Live From Lisbon--Debate: 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙤𝙧𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙢 W/ Miguel Morgado, Carlos Guimarães Pinto, & Yaron

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, everyone, Thank you so much for being here and supporting.
My name is Miguel Almela. I am part of the
Objectivism Portugal group. In conjunction with the Atlas Campus, we
have organized these conferences. We organized one in Portal last
Tuesday and we are organizing this one now in Lisbon today.

(00:24):
The conference will be about the morality of capitalism and
we want to answer the following question, if capitalism is moral,
why this isn't the right defended properly? And to do
that we are going to count with the help of
these three gentlemen. The first person I will introduce to
you is the chairman of the Iron ran Institute. He

(00:49):
is the author of Equalism, Unfair, Free Market Revolution and
in Pursuit of Wealth. He also hosts his own podcast.
It's called The Iron Broods Show, and if you like
what you hear today, you can just check it out.
And so please just put your hands together for your
on Brook. Thank you so much for being here. The

(01:18):
next person I'm introducing here today is someone that I
could stay here for the whole night talking about his accomplishments,
but I'll just say this he is He has a
PhD in economics, he's He's done a lot of things.
He is someone that we all Portuguese society, we all

(01:42):
should be very grateful for him pushing liberal ideas in
the European sense in Portugal. And he's just published another
book called Sorry, leave it a Lil mumund and please
just put your hands together for calls I spins. And

(02:08):
the next person I'm going to introduce here today is
someone that you all know for sure. He has a
pH d in political science. He's a professor, he's a
political commentator and analyst on Primetime TV. He's someone that
I admire for his bravery and intellectual capability. And he

(02:32):
just published his book on He's written many books, but
he just published his last book called in Troutsell, I
leave a lesion and please put chance together for you
and to help us moderate this discussion we have here today,

(02:57):
someone that at a very young age has already done
a lot. So I'm very proud to introduce someone that
is an investigator at E I at E E P
I E P sorry for in political science and basically
has written a book already. It was published in twenty

(03:18):
twenty three. It's called Mikhaelbachov, findwin Pert and she's a
writer at Espresso and a commentator and analyst at Now's
New and Observador for International Politics. So put yours together
for Daniel Lenunz.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Thank you so much, and the floor is yours.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Miel can you can
you hear me? Is that fine? Okay? Good evening everyone.
Just before we start, I have prepared some welcoming words
to you, so welcome to our conference on the Morality

(04:01):
of Capitalism here at the beautiful tivoli of Nita Deliverdad.
It's really a pleasure to me to see such a
full room full of people who feel couriers, thoughtful and
probably ready to engage in new ideas and ideas that

(04:22):
truly matter for all of us. As you probably know,
tonight's event is actually part of the Road to Iron
Rent Conference twenty twenty six, bringing some of today's leading
voices on individual liberty and capitalism closer to audiences here
in Portugal. And our goal is actually very very simple.

(04:47):
It's to spark meaningful discussion, to challenge assumptions, and to
leave each of us with something to think about right
after this session. So thank you all for being here.
Whether you're a long time admirer of iron Rain's ideas

(05:09):
or just curious to hear new perspectives. You're in the
right place either way, so thank you very much, Miguel.
You have already done part of the job. So let
me just say that we're very fortunate to have such
a distinguished panel of speakers with us. The first one,

(05:30):
of course, Yarren Brooke, who is an economist and chairman
of the Iron Rain Institute. As you already know most
is one of the most well known advocates for capitalism
as a moral system and not just as an efficient one,
and his talks challenges to rethink the principles that underline freedom,

(05:52):
success and also human flourishing. And joining him we have
another two well known Portuguese voices in political and economic thought,
Migel Morgad and karg Shpintu. As you know as well,
Miguel Morgad was a member of the Portuguese Parliament from
twenty to fifteen to twenty nineteen and served as senior
political Advisor to the Prime Minister from twenty eleven to

(06:15):
twenty fifteen. He's also a senior fellow at the Institute
for Political Studies, from where I came from as well
and from where he holds a PhD in political science too,
as well as a familiar face to all those who
watch sign tes Kasgieve Shpintu is a member of the
Portuguese Parliament. He's He has served as president of Innicity

(06:37):
of Liberal from twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen, as well
as executive director of Institute to Much Liberdad. He is
also aldo also a PhD in economics from UNIFADU Portu.
So please join me in welcoming our guests. Thank you
very much.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
Where the last yeas one of the.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Well we're going to get started in. My first question
goes right to Miguel, and it's actually a very simple one.
So Miguel, in a sentence, and please in the sentence,
what is capitalism.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
It's a novel way of organizing production and consumption of goods.
It's the modern economic form par excellence, without any historical precedent.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Okay, Carus, anything to add to this definition.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
No, I disagree completely with this definition. I don't think
it's a novel way whatsoever. I think it's the way
that people have lived for centuries and millennials. We just
decided in the nineteenth century to call reality capitalism. But
I cannot explain that in one sentence. If I have
more time, i'll do it after Why Why I think

(07:55):
capitalism just normal life and we just decided to that recently.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Okay, you're on. You definitely have something to add.

Speaker 5 (08:04):
Yes, I'll disagree with both of you. I think capitalism
is an innovation. It's an innovation that is a consequence
of the discovery of the concept of individual rights. It
is the system political, social economic system that recognizes individual
rights and where the government's sole responsibility only responsibility is
the protection of those rights, and where all property is

(08:27):
privately owned.

Speaker 6 (08:28):
It's an unknown ideal.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Okay, so you in a few words you have mentioned
individual responsibility, property rights, and I'd like to ask you
why is that such a crucial fundamental part of your
definition of capitalism. Why does it matter that much?

Speaker 5 (08:54):
Well, I think something changed in the beginning of the
nineteenth century, something fundamentally changed there. You know, people call
it the industrial evolution, or it's more than that, because
it was political, it was social, it was cultural. And
since then we've seen this hockey stick phenomena. We've seen
wealth grow exponentially at a rate and in a way

(09:15):
that we haven't experienced in you know, one hundred thousand
years or more of human history.

Speaker 6 (09:20):
So something unique changed.

Speaker 5 (09:23):
And if you look at what that is, it is
it really, I think is symbolized by the founding of America.
It's symbolized by this idea that individuals ends in themselves
they have rights. The government should stay out of their
lives other than to protect those rights. And property is
essential for life, the fundamental right. There's only one right really,

(09:46):
of all the rights, there's only one, and that is
the right to life. And the property is a manifestation
of that right. You can't have a right to life
if you don't have a right to the stuff that
you create, that you make. So you observe that that
this recognition of rights happens, people are left free for
the first time in human history. They're left free to
pursue their own lives. There's a recognition that you know,

(10:12):
reason is is efficacious and powerful and and oh wow,
all right, unexpected, you know, all right, yeah, I guess,

(10:35):
I guess.

Speaker 6 (10:35):
So the size of a group. Yeah, absolutely, they didn't.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Throw paint that you you should consider yourself lucky. They
didn't throw anything at you.

Speaker 6 (10:42):
Oh, no, I had a lot worse, believe me, a
lot worse.

Speaker 5 (10:47):
She didn't have her face covered and she didn't stage,
so we didn't get antea for here.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Oh sorry, it's not time for questions from the audience. Okay, please,
it's not the time for questions from the audience. It's
not the time for questions from the audience.

Speaker 6 (11:13):
Oh so there we go. Okay, So keeping you, there's
going to be more.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
I think, all right, we'll see all right, So say
individual rates people are liberated, the free. They have an
opportunity to pursue their own values, their own goals, free
of cosion, free of force. Suddenly in the early part
of the of the nineteenth century, late part of the
eighteenth century in some parts of Europe and the United States.

(11:47):
And what you get is the manifestation of this freedom
is a boost of entrepreneurial activity, business activity, wealth creation,
and we call that capitalism. Marks looked around, I mean marks,
the large sent help define this Tom. But he looked
around at what he saw was real, and he actually
describes it pretty well. I mean to Marxist credit, you know,

(12:08):
which is different than a lot of the Marxists today.
He recognized what's going on around him, and he sees
the wealth being created in the rising stand of living.
He mistook it to it and he believes it's gonna
lead to all these hollers. But he sees something real
and he called it capitalism. Okay, we you know, quite
happy to take that term. Capital comes from head, which

(12:29):
means mine think from Latin. Uh And if not a
bad not a bad term. So capitalism is the term
describing this phenomena explosion of productivity as a consequence of freedom.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Okay, thank you.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
So I presume we.

Speaker 6 (12:46):
The door is over there. I'm not gonna respond. Not
the topic another time, another place. H m hmmm.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Shall we keep going?

Speaker 6 (13:41):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (13:42):
As I was saying, I presume we need to state
first of all, to exist and then to develop some
part of the work. So, miguel, what work or in
what sectors should the government be involved when it comes
to a capitalist society in your view?

Speaker 4 (14:02):
Of course, capitalism has been evolving for a long time
and adjusting to different social needs. I mean, there's this
big argument since the late nineteenth century among liberals about
what the states should do in order to make effective
the protection of human rights, of individual rights and some

(14:24):
of the liberals actually came to the conclusion that the
state had a lot of things to do, had a
lot of responsibilities that it had to take, for instance,
to make sure that no one is miserably poor, make
sure that no one works for a miserable wage, make
sure that people have access to healthcare or to education.

(14:47):
So you know, I disagreed deeply with your own because
it makes capitalism and social system, while in fact it
is not. Capitalism only makes sense since that moment in
time when in Western consciousness we started to think that
we live in different dimensions political dimension on one side

(15:08):
and social demenson on the other side, but an economic
dimension on the other. It's all a fiction. As we
all know, we are not economic beings or political beings.
We are total beings. But anyway, we started to think
of ourselves as parttaking of all these dimensions, and capitalism
describes one way, one historical novel, absolutely novel without precedent

(15:31):
in history, of organizing our so called economic life. But
then again, what sort of economic life is adjusted to
the liberal ideal, which is that everyone is free. That
leaves a kind of freedom in which equality is an ingredient.

(15:51):
So at the end of the nineteenth century beginning of
the twentieth century, a lot of people started to think, well,
liberalism is supposedly about the emancipation of every single individual,
and for that task we need the power of the state.
We need to tax the rich, get a lot of
fiscal resources, and distribute wealth. And even if some sort

(16:16):
of goods, of economic goods are not available in the
amount that we want, then the state should assume that
responsibility as well, and so on and so forth. So
even in the family of liberals from the nineteenth century onwards,
there's this big route, this big discussion, this big argument,

(16:41):
even a fracture within the liberal family. That's perhaps some
of the liberal slash capitalist tenets, that is, the sanctity
of the right of property, the sanctity of freedom of
contract should actually be conditioned were limited, And that's why

(17:03):
we have the current state of politics in the West.
We are all, in one sense or the other liberals,
because we all want society in which everyone is free.
So in that sense, liberalism one. But there's this division
between the left and right because the liberals have themselves
divided around this question. Is it true that only the

(17:28):
freedom to act as economic being without any political or
state restraints lead to this emancipation of each individual, or
on the contrary, we need the state to emancipate each
and every one of us, at least the poorest of us,
the most vulnerable of us in society. So this is

(17:49):
an argument around within the liberal family.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Can you tell us, then, what's the difference between the
capitalists society that Miguel was describing and a socialist society.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Fart by saying why I was teasing earlier on about capitalism,
I think it's important to speak about this. I think
capitalism is in the human nature itself. We always wanted
to work, we always wanted to save, we always wanted
to trade, So that was always part of the human being.

(18:29):
What we call the emergence of capitalism in the nineteenth century,
it's basically the creation of the institutional setting that allowed
human beings that already were capitalistic in the sense that
they wanted to work, they wanted to trade, they wanted
to invest. That that has always always happened. I have
a friend that is somewhere there that is telling me

(18:51):
that that capitalism was the world that was actually created
in nineteenth center by anti capitalists. To describe the world
as it is. So they found out because there's always
problems with the world, they identified a few issues that
the world had because it will it had, it will

(19:11):
always have, and they decided to call it capitalism. So
they called a capitalism to reality as it was. What
I think, this hockeyistic development that we saw from the
nineteenth century was not the creation of capitalism, because capitalism
was already there. It was the creation of the institutional

(19:33):
setting that allowed capitalism to thrive, that allowed for people
to have equal rights, that allowed people to save, to
have property rights that was essential to be able to
save in the long term, to do proper training, et cetera.
And that, yes, that the creation of that institutional setting,

(19:54):
with all the liberal revolutions allowed, with all the rights
that came from these revolutions, allowed them for this huge
development that we have seen. And we must not forget
how huge this development was. If we think about how
a peasant lived in the eighteenth nineteenth century, and it

(20:18):
was not very different from a peasant lived two thousand
years before. There was not there were small technological developments,
But if we compare that and how a regular person
living in the beginning of the eighteenth century or in
the middle of the eighteenth century compared with anyone two

(20:38):
thousand years earlier, there was no big difference. They had
to work from day to night to eat their children.
Half of the children would die. They would die before
they would turn forty. And if we compare the what
even the poorest of the people today in developed society

(20:59):
is leave. There was a huge jump in the quality
of life. And that was what that institutional setting meaning
letting capitalism actually work to the good of people, brought
to us. And I think that's the biggest, the biggest
change of that we've faced in the last three hundred years.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Okay, I understood. So let's deepen our conversation into the
topic that we want to understand, which is why capitalism
is a moral social system. So roon, let me ask
you what is morality from your point of view and

(21:39):
how can we integrate that idea of morality in this
debate on capitalist societies and capitalism itself.

Speaker 5 (21:50):
Well, I think a moral system or morality is a
code of values by which human beings can live their lives.

Speaker 6 (21:59):
The distinguish between what is pro they lives, what is.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
Good for them, and what is bad for them. That
it is a guide to living life well. It is
a guide to human flourishing. And I think one of
the things that human beings need in order to live
a moral life and to achieve their flourishing, to achieve happiness,
to achieve prosperity, is they need freedom.

Speaker 6 (22:25):
But we need to be careful about the word freedom.

Speaker 5 (22:27):
Freedom is a wood, and I think will probably disagree
about even what freedom means, right, because I mean, you
can go in front of any group of people and
ask them do you believe in freedom, and everybody, a
group of communists, a group of fascists, everybody will say yes,
because they're all.

Speaker 6 (22:45):
Defining it very, very differently.

Speaker 5 (22:48):
I believe freedom is the absence of collusion, the absence
of force, the ability to live your life based on
your own values, your own thought, reasons, your own reason
in pursuit of your own happiness, with nobody inflicting violence

(23:09):
and force and causion, and an authority to tell you
what you can and cannot do. So I you know, so,
so I think morally, I reject the idea that we
can tax some people because we want to give it
to somebody else, because they're suffering right now, and these
people are doing better than those people, so we should
tax them and give it to them. I mean, we
used to call that theft, and and you know now

(23:31):
we've created state institutions to kind of facilitate that, and
it's no longer theft.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
Fine, but the reality is that that is them.

Speaker 5 (23:40):
We've taken freedom away from some in order not to
enhance the freedom of others, but to make them dependent.
So I think it's destructive. I think it's anti freedom.
You're not liberating anybody. So a moral system is that
which leaves individuals free, free of coursion, free of force.
It's not a system that facilitates. It's not freedom is

(24:01):
not It's a positive in terms.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
Of it allows people to do stuff.

Speaker 5 (24:05):
It's not a positive in terms of it gives people
or provides them with values.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
Okay, So basically uron is kind of titing that what
Miguel and Carlous just said about capitalism just a while
ago is not really capitalism but some kind of mixed economy.

Speaker 5 (24:25):
Yes, I would define what we have today in the world,
and really we've always had to some extent is a
mixture of capitalism and elements of statism, whether you call
it socialism or other form of statism, the elements of
both private.

Speaker 6 (24:38):
Property, some freedom you can or to them all.

Speaker 5 (24:40):
You can buy pretty much what you wanted, though we're
going to be taxed in between, with a vat or
a sales tax. So there's the state force is always there,
but it's a mixture of some freedom and a lot
of controls. And different countries have different levels of a
little bit more freedom, a little bit less freedom. But
we have these mixtures, and we usually a debating kind

(25:02):
of different little variations right, a little shift this way,
or you know, left or right, or whatever you want
to describe it. And what I'm arguing is there is
a system called capitalism that's out here. It's an ideal.
It purifies it from all the statism. The state is
necessary for very few things. You asked before, what should
the state?

Speaker 4 (25:21):
Do you know?

Speaker 5 (25:22):
For exactly what the state is built for. It's it's
there to protect our rights. To do that, you need
a military or police force and a judiciary. Other than that,
you need nothing. It needs to be able to arbitrate
issues of individual rights. It needs to protect us from
the use of force, from coersion, from people stealing our stuff,
taking our stuff, or silencing us. Like some people try

(25:46):
to do here. That is the role, that is the
role of the state. Other than that, the state has
no role. Any other role it takes on is by
definition of violation of rights. And therefore, and move away from.

Speaker 6 (25:59):
Freedom, then.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Why then should governments do more than just protect individual
and property rights, Just like Iran was mentioning, why I.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Understand that having this internally coherent vision of the world,
that and any type of of of taxation is some
sort of of of cohercion, and so there shouldn't be
any there. And that departs from a standpoint that I
do not have, which is a fully individualistic standpoint that

(26:37):
we there's no values, that we don't have values as
the community. And I do believe that we do have
some values as a community, and we do have responsibilities
towards each other, and and they should be assured by
by by taxation, by some level of taxation. Of course,
as we were speaking yesterday, there's there are certain degrees

(27:01):
of this. Yesterday we were speaking about on one extreme
full capitalism, which I don't like to call it full capitalism,
but full individualism, I would say, and on the other
extreme full communism. And neither of these has ever been tried.
So we ask anyone has has this ever been tried?

(27:22):
And no one can give one one full example. And
you aren't told me, which is true, that it's true
that we haven't tried any of these extremes. But the
more we get close to one of the extremes communism,
the more misery we create, the more we get closer
to the other, and the more development we have and
so on, which is which is true. But there's also

(27:44):
probably a reason why we do not get so close
to that extreme and and societies tend, even developed societies
that have that provides a lot of well being to
their members, do not get even close to this level,
this extreme level. And it's because there's there is a

(28:04):
sense of community. We have the sense that our children
cannot go without the education, so we need to ensure
that we have the sense that we cannot leave anyone
to die of hunger. And yes, it's true, I know
that there would be voluntary ways to uh to provide
the education to children, to provide to provide health care.

(28:28):
But then but then we would have another problem that
everyone would wait for everyone else to do that. So
we would benefit from the social cohesion all of us
would benefit from it, but then we would wait for
anyone else. And that's the reason why, why why we
need government to ensure this, this base level of of

(28:50):
of welfare, to ensure that no children goes without the education,
that anyone that falls into uh a severe health problem
has a type of support that no one dies of
hungary in elderly age. And I do believe there's a
there's a role for that, and yes, we we will
need some cohercion in order to do that. And that

(29:11):
does not destroy my my belief in in capitalism much less.
I think these these are pillars that we we need
for capitalism to work and h and to have democratic
alision to the capitalist values.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Miguel I, I presume you kind of agree with with Carlush,
But tell if tell us if you if you do,
And concerning taxation, tell us, is it moral for a
government to collect taxes from the people, of course, to
to perform some kind of activities in in societies and

(29:53):
which ones and why?

Speaker 4 (29:55):
Well, let me start by saying why I disagree with
your own when as if society needs government besides providing
the you know, the judiciary function, security function, defense function.
My short answer would be such a society wouldn't be

(30:18):
would not be a free society. And I'll give you
a reason. There's many reasons why I say this, I'll do.
Let me just give you an example, just for the
sake of argument. Human beings, contrariwise to the revolutionary liberal motto,
are not born free. Every one of us knows that

(30:43):
we are not born free. We are born every one
of us was born in an absolute state of subjection.
What is a baby just born, just thrown out in
the world. There's no example in the world of nature
of such a state of subjection and total dependence than

(31:05):
a human being just born. Why is it important? Why
does it matter? Because it the survival of the human
race requires authority, the presence, the existence, the functioning of
authority from day one of our individual existence, and that

(31:25):
has a whole universe of consequences even after we are born.
So we are not born free, but we are born
to freedom. That's a very different thing. So we need
to be prepared to be free beings in our own future.

(31:46):
So we need authority to guide us. You can call
it religion, you can call it parental authority, you can
call it whatever you want. But you cannot dispense with authority.
That was one of the big mistakes of you know,
the second and third wave of liberalism since the nineteenth
century onwards. Although first generation liberals in the seventeenth century

(32:09):
they all understood that, but then it was forgotten for many,
many reasons. So on top of that, you have to
say that freedom, like Urin was saying, everyone wants freedom.
Why is it so? Because freedom has moral value. That's

(32:31):
the reason why we think freedom is a good. Even
when we say that freedom is that particular good that
allows for the fruition of every other remaining good, it's
a good. It has a moral value. So if freedom
is valued because it has moral value, it's because freedom

(32:52):
allows us not to live according to radical contingency, That
is to say, we don't value life that is hostage
to arbitrariness. Arbitrariness has no moral value. So we organize

(33:14):
ourselves in societies. In full functioning societies, there are human
communities in order to be stable, need to be organized
around the principle of governance. Again, the principle of authority,
and that implies that freedom is not limitless. This human

(33:36):
community needs to be governed. So now we say, well,
we want to be free, because everyone has the right
to do whatever they want, just to respond to corlige
given and spins. One of the reasons that it cannot
say that capitalism is just the name that the enemies
of capitalism came up with to describe what we were

(34:00):
doing as mankind for millennium. And here Jaron and I
are in agreement, of course, that this is an absolute
novelty is for the simple reason that no one, no
group of people anywhere in the south, in the north,
in the east, in the west of the world, before say,

(34:22):
the nineteenth century, every thought that as a pside could
be ruled and lived in which each individual would make
up his own mind about what is supremely good for himself.
There's no such an example in the past and the
history of mankind. It's as simple as that, either we
ask the gods to let us know what it was good,

(34:45):
or some priests or some ruler, or some you know,
old man wiser than we were. We never lived according
to this moral notion that we can only agree to
what is evil, but not we cannot agree. We cannot

(35:05):
come up to an agreement concerning what is good to
everyone of us that is new, and without that moral outlook,
there's no capitalism. Capitalism depends on this new moral framework
that Urine can call it freedom. It's a good name
as anyone else, as anything else, but it's a different

(35:30):
moral outlook, a different moral horizon, and it's new. It's
radically new, and it came not from the spontaneous action
of human individuals. It came from the mind of a
very few number of thinkers actually in Europe, in the West,
not outside the West, in the West. So it's everything

(35:54):
but old, everything but spontaneous. So what should I mean taxation?

Speaker 5 (35:59):
Is?

Speaker 7 (36:00):
Is it.

Speaker 6 (36:01):
Legitimate?

Speaker 4 (36:03):
We must agree that, of course it is, according to
which principle is taxation legitimate? According to the liberal principle consent?
If people consent to being taxed, well it becomes legitimate.
I mean, I'm just repeating what liberals have been saying
for centuries.

Speaker 8 (36:23):
Now.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Taxation with no consent, all right, that should that is illegitimate,
should be disobeyed, should be immoral. But once it's consented to, well,
taxation is legitimate. Now we must ask the question to
what degree should taxation go to to what kinds, to

(36:44):
what kind of objects should state taxation be directed to
which is more efficient, which one is less efficient. But
that's a different kind of conversation.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
I would say, Uh, I want to say something. Just
just let me just let me ask you concerning what
Miguel just said, and Cardles as well. I cannot resist
asking you, and I know you have something else to say.
But shouldn't governments provide at least I don't know, roads, healthcare, education,

(37:29):
or if not provide, shouldn't governments pay the private sector
to do it?

Speaker 6 (37:37):
Yeah, so there's a lot to say that.

Speaker 5 (37:40):
That was pretty dense and a lot of a lot
of interesting contents, some of which I agree, so most
of which I don't. Let me let me just let
me comment on this idea that we're born dependent, and
we certainly are born dependent, there's no question we're completely
dependent on the authority.

Speaker 4 (37:56):
Of the parent.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
To extrapolate from our state as children to our state
as adults. Is I think a big mistake. We are
born without the capacity to reason, we are born without
the capacity to think, We're born without the capacity to
be rash.

Speaker 6 (38:11):
We have that potential and.

Speaker 5 (38:12):
We develop it through childhood, and the whole point of
parenting at the end of the day is not to
inflict some authority on the child, but to guide the
child towards independence, That is, to guide the child towards
being able to use his own mind in pursuit of
his own values, in pursuit of his own life. We
guide the child to be an independent human being who

(38:34):
can think and take care of himself. And indeed, I
think the biggest revolution that makes capitalism possible if you
think about the eighteenth century, and we talked about the
few people that make it possible, and I think it
is a few people. Maybe the most important person is
somebody like Newton, right, not a political philosopher, but a
scientist who shows us the capacity of reason to understand

(38:58):
the world, the efficacy of science, that we no longer
have to depend on authority of the past, whether those
authority is of religion or whether those authorities are ancient philosophies.
The philosophers who are the Scholastics and others took verbatim
right as the word of God. In a sense, but

(39:19):
we can think for ourselves. Everybody has the capacity to
reason and therefore think for himself, and therefore to be
an independent agent.

Speaker 6 (39:27):
And that doesn't mean to be on a desert island.

Speaker 5 (39:30):
That means they interact with other people as an independent
agent in trading relationships. So I, I you know, the
whole point is adulthood is when you don't need authority anymore.
You need values, You need a philosophy to guide your life.
You need experts to tell you you know, you know,
to diagnose your disease and to help you in a

(39:52):
hospital or something like that. You need experts, but you
don't need authorities in the sense of somebody who courses you,
or somebody who forces their ideas on your throat, or
a government that.

Speaker 6 (40:01):
Tells you to what you what you should live for.
So I think the idea.

Speaker 5 (40:07):
The idea is that as adults who are capable of reasoning,
capable of rationality, capable of discovering their own values, capable
of using that reason to discover those values, you know,
authority needs to be out authority at least that can
inflict violence if.

Speaker 6 (40:23):
We disagree with it. And and government, of course is
such an authority that can inflict violence on us.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
So I can show up to you right there. Well,
I just wanted to add something. Well, as you may say,
as it may expect me to say, now, is that
you're going to make made the argument that I was
making about authority. You have authority right there. So freedom
is not spontaneous. Freedom is created, and it's created by authority,

(40:50):
an authority that is there to leave us in a
position of guidance once we are endowed with freedom. That's excellent.
That's that. That was my point precisely. But since he
mentioned Newton, and I think Newton is very relevant here,
let me just add someone one generation older than Newton
that is even to my mind, even more important to

(41:12):
the creation of the capitalist mentality. Another in englishman, another
in English scientist Francis Bacon. Francis Bacon by himself created
the whole moral outlook of what we call capitalism today.
He came up with these thoughts, very simple thoughts, like

(41:35):
Carlos was saying, we have as mankind experiencing this mirrorable,
miserable state of absolute poverty since ever, since ever an
ex expectation of living of what's say, thirty years of age,
you know, spending your whole day with being hungry. You know,

(41:58):
that's the experience of mankind. Bacon thoughts, for the first
time in.

Speaker 6 (42:03):
Our history that it was not supposed to be this way.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
But we have the ability to completely transform the world
only if we understand that what we have been given,
the world that we have been given, is not enough,
and we should not be thankful for the poor world
that we've been thrown into to get a living. So

(42:30):
that's what Bacon is saying, be demanding, be demanding about
God's God has not given us enough, So it's up
to us to completely transform the world and make it plentiful.
It's not God that's going to make the world plentiful
for us. It's going to be us. But we have

(42:51):
to scientifically organize. For the first time in the history
of mankind, we have to scientifically organize the way we
work because spontaneously we have not been doing things with
a purpose of productivity like we would say today. Productivity
was never an objective in the history of mankind, neither

(43:12):
in China, neither in ancient Greece, neither in the tribes
in Gaul, in Roman gol never. Bacon said, only if
we organize ourselves to actually state goals productivity, goals in science,
in our economic life, will we be able to transform
the world. And that's exactly what happened. Let me just

(43:33):
finish with giving this example. Carlos has been saying, well,
we have this institutional setting that allowed us to make
capitalism what it was, natural and spontaneous universal. Actually, capitalism
depends on one specific institution that was not created by
no philosopher or politician. But it's absolutely central and it's

(43:55):
very new. It's the enterprise. It's the company. Existed before,
but once in the sixteenth century seventeenth century, we see
these little human communities designed to scientifically work for a purpose,
to get more money, to get more products, to get innovation.

(44:15):
It never happened before. So actually bacon is very important
to Here'm sorry, so sorry, sorry for.

Speaker 5 (44:19):
An Interructionability agree about bacon and I disagree about the corporation.

Speaker 6 (44:23):
I think I think business corporation.

Speaker 5 (44:25):
Yeah, business ultimately is the corporation is ultimately a product
of freedom, and the first corporations in the sixteenth seventeenth,
eighteenth century we indeed unfree right monopoli is King granted
a monopoly and it's only with the breaking of that
in the nineteenth century under freedom. But the fundamental concept
that makes capitalism capitalism is not the corporation. It's the

(44:47):
Because of the corporation, what makes the corporation possible, which
is property rights, which, of course property rights depend on
the concept of individual rights, and that's John Locke. So
if we're gonna if we're gonna attribute it to a philosophy,
you know, John Locke is here crucial because he's defining
what property rights are.

Speaker 6 (45:04):
He's defining what rights are.

Speaker 5 (45:06):
You can disagree with his definition, but the idea of
the fundamental idea comes from there, and it's only the
application of that that ultimately leads the breakup of these monopolies. Really,
you know, real property rights and that is it comes
about in them. But except the text in the nineteenth century,
except taxation.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
If taxation is consented, then it's legitimate.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
Well, but this is the problem with Let's talk about
consent for a minute. What does consent actually mean. Right,
Consent means democracy. Consent means we vote a majority, but
there's a minority that is not consenting, a minority that
voted against.

Speaker 6 (45:38):
A particular proposition.

Speaker 5 (45:40):
So, you know, as as I think the founders of
American and I think many thinkers have discovered, the problem
with any kind of democracy is that it oppresses the minority.
It's two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Right,
we know how that goes, and we know how it's
always going to go. So what about those who don't consent?
In every demo, See, there are plenty of people who

(46:01):
don't consent to be taxed. I don't consent to be taxed,
and yet I'm going to be taxed anyway, and I'm
going to be caused. Of course, we consent all kinds
of things that you probably disagree with, that majorities, you know,
vote for that violate our rights. And this is the
this is the the innovation that is I think the
American Constitution in its original form and its original intent,

(46:22):
and that is the idea that individual rights are beyond voting,
beyond this majoritarian idea of consent. And then the question
is what are those rights? As For example, in America,
a majority can decide we don't want to hear your
on speak anymore, we don't like his ideas, we're going
to silence it. And yet the Constitution protects your right

(46:43):
to speak. And if the Constitution better protected your right
to property, then a majority maybe couldn't vote to take
some of your property away.

Speaker 6 (46:52):
And give it to other people.

Speaker 5 (46:53):
So so I reject the idea that majorities determine consent
because individuals don't consent to everything a major already decides
for them, and the smallest minority, always, the smallest minority
in any society, is the individual. And the individual doesn't
consent to most things that the government does today, which
is the problem of government today. So many of us

(47:16):
don't like what it's doing and yet have no ability
to actually change it.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
So the question was what about the roads. That's all
very interesting, I know, but what about the roads healthcare? Education?

Speaker 4 (47:29):
And at one more point, can I just make a
comment other question of consent?

Speaker 6 (47:33):
Something you said just before you leave the question of consent?

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Can I do your mind your mine? There's this this,
this very old problem in liberal discussion about the majority principle.
So there is this nice guy version of why we
accept majority principle, and there's this, you know, rug guy
version of why liberals accept the majority of in principle.

(48:00):
So let's begin with the nice guy. The nice guy
says that we have to accept decisions by the majority
because it's very difficult to get to an nanimous response,
of course, about all sorts of issues. So we have
to decide anyway, So why the majority, Well, because we
accept that we are all politically and morally equal. If
we don't accept majority decisions, then we are allowing to.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
Give equality, rejecting equality because we're saying that those in
the majority are more equal than.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
We just say that majorities are contingent. This is the
nice guy's version. A majority is contingent. Uh, So we
have to make up decisions. We have to get a
decision about taxation or any other issue. So what is
the most proper criteria? According to liberal equality, we would say,

(48:55):
if we don't accept the majority, we are in fact
giving a feed to a minority, and in one extreme situation,
to a single individual, that would be the most un
unequal solution we can think of. So this is the
most moral version. The less moral version comes from someone
that you're unus quoted, this big you know, liberal hero

(49:18):
called John Locke, this Englishman of the late seventeenth century.
He actually gives a ground for accepting majority decisions, a
very different ground. He says, it's all a question of force,
a force.

Speaker 6 (49:33):
So we are adding not votes, but force.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
The majority is stronger than the minority. And why does
Locke accept such an immoral argument because it says that
societies have their own inner movement, and that inner movement
is given precisely by the stronger party. Now, why are
we as liberals. Well, I'm actually not a liberal, as

(49:58):
you may have guessed. But anyway, liberals in this larger sense,
why do we accept that Uran doesn't accept this principle,
but the majority of us do that if you're richer,
you should pay more taxes for one very single simple reason,
because if you are already rich. Notice this, I'm not

(50:19):
texting you because you are white or because you are black. No,
it's because you are richer.

Speaker 6 (50:26):
Than the average.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
So you got more from the society you live in
than I did as a poor guy.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Let me just kiss this.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
So we are trading goods.

Speaker 6 (50:37):
We are trading goods.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Get you got more from us, not because you exploited it,
but because you live here. Right, try to be rich
as Zelene Musk living in Burkino Fasu it may be
more difficult than living in America. So living in America
as a whole, as a society makes it easier for
you to get rich. And you did. You got rich.

(51:01):
Now give it something back to the others who for
no for arbitrary reasons. Uh, didn't God as rich as
you and need that money because you know, we need
free schools, or you need free healthcare.

Speaker 6 (51:17):
Or you need to security.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
Complete perversion of of of how people, complete perversion of
liberalism has been written.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
No, I know, I disagree with liberalism as obviously. You know,
rich people create the wealth that we all benefit from.
They're the massive beneficiaries of mankind.

Speaker 6 (51:35):
They're not takers.

Speaker 5 (51:36):
They give us and they're rich and and they're rich
there because they've given, right, but you agree they've traded,
but you agree.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
That being rich is better than being poor, of course, right,
So they get that benefit. They are benefits, but they
created that benefit.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
It is attributed to them, and everybody else has already
benefited from the fact that they become rich. When when
when when when you know, Steve Jobs becomes rich by
producing the iPhone, we all benefit because we get iPhones
and he's become rich, so he doesn't have to give
back anything, and if anything, we should say thank you
to Jobs above and beyond the billions that he's already made.

Speaker 6 (52:11):
So it's it's exactly upside. How does it so?

Speaker 4 (52:15):
In my view?

Speaker 5 (52:15):
In my view, the rich have given so much to
all of us, they should be text less than everybody else.
I mean, if you if you're gonna, if you're gonna go,
based on how much you've contributed, they should be text
less than everybody else because they've contributed to human life
so much more.

Speaker 6 (52:29):
You're poor. You haven't contributed anything to the rest of man.

Speaker 5 (52:34):
Maybe maybe maybe yes, we don't know why somebody is poor,
why somebody, But the fact is to.

Speaker 6 (52:41):
Become rich in a free society, you have to produce,
you have to do something.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
How do you use that argument? A universal argument about
tax session all the rich to those guys who inherit
their wealth, who have done nothing for men.

Speaker 6 (52:55):
All I'm saying, well, but the people you need the
money got to choose what to do with it.

Speaker 5 (53:00):
Sure, you could have bound it. Sure, and they had
a right to do that. Your father is your father,
you are, you are a rich you.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
Never did anything for men kind of sure then you know,
putting coke in your nose.

Speaker 5 (53:10):
Or whatever, you know, And in the capitalist society you're
not an infector to anyone. I mean, there was a
phrase in the nineteen per century, your property is sure,
but you know phrase in the nineteenth century, from short
sleeve to short sleeve in three generations. You know, those
who don't make the money, who really live the it's

(53:31):
not theirs, lose it very quickly. So so yes, okay.
So some people are rich because they inherited it, because
the person who gave them money has the property rite
over it. They created it, they get to do whatever
they want with it. But most people, at least in
the United States, and the more capitalists you become.

Speaker 6 (53:48):
The more this is true.

Speaker 5 (53:49):
Most people who are rich create that wealth. They're not
rich because of an inheritance, the rich because of the creation.

Speaker 6 (53:55):
And you can see that.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
Take the take the Fortune five hundred list of the
richest people in America, and you will see that an
overwhelming majority of that list of people who created the
wealth themselves. You know, just look at the top ten.
Most of them are tech entrepreneurs. They're very few families
in that top ten.

Speaker 6 (54:13):
You're quite oh. One more thing I want.

Speaker 5 (54:15):
To say before the question, one more thing, because it
was brought up about the morality, right, because this is
a discussion about reality. It's not that I believe that
freedom is equal to morality. I don't think freedom is
a moral concept. I think freedom is a political concept,
and morality is about your ability to pursue your own

(54:36):
self interest. It's about the ability to pursue your own
rational values. That's what morality is. And what freedom allows
is you to be moral. It allows you to go
out and pursue those values. It allows you to pursue
yourself for interest. And so capitalism is a moral system
because it gives individuals the freedom to choose their values,

(54:59):
to rationally figure out what makes sense for them to
go and pursue, and it leaves them free to do so.
It leaves them uncoorsed, unforced to do exactly that. So
that's what makes it all. Now why roads and everything else? Look,
you know, we could have a whole session on roads, right,
but there's zero reason, there's just zero reason why roads, healthcare,

(55:20):
education cannot be provided by the private sector, indeed much better.

Speaker 6 (55:24):
I mean, I've driven on the roads here in lisbon I.

Speaker 5 (55:27):
I you know, I come from Puerto Rico, where the
roads are even worse than here, much worse than here.
I know how good government roads are. I mean just
sending traffic over there. And you know, in any any
city in the world, and you see that I think
we could do better. Now, we could have a whole
discussion and how government could, how private sector we deal
with roads, But that's.

Speaker 6 (55:46):
For another time.

Speaker 5 (55:48):
Healthcare, God, I mean, you know, we are so retarded
in terms of healthcare because it's all bureaucratized and all
run by government, and we don't have the the you know,
market incentives that drive costs down and and.

Speaker 6 (56:05):
And you know, a quality up that we have in
every other sector.

Speaker 5 (56:09):
Why in this so crucial sector to all of human life,
do we relying on socialism to provide us with the
goods instead of relying on capitalism. I mean, one can
only imagine what a capitalist system applied to health care.
And don't tell me the United States is capitalists when
it comes to health care, because it is not. But
if only we applied the principle of capitalism to health care, wow,

(56:31):
we would live so long, we would live such healthy lives.
It would all be completely different. And the same with education,
I mean public education. Government education sucks. It's really really bad,
at least in the United States. And by the way,
the poorer you are, the worst education you get. That
is the worst education in the United States today is

(56:52):
provided in the in the in the slums, in the
you know, in the neighborhoods and minorities where people are really,
really poor. That's the worst place, the worst education you
can get. Surely entrepreneurs could do better than that. Surely
you can.

Speaker 6 (57:06):
Figure out a way to improve that.

Speaker 5 (57:10):
You know, the incentives that the government creates distort the
provisioning of any services, whether it's healthcare or whether it's education.

Speaker 6 (57:19):
So a market, a market driven.

Speaker 5 (57:22):
Education market or a healthcare market would surely do a
much better job than what we have today.

Speaker 3 (57:28):
So Carls, what should we do? And after this fiery discussion,
what should we do to someone in front of the
emergency services at the hospital with no means to pay

(57:48):
for their healthcare? And then to to MiG out another example,
what should we do to the key that can't go
to school because of money reasons?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
But now it's come I think the question was answer.
First of all, I must I must admire your restrain
of not saying you roll a bunch of socialisms.

Speaker 6 (58:08):
Just live in the room like you know it would be.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Although although I I must say that I tend to
agree with Maria ne Mortago here. I think she's quite
you don't know who Maria Ne Mortago is Alex fainyway no,
but it was a really interesting discussion. And to pull down,
to pull down a bit of discussion, I like to
call some steps back and go back to the nature

(58:34):
of capitalism, because I don't I do think it's it's
it's something that is quite important to to understand how
how capitalism was always part of of human nature and
it was described like that. Actually, the word capitalism started
being used by anti capitalists to define the world as
it was, and Miguel said something before that I completely

(58:59):
disagree that that productivity was never a goal of human beings.
It was always the goal of human beings. I mean
from the moment that we invented the first tools. Why
did we invent the first tools because we were worried
about productivity, our own productivity. Why did we build the

(59:20):
first boats because we were worried about And that was
way before, way before the nineteenth century, way before the
eighteenth century. So this need to trade, to invest, to start. Actually,
the first cities appeared because human beings were able to store,
to start storing food for next winternets and so on,

(59:42):
and that's why cities came up. The farming itself was
a way of investing, so we could be recollectors and
go and pick up fruits and spend our days doing
like that. At some point we thought, as human beings,
well if we plant some seeds now, so we do

(01:00:02):
an effort that will not lead to us eating right now,
we will plant seeds. That This is investment. That's the
definition of investment. To do an effort, to do some work,
to put some of our work in order to collect
something in the future. This is investment. And this is
in the nature of human beings. Investing, trading, working, increasing

(01:00:27):
our own productivity was always in the human nature is
part of the human development. We just got an institution,
a different institutional setting that was based on equality, on
on opportunities, on property rights. I'm sure that on enterprise
all or enterprise was there a bit before that allowed

(01:00:52):
what was already in the human nature, what was already
within us. This needs to be more productive. This one
to say this the need for us to be better
and to be safer, including economically safer. That allowed it
to to bring us to the point where we are today.

(01:01:13):
And that's why I said earlier on that I do
not believe that capitalism in the way that it was
defined initially by anti capitalist by the French philosophers on
that was that used to say not that property was theft.
It was one of the first philosophers to use the
word capitalism because it was strongly anti anti capitalists. The

(01:01:36):
way that it was used used originally was was something
that already was in the in the human beings. And
there's one reason I I'm I'm I'm a pragmatist, so
I'm not as an expert in in philosophy as my
two colleagues here. I'm a pragmatist and I look at

(01:02:00):
world around me and I don't understand it fully. I
don't have the capacity to process and storage all the
knowledge like no one has. But I look at the reality.
And there's probably one reason why there are so many
experiences in the world of political organization and none of
those is what you're on defense. There's probably one reason

(01:02:25):
for that. And the reason for that is probably the
same that there was never real communism, is that it
would be impossible to actually work. Although I admire the
coherence of the thought of the the way that you
just avoid coersion at all costs, and that's very coherent.

(01:02:48):
But then the reality the world is made of nuances,
and those nuances probably some nuances that we don't understand
because we don't have capacity to fully understand. It's the
reason why when I that have come is neither we
have the world that you'd like to us to live
in Two quick comments.

Speaker 5 (01:03:06):
One is I agree with most of what you said
in terms of human nature, right. I think we do
strive to succeed, to invest, the bill to create when
we're left free. I think one of the reasons. So
all of that is true. I just wouldn't call it capitalism.
I think that's part of human nature. Capitalism is when
this idea of individual rights is identified and then institutions

(01:03:27):
are created to protect it, and that's the form.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I think our difference is more about the definition of
capitaliity than any comment.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
But I want to integrate this with Francis Macon because
there is a sense in which vice is making is
innovative in you in a sense of progress, but that
is in the context of his time and the context
of his place. Because it is true also that you
can convince human beings through ideas and philosophy not.

Speaker 6 (01:03:53):
To strive, not to improve not to perfect, and that's
why you get dark.

Speaker 5 (01:03:59):
Ages, that's why you get declines in civilization, when you
get periods in which people stop making those investments, people
stop trading, people stop looking at this world. There's importance
and maybe you know, strive towards another world as the
primary rather.

Speaker 6 (01:04:16):
Than improving a lot in this world.

Speaker 5 (01:04:17):
And it's important that Francis Bacon comes at a time, right,
a renaissance, a rebirth of Western civilization after a period
of decline, of lack of investment, of lack of trade,
of lack of innovation, and it says, hey, we can
indeed progress, we can improve. Knowledge is useful for humankind

(01:04:38):
to improve its lot. So I'll say something even more
controversial and what I've said up until now, I really
do think that that Western civilization was retarded for about
a thousand years because of religion that deemphasized this world
and emphasized another world. And in need of Francis Bacon

(01:04:58):
and a bunch of other thinkers to bring this world
back into focus so that we could trade, innovate, invest
and do all those things. And you know, there's a
reason it's called the Renaissance. And then an enlightenment because
first we had a resurrect kind of Greek ideas that
were very focused on this world, and then we had
a a you know, discover reason, rediscover reason and apply

(01:05:22):
it to human life, which I think ultimately leads to capitalism.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Just let me go back to catch please and concerning
societies or government's responsibility on helping others, whether it's about
healthcare or education, what kind of thoughts do you have
about that? The question I think was what should we

(01:05:50):
do in front when someone is in front of a
at the hospital with no means to pay for their healthcare,
or or if a kids cannot go to school because
of money reasons? How should governments and societies act when
it comes to the lack of capabilities money capabilities?

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
I think government should should be But but I said
that I agree with you, right, I was close to you.
You will never forgive me for this onother No, No,
of course, I I do believe that that that government

(01:06:36):
should ensure access to it, to healthcare, vacation. I said
it earlier. I do believe that we are part of
the community and that's also triggering our our freedoms that
although it does require some level of cohercion, individual level.
It's also a trigger of of liberty and freedom to
ensure to ensure that that no one gets into misery

(01:07:01):
or dies because he has no financial means, and that
no children is kept without education because their parents wouldn't
wouldn't allow and there will be I think we can
have a topic vision of the world in which that
would never happen, that under voluntary agreements, that that would

(01:07:23):
be provided for. And we know we know that's not
the case. We know that wouldn't be, that wouldn't always
live be the case. I lived in a very next
met there was an area where people were were quite poor,
and at that time, the state didn't provided with a

(01:07:43):
pre preschool education, pre preschool care, and I saw kids
of four or five year old that were just stuck
at home for for the whole day, that didn't develop
language until they were five because they didn't at the
proper care from their parents' either because they couldn't or
because they were alcoholic or whatever. So I do not

(01:08:08):
think we should live in the world where these basic
things are not offered. And I think we as the community,
and once again, there is a reason why in the
developed world, why in the developed world that had this
progress in the last two three hundred years. Those things

(01:08:30):
are provided for. It's because as a community we agree
that there is no example in the world, as there
is no example of communism working. There is no example
in the developed world where children don't have access to
education provided by the state, where elderly people don't have
access to healthcare provided by the state. And there's a reason.

(01:08:53):
And you can always say, but elder people, if they
chose not to have an insurance, then they should just
take the responsibility for that. Yes, but then you are,
you are seventy, and you regret, and what can you do.
You cannot go back and be thirty again and take different,
different choices in your life. And as a community, it
would be extremely hard for us to accept that people

(01:09:16):
would live under the under those under those conditions. So, yes,
we're both Marianna Mortagos here, but compared to jar and.

Speaker 6 (01:09:24):
Of course, but two one, there's a slippy slope, It's
obvious there is. We see it. We see it every way.

Speaker 5 (01:09:31):
And and second, the fact that you regret not buying
insurance when you're seventy that somehow gives you a right
to take my stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:09:39):
It does, I mean and and not to.

Speaker 5 (01:09:41):
Come and ask me, not to voluntarily ask people to
help you. But it gives you a right, literally to
use coursion against those who were responsible. So the system
we have today is one that rewards irresponsibility. It benefits irresponsible,
its expensive the responsible, and it courses the responsible to
take care of the irresponsible.

Speaker 6 (01:10:01):
And it's something you know, morally offensive about that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Okay, just just let me make a brief situation I
can I for the seconds. Please.

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
Well, there's a lot of injustice and suffering and evil
in the world. That's why we cannot leave everything to
the arbitrariness of our best choices. So I would say
that our moral standing is not well. If you didn't
take if you didn't make the right choices before, you
cannot coerce me in order to help me helping you. Now,

(01:10:33):
it's actually the other way around. I because I'm a
member of the same community that you are, I will
take care as long as everyone else of you that
are suffering. And because you are a three year olds
and you have an alcoholic parent that hits.

Speaker 6 (01:10:48):
You, nobody is objecting to voluntary help. No, no, no,
I mean I mean you just you just said I
want to help.

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
But that is.

Speaker 6 (01:10:55):
I'm talking about, But you're talking about coursing people.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
I'm talking about a moral political that makes sense to
a political community, and that has to be translated into
a political position and an apparatus of state apparatus to
make sure that that position is actual policy. Let me
just give you Let me just say something about the
naivetatd that you know, in my opinion, is being is

(01:11:22):
haunting us while talking about human nature. So there's this
idea that we all been as human beings in the past,
wanting to strive and to prosper Who doesn't look around,
everyone wants to prosper. So people two thousand years ago,
four thousand years ago didn't. My answer is yes, they didn't.

(01:11:43):
They did not. Let me give you an example, two examples. Actually,
why we have two twenty five hundred years of Western literature.
There's not one single instance of someone saying that man
as man, wants to strive, wants to be prosperous, wants

(01:12:04):
to be better tomorrow than is today materially speaking. Only
beginning in the eighteenth well seventeenth century do we start
to have people say that. Never before and in the
seventeenth century actually, one of these guys, one of these
big and Uvedas, said the following, You all agree that
human beings want to live, right, not being prosperous, want

(01:12:28):
to live. It's better than being dead. Right, everyone agrees
on that. There Surely there's no more common sensical proposition
about human nature than this one. We want to live
rather than die. Well, actually, this guy was cleverer than
we are because we were saying, well, actually, I know

(01:12:50):
a lot of people who prefer death to being alive.
And he gave two examples. One, the nobleman, the great Warrior.
He prefers to die rather than live in shame. Yeah,
people actually prefer to die than to live in shame.
Not in this room, of course, but in other places

(01:13:12):
and in the past. Second example he gave us the
religious martyr. You're on, the religious martyr. He rather prefers
to die and go to heaven, then say alive and
live in life of a fidelity to God. Actually, this
was the majority of the Western population until two hundred
years ago. Right, but now we don't longer believe in God.

(01:13:34):
We think that our forefathers lived like we live before
we live now. Wrong, it's just wrong. So this guy
called Thomas Hams said, it would be excellent if everyone
believed that, according to human nature, it is better to
live than to die. But since human nature is not

(01:13:54):
as constant as that, let us follow the following procedure.
Let us make shameful to be a religious martyr. Let
us make shameful to be a great noble warrior. Once
we have that, once we get rid of the religious martyr,
once we get rid of the achilles of the great

(01:14:17):
noble warrior, then we can say human nature is all
about wanting to live in, getting prosperous and better our
own condition.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Like Adam Smith said, we're.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Actually coming to an end. Do we have time for
a last question? Miguel, do we okay? This last question
is actually the same for the three of you. Why
does not the right, meaning advocate for capitalism defend a
kind of complete Lazare capitalism. We can start with Uran

(01:14:54):
than Carlouge, than Michael.

Speaker 4 (01:14:58):
Well.

Speaker 6 (01:14:59):
I mean, the right is a.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
Yeah, a bunch of.

Speaker 5 (01:15:05):
I mean, the right is an interesting tone because I
mean there's somewhat arbitrariness in terms of left and right
and how we define this. I mean, I like a
political spectrum that goes from collectivism to individualism rather than.

Speaker 6 (01:15:16):
From left to right, because you know, right and left merge.

Speaker 5 (01:15:20):
And become one, as you're seeing in the world around
us in terms of their statism and in terms of
their rejection of capitalism. I think the main reason why
people generally reject capitalism is because they have a morality
that is inconsistent with capitalism. I mean, we've seen this, right,
I mean there's a real tug at the heartstrings of

(01:15:43):
what about that child, what about that one person that
gets left behind? What about those people? Shouldn't it be
okay to sacrifice some to others? Sacrifice, after all, is noble,
it's good we live. The conventional morality we all believe
in is a morality of sacrifice.

Speaker 6 (01:16:01):
Sacrilge is a good thing.

Speaker 5 (01:16:03):
Now, I think that is a very slippery slope, and
I think that's a morality of socialism. It's not a
morality of freedom. It's not a morality of capitalism. I
think what's lacking is a real morality of individualism. We
start with the individual. We start with the individual living
for himself, living a life in pursuit of his own values,
using his own reason, and that kind of morality is

(01:16:27):
lacking in the world, and it's you know, we can
have debates about economics that I think are relatively easy.
I think I can actually even these guys who are
a little skeptical, I can show them that one hundred
percent private healthcare would work a thousand times better than
the healthcare system we have today.

Speaker 6 (01:16:43):
Economics is easy. The challenge is morality.

Speaker 5 (01:16:47):
The challenge is to get really philosophical and get down
to individual morality, what you should live for. And I
think capitalism demands that we change on morality. It means
turning upside down the jude O Christian ethical code. It
means rejecting that and coming up with something new, something
that's focused on an individual well being, something that returns

(01:17:08):
to a more riskatilian a view of morality, something about
human flourishing as an individual, the individual flourishing. And if
we start there, I think, then what we realize is
cosion of force are the enemy of individual flourishing. Cousion
and force of the enemy of individual reason. In the
you know, cosion and force are the enemies of the

(01:17:29):
pursuit of happiness, and therefore the one thing we need
to extract from society, the one thing we cannot allow
in society is force and cousion.

Speaker 6 (01:17:38):
And then once we get rid of those, we all
these other details.

Speaker 5 (01:17:41):
What happens to kid in front of the emergency room,
all of that are details that can be worked out
fairly easily.

Speaker 6 (01:17:47):
I mean, we've talked about people, you know, we've talked
about you know, people wanting to help. Well, okay, that's voluntary,
so hope.

Speaker 5 (01:17:55):
And if the majority helps in a minority doesn't help,
that's fine because somebody's rights were violated. But if the
majority forces the minority to help, now you're using coursion.
Now you're using force, and now you're moving away from freedom,
away from capitalism, and you're actually applying an immoral standard.
You're forcing people to do things they don't believe in
because you've decided it's good. It's good to help the child,

(01:18:18):
it's good to help the seventy year old, by your standards.

Speaker 6 (01:18:23):
But it's the individual that matters.

Speaker 5 (01:18:25):
And so the reason the rights and the left and
pretty much everybody else doesn't believe in capitalism is because
they don't believe in an individualistic moral code.

Speaker 6 (01:18:36):
And that's that's the that's the challenge, that's the struggle.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
I think in the way I think the question there
or an extreme version that's probably neither the right or left,
and most people would not believe. But I think the
main question is why the right sometimes tends to escape
from a free mark uh thought, why they do not

(01:19:03):
defend more more free market than than they do well
well in democracy. It's very hard to do that. It's
very it's very hard to win elections by defending by
defending free markets or a path towards free markets. That's
that's that's really complicated. Plus, when there is this struggle

(01:19:24):
between left and and right, usually the answer every time
we see right emerging like we've seen right now is
true populist right so and and the populism and free
markets do not get along very well. Sometimes they they
do use it as a tool to as an initial
tool to differentiate themselves, but once in power, they will

(01:19:50):
never they will will never do that in this sexame version.
It's just because it's it's just not possible. I do believe,
I do believe that that that this is, as I
said before, internally coherent. Yes too, to avoid the cohersion
at at all costs. It just doesn't work in in

(01:20:13):
reality it's it doesn't it would be impossible to keep
the community united, knowing that that old people will be
without without health care, or unprotected, or children would be
And and the reason why why I say that it's
it's empirical. It's because it did not exist. It's the

(01:20:35):
same thing that we always ask to communists when we
have our debates, where has it worked? And they always say, well,
it has never been tested. This has never been tested.
And for a reason, because it would be impossible to
keep to keep a community working under this this political premises.

Speaker 4 (01:20:58):
Yeah, well, in the person in the nineteenth century there
was a political right pretty much anti capitalism. But after
the Second World War, to a large extent in the
West at least, that political right has been defeated and
it's become marginal in every single country. So we should

(01:21:18):
not be you know, we should not make complaints about
the political right. It's not a binary thing, either complete
stalinism or the non ideal. It's you know, you have
a matrix of choices. And actually I think in the
last sixty years, the political right, beginning with in Portugal,

(01:21:39):
if it was not for the political rights, I mean,
the two main political parties before Chiga came along, and
before it's liberal came along. If it were not for
PSD and CDs, well we would be living in a
socialist country to Korch. So it was due to the
PSD mainly that we actually have a free market economy,

(01:22:01):
of course, with a lot of Stadism, a lot of
mixed economy like every like every other country in Europe.
So I mean, for me, it's not such a big deal.
In the past. Yeah, in the nineteenth century there was
actually a romantic political right that was against capitalism. You know,
you have this writing even by Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist.

(01:22:25):
He himself assumes the responsibility that if we have to
get rid of trains, yeah, so be it. Thomas Carlyle,
Thomas Carlyle was a conservative, a romantic conservative. Perhaps he
was even more anti capitalism than Marx, and Marx learned
a lot from Thomas Carlyle. I mean, Marx is welcoming

(01:22:46):
the capitalist revolution. He's welcoming into the world. He wants
to make it strong and fast in order to overcome it.
But he's welcoming it. It's not you know, in the
least be nostalgic about what came before capitalism. Quite the contrary, actually,
Thomas Carlisle was he said, this is all bad news

(01:23:07):
in all front. Henny came from the right. You know,
the German Romantics were all anti capitalism and they were
all defeated. So I think we should be thankful. Just
let me give you a final word about what Joran
said that I think is a very serious, really serious
topic about the relationship between what it calls the culture
of individuality, of the morality of individualism on the one hand,

(01:23:31):
and Christianity on the water. I think he has a
point there. I mean, we are on different sides of
this discussion again, but I think he's right. I mean,
Christianity brought into the world this big revolution, the first
revolution of love, and it brought the politics into ethics,
the idea, the very strong idea of compassion for suffering.

(01:23:54):
And I think compassion for suffering coming from Christianity, even
though people no longer believe in God uh is actually
quite strong and explains a lot of our political attitudes today.
So I think even though we are on the other
on opposite sides on this specific topic, I think is right.
I mean, there's this incompatibility. I think I'm regretting the

(01:24:16):
loss of Christianity in our culture. Maybe he is clapping
his hands out, but I don't know. But you know,
I think it's a very very serious.

Speaker 5 (01:24:23):
Point to Christianity's being secularized. Right, secular cultures adopted Christianity,
that's it. And so the struggle is still between christian
values and capitalism. I don't think they're compatible. And that's
why we don't get capitalism, because because the values of
Christianity are still strong in the culture, even in our

(01:24:44):
I would say thank God, I would say the opposite,
Thanks very much.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
We're now going to open for debate. But before giving
the flaw to the audience, I think Miguel has something
to tell you.

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
Yes, yes, so thank you for being here. Please clap,
Thank you all so much onjin for being here. Before
we move to the questions period, let me just tell
you that on your seats you're going to find some flyers.

(01:25:22):
You might be wondering what they're for. We are hosting
next year in portso Iron Ran conference. It's going to
be from the seventeenth to the nineteenth of April. So
that you are code links you connects you to a
to a website, where you can sign up and even
apply for a scholarship and attend it for free. It's
going to be three days and if you want to

(01:25:43):
know more about objectivism and iron RAN's ideas, you can
apply for it.

Speaker 6 (01:25:47):
Please do so.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
For the ones that are watching online at the end
of this broadcast, you're gonna have an image as well
with it you are code. You can do the same
if you don't find any flyers on your seats when
you go down on the roll up, you have the
you are toad as well, and you can you can
can the CHR code. There another annuncement that I want
to make. Yes, sorry, just like confused because they're both

(01:26:09):
margad He won the essay contest, so I'll be round
of applause for him.

Speaker 6 (01:26:20):
At the end.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
Just come to the front and I'll deliver the prize
to you. Okay, So if anyone wants to ask questions,
I'm gonna ask you to make a line there on
that side and I'll hand you the mic. Please be
brief on the introduction of the questions and just one
question per person. Okay, thank you. If anyone wants to
ask them, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:26:41):
There we go. Mm line is over there.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
Okay, there's a line, Oh that's the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
Hello.

Speaker 9 (01:27:07):
My name is Francis, and my question is I am
currently reading Atlas Shrugged, and there's this notion that a
lot of characters talk about about how it's basically the
fault of the capitalist that they let themselves be labeled
as immoral. You know, the very fact that we have
in a conversation about morality and capitalism shows this.

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
That there is this idea that the two are separate.

Speaker 9 (01:27:28):
So even they mentioned the example of Robinhood, you know,
a very old title in which a thief, which is
the good guy, is the guy who steals from a
rich So my question to you is where does this
come from? Do you think it's intrinsic to the human
being to almost hate the rich and the owners of
companies or is there a knowledge into this Where do
you think it comes from?

Speaker 6 (01:27:49):
Well, I mean I think it is.

Speaker 5 (01:27:50):
It Certainly, it's very ancient in the sense that the understanding,
the understanding economics and how people get rich was based
on a zero sum mentality. That is, for most of
human history, people didn't understand the win win relationship of trade.
They didn't understand the value added a production and creation.

(01:28:13):
And indeed, most rich people, if you go to Europe, example,
five six hundred years ago, did not become rich because
they produced. They became rich because they stole right. They
were very good at cosion and force, and that's how
they got rich.

Speaker 6 (01:28:29):
So and even if you go back to Aristotle and you.

Speaker 5 (01:28:32):
Go to the Greeks, they had very little understanding of
the mechanisms of trade and the very essence of win wins.
So the idea that the rich are somehow you know,
confiscating their wealth comes from a historical experience and there
wasn't a shift it neither knowledge nor in morality. During
the nineteenth century, suddenly wealth was being created for the

(01:28:55):
first time in human history on scale.

Speaker 6 (01:28:57):
Wealth was being.

Speaker 5 (01:28:58):
Created rather than redistributed, rather than being confiscated, and we
didn't our knowledge system didn't adapt to the social and
economic realities of what was going on.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Just say one thing. I think it's very optimistic to
believe that most people already understand that that trade is
not a win win situation even today.

Speaker 6 (01:29:21):
I agree with you, but it is.

Speaker 5 (01:29:23):
And this is part of the big problem is most
people today still see the world of zero sum. You know,
you can you can see that in American politics story
now very very you know, really real sense.

Speaker 6 (01:29:36):
So this is a real achievement.

Speaker 5 (01:29:37):
I mean, it seems pretty straightforward the traders win win,
But that is a huge cognitive achievement to get to
that point.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
That is, every day it's easier to.

Speaker 4 (01:29:46):
Persuade people that an economic relationship can be a win
win situation when there is economic growth all around. If
there isn't, people actually start to make this rational you know,
conclude lusion into this rational conclusion that well, if this
is more or less the same wealth, you're in and
you're out. If one gets more then I get less.

(01:30:08):
It makes sense. It all ends with economic growth. That's
why there is this very important emancipating moral effect of
economic growth as such, such an important phenomenon.

Speaker 10 (01:30:25):
Good afternoon to the guests and to the panel. I'm
theatergos Office bachelor student for EP. My question poses to
the economic boom that was mentioned in the nineteenth century,
mainly in the second part of the century. My question
is we know that that economic boom consequently gave us

(01:30:48):
political stability in Europe that can consequently gave us broad
social com in an era that were of extremists. But
when we enter that era, do don't do? Don't you
think that the social part, the social development and the

(01:31:09):
social worry about about the population that came with the
economic growth was the terd in the capitalism era. So
maybe it was a capitalism was a forum of economic development,
but two extremists to the point that it discards the

(01:31:30):
social part of uh, the that that era.

Speaker 6 (01:31:36):
Yeah, I don't know exactly what you mean by a
social part, but no, I don't. I don't think that
that is that is true.

Speaker 5 (01:31:43):
I think that if you look at societies that approach capitalism,
yes they never reached the ideal, but they approach capitalism
during the late part of the nineteenth century, I don't
think the societies there were necessarily unsocial or unhealthy in
that sense.

Speaker 6 (01:31:58):
This is an error.

Speaker 5 (01:31:59):
I mean, let's remember, capitalism did amazing things to mankind,
not only economic wellbeing, but political emancipation. Political imagination was
a feature of capitalism. The abolition of slavery was a
feature of capitalism. And I think that once you have
a society in which causion is extracted, not fully but
to a large extent, human relationships become healthier. Because I'm

(01:32:24):
not thinking constantly is this guy stealing my stuff? Is
he part of the majority that's trying.

Speaker 4 (01:32:28):
To vote me?

Speaker 5 (01:32:30):
You know, I think that the more you get a
society in which the majority is voting away rights of
people constantly, what you get is tribalism and tribal mentality
and people fighting each other.

Speaker 6 (01:32:41):
So you get social strife.

Speaker 5 (01:32:43):
Democracy leads to social strife because you want to form
majorities to protect yourself. You want to it rather than
win win relationships. Trade is a beautiful thing, and capitalism
emphasizes trade. It emphasizes win win, and I think you
get better societies, not worse societies.

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
It's a member of parliament is also a member of parliament.

Speaker 4 (01:33:06):
A member of parliament, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:33:07):
We've got a prestigious, very prestigious audience.

Speaker 4 (01:33:12):
Not as prestigious as parlous.

Speaker 6 (01:33:15):
So I'm George.

Speaker 11 (01:33:16):
Yes, I'm a member of Parliament, and I have a
question about you were talking about that pure capitalism or
truly unbridled markets have never been tried. Actually, I think
there was a very brief period transition history where you
were close to that, which was during the nineteenth century.
We were doing away with all the old structures and
you were putting in place all the institutionals set up

(01:33:40):
that allowed for capitalism, and for some reason, at the
same time you started seeing more concerns with welfare otherwise
as well. People started talking about unions, the rights of children,
for instance, and the rights of workers. And my intuition
is maybe that happened for a reason. Maybe people realized
at the time that you couldn't get a stable model

(01:34:01):
if you only had completely free markets without any of
the other things. I don't think Bismarck started implementing the
welfare state because he was concerned about poor people. I
don't think that was his perspective. So I would ask you,
do you think you could get that state of pure
free markets, you know, the government just doing the minor

(01:34:24):
kiss model, without the poor eating the rich.

Speaker 6 (01:34:28):
That would be my question.

Speaker 11 (01:34:29):
And then a side comment, I don't think you were
always comparing, you know, society and our capitalism versus before.
I don't think you explored the extent to which moving
from a society where wealth came mostly from owning land
to a society where you could produce way more and
get richer without owning word land, which was a key
factor in the in the transition.

Speaker 5 (01:34:51):
But remember even even land ownership was land that was
taken by false I mean, it was always defended by fos.
But look, in my view, history is determined by ideas.

Speaker 6 (01:35:03):
Ultimately, ideas shape history.

Speaker 5 (01:35:05):
And the reality is that in the nineteenth century, while
the world was moving towards capitalism, there were no there
was no intellectual foundations for it.

Speaker 6 (01:35:13):
The Enlightenment was dying.

Speaker 5 (01:35:15):
As we said, German Romantics who were the dominant intellectuals.

Speaker 6 (01:35:19):
In the nineteenth century.

Speaker 5 (01:35:20):
If you look at you know, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx,
they dominated.

Speaker 6 (01:35:25):
They were anti capitalists. All of them were anti capitalists.

Speaker 5 (01:35:28):
And so you got a particular momentum out of the
Enlightenment that was moving in a particular direction, in direction
of capitalism. And at the same time you got an
intellectual backlash against the Enlightenment that elevated socialism or various
nationalisms or you know, the nationalist movement in the nineteenth
century was not pro capitalists, both on the left and

(01:35:50):
the right. So there was unanimity across the political spectrum
that this phenomenon of capitalism was not good, and some
of the liberals tried to defend it, and I think
did a pretty poor job of it. You know, whether
it's male or others, I think they sold out on
the principles of what is required for capitalism. So look,
the battle of ideas was won by the anti capitalists,

(01:36:13):
and what you got was a compromise. What you got
was the mixed economy, which is a compromise between the
force of freedom that the Enlightenment set off and the
anti capitalist voices of the nineteenth century, the philosophers.

Speaker 6 (01:36:26):
And the intellectuals. And we're still living through that.

Speaker 5 (01:36:28):
We're still having this debate, we're still fighting this fight
between those different forces.

Speaker 6 (01:36:33):
And reality is, how many intellectuals in the world are
really pro capitalism, very few. How many philosophers out there
in the world are pro capitalism very few? So we're
still losing.

Speaker 2 (01:36:44):
Why do you think it's that?

Speaker 5 (01:36:46):
Because I think that the morality of Christianity is so
deeply entrenched in the culture, both in the secular form
and in a religious form, that it's going to take
a long time to uproot it and to get rid
of it and replace should do something better. And until
that's done, right, until that's done, you will not get
lovely fake capitalism. You will not get a fully capitalist

(01:37:09):
fully capitalist world wealley is much more difficult to fight
over than as I said.

Speaker 6 (01:37:13):
The Economics.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
Monumentee in English.

Speaker 12 (01:37:24):
My name is Andrea Andrea, and my question is cent
words on whether capitalism is the solution for the future
of human kind because we all know that we willn't
have enough planets if all of the Earth population had
the same consumption style as the United States of America.
And since that all of the capitalists want people to

(01:37:46):
consume more and more, how can we create a sustainable future?

Speaker 5 (01:37:52):
I highly recommend reading an economist by any of Julian Simon,
who talked about the ultimate resource Any shows in his
work that there is no limit. There are no there's
no limited resources. Resources are unlimited. Indeed, the only limited
resources the human mind. We are innovative species. There is

(01:38:13):
I mean, think of any resources and there are substitutes
and their products, and we could be mining the asteroids.
There's just no limit to how many people can survive,
how many people could be on eatho the population.

Speaker 6 (01:38:23):
Is shrinking, and how many resources we can get out there.
So I think the whole idea of limited.

Speaker 5 (01:38:28):
Resources is false. We could all be living much better
than Americans eight billion people on planet Earth could be
living much better than Americans with the you know, with
the technological knowledge we have today. Never mind, the technological
knowledge will have been one hundred years.

Speaker 1 (01:38:44):
No.

Speaker 4 (01:38:44):
Franstans Bigham, the guy was telling you about in the
sixteenth century, said the Dutch have the best minds in
the world, but the Netherlands didn't have any minds. I
mean to get out an order. Not a single mind
there was in the Netherlands. So what war the minds
the Dutch themselves? Like I said, that's the ultimate economic

(01:39:04):
resource right there. That's why the Netherlands is the richest
country in the world at the end of sixteenth century.

Speaker 2 (01:39:10):
Of course, absolutely, so good afternoon. My name is Andrea.
I'm a student of EPI.

Speaker 13 (01:39:19):
I look, we would like to ask Aaron Broke about
the It's not probably about the morality of capitalism that
was mentioned here, but is related. I think it's a
relation between psychology and the capitalism. I believe in the
idea that the actual mental crisis that we have nowadays
in the twenty first century is caused by the capitalism

(01:39:43):
in many aspects. Because of capitalism until the until the
nineteenth century, I suppose we have the idea and the
idea that individuals should work to survive. Nowadays, you have
the thesis idea that you shoul work for that we
work for live for working. And I think that this idea,

(01:40:04):
in the psychological point of view, it's the main cause
of the mental health problems that individuals have nowadays, such
as anxiety depression. So I believe in this aspect, I
think the capitalism is the best best system that we
have in thecnomical point of view. But I think that
in the ethical philosophical point of viewmans, I think that's

(01:40:27):
a lot of these eventures in the spect that instrumentalized
as the individual as a part of a system which
the main purpose is just to produce and doesn't matter
the value. The doesn't matter in respect us values because
many because capitalism, in the moral point of view, is
just statistics and not values and aspirations.

Speaker 2 (01:40:48):
So I think that the crisis the mental health crisis.
I think.

Speaker 13 (01:40:54):
I know that you disagree, but what you think about
my idea.

Speaker 4 (01:40:57):
The curious is my student, Okay, think it is, and
I think it is.

Speaker 5 (01:41:04):
So I don't think capitalism is about statistics. I think
capitalism is about values. It's about trading values. It's about
offering values into the marketplace, and and people either value
or don't value what you're offering, and they either buy
it or don't buy it.

Speaker 6 (01:41:18):
They either trade with you or they don't trade with you.

Speaker 5 (01:41:21):
That's true in terms of employment, that's true in terms
of customers.

Speaker 6 (01:41:24):
That's true of all the relationships.

Speaker 5 (01:41:26):
I either trade value for value relationships or they walk away.
I don't think that that the that the psychological crisis
that we're living through has anything to do with capitalism.
I think it's quite the opposite. I mean, if only
we taught people about the virtue of capitalism and how
they should live, and the idea the work.

Speaker 6 (01:41:48):
You shouldn't live to work. You should live to live.
You should work to live. You should work to be happy,
You should work to achieve your values. Work is a means, but.

Speaker 5 (01:41:56):
It's also a psychological means. We gain most of our
self esteem from work. Most of our self esteem comes
from work, and it will always be that way. So
embrace a career that you love. Embrace something that you
are going to enjoy doing that you value that. Then
you can achieve things and you can gain pride from

(01:42:18):
which then leads to increased happiness. I don't think you
can be happy in life unless you do work that
you enjoy. Unless you do you gain value from your work.
It's not about the money, it's about the self esteem.
It's about the achievement of values. So if we live,
if there are people who live to work and work
as an end in itself somehow for them, then yeah,

(01:42:40):
they can have psychological problems. I agree, But that's not
the fault of capitalism. That's a fault of I don't
know the ideas that they're holding. And maybe our educational system,
by the way, which is run by the government, not
by the free market, it's the fault of educational system,
and it's the fault of the values that our society holds.

Speaker 8 (01:43:01):
So hello, my name is Almy and I'm Marish. PhD masochists.
So I can pay less taxes.

Speaker 6 (01:43:11):
Which PhD masochist I just wanted to get.

Speaker 8 (01:43:14):
So I just can't pay less taxes according.

Speaker 6 (01:43:16):
To you, I was a poor PhD.

Speaker 8 (01:43:19):
No, I want to be considered resource less taxes. What
I would like an answer for mission is one of you.
What would you call a sociological system that liberates the
capability of individuals to trade.

Speaker 2 (01:43:35):
Goods, call it anything. I think, just human nature, human
human beings. As I was saying before, I always wanted
to do that. I always wanted to trade. It's part
of of of of human nature. I know you probably

(01:43:56):
call it capitalism, I'll guess, and and and probably according
to that definition, yes, it's it's capitalism, and it has
been here for the last three centuries. But I do
believe that's that's part of human nature.

Speaker 4 (01:44:10):
Would you call it capitalism or your.

Speaker 8 (01:44:14):
I made a question because you were always arguing about
the definition, and I couldn't see your guys disagree with
this definition.

Speaker 4 (01:44:23):
Oh all right, I get it.

Speaker 5 (01:44:25):
So the capital it is a system that leaves you
free to do that and protects you protect your property
rights so that you can engage in that. So yeah,
but but but you need that protection, right because if
somebody can intervene as you're trading goods and take the
stuff away, then then you're you're.

Speaker 6 (01:44:43):
Likely to trade less, you're likely to benefit less. So
you need that protection. That's what what a system of capitalism.
It's a system provides. But as a.

Speaker 4 (01:44:52):
System, it also requires this concern with progress. I mean,
if we think about it the way we work in organize, production,
and investment. It's all about making more tomorrow than today.
If we remove that, we remove the whole capitalist capitalist arise.

(01:45:17):
And I think so there's yeah, we trade with each other,
we want to emancipate each other's capabilities, that's for sure.
But if we remove this progressive notion that we are
ever trying to change the future by what we do
in the present investing, studying, researching and all that, I

(01:45:42):
think we missed a central point about capitalist.

Speaker 2 (01:45:46):
But people always wanted to be better than before. It's
it's the Bible. I mean, it's the Bible that people
wanted to start to get rich. There were rich people.

Speaker 4 (01:45:58):
In the Bible, so yeah, But the Greek said, name
a specific name for advice of rich people. It was
called play on. Next, pat was a big name for
someone who wants to accumulate.

Speaker 2 (01:46:09):
It was you know, so there was people who wanted
to accumulate exactly, but today's view negative.

Speaker 1 (01:46:18):
No, no, no.

Speaker 4 (01:46:19):
There were also people in ancient Greece who actually believed
in human sacrifices, and the Greek said, no, that's wrong. Yeah,
it's the same thing.

Speaker 6 (01:46:28):
There were other people will.

Speaker 4 (01:46:30):
Think about, well, I want to make a lot of
money until I can't even count my own money.

Speaker 2 (01:46:34):
But people, accumulation is wrong. Some people say that today,
But that's what you call the socialist idea.

Speaker 6 (01:46:41):
Real progress is a real intellectual achievement.

Speaker 5 (01:46:45):
And again in the West, it didn't really exist until Bacon,
until until uh you know, you know, and that's part
of what made the West the West.

Speaker 2 (01:46:56):
But if we started to believe that there, it's different.
Is it a thing that only started to happen recently,
in the last two or three centers because we still
we started having the institutional setting that allowed us to happen,
or people did not want that before, Because I don't
believe the second version. I don't believe that before before

(01:47:19):
the institutional setting was there, people did not want to
community did not want progress. I do believe that they
wanted they just didn't have institutional setting.

Speaker 5 (01:47:30):
If you read the only early thinkers from the first
thousand years AD, they are constantly talking about the fact
that this world doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 (01:47:40):
You know, a progress in this world is insignificant.

Speaker 5 (01:47:43):
Now I'm not saying, you know, individuals out there probably
try to make the best they could, But there was
a whole intellectual tradition that advocated for Yeah, I forget
about progress.

Speaker 6 (01:47:55):
Progress is impossible.

Speaker 2 (01:47:56):
Electually, but we still have fingers that said that. No,
the and there's the difference between what thinkers were saying
and what people were striving for. And that's what all right, Okay,
So then at some point they had settings that allowed
us for people to achieve what they were striving.

Speaker 4 (01:48:14):
This was the old I mean, there was this Carlos,
this idea that the elites were completely blind to what
was happening around them. That's a possibility, that's a possibility.
What's wrong with what it's saying is that you have
no vestige, You have no evidence of what happened in history.

Speaker 2 (01:48:32):
You have no people wanted to progress and have a life.

Speaker 6 (01:48:36):
They didn't leave, They didn't leave the village, the substance.

Speaker 2 (01:48:41):
They build villages, just the move from being recollectors to
establish villages and cities. It showed that that they wanted
to progress, they wanted to be able to have a
better life, and that happened in people.

Speaker 5 (01:48:57):
They were in history with people strive for a better life.
But there are long stretches of history where nothing happens,
nothing happens, and people are not striving. But and you
can see places in the world today where people are
quite satisfied with not advancing, not moving sure, not no progress,
not going anywhere, because for example, religious modelor them, religious

(01:49:19):
modelor them, you know, often dictates look at the Islamic
world often dictates stagnation and not polished, and they embrace
an individual embrace that in the name of the religion.

Speaker 4 (01:49:30):
And you have to, I mean, Caddles is saying people
want to do better, all right. So if you're saying
that I'm being devoured by wild beasts because I live
in the woods by myself, and I want to protect
myself from the wild beasts, and I get a weapon
and I come up with this way of bringing fire

(01:49:50):
and that scares the beasts away. Caddles that you see
people want to strive. Well, I mean that's self.

Speaker 2 (01:49:56):
Protection, of course, but that's what's more than that.

Speaker 4 (01:49:59):
That was That's not what he's here under discussion about development,
about economic development, about the transformation of the world, about
concepts such as economic growth, concepts such as progress. There
was no such thing before and for thousands and thousands
of years. You have to give an account of that,

(01:50:21):
and they have to explain why is why the change
was so dramatic.

Speaker 2 (01:50:25):
I agree there was no economic progress before that, but
the strive to have economic individual strive to.

Speaker 6 (01:50:34):
Look at the movement today of the growth.

Speaker 5 (01:50:37):
You know, there's a there's a real movement today to
stop going to stagnate, which which is hard to imagine
anything worse than that.

Speaker 6 (01:50:45):
You know, there are real people out there who don't
want me, really don't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:50:50):
Let me give you this example, which doesn't mean that
most people still don't want it. They do want it,
even though there are some thinkers that want to. The
growth doesn't mean that. But the think is influential, and
the human nature did not change three hundred years ago.

Speaker 5 (01:51:03):
But what I'm saying is that a thousand years ago
the thinkers were the growth thinkers in a sense, they
didn't have a concept of the growth, but the influence
was such that most people just accepted the way of
the world was. They couldn't imagine anything better. Of course,
they just couldn't imagine a future that was better than
the past. People because they'd always been the same.

Speaker 4 (01:51:20):
People accepted that they were supposed to die and die
early rather than late.

Speaker 6 (01:51:28):
Amazing, it's actually have better. We got two less questions
just this, uh.

Speaker 4 (01:51:35):
What happened with Bacon again? The cart also is that
that they were starting to make the following reasoning with
the transformation of the world technologically applying our mental strength
to transform the world, we can't conquer mortality. And that's
what we've been doing so far. I mean, first thirty

(01:51:56):
years old, than forty and fifty, now ninety and perhaps
the next generation we are able to recompose our bodies
and never die. I mean, that's the whole different dream.
You didn't have that dream before, and you started to
have that dream beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

Speaker 14 (01:52:15):
Sorry for interrupting, guys. I love your guys, banter. I
love you how you interact with each other, the clash
of personalities and beliefs. My name is Manuel, and I
also love how you are organized from left to right,
to the most radical to the least radical. In terms
of defense of capitalism. I don't know if it's not
intentional or not. My question is for your own book,

(01:52:36):
because you said that Christianity and Christian values are incompatible
with capitalism, and I was going to ask that if
that is the case, then why is it that in
the in the US and the United States. People who
tend to be more leftists and anti capitalists tend to
be atheist leftist socialists, and people who tend to be
more pro capitalism tend to be right wing Christian citizens.

Speaker 6 (01:52:59):
Well, let's be.

Speaker 5 (01:53:01):
Clear that, you know, the right wing Christians in the
United States and not pro capitalism in the sense of
what I mean by capitalism. But you know, it's a
good question because it's unique to America. It's not clear
that Christians elsewhere are proprey markets as much as Americans are.
They tend to be more left wing cuerdainly, the Catholic
churches tended to be more left and right economic terms,

(01:53:24):
with the exception maybe of a pope here are there.
You know, I tell my Christian friends in America that
many of them what happens is that they love America,
and they love the Constitution, and they love people like
Thomas Jefferson and so on. And then what they do
is they take their Christian values and they take the Bible,

(01:53:44):
and they morph them to adapt to their love of
America and their love of the Founding. So the primary
for them is their patriotism, and then they find what
they want which is, you know, the beauty of I
think religious writing is you can find what you want

(01:54:06):
in it, and people can find of all colors can.

Speaker 6 (01:54:09):
Find it Americans. Americans.

Speaker 5 (01:54:12):
Those Americans are particularly patriotic and particularly love America.

Speaker 6 (01:54:17):
And before they find that in the Bible, they find
that in the reading of Christianity.

Speaker 5 (01:54:23):
I don't think there's anything about specific about Christian values
that leads to America. You know, the founders of America
were not particularly Christian. Many of them were Deists, some
of the one conventional Christians or outside of the mainstream
of Christianity.

Speaker 6 (01:54:38):
And I don't think the founding documents of.

Speaker 5 (01:54:41):
America particularly Christian in spite of the fact that these
conservatives believe they are.

Speaker 4 (01:54:45):
Can I just add something, there's a specifically American story
to tell about the flourishing of American Protestantism and the
way developed this affinity for free market economics, you know,
and you have the Max Favors story and all that,
the Max Weber and narrative, But I just wanted to
say that in Europe, maybe Christians have learned in the

(01:55:06):
last sixty years or so to appreciate free market economies
for the reason that Christians began for the first time
to be afraid of the intrusion of states and ideologically
driven policies that affects them as Christians. So even the

(01:55:29):
Catholic Church started to develop this great love for the
autonomy of civil society as a whole from state intrusion
in order for the Catholic Church to survive against the
attacks by the atheistic state. And also the Catholics and
Christians have a lot of other institutions schools or in

(01:55:50):
charities and hospitals that they want to preserve their independence
from the state. Again, so the free market economy gave
to Christians framework vision of society that actually not only
is more prosperous than socialis and so on and so forth,
but also brings protection to them as Christians because as

(01:56:11):
they have driven into this corner as a minority, they
began to be afraid of state intrusion intermission in their
own activities.

Speaker 7 (01:56:18):
I would say, yeah, okay, my name is well Scouts,
and I would like to thank everyone for this great evening.

Speaker 4 (01:56:31):
I have a question.

Speaker 7 (01:56:33):
It can be for everyone, but in particular too Yarn.
First of all, I have to somewhat disagree with the
with the idea that neither Judaism nor Christianity has contributed
to the development of capitalism itself, as many Christians and
Jews in particular were incredibly how do I say, successful

(01:56:55):
in creating many popular and into prices out there. And
I remember watching your your your podcast on Zooka TV
and you said something really interesting which has to do
with a growing rise of anti Jew hatred even in
libertarian circles. And my question here and considering that this

(01:57:20):
kind of hatred I tend to see more in collectivist
circles like a national not socialism, fascism, and even communism,
as you could see here from these people that left
the room, do you believe there is a correlation which relates,
for example, of the to the capital sin of Christianity,

(01:57:44):
which is envy with them with there is a correlation
of this with collectivism and with the anti Jew hatred.

Speaker 5 (01:57:56):
I mean I I so let me just say, I've
got a couple of talks online on YouTube if you
put in you on volcantic Semtism that kind of talk
about anti Semitism and anti capitalism, and the two are
definitely related. Marx was a real anti semit and to
to see this, uh, the first essay he got published.

Speaker 6 (01:58:15):
The first essay Marx published was.

Speaker 5 (01:58:17):
Called on the Jewish Question, which was a question in
Germany at the time about assimilating Jews into society, whether
to do it, whether or not to do it, and
how to do it. And you everybody should read necessay
because it goes to the heart of what Marx is
all about. Max is not a scientific economist. Marx is
a hater.

Speaker 6 (01:58:37):
What does he hate?

Speaker 5 (01:58:39):
He hates self interest, he hates individualism, and he associated
and he he literally says, the problem with the Jew
is he's self interested. The problem with the Jew is
he's capitalists, he's trying to make it. And the problem
with Christian society is it to become Jewish. He literally says,
you know, the Jewish question, the probably the way to

(01:58:59):
solve the Jews question is for Christians to stop being Jews.
Never mind the Jews, stop being Jews, everybody should stop
being Jews. So so so Marks really makes that link
between capitalism and the Jew and uh and condemns the
Jew because he manifests self interest in his behavior.

Speaker 6 (01:59:19):
This is this is his argument.

Speaker 5 (01:59:20):
So there's a deep relationship between the left and anti Semitism.

Speaker 6 (01:59:24):
And always has been. And and Communism Inspitteter of the fact.

Speaker 5 (01:59:27):
That some of its intellectuals were Jewish, was very antisemitic
throughout throughout most of its history. But you know, you
said something about Jews and Christians contributing to capitalism. Look,
I didn't say there was a conflict between Jews and
Christians and capitalism. I said there was a conflict between
the ideas of Christianity and Judaism and capitalism, which is

(01:59:48):
not the same thing. Of course, people as individuals, they
build businesses, They they even contributed ideologically. I mean John
Locke was a Christian, so obviously people who held beliefs
contributed enormously to the creation of of of a of
a capitalist society. You know, they anti Semitism is always

(02:00:09):
and you know, it's a sad way to end this,
but kind of the discussion. But it's it's it's always
a feature of tribalism and collectivism when it's your tribe
against the other tribe. When it really is when it
becomes when people have a sense that it's existential. Uh,
they're looking for scapegoes, they're looking for somebody to blame
the problems andto and to and to lash out at uh.

(02:00:32):
And and that is that is a feature that develops
on the left, and it's a feature that develops on
the right. And we're living in the United States right now.
It is truly scary as you're seeing anti semitism grow
in both the left and the right. I mean, there's
a big crisis now on the right with heritage and
Tucker Calson if you if you know this stuff. But
but it is a consequence of this what's called polarization

(02:00:54):
with this this really these these the division of society.

Speaker 6 (02:00:58):
Into tribal mentality, into tribes.

Speaker 5 (02:01:00):
And you know, so we need to form a coalition
on the right because everybody's welcome as long as they
anti left. The unifying factor is the hatred of the left,
and of course much of the left, the unifying factors
hatred of capitalism or hatred.

Speaker 6 (02:01:14):
Of the right, or however they define it. So tribalism
and the enemy collectivism in that sense is the enemy. Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:01:20):
And in individualistic societies, societies to treat people as individuals.
You know, by definition, I'm not going to be anti
semitic and are going to be racist. Uh, They're gonna
treat each person as individual I mean, I love modern
Luther King's statement about you know, look at people's character,
not the color of their skin, not not their ethnic

(02:01:41):
origen but but who are they? What is the what
are they qualities as individuals?

Speaker 4 (02:01:45):
But the Christian added to the words inequalities, not to
mention other stuff. It's very, very complex. Let me give
you an example. So Christianity so the underdogs in society,
the poor, the slaves, even because the Christianity didn't when
Christianity emerged, it it didn't stand for the abolition of

(02:02:07):
slavery that was afterwards. So they told the poor and
the slave accept inequality, accept it, don't revolt against inequality.
You have your masters, you have your rich, accept them,
and use your position of inferiority as a sort of
training ground for humility that will bring you the favor

(02:02:32):
of God. That's one goal. The other goal was not
Christianity right directing itself to the poor and the slaves,
but to the rich and the powerful. The Church said,
I told those subordinate to you that they should accept
your position of privilege. But bear in mind that you

(02:02:55):
occupied that position of privilege with no merit of your own.
So Christianity, the legitimated positions of wealth, of superiority, of
social superiority, at the same time that it tried to
smooth the potential for envy and revolt among the poorest.

(02:03:17):
That's why Marx then said that Mark has this very
famous line that religion is the opium of the people,
and he was thinking mainly about Christianity, but everyone forgets
what it says afterwards about religion. He said, well, this
is a big insult to religion, right, because religion is

(02:03:38):
a sort of narcotic and you forget about the oppression
that you are subjected to. You are supposed to be
leading the revolution, you're not because you believe in false gods.
But afterwards Marx says in the same sentence that religion
is the only heart that is left in a heartless world.

(02:03:58):
So you see how complex Christians and it can be,
even for the formation of the socialist mentality as well
as for bringing about the capitalist world as we know
it today. It's really really compared to very subtle.

Speaker 1 (02:04:11):
Wind wind. On a positive note, just to remind you
all that you have those flyers with you, you can
stand the QR code and access the link that allows
you to sign up or apply for a scholarship and
attend for free the conference next year. The ones watching
online now, at the end of the broadcast, you'll have
an image with that QR code as well. I just

(02:04:32):
want to know that when you're leaving the room, on
your right, you're going to have a table with some booklets.
Just choose the booklets that interest you the most and
take them. They're free to leave. Okay, once again, I
want to thank everyone on this panel. Please put your
hands together. I also want to thank Lola and SFL,

(02:05:04):
the partners of this event, and the Iron Ran Institute
for being the sponsor. And once again, let's hear it
for the Spanel. Thank you very much for being here.

Speaker 2 (02:05:12):
It's great Africa.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Ruthie's Table 4

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Ruthie's Table 4

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

On Purpose with Jay Shetty