Latest / Yaron Brook Show / Why Capitalism is Losing & How to Start Winning | Yaron & Nikos Dialogues

Transcript

Why Capitalism is Losing & How to Start Winning | Yaron & Nikos Dialogues · Yaron Brook Show

• 0:21
  Speaker 1: No radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: This is the Iran Brook Show. Or as the case
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: may be in this here, it is the Iran and
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Nikos dialogue. So welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: know it's a little early, earlier than usual. I've got
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: a 6.30 flight tomorrow morning, so I have to get
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: up at 3.30. And Nikos didn't sleep the night before
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: last or something like that. So we have excuses. We
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: have excuses. We're both tired. But get ready to go.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: This is an exciting topic, which we which we just
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: did a bunch of filming for a documentary that we're
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: going to do on this topic. So, hey, Nikos.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: We're never tired.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: We're the Stakhanovites of the objectivist movement.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Stakhanovites?
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: You know Stakhanovites, right?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: No, I don't.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: You don't know Stakhanov?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It's almost like the shoes and the other stuff that
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, Nikos has discovered just how
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: ignorant I am over the last week or so.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you know the concept.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: So Stakhanov was a coal miner in Soviet Union during
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: the second five-year plan. And he managed to overpass the
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: plan so much that he broke records, let's say, in
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: being a good Soviet worker. And then people who worked hard,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: he started something like a movement and they were called
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: the Stakhanovites because his main name was Alexei Stakhanov.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Okay. So the people who work hard, even under oppressive conditions.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: No, the people.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Under authoritarian conditions, they still muster through. Nothing stops them.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: You ruined my parallel, but I think the people got it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Hopefully, people got it. All right. So, yes, we are tired.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: And we've done a documentary series. You know, we've worked
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: on a documentary around this last week. I think I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: mentioned this yesterday. We also did a really interesting, I think,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: documentary on Marx. We went to all the places in
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: London where Marx lived and Engels lived in Marx's grave,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: places I've never been to. And the grave I was
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: impressed by the cemetery. The cemetery is really pretty. If
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: you're going to be buried somewhere, if you are going
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to force people to come and go to your grave,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: then it should be in a pretty place where they
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: can enjoy this, the the atmosphere and that graveyard is
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: about as nice as it gets.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: And we did another documentary that I want to reprehend
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: you for. Yesterday you said, maybe, maybe some people might
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: be interested in a 10-hour documentary on Yaron Brook. So people,
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: I'll just give you some highlights of what's going to
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: be there. How a dream impacted Yaron's life. Something related
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: to bears. That's a different story, not the dream of bears.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Something about hiking on a coal mine, or sorry, on a... Yes,
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: by the Syrian border. Yaron being too broke to attend
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: an okon, or what used to be an okon. Where
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: else are you going to get these stories? And this
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: is just a glimpse. I can't even remember. There are
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: so many highlights that these are just at the top
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: of my head. So you're all for a treat.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: So the only other place I tell these stories is
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: over the poker table at Ocon.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: And some of these stories have not even been revealed
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: on the poker table, but they will be revealed in
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the documentary. So I don't want any defeatismo. It's 10 hours.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: If you heard there's a five-hour version, extended version of Casablanca,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: let's say it has Rick and Nilsa's years in Paris,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: would you say, yeah, it might be a success? I
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: might watch it, but maybe I'll watch it in 2X.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Of course not. You'd say, I can't wait. Give it
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Comparing me to Humphrey Bogart and what's her name? God,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the beauty. What's her name, the actress? Ingrid Bergman. Ingrid Bergman. Yeah,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Ingrid Bergman. All right, so let's turn to our topic today.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: So why don't you start us off? You've got an
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: intro to this.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's a topic which is unfortunate, but we have
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: to discuss it. And my thesis for today's episode, we're
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: talking about the liberty movement. The movement that I consider
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: myself part of it. So this is not me throwing rocks.
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  Speaker 3: This is me sharing my worries about this movement. And
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  Speaker 3: I claim that this movement is the biggest failure in
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  Speaker 3: the history of political movements. And I'm saying this in
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  Speaker 3: all seriousness and without, again, any pleasure. And I can
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  Speaker 3: explain why I'm saying this. There are many movements that
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  Speaker 3: are not doing that well. You could say, for example,
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  Speaker 3: I don't know. left-wing anarchists or the communist parties in
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  Speaker 3: the West. But our movement has something unique that makes
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  Speaker 3: its failure even more unforgivable. And it is that we
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  Speaker 3: have proof of concept that our ideas work, as opposed
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  Speaker 3: to most other radical movements, because we are a radical movement.
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  Speaker 3: Our ideas have given humanity its best days. And yet
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  Speaker 3: our ideas today are... irrelevant what do i mean irrelevant
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  Speaker 3: i mean that they are not in the toolkit of
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  Speaker 3: the discussions on how to solve society's.
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  Speaker 2: Problem in almost any country yeah yeah i.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Can give a great example i mean i just i
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: just attended this uh festival of ideas and philosophy you
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: know philosophy and music i guess philosophy music largest festival
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  Speaker 1: in the world they claim although i think the brand
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the one in london is a you know, of the,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know, 50 speakers, 60 speakers, how many classical
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: liberals pro free market people were there?
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  Speaker 2: Probably two, three, two.
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  Speaker 1: And a half. Right. So, so me and, and Deirdre McCluskey,
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  Speaker 1: who I'll talk about in a minute and Jimmy Wales
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: from Wikipedia, if you want to count it. Right. But
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  Speaker 1: really that's it. Everybody else was left of center. Maybe
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: there were a few, a couple of conservatives. Um, and, uh,
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  Speaker 1: We're not at debate. The debate is going on out there.
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  Speaker 1: The world is moving forward, and the free market position
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  Speaker 1: is not represented in the major forums in which the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: debate is happening.
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  Speaker 3: As if this was not enough, every other ideology out there,
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  Speaker 3: whether it is mainstream or fringe, is having a moment.
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  Speaker 3: Democratic socialists are having a moment. Fascists, for God's sake,
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  Speaker 3: are having a moment. Radical leftists are having a moment.
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  Speaker 3: Political Islam. Obviously, environmentalism, which has been the most successful
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  Speaker 3: movement in history. We can discuss this at another point.
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  Speaker 3: Every single movement has had its moment. Every single movement,
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  Speaker 3: their message is reaching some.
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  Speaker 2: Important mass of people.
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  Speaker 3: And many such people are finding it appealing. There's one movement...
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  Speaker 3: for which this is not happening. And unfortunately, it is
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  Speaker 3: the liberty movement. It is the freedom movement. I will
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  Speaker 3: let it up to you if you want to explain
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  Speaker 3: what we mean by freedom movement.
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  Speaker 2: And yeah, why don't we take this?
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  Speaker 1: It's a loose conglomeration here, right? So it's, and I
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: hesitate to say our, because as we'll talk about, I
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  Speaker 1: think a lot of the differences between us and many
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  Speaker 1: of the other people in this movement are pretty dramatic
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: and pretty substantive and significant. And maybe the fact that
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  Speaker 1: they haven't embraced them is the cause of why we're
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: not winning. You know, we can talk about that. I'll
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: talk about what I've considered, you know, it's hard to
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  Speaker 1: say the most, you know, the biggest failure of the
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  Speaker 1: 20th century because there were so many. But one of
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  Speaker 1: the biggest failures of the 20th century is related to
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: this movement. We'll get to it. So it's basically, I'd say,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: small L libertarians. I don't consider anarchists as part of
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  Speaker 1: this movement. I think anarchy is statism, so I don't
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  Speaker 1: consider them. But I consider the economists, even some of
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: whom are anarchists, but they don't make anarchy the key thing.
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  Speaker 1: They're fighting for more freedom, free markets, less regulations, less taxes,
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  Speaker 1: all of that. You know, the kind of libertarian Republicans
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  Speaker 1: of the past, the conservatives who are more libertarian. the
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  Speaker 1: classical liberals that are out there, many of them economists,
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  Speaker 1: political scientists, and so on. So the think tanks, you know,
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  Speaker 1: places like Cato, and probably, you know, Mises.org, some of it,
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  Speaker 1: some of it not, but certainly Fee, and FIRE, and IEA,
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  Speaker 1: and the Adam Smith Institute, and there's like a dozen,
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  Speaker 1: probably just in London, of these kind of free market
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  Speaker 1: leaning think tanks. And Just look at British politics and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: don't look at the labor movement right now. Look at
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  Speaker 1: at what happened during Boris Johnson's tenure as a conservative
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  Speaker 1: party head. Look at what happened to the conservative party
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  Speaker 1: who these people at the Adam Smith Institute, IEA, and
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: all these other think tanks had access. They could knock
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: on their door and walk in.
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  Speaker 3: They would invite them in their receptions. And then the
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  Speaker 3: very same people would invite Greta Thunberg and give her
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  Speaker 3: a standing ovation. Or these very same people who sanctioned
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: these institutions by, yeah, we're all for liberty, they would
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  Speaker 3: go on and ban plastic straws, for example. So this
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  Speaker 3: has been the case in the UK.
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  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And the same thing ultimately is true in the US.
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  Speaker 1: The free market, think tanks, the free market world, the
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  Speaker 1: people who claim, not always the really, in reality, who
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  Speaker 1: claim to be pro-freedom, pro-liberty, that is the big group, right?
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  Speaker 1: That is the big umbrella. And, yeah, one has to
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  Speaker 1: conclude without any doubt that globally, on a global scale,
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  Speaker 1: with the exception, potentially, of Millet, it has been a
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  Speaker 1: massive failure. Massive failure.
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  Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about Millet and why.
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  Speaker 3: But let me try also my luck with a definition,
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  Speaker 3: let's say, of the liberty movement.
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  Speaker 2: So how about, let's put it this way.
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  Speaker 3: You have a network of people, of individuals, of groups,
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  Speaker 3: of organizations, who all view themselves as being inspired by
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  Speaker 3: the cause of defending liberty, economic freedom, and individual rights.
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  Speaker 3: but also they're active in championing such a cause. You
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  Speaker 3: cannot be part of a movement if you just think
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  Speaker 3: about it in your home. You have to do something.
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  Speaker 3: You contribute, you put on stickers, something. Now, a movement,
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: first and foremost, needs to see itself as such. So
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: it needs to, for these people to understand that we
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: have something in common. And the other thing it needs to,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: to be a movement, you need to, it's in the word,
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  Speaker 3: move towards something. It required some target, some goal, some destination.
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  Speaker 3: So these are the two things for me that identify
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  Speaker 3: a movement. You have some common identity and some common goals.
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  Speaker 3: And for me, the litmus test, and also something you mentioned,
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  Speaker 3: the anarchists. Here we disagree. Some anarchists, I would put
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: them in the movement.
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  Speaker 2: But here's the most.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I said that. The anarchists who don't lead with anarchy.
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  Speaker 1: The anarchists who are not promoting anarchy as their primary thing.
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  Speaker 1: The anarchists who were pushing for freedom, yeah, they also
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: believe in anarchy, but that's not their, they are part
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  Speaker 1: of this movement, yes.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, maybe we're saying the same thing. I have it
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  Speaker 2: in a different way in my mind.
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  Speaker 3: So what makes the situation even more depressing is that
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  Speaker 3: the few people who made it to the status of
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  Speaker 3: being a voice in the culture, Dave Smith is an example,
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  Speaker 3: they are not leading the with I want to defend
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  Speaker 3: freedom and individual rights. They're leading on something else, usually
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: something related to the culture wars, something related to things
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  Speaker 3: that have nothing or little to do with individual rights.
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  Speaker 1: Or the opposite, or actually hurts individual liberty and individual freedom,
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  Speaker 1: like Dave Smith's position on Israel or Michael Malice's platforming
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of race realists and so on. So, you know, the
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  Speaker 1: That's the problem with the people who lead with the
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  Speaker 1: anarchy is they actually are moving away and undermining the
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  Speaker 1: cause of liberty.
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  Speaker 3: For example, Thomas Macy, I don't think he's an anarchist,
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  Speaker 3: but again, you get the sense these days that the
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  Speaker 3: main thing on the agenda is foreign policy, but not
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: this urgency to let's defend individual rights, let's showcase the
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: importance of freedom. How many times have we heard Thomas
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Macy or even Rand Paul these days making the positive
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: case for freedom? So either the people who want to
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: promote liberty as a virtue or something good, either they
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: do not have great success in penetrating the culture or
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: those who do, they do not lead with defending freedom.
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  Speaker 2: And again, let me preempt something.
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  Speaker 3: This is not us from the tower playing.
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  Speaker 2: Quarterback, how it's called.
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  Speaker 3: It's not that our movement has answered all this question
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  Speaker 3: and is a great success and we're throwing rocks to
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: the other movements. Most of the things that we're going
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: to say today also apply to our own movement and
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: to the objectivist movement. So this is a genuine attempt
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: to try to understand what is not working, what is
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  Speaker 3: the problem, and how can we fix it? How can we... Because, again,
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  Speaker 3: we have the best ideas. It is unacceptable that we
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: are the one and only political movement which is not
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: in the game at times where people are very hungry
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: for answers.
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  Speaker 1: No, that's absolutely right. And, you know, a lot of this,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: you know, people make excuses. And some of those excuses
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: are legitimate. They're not completely illegitimate. You know, the bad
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: guys have 2,000 years of history behind them. The educational
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: system is against us. We can't get into the universities.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: You know, they can appeal to emotions. in ways that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: we can't because they hook onto the altruism. You know,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: we just don't have enough money, right? All of these- Okay, wait, wait.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Each of these excuses is a cope. Can we spend
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: two minutes dismantling these excuses?
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Explain, do it. Okay.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: We don't have the education.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, but actually, and I thought you said this in
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: the documentary, this just throws the ball Further away, because
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: why is it that the teachers are socialists? Yeah, we
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: don't have the education. This doesn't say much. Or this
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: other point. Everything is stacked against us. Imagine going to
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: an abolitionist, someone in the American South who is risking
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: his life, who is risking to be lynched at night,
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: and telling him, you know, it's a difficult battle.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: We can't fight it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: Imagine going to an independent-minded did scientists during the Inquisition
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: and tell him, what can we do? Things are difficult now.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: It's a jungle out there. It's a jungle. We stand
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: no chances.
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  Speaker 2: Or what else? Oh, the emotions thing.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: That's the thing. So we are saying, oh, the left
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: is using emotion. What does this mean? Emotion means that
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: something matters to someone. How is it an accusation to
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: say the other side is using emotion?
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Well, this is.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: The same thing as saying the other side is telling
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: things that are important to people, that people find valuable. Okay,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: then do the same. Find something which is connect with
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: what is important.
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  Speaker 2: For other people.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: So each one of these excuses, I mean, at the
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: same time, it expresses a reality. But at the same time,
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: it's a cope. Or we don't have enough resources. Most
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: of the Liberty Movement institutions are charities. You can go
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: and find their budgets online. You add them up, you
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: get the budget of an NBA team. Are you telling
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: me that we're punching above our weights with the budget
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: of an NBA team? Like, did we really make more
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: noise last year than, I don't know, the New York Knicks?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: So... Yes. I think that's all right. I mean, I
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: think there's, you know, there's something to all these copes, right? So...
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: you know, when you talk about appealing to emotion in
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: a culture that's already altruistic, it's easier to tell altruistic stories.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: We're telling the opposite stories. It's harder to evoke emotion
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: in a culture that's not used to those stories. But
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, I think one of the challenges,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this, right? One of the challenges,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: how do we do that? That is, how do we
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: evoke values, emotions? How do we, and a big part
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of that is how do we project a positive vision
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: a vision that people can get excited about, that people
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: can get passionate about. And I definitely think we fail
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: on that front.
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  Speaker 3: And it's not noticed that even the parts of the
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: liberty movement who are altruists, they're also failing. It's not
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: that they managed to get the altruist, emotionalist message. So
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: that can't be it.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yep. Yep. No. And I think a big part of
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: the failure is that they're altruists, right? A big part
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: of the failure is that the liberty movement itself has
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: not challenged its own philosophical premises, has not challenged its
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: own underlying philosophy. And ultimately, its underlying philosophy is very
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: similar to the underlying philosophy of socialism. And yet the
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: socialists are more consistent with it. So I had, I
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: was telling you this earlier, I had an interesting conversation
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: today at the conference I attended with Deirdre McCluskey. Now, look,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much you guys know about Deirdre,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: but Deirdre's 84 years old. She's a force of nature
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: in a sense that she's all over the world. She's lecturing.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, she is obviously weak and have a hard
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: time walking and getting around. She powers through it. She
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: gets up on stage she talks she stutters so she
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: often gets caught up in a word and she powers
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: through that and she presents and she's a very powerful
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: presence on stage people listen when she talks and so
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: she's one of the most active proponents of you know,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: call it capitalism. And she's also written books, important books.
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  Speaker 1: She writes a regular column. She's working on a book
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: right now. She's, you know, she's always one of the most,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: most productive people I know, right. But very conventional at
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, philosophically and, um, and, and religious.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: So we were talking today and she was, she asked
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: me what I was working on. I said, I'm working
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: on a, on a book about, uh, kind of the,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the Western civilization and its origins. And she says, well,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: you know, what, what do you think they are? And,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: you know, so I went into reason individualism and she's like, no, no,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: stop reason. We, you know, the, the status choose reason. We,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: you know, she takes Kant's kind of reason as, as,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: as a Kantian. She takes Hayek's view that, you know, uh, the, the, uh, the, uh,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: status to all think that they, this, this, Reason means
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: they're smarter than us. And reason means they can plan
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: our lives for us. And this is one of the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: most substantial defenders of liberty out there. And she's saying, no,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: you have to separate out the Enlightenment from liberalism. We're liberals.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: We're not pro-Enlightenment. And I said, no, I'm pro-Enlightenment. I'm
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: not a liberal. And you can't have liberalism without the Enlightenment.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And in individualism, she tried to push back on individualism.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: And it was like, I pushed back on her. And
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: you could see she was thinking. But, yeah, I mean,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: the reality is that much of the liberty movement, put
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: aside all the other critiques that we're going to make
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: of it, just philosophically, and this is the most important
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: critique at the end of the day, are just not
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: on the right bandwidth. They don't have the right ideas,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and therefore the defense at the end of the day
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: is weak, compromising, It's moderate. They're afraid to be radical.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: And they don't actually take the logic of what they
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: believe all the way. And it's a dramatic weakening. We
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: see that whenever we interview or discuss or debate one
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of these, even the better, Cato-style free market kind of thinkers.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So yes, I was going to say, One of the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: biggest tragedies of the 20th century, and I mean this,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th century, is
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that people like Mises and Hayek and Milton Friedman, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's another dozen I could name, the giants
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: of the liberty movement, when they were giants, because I
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: don't think there are many giants of the liberty movement today,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: maybe a few, but not many. This was a time
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of giants. They didn't take Ayn Rand seriously. We would
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: be 50 years further along, maybe 100 years further along,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: in the fight for liberty if those people had taken
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Rand seriously, basically had said, huh, yeah, she's the philosopher,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: we're the economists, she's got it right, and embraced that idea. Instead,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: they tried to fight for their own philosophical context, which
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: was wrong and perverted and distorted. and ultimately rejected Rand
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and marginalized them.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: So if we put it together, there are two problems,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: sometimes for two different parts of the movement. One part
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: of the liberal movement does not have an inspiring ideal,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: or put differently, does not have a positive vision for freedom.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: It cannot create this inspiring vision that will tell people,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: come with us, Because we have to offer something which
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: is good and noble and relevant to you. This is
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: one part of the movie. So to put it in
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: simpler words, they don't have an answer to the question,
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: why do we need liberty? What is freedom good for?
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: Except for the economics. So they have the utilitarian case.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: But when you have leftists on the barricades promising you virtue, justice...
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: And on the other side, you have people who are
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: showing you graphs. Guess who is going to win? When
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: you have new rightists talking about beauty and cathedrals or
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: fascists talking about heroism, and then on the other side,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: you have people who explain why tariffs are problematic in
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: the economy, guess who will win? But that's not the
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: only problem. So part of the movement does not have
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: an inspiring idea. And another part of the movement... maybe
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: has the right ideas, but does not have the urgency
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: to fight for these ideas. And I know the term
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: urgency is a bit cryptic. So someone asked me, because
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: I wrote an article in all this in my subtext
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: some months ago, we're too good to be friends. And
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: although it was well welcomed, many people told me, this
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: is all too vague. What do you mean there is
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: no urgency? So here are some examples of urgency. What
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: would urgency look like? First of all, a very strong
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: eagerness to figure out a way to connect better with
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: your intended audience. Rather than us talking to each other
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: or us talking to the audience, we need to really
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: trouble ourselves. How can we communicate these ideas to our
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: audience without compromising on the ideas? And preaching to the
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: choir is not enough for a fringe movement. You can
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: preach to the choir if you're the Vatican because the
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: choir is large. But you cannot do this if you're
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: the liberty movement or if you're the objective.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: You cannot do it exclusively. You still have to do
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: it because you have to educate your choir.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That goes without saying.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: But also, you're talking to the world and you have
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: to understand where does the world come from? What are
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: the things that worry them? What is their context? Another
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: thing that you should do, and I know many objectives
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: here would cringe, but you have to build the identity
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: of a movement. You have to create this idea that
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: we're all together because we share some common values. People
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: think when they hear identity, they think, oh, I'm going
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: to become a tribalist, which is totally not the case.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Picture this, you're in a concert and your favorite song
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: comes on, let's say a song which raises the emotions.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: You sing with other people, but you're still yourself.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: You are connected with these people because you like the
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: same things.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And actually, in this case, you are not just the chorus.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: You are also the singer because you are an activist.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: So identity does not mean tribalism or giving up your judgment.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: And identity could mean symbols. Remember how in.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Atlas Ragged they have the sign of the dollar. And yeah,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Francisco says, yeah, that's an inside joke. That's actually a symbol.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: That's what we call a meme, something that has a
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: meaning that people get immediately and say, that's us. This
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: represents our ideas. And it could be optics, music, different things,
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: but something where you understand, yes, this expresses the things
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: that are important to us.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's all right. The challenge,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of course, is once you go beyond the objectivism, is
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: that there's a reason they're not inspired. They don't have
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: an inspiring vision because they can't. They reject individualism. So
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the inspiring vision of happiness, individual happiness, individuals pursuing their
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: own values, they reject reason. Deirdre really wanted to fight
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: against reason. I mean, so what's going to be inspiring
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: about what she says? I mean, ultimately, to be inspiring,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: she's going to have to sneak reason in. Implicitly, it's
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: going to have to be there. The problem is, and
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: this is the case with most of the freedom, the
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: people who are active in the freedom movement, If you
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: ask them why they should be free, why is freedom good?
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about this. I've done talks about
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: this in the past. And I remember doing it at,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: what do you call it, the big summer conference where
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: all the libertarians go, Freedom Fest, Freedom Fest. I did
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: this talk to libertarians, right? And I said, why do
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you care about freedom? Why is freedom important? And I
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: got these blank stares. They looked at me like, what
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: are you talking about? I said, why should we go
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: and fight for freedom? What's in it? Oh, GDP will
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: go up. The economy will do better. Really? That's why
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: you want to fight for freedom? And when you really dig,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: when you really unpeel the onion, if you will, then
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the reason to fight for freedom is because you want
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: to live the best life you can in the world
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: for yourself. You want to pursue your happiness. And that requires...
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: at some level accepting an egoistic morality and if you
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: don't accept an egoistic morality you're never ever ever going
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: to be passionate about the cause of freedom.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: So let's put it in other words because what you're
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: saying is very important let's think of the opposite If
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: I'm not inspired by what you described, living the best life,
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: do I need freedom? So if I want, let's say,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: to die for Mother Russia, if this is my vision,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: do I need freedom? No, I need someone to tell
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: me what is the good of Mother Russia, and then
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: I have to obey. If I want to live for God,
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: I don't need freedom. I need someone to tell me
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: what God requires. Or if I live for the greatest happiness,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: for the greatest number, Then I need a committee of
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: bureaucrats who will do their calculations, actually central planning calculations,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: and who will tell me what of my actions will
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: lead to the greatest good of the greatest people. So
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: it also works the other way around. The only reason
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: you want freedom is freedom. if you want to live
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: a good life, and then it's mirror image, the only
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: way you can have a good life, a meaningful life,
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: is with freedom.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, and add to that, now, another layer, right, is
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: how do I know what a good life is? I
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: feel it? I get a revelation? Right? No, you have
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: to reason it. So the only way to defend freedom
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: is to want freedom to have a great life for
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: yourself and for the people you love. It's to recognize
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the value of freedom to your life. And that creates
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the passion. This is important because it's important to me.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: And to know that you have the tool to thrive
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and survive once you attain the reason, once you attain
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the freedom, which is reason, right? That's the tool. And
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: if you don't believe in reason, then what do you
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: believe in? Then what is the means of knowledge? Okay,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: it's revelation. Well, that doesn't lead to freedom. That leads
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: to authoritarianism. The authoritarianism of those who get the revelation.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Or you believe in subjectivism, or you believe in tradition.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: That's a fascism. That's a new right. Truth was discovered
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: a long time ago. We just need to access the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: truth of the past. All of them, every single movement
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: that is not for freedom, is a movement of anti-reason.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And then most of the freedom movement is anti-reason. So
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: is it a surprise at all that we have failed? No. True.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: But urgency, so it's.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: On the one hand, yes, to understand this, that this
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: is about living, so to understand what we're fighting about.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: But I think there's a second layer which even if
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: we manage to get to what you are trying to get,
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: I get the sense that many people, particularly the ones
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: leading the movement, I don't see much fire in them.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to put it. And I will
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: describe the opposite. So maybe you understand what I mean.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I don't see much fire. I have two examples in
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: mind that come to mind when I think of urgency.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: Actually, the one involves you.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: You used to travel and you still do, but Places like,
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know, China, Kazakhstan.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: I never went to Kazakhstan. But Mongolia, I went to Mongolia.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: Mongolia, Mongolia, sorry. You've been to one of the stands.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: I couldn't remember.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Azerbaijan, I've been to Azerbaijan.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan, Mongolia.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to Tbilisi tomorrow.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Tbilisi, no offense to our Georgian friends, not the best
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: airport in the world. But it's... Going to and talking
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: to everyone, hoping that, yes, something might come out of here,
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: to the Balkans.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: This to me sounds like urgency. I'll give you another example.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: The late David Boas, he was sick for the last
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: years of his life. And his last talk, he's very
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: visibly ill. He's very frail. And he gets on stage
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: because he wants to give a warning to the world,
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: to actually the liberty movement, about the dangers of the
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: new right.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: I find something very moving in it.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: Whatever you think of David Boas, this to me shows urgency.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: That what I'm doing, my job, is very important. So
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: important that even if this is the last thing I do,
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: I want to pass a message to the people about
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: something that I care about. And I don't get this
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: from many other aspects and corners.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Of the movement.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's right. But again, I, you know, so,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: so I think Deirdre has urgency or at least that passion,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: but she's, she, she doesn't have the reason individualism and
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it's going to be hard to win if you don't
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: have the ideas that are going to ultimately change the world.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: It's not going to change without them. Um, and you know,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: she's very skeptical of Ayn Rand and so on. Uh,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: you know, if you look at, uh, if you look at, uh,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: there's two libertarian economists, Ben Powell and Lawson, one's from
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Dallas and one's from Texas Tech. They did a, was
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: it a beer drinking something? You know, they traveled around
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: the world and gave lectures on capitalism, the economics of capitalism,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: but all while drinking in bars and writing about the
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: drinking in jars. And it's fun and it's light and it's,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: It's pleasant. You know, at the end of the day, again,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: what they're missing are the foundational ideas that are required
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: in order to really change the world. And it's almost like,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: and I think this is true of some objectivists too,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: it's almost like there's a certain game to it, right?
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: There's a certain, you know, we know that the economy
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: is better under capitalism and isn't it fun to travel
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: around the world telling people about this? And it's not
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: about passionately changing the world and having a clear vision
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of what that looks like. I mean, I don't know
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: what the world looks like under real freedom because I
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: can't imagine how beautiful it will be. I can't imagine
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: how rich we can get. I can't imagine how wonderful.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I live a really good life. I mean,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I'm happy with my life. And yet, I'm constantly burdened
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: with the reality of this crazy world we live in.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I have to deal with Donald Trump every day. And
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it would be like to live
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: in a world where, you know, those burdens were lifted
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: and we were really free. But I know how great
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: that would be. And that's what drives, I think that's
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: what drives me, right? The beauty of it, the life changing.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: And with me, it's Ayn Rand, right? So- Rand changed
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: my life completely in immensely and deeply meaningful ways. And
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: to get other people to have that same experience, wow,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: that's so much fun. And so urgent because they're not
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: having it. There are 8 billion people on the planet.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Only about, I don't know, 100,000 of them had this experience.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: And so we have 8 billion still left. There's a
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: lot of work to do.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: And this is the other thing. You mentioned the vision.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: There has to be a positive message. And the fact
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: that we're not going to end in gulags is a
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: good start, but it's not a positive message.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: The fact.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: You cannot just tell people, come with us, because otherwise
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: it's the gulags. This is fear. I know fear is
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: a strong feeling. It's not a good motivating factor to
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: build a good movement. Instead, how about this?
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: How about.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: You're going, it's what you said, you're going to have
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: possibilities in your life that you haven't even imagined. I
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: always speak about maglev trains going from Europe to the
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: United States in two hours. Things in your own life about,
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: for example, biotechnology. Imagine living, maybe not forever, but living
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: way longer life.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Releasing some of.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: The worries you have about what your child or your
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: beloved ones can come down with. This is the positive vision.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: And this vision can only come through freedom. There's no
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: question in my mind about that. And again, the whole
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: of history is our witness. So we have all the
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: raw material to do this. And yet somehow, it's as
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: if we are shying away from such possibilities. And again,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: at the end of the day, it will come to
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: people's philosophy.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: They will say, oh, I don't want to play God.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: Or they will say things like, or then they have
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: accepted other premises such as environmentalism. What's going to happen
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: to our resources on earth if we live longer? Like seriously,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: you think if we manage to find a way to
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: live till we are 250.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Years old, our problems, we're going to run out of oil.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Like seriously, do you have so, maybe that's another issue.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: There's so little food. in humanity, in human potential, in
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: human subjectivity. I don't know how to put it. There
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: is so much pessimism, and particularly many economists. They see
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: people almost as a problem. The individual and the individual's
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: freedom is a problem to be mitigate it is a
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: problem to be controlled and again these are people supposedly
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: on on our side you mentioned your experience in this
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: conference i remember years ago and a conference which was
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: supposed also close to us and the opening lecture was
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: about behavioral economics someone portraying behavioral economics like actually saying
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: this is how we can trick people actually you know
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: people are stupid they're idiots But if we do these
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: small changes, we will manage to have them recycle more.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: This is why you need liberty, seriously. I can have
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: this under central planning. Why do I need you to
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: advocate for liberty if this is your vision?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I had a goal today, a Chinese goal at my talk.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: We had on one of the panels, we had a,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I'll call him an apologist for China on the panel.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: This was the panel on democracy and he was trying to,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't clear what he was trying to say, but
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: he was, he was clearly trying to argue that, you know,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: your democracies in the West are pretty screwed up. Leave
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: us alone in China. And so, you know, there was
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a question of why China had done so well. And
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I gave my spiel and this, this Chinese girl came
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: up to me afterwards and she said, you know, you know,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: you know, in China, I have safety. Chinese economy is
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: doing really well. Look at this UK. Look at, look
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: how horrible it is. Look what's going on there. I have, And,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and I'm telling her, yeah, but if you
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: say something that she doesn't like, you go to jail.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: You know, think of all the girls or the young
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: people during the protest over COVID who were rounded up
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: and gone to jail. And she was like, yeah, okay. But,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: you know, but it's safe. It's like the vision people
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: have of their life is so narrow. The vision of
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: what they think is possible in life is so narrow
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: and shallow. And to open them up to what is possible,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: to the potential, it's so frustrating. I mean, she comes
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: from a world where you'd think she'd appreciate the liberties
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and the freedoms, and no, she doesn't. What she appreciates
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: is the authoritarianism, and she wants to bring it here.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Actually, What you just said made me think of the
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: biggest black pill when it comes to people in liberty.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: But before that, you mentioned COVID.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: COVID would be a huge opportunity to make the case
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: for liberty.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, what happened?
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Early on, it was very few people, two of them
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: in this meeting, who were shouting against the lockdowns.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Everyone was silent.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: And then the reaction, the resistance, let's say, to the
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: lockdowns transformed to some craziness about how Fauci needs to
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: go to prison and the vaccine, all that crap. So
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: another missed opportunity because people didn't have the proper software
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: to analyze the situation. The software is reason. So here's
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: the black pill, the pessimist outcome. What if the reason
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: many people don't really care about freedom is because many
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: people don't particularly either care about their lives, truly care,
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: or they find the responsibility that comes with freedom very
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: hard to bear. And you see constantly politicians bombarding them
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: with this message that it's dangerous out there. Like it's
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: dangerous if you have to leave your village in the
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: Appalachian mountains and the factory that you and your father
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: and your grandfather worked and having to go somewhere else.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: And maybe we're not good enough for freedom. And again,
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: this cannot become a pessimist episode.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I'm just, so the.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Soup is- No, it's absolutely true. I mean, it's the whole,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: It's all be afraid of immigrants, be afraid of trade.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: They're taking your job. They're going to destroy your life.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: They're going to kill your daughter. They're going to rape
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: your wife. That is how statists operate. And they're very good.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: This is why they win. They win because they appeal
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: to an emotion of fear. And sadly, we live in
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a culture that is very attuned to fear, right? Climate change, AI,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: the world is going to end one way or the other.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: You are going to kill them. And we are stuck
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: in this position, I find myself in this position, saying, no, no,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the world's not bad. It could be much better, but
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: it's not bad. And that's not a particularly inspiring vision either, right? No,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: there are real problems in this world, but how do
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: we project what is possible? How do we project what's real?
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: You know, short of a novel, right? Short of writing
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Atlas Shrugged or sequel to Atlas Shrugged. How do we project...
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: what is possible to human beings, you know, because, you know,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: you land up on the show a lot defending the
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: status quo. No, no, no. Incomes are not shrinking. The
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: middle class is not shrinking. And it's all true because
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: life is much better than the bad guys would like
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to portray it. But that's not who I am. I'm
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: not about the status quo. I want incomes to be
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a thousand times better. I want middle class to disappear
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: because everybody's rich. You know, and I believe that's all possible.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: But it's hard to get to it because you're doing,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: we spent so much time undoing the gunk, the trash
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: that everybody else leaves in our path.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: And you mentioned vision and inspiring and this brings us
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: also to aesthetics.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Have you noticed that we are the double irony.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: And inexcusable irony? A, we are the only movement that
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: has practically zero aesthetics. I was thinking about the other one.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: We have Atlas shrugging the phone head.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Wait, that's the second thing. That's the second criminal omission.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Could you think of a song, let's say, about liberty?
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: Millay has made the song Libre from the 70s. It's
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: a great song.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Jennifer is going to tell you that Rush has several
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: songs that are about liberty and that are really good.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, have we adopted any of them as making it
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: a symbol? And the answer is, of course, no. And
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: at the same time, we are the movement that has
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: the best raw material. We have stuff that other movements
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: would pay trillions upon trillions and they would never come
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: up with them. They have Eisenstein, they have October, they
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: have nice things. We have Atlas Rack and the founding.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: And what have we done with this? Nothing. the liberty
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: movement hasn't, again, it's as if aesthetics is only about
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: these primordial brutes and we're too cool for that. We are, oh,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: this is emotion. This is, we don't want anything to
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: do with that.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Part of it is the wider liberty movement is afraid
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: of Atlas Shrugman because they challenge their philosophical assumptions. It's
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: beyond just the rejection of aesthetics and they don't think
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: it's important. It's It's the fact that, oh, wait a minute,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: if I'm a utilitarian or if I'm a Christian libertarian
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: or if I'm a, I don't know, Kantian libertarian or whatever,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I now embrace Atlas Shrugged and Found Head, then I'm
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: embracing a lot more than just the aesthetics. I'm embracing
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the fundamental ideas inside of it. It goes back to
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: my point. If Mises and Hayek had embraced Atlas shrugged.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, to some extent, Mises did. But if they'd
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: embraced Ayn Rand as a philosopher, as the philosopher of
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: the liberty movement, imagine that. That Mises appoints Ayn Rand
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: as the philosopher of the liberty movement. And she's acknowledged
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: as such, and everybody reads her and studies her and
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: talks about her. The world would be a completely different
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: place right now. Instead, you know, the people who followed
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Mises are all mediocrities and wusses. and to some extent
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: anti-life and anti-man, the Hoppers and the Rothbods of the world.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: And we've got whole institutions dedicated to anarchy and nihilism
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: in many respects. And the beauty, but importantly, the morality
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: and the reason that Iron Man brings the liberty movement,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: you know, thrown to the side.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, then that would bring us to another discussion, which...
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: might be a soul of its own, why is it
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: that us, in our corner of objectivism, why are we
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: not having much better results in penetrating the culture? Let
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: me throw something on the table in all this. The
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: importance of the apostles of a movement, the importance of
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: the key figures of a movement. I was reading the
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: biography of Malcolm X, I encourage every aspiring activist to
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: read it. Of course, it's one of the most racist
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: books I've ever read in my life, and I've read
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: Mein Kampf, so there's competition there. And yet there's something
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: very interesting in how Malcolm X almost becomes a movement
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: of one. And he, with very radical ideas, with, again,
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: speak about, oh, I'm against the establishment, with abhorrent ideas,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: and yet there's something in the way he approaches his activism,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: how seriously he takes it, that I think is a
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: very interesting.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Takeaway.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Because, you know, the question with objective is, who should
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: we compare ourselves to?
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Should we compare ourselves, let's say, to.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: A political movement, to the civil rights movement, Should we
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: compare ourselves to something like stoicism? It's even difficult to
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: affect evaltruists. It's difficult even to see what exactly we're
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: trying to do. But in any of these movements, you
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: will find the importance of the evangelists, the apostles, however
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: you want to call it. Think about how much Ryan
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: Holiday has done about stoicism. Someone who is not a
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: particularly original or deep thinker, and yet... He does something
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: which I think it is he shows the world. He
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: does not just tell the world. He shows the world
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: that this is what this... This is the life that
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: you can get with these virtues. This is how these
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: virtues are concretized in action.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think... When I think of
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the objectivism, I think our work is much more like
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: the Enlightenment. It's much more about... you know, really challenging
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the very foundational ideas in a culture. In the Enlightenment,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: it was primarily Christianity and violence and war and things
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: like that. And I think for us, it's very similar.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: You know, you can come up with a sexy idea
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: and it'll be sexy for, I don't know, Stoicism was
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: sexy for five, six, ten years. You know, it's not
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: as big now as it was let's say five years ago.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: And I don't think it will be in five years.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: We are in this for the longterm. We're in it
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: for political change, but just in a sense, like the
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: alignment was, we recognize the political change requires philosophical change
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and cultural change first. And so I'll, you know, as
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: a movement, what we're seeking is philosophical and cultural change. And, uh,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: You know, I think we can learn a lot from
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the Enlightenment. I think we can learn a lot from
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: what the Enlightenment did and how it pursued it and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: how it acted. And one of the big lessons I
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: take from the Enlightenment is the Enlightenment was basically a
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: network of intellectuals. It's called the Republic of Letters. It's,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: you know, well over a thousand intellectuals talking to one
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: another and then communicating with the world to the extent
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: that they could because they face censorship, which we don't,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: which we have a huge advantage over them. You know,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the numbers. I can't remember the numbers,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: but Voltaire wrote thousands of letters. Thousands of letters to
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: other intellectuals. So we're not talking about a letter qua email.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: And my email in particular, my emails in particular, you know,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: three words and that's it. We're talking about letters. Letters
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: of substance, of philosophical thought, of, you know, personal connection
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: on top of philosophical thought. And the work that they
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: put in. the, the, the, the, you know, the urgency
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: that they had, you know, and, and the, the Voltaire
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: standing up against injustice, particularly on the side of religion. But,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: but the same is true of all of them. You
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: think about the people who popularized Newton, right? So Newton
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: was radical, super radical, right? We think of science, how,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: how radical could science be? Oh no, this overthrew everything. And,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: and there were people all over Europe giving lectures and,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: and seminars and presenting papers on Newton to try to
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: get people familiar with it. So to me, that's, we're
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: still at that level of work, you know, of really
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: engaging with intellectuals, building an intellectual network and engaging with
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the culture. And, and I, you know, a lot of
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: what I think we need to do right now in
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: terms of urgency is find new intellectuals, find more people
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: who are interested in being intellectuals, who want to be
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: intellectuals and, and then training them up to becoming those intellectuals.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: But that's what I learned from, you know, that's, you know,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: the enlightenment didn't have the center for enlightenment studies that
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: went around and, and, and, and, you know, hired intellectuals
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: because the soil was ready for it. And, and you,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you know, there were, there were intellectuals all over the
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: place and, um, it was a very different political and
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: cultural environment. If we're, if we're serious about the urgency,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: we need to find people who can articulate that urgency
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and we need many of them. Right.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: And, you know, people will now say, okay, so what
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: can we, what can we do? What can we all do?
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: So for the end, I mean, I should have prepared
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: this better, but from the top of my head, here
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: are three things that I think we can all do. First,
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: be a bit extra thoughtful on who we support and
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: demand more from our support. Like ask tough questions, your activists,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: the groups, the organizations that you work with. Show me
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: that you care. Show me that this is important for you.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Show me that you are not complacent. Don't be complacent.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: If you see that something does not work, try new things.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: And to.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: To say something close to home. The reason we did
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: the documentary is, in a way, we haven't tried this before.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe it will work. I hope it will work.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: But we have to do something which will be different
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: from things that have.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Reached a ceiling. Maybe this will raise the ceiling a bit.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: But tell you what, even if they don't work, I
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: still think this is the proper way of thinking, that
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: we need to try harder. We need to try harder
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: in order to do things better.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Nobody's ever tried to do what we're trying to do.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: So it's true that the environmentalists were successful and all
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: these other movements were successful, but none of them were
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: engaged in trying to completely overthrow the existing, you know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: the existing culture. I don't think even the communists, because
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: as we've talked about in the past, you know, communism
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: leverages Christianity. It leverages the altruism. It leverages the collectivism.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: It leverages something that already exists in the culture. We
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: are truly trying to change what people believe about pretty
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: much everything. And this is the difference between objectivist and
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: the liberty movement. The liberty movement doesn't realize that. They
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: think they can overlay liberty on top of the existing culture.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: So they think if they could just convince people that...
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: You remember we talked to James Lawson. You know, he's
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: a nice guy. A friend in about... you know, and
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: it's in the documentary where we talk about what the
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: liberty movement could do. And he was talking about, we
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: could ask polls differently. We, you know, we can, we
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: can tease out, you know, these, these things here and there.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: And it's, he thinks if we just tinker with the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: existing culture, just a few little changes that we make
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: little things, things will get a lot better. And what
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: we are saying is, and this is the big difference
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: between objectivists and everybody else, we need to scrap the
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: existing culture. In a sense, we need to redo it.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: We need to leverage the Enlightenment and the founding fathers
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: and the founding of America and take the best out
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: of them. But everything else goes. And we start anew.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: And in that sense, we're real revolutionaries. We're the real revolutionaries.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: Well, there's no question that we're the real revolutionaries. It's
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: just when the.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Objective is so high the question becomes how can you
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: break it down and how can it become something more
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: than a pie in the sky and then we say
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: you know in 50 years or then 100 years or
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: 200 years so the difficulty is how to grasp what
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: you say and try to bring it closer or to
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: at least try to imagine what bringing it closer would
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: look like because otherwise it can become fatalism it can
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: become it And.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: It's very easy to fall into fatalism, and particularly you
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: read Ayn Rand's Missing Link, and you say, well, if
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: people can't think abstractly, who are we even talking to? So,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: you know, my view is, as I've said, first of all,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: I agree with you. We've got to experiment. We've got
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: to try new things. But the call at this point
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: in the changing the culture, you know, mission, We need 1,000 intellectuals.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: To me, that's the standard. We need 1,000, you know,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: to be a little self-aggrandizing. We need 1,000 Nikoses and Yerans.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: You know, Nikos, Yerans, Alex, I mean, you can fill
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: in the rest, right? We talked about this. Maybe we
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: have 20, 25. We need 1,000, right? And maybe with
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: a broad definition, we have 100. We need it anywhere from,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: you know, 10 to 40 X, the number of people
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: we have. And then, then imagine what happens to experimentation, right?
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Then every one of them will be experimenting. Alex has experimented,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: tried different things and, achieved great things by doing so.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Imagine if we have a thousand people experimenting, a thousand
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: people trying new things and pushing the envelope and arguing
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: the case for freedom from a different perspective. That's how
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: we win. That's how we succeed. But it's a numbers
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: game and we have to attract the talent and we
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: have to find young people who are willing to dedicate
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: themselves to this kind of work and who have that passion.
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: But see how it is. It's so cyclical to do this.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: We have to inspire the good people, the idealistic people
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: that come here. There is something here. So I don't,
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: maybe my final point would be aspire to inspire.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Aspire to, to inspire.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Yes. I think that's right. And don't give up. And, uh,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: a broad outreach. You know, you never know who, which
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: young person is going to be the young person who
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: turns out to be the next Leonard Peikoff. You know,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: the next, you know, I'm not even going to say
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Ayn Rand because that's, that's a dreaming, but the next,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you know, Nikos or the next Alex Epstein. We don't know.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: You don't know where they are. So reach out. You guys,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: if you meet young people, hand them Ayn Rand books.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, just simple like that. Anybody you know who's
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: 16 to 22, or to 30 actually, hand them a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: copy of The Founder. Stop being embarrassed about our ideas.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Here's a book that had a huge impact on my life.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I hope you read it. That's it. That's all you
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: have to say.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: And be again, be a bit more demanding with where
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: you spend your money to. There are groups in the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: Liberty Movement where you see their project and they're almost
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: indistinguishable from, I don't know, from UNICEF or something. So
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: ask yourself, if I run my business like that with
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: this incoherence of a message, with this completely diluted message,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: would I be happy with this? So then why do
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: you support groups that have crazy, crazy budget and they
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: don't do anything? So I'll tell you one last thing.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: In the last months, due to professional situation, I have
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: done deep research into almost every liberty movement institution because
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: I've basically applied to almost all of them. So I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: know the budget of them and what they do. And
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: the gap is absolutely, absolutely sad. I'm not saying they are,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: you know... they are doing anything illegal or something. It's
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: just that they're complacent. It's always, you know, it's okay. Well,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: our videos are, we don't do much. We don't do much.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: If this was your business, you would be very angry.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: You'd be like, guys, do something. I'm trusting you here.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Anyway.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: See, we said let's not end up being a black building,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: but again, if we don't speak about these things, who
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: will speak about these things?
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: No, but I think we need to be more inspiring.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: We need to use more of Ayn Rand's work because
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: I think she was so inspiring and her novels were
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: so inspiring. And we need to find young people. And
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: that's the key. That's everything. And To do that, we
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: have to inspire young people. We have to have a
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: positive vision for the world. We have to be able
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: to answer why freedom in an inspiring, you know, uplifting way.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: And look, and we have to, you know, one of
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: the things I, you know, I was telling Nikos about
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: this conference where people ticked me, pissed me off. I mean,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the debates, the first debate in particular, I was, I
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: almost got up and started yelling at everybody because it
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: was so, The opinions that people were expressing were so crazy.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I had a woman on one side who was,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: we were talking about the value of freedom and nobody
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: wanted to define what freedom was, right? So they were
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: all collectivists, right? There were three panelists. The other two
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: panelists were complete and utter collectivists. One was, it's all
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: white supremacy, right? is destroying the world. And you have
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: to think in groups because the white supremacists have determined
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: the group.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: That's exactly what white supremacists are saying these days. Everyone
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: else is thinking as groups. Therefore, whites should also think
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: as groups.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And capitalism was built on slavery and capitalism was
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: built on genocide. And it's all dead bodies. And that's
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: all there is in history is dead bodies. And we're
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: no better off today than we were a thousand years ago.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: And America is no better than China or middle of Africa.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: They're all the same. Everything's the same. And then a
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: woman on my left from India who, who, who, who
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: knew you, what exactly she was saying, but her big
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: thing was, you know, we've got to stop the extermination
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: of the Palestinian people. You know, the, you can't talk
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: about freedom when people are being exterminated, uh, you know,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: by the West, by the West. And I, I'm sitting there. What?
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: And it, I got angry. And you know me when
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I get angry. So I really laid into them. And
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of the audience wasn't happy. But a chunk
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: of the audience was like, wow, somebody's standing up. Somebody's
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: standing up to these people. And that inspires people. And
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: a bunch of young people came up to me. A
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: bunch of kids came up to me afterwards and said, oh, that.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Was so great.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: It was so good you stood up to them. It
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: was so good what you said on Israel or whatever
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: or about slavery or capitalism. Yeah, where do we learn more?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Where do we learn more? And that comes from inspiration.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: It doesn't come from the particular words I said because,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: you know, who knows if I actually saw what I said.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: But it comes from the passion, the anger, the commitment to,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: you know, to a better world, to truth, to truth
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: more than anything else.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: In other words, it comes from the fact that these
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: things matter to you.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Matter.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: This is the urgency point. That it matters. It matters
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: for your life and therefore you're passionate about it.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: And I think objectivism, objectivists are really the only ones
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: I see who really, really care. I mean, and you
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: can see that, for example, in the work a lot
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: of people from the Institute have done around 9-11. I mean,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: that was urgent. There was urgency there and they care.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think I did the discussion with Ilan
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: and Ankar about 9-11. And Ankar teared up talking about
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: the soldiers lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ankar cares, I mean, Ankar,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: who's never emotional, right, cares enough about the soldiers who
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: he doesn't know who died in Iraq and Afghanistan to
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: tear up on a podcast. And, you know, we actually
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: value human life. You know, we see values human life
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: is this amazing thing. And to see it wasted and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: to see it destroyed is an affront to everything we
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: believe in. So we, you know, I think objectivists should
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: and do really, really can. What you all need to do,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: all of us need to do, is be much more
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: willing to fight for that, much more willing to express that,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: much more willing to go out there and be on
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: a limb. I know it's hard because the world is
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: against us, but Go out on a limb and defend
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: your position and let people know that they're full of it,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's wrong. Look, at this conference, everybody's
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: a leftist. So I had no idea if they were
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: going to, you know, I was going to be, you know,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: sent to the bonfire, you know, right then and there.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: But they'll have me back. They'll have me back because
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: for them, for the organizers, it's kind of entertaining, right?
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: I was telling someone the other day, I think I've
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: seen almost every objectivist intellectual tear up at some point
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: or the other, not because something, you know, their cat died.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: Something they said, they understand it is so important and
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: it meant so much to them that they tear up.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: Some of them online, you mentioned Ankar.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: I've seen also other of our friends do that because
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: these things... matter to them. And we need more of that.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: Not the tearing up, but this is how much this
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: matters to me. And again, actually, I'll give a direct encouragement. People,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: if there's someone in the liberty movement and you think,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: for them, it doesn't really matter.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: They're more like a mercenary.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: Don't deal with them don't give them their money don't
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: go to their conferences mostly don't give them their don't
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: give don't give them your money because it this fight
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: is too important to go and fight it with people
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: who don't care.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah and this is part of i mean i promise
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: not to talk too much about this but this is
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: part of why god debating like uh what is zulu
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: whatever zc zulu zero whatever on anarchy i mean who
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: cares Sorry, but who cares? It's just, it's like there's real,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: there are real problems out there in the world. There
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: are real issues. There are people to be attracted, you know,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: and all the people who follow Zulu read Ayn Rand.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: So they know. I'm not going to say anything they
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: don't know. They've chosen. They've made their choice. Why would
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: you go and waste your time on these internal disputes?
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Walk away from that and focus on the real battle.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: The real battle is to change the culture. There were
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: battles to bring Ayn Rand's ideas out there into the world,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: not to to to debate stuff that really is is
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: ridiculous right it's not serious anyway maybe somebody else will
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: debate liquid zulu all right um what do we do
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: now we do super chat questions.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: Right Yes, we do super chat questions and again, this is,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: so usually people will come here well prepared, giving you facts,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: giving you some historical insight, at least for me. This
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: is an open invitation that I don't have the answers.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: I wish I had them. And again, it's not that
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: I'm lecturing people and I'm doing that great and I'm
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: the new Malcolm X of liberty. It's the movement's failures
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: are also my failures. So if people have any good
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: suggestions or they can, uh, poke holes in what we said,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: this is more than welcome today, more than in other episodes.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: Like it's highly unlikely.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: You're going to persuade me that the great leap forward
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: was a great idea, but today I'm very open to,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: to either changing my mind or something or seeing something
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: I haven't seen before.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: Yep. All right.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: Um, Oh, and also just to say a big thank
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: you to those of you who, from the previous episode,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: knew Mike Mentzer and DMed me with extra information about
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: who was this guy. It's very nice that these shows
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: are also created. We learned about people we didn't know
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: much about. We meet people virtually who were present in
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: these historical events. So particularly the last episode, I'm very,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: very happy on that it meant a lot for some people.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: And it did also great in views. But the most
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: important thing for me is some people felt, oh, I
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: feel seen. I feel that there was justice here, that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: this person was actually.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: Commemorated or whatever.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And so thank you, guys. All right, let's
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: jump in here. Let's start with Ryan. Ryan, 50 Canadian dollars.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Ryan. What percentage of the population is part
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: of a movement? Very low. The people not in a
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: movement living their lives are in essence freeloading off the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: liberty movement to the extent they are free. I think
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: there will be a way to mobilize the masses. Yeah,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: go ahead.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: If you see groups like the Sierra Club, yeah, obviously
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: they're not the majority of the population, but they have
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: very significant numbers. So particularly environmentalism, The genius thing that
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: environmentalists did is they lowered the entrance fee, let's say,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: to the movement. So very few people did very difficult
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: activist stuff. And then many people would sign a petition
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: and it made it easier for you to feel that
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: I'm part of something big and heroic, whereas actually what
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: you were doing was almost nothing. So we could do
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: one day an episode for the environmental movement because I
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: consider it the most successful movement ever. in human history
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: by specific metrics. And it's questionable what we can learn
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: from its success, but there are a few things that
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: we do that we can learn.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oncon, I did lectures called 2007, 8. I can't remember.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: In Ocon, we did three lectures analyzing three different movements
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: and their success. And one was... Christianity, the religion, particularly
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: in modern, it's modern, you know. And then one was environmentalism,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: and one was, in a sense, the Enlightenment. So the
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: free market movement, it's beginning in the 18th century and
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: 19th century versus today. Well, no, I think we also
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: talked about for a while the free market movement looked
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: like it was going to succeed. in the 70s and
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: then in the 80s. It looks like it was going
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: to succeed, and the question is why and how did
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: it do that? How did we get Reagan and Thatcher?
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: That's our question. If you think about the character of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Ayn Rand, who was alive and fighting, and talk about
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: urgency and talk about a positive vision just in her presence,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: but Milton Friedman, with all the criticism I have of him,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: you watch the Q & As Milton Friedman does. And
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: how sharp he is, how quick he is, how benevolent
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: he is, and how he doesn't take any BS from anybody.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: And he inspired a lot of people. I mean, again,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: not as deeply as we want. And ultimately, I think
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: that's the failure. But even people like Hayek were everywhere.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: They were active. They were engaged. And I think that
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: that period had a lot of people... A lot of
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: people engaged and a lot of people working in a
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: way that we haven't seen. So I think what happened was,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I think to some extent, and this is with regard
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: to the liberty movement, the liberty movement in 1989, when
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the Berlin wall fell, felt like they won and was over.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: I think about 89, the Berlin wall had fallen. China
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: was liberalizing huge, really, really fast. I mean, people forget
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: how dramatic it was. I mean, Tiananmen Square happened, but
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: they immediately went back to liberalizing. Eastern European countries were
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: becoming free, capitalist to some extent. Southeast Asia was all
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: becoming capitalist to some extent. South Korea, Japan, the Asian tigers,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: Hong Kong, Singapore. And it looked like this was it.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: It looked like, as Fukuyama said in 93 and 94
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: when he wrote The End of History, liberal democracy won.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: And while... The free market movement was not pro-liberal democracy.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: They wanted more. They wanted capitalism to some extent. Democracy
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: was pretty good. And they stopped fighting because they'd won.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: And they thought that at this point, yeah, we'll just incrementally,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: we'll just tweak, we'll just increase freedom a little bit.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: You remember Tony Blair was in the UK and he
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: was generally pro-markets and Bill Clinton was in the US
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: and he was generally pro-markets, didn't over-regulate or anything like that.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: And they thought, we'll just tweak. We'll just make things
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit incrementally better. And the 21st century has
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: completely destroyed that vision. Communism is roaring back. Authoritarianism is
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: roaring back. The tweaking is useless and pathetic. And the
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: mixed economy is crashing and failing. And they don't understand
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: what happened. You know, what happened? We won the Cold War.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: How is this happening to us? They're completely bewildered by it.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: And they haven't got that fire anymore. It's gone. I
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: think they had it in the 70s and it's gone now.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: Think before and after.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: In the 70s, there were three years, I think, 74, 75, 76,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 3: that we did the three-peat.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: Friedman wins the Nobel in economics. Next year.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia is the book of
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: the year. And next year, Hayek wins the Nobel in economics.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: Can you imagine that there was a libertarian book that
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: was the book of the year? Nozick, people were reading
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: Nozick the way people today read Noah Harari and things
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: like that. Today, this would be inconceivable. Compare this with
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: the UK three years ago. They have, after trying everything, a, quote,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: neoliberal finance minister. Kwasi Kwarteg he managed to stay in
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: his position 38 days this is how long the country
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: that gave us Margaret Thatcher managed to stomach a guy
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: who very timidly whispered something about opening up the markets
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: and lowering taxes and regulations 38 days yep Michael says.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to understand this, Michael. Merciful social democracy
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: is a temporary disguise for cruel communism.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he probably means that we are in the ante
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: room of even a harsher socialism.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe, maybe, maybe.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's also the other way, the other way, the
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: other way around. Because what comes after social democracy is
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: the authoritarian right.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's not better. Or it's on the margins.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: Maybe it's not as bad as gulags, but it's not,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: there is no determinism that history is going to go
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: one way, one way or the other.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it's much more
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: likely we go to authoritarian right than we go to communism,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: at least in the US. And it really does look
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: like the right is on the rise in Europe. But
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: it's hard. Who knows? It could swing very dramatically in
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: another direction very quickly, given a variety of different circumstances.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: I listened to your analysis on the alternative for Deutschland.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: I think it was excellent.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: And my takeaway is they spoke about things that no
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: one else had the guts to speak and give a
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: good answer to. So they imposed their own answer, which
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: might not be the best, but they gave an answer.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: Yep. The more the conventional culture evades the real problems,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: the more fringe groups are going to dominate the discussion.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, everybody in the U.S. is evading
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: the debt. You're just in economics. It's evading the debt.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: So what you get is this fringe group in economics
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: called modern monetary theory, where they say, oh, we can
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: put money in. That doesn't cause inflation. We can just
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: put as much money as we want, and that'll solve
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: the debt problem. So there is no debt problem. And
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: people are taking it seriously because, well, none of the
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: respectable people are talking about the debt. At least these
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: people are talking about it. And they're reassuring me that
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: it's not a problem. So let's go with it. All right. Givi,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: Givi from, I assume from Georgia. Is that right? Because
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: Givi says, let's start with that one. He says, no
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: offense taken. We dislike Alta Blisi Airport also.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: I have horror stories of arriving at four in the morning.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: I have a talk the next day, I'm dying to
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: go to bed. And then you realize there's a one-hour
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: queue And yeah, so my friends make fun of me
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: for going very early to airports. In the Tbilisi airport,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: you can go three hours before your flight and then
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: you can run. But because everyone is in the same boat,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: then the plane might be late anyway. So yeah, it's
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: not the best airport. But best hospitality from the local
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: liberty and objectivist movement probably throughout Europe.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: The Bulgarians are also good, but the Georgians, there's something
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: special about them.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and their great wines.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: Food is great.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: But yes, not surprisingly, Tbilisi airport does not intimidate me.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make my worst five airports in the world.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: It's nothing on Frankfurt. I will take Tbilisi over Frankfurt
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: any day.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: Come on.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. God, God. I've missed airplanes in Frankfurt. I've never
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: missed an airplane in Tbilisi. They've been late, but I've
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: never missed an airplane. And I don't, and I've never been,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: I've never in my life been to an airport three
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: hours before.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: This is what urgency looks like.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: You travel so much to spread the message of liberty
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: that you can name five airports that are worse than Tbilisi.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: That's right. All right. Uh, well, Givi also says, uh,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're in Tbilisi, we've got
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: a big event on tomorrow's Monday, on Wednesday. A big event.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: The Pata's organization is putting on a whole conference. I'm giving,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: I think, two talks during this conference. It's all about
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: civilization and the role of civilization. So I'm going to
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: be talking about Western civilization. I'm also going to be
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: talking about foreign policy. So, yeah, hopefully a bunch of
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: you who listen to the show, who are Georgians and
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: are in Tbilisi, I hope you come and join us.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a lot of fun. They've got
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: a whole program for me. God, I'm going to two
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: museums and meetings, and I'm giving three talks all in
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: one day, and it's going to be a lot of fun.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: All right, what if capitalism is losing because people usually
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: cling to the first world view they encounter in life
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: religion environmentalism socialist ideas altruism is what they run into
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: and their mind refuses to adapt in the face of
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: logic and reality i mean but this is the problem
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: you've got so many counter examples nikos who used to
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: be you know yeah he encountered socialism very young in
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: life and became a real dedicated socialist and he's not anymore.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: Not just socialism the mouse red book.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I introduced him in the video
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: in one of the documentaries as a communist, and he
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: seemed to take offense at us. I was being.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: No, no, I took offense on the sociologist, not on
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: the communist party.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. I didn't know that. And, you know, I
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: grew up with, not with religion and environmentalism as much,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: but socialist ideas, altruism, man, collectivism, nationalism. All of that
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: I grew up with and believed in as a teenager
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: until I read Iron Man. So there's no question. And
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: this is why. Okay, so this is my theory. And
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: Nikos can tell me if he thinks it's right. Although
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Nikos is somewhat of a counter example. We all, yes,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: we all grew up in a certain environment with certain
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: ideas and influenced by the ideas around us. All of us.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: Our parents' ideas have a huge impact on our lives.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: early on and our teachers and our preachers, if we're
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: religious and all of that. And then something happens at
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: around the age of 15. And some people, it happens
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: a little earlier. Some people happen a little later. We
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: become rebellious. Maybe it's the hormones. the testosterone, whatever. But
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: we want to think for ourselves. And most people, the
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: way they become rebellious is they do the opposite of
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: what they're told, right? They become counterculture, counter to everything.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: And it's the same second-handedness. But there's an opportunity. There's
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: a window there where people are open to new ideas,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: where they're willing to challenge all the ideas that they
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: grew up with. So you're absolutely right, Givi, in the
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: sense that They've adopted all these ideas from their parents.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: But then there's a window. I think it opens around 16, 15, 16.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: And I think it closes around 30. Some people, it
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: goes all the way to 40. But it often closes
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: at around 30. And this is why college is so important.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: And if you can get better ideas to people during
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: that period of time, and you can do it in
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: an inspiring, maybe even entertaining, stimulating, challenging, really has to
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: be challenging, and.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: Original way And relatable.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: Relatable. Then I think you can change them. This is
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: why when people say, Ayn Rand, oh, that's a novel
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: for kids, for teenagers. I go, yeah, absolutely. Because if
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: you're 50 and you read Ayn Rand, you're not going
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: to get it. Because you're not open enough. Your mind
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: is not open enough to these ideas. But when you're 15,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: you're willing to accept ideas that a 50-year-old, it's too costly.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: It's too costly. You've got too much invested in the
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: old ideas now. They're exceptions. Nikos is an exception because
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: he came to it relatively late in life. I know
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: other people that came late in life, but it's exceptions.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: Most of us read Ayn Rand when we were teenagers
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: or early 20s, and that's when it had the impact.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: And that's because there is this cognitive opening at that point.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: And I think it calcifies, it closes, it disappears as
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: we age. And that to me just reinforces the idea
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: that our audience are young people our audience is 16
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: to 30 that's the sweet spot that's what we want
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: to go after that's who we want to talk to
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: and and that's who we need to send that it's
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: also the period of idealism who are the who are
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: the democratic socialists of america who are the they're all
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: young all of them are young at least that's when
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: they get them because people want to be idealistic when
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: they're young they want to believe in They want to
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: believe there's something. They want to believe in nobility when
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: they're young. Later on, we all be, we, I mean,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: they all become cynics, right? Most socialists end up becoming cynics.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: If only there was a documentary about Yaron's young rebellious
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: years and how he came across objectivism.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: If only. Yeah. Be ready for part one, you know,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: three airway days. I think that's four hours or something
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: like that, three to four hours.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: As many as it is.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: It's long. It's good stuff. Yeah. It's fun. It's entertaining.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: All right. Molten splendor. In my opinion, the missing link
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: for embracing objectivism is not freedom or understanding capitalism. It's morality. Yep.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Christianity and millions of their followers are hooked by Christian morals.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: Capitalism and freedom are moral principles. Stress the morality of these. Yeah,
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: I agree completely. And this is what I was trying
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: to say about the freedom movement, the liberty movement. They
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: don't get that. And as long as they don't get that,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: they have to fail. As long as they try to
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: pitch capitalism as an altruistic system, as consistent with altruism,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: they have to fail. There's an inconsistency there that people
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: see right through. So this is all about advocating for self-interest.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, the virtue of selfishness. That's the most important
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: idea we have, whether we want to use the term
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: selfishness or self-interest or egoism or what you want to
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: use it. The fundamental concept of your life is yours
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: and your moral responsibility is the pursuit of your happiness.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: The achievement of your happiness is what you should be
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: striving towards. And I mean, again, what a beautiful. thing.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about that. What a beautiful idea. I mean,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you Ayn Rand for giving
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: me that idea, right? As I say in the documentary,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: that's what hooked me in Atlas Shrugged. It wasn't the economics.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: It wasn't even the heroes. It was this idea that
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: pursuing my own happiness was morally good. It was the
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: moral good. That was a revolution. That blew my mind.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: And I love, you know, it's an inspiring, radical, amazing idea.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: And we should be leading with that in many respects. Absolutely.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: And our friend mentions that this is a difficult battle. Notice, though,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: how there's also an opening in the culture. Think how
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: important is the self-development genre. If we manage to find
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 3: a way to connect that message to the message that, yeah,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: it's about your life. There is no self-development without a self.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: So even this uphill battle, the battle of morality, of self-interest,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: still there is a way to do a better job.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: So I don't want us to go full despair. Oh,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: it's impossible. The stack are against us. Yes, it's difficult,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: but at least we should do our best. We should
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: punch above our Wait or whatever the phrase is.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: Be rocky. All right. Thomas. The center left is 100%
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: for capitalism. But they say that for capitalism to be successful,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: there has to be a social safety net. Yeah, but,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: you know, again, that's because they don't know what capitalism is.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: They don't understand what capitalism is. And they're not 100%
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: for capitalism. They want a social safety net. They want
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: a big one. They don't want just a little one.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: They want a big one, a massive one, a significant one,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: an ever-growing one, ultimately, when you push them on it.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: But they also want a regulatory state. They don't want
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: to leave it. They want to deregulate housing, because right now,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: housing is a concern. But they don't want to deregulate everything.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: They don't want to deregulate business. They're not for capitalism.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: They don't understand the concept, and they... Because of the altruism,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: they're suspicious of businessmen, and therefore businessmen have to be regulated,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: they have to be overseen, they have to be controlled,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: because otherwise they will do evil things.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish the center-left was like that. By the way,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: our friend is called Thomas, which reminded me, shout out.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: to Tom Bison, day two of the documentaries, I was
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: so tight, my shoulders were two inches from my higher,
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: they were basically touching my ears. I went to his
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: studio after one and a half hour, magically, I was
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: much better. I could do the last two days of
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: the documentary. So Tom, thank you very much.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of people, a lot of people
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: talking about having Yaron Brook withdrawal syndromes when I don't
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: do shows. Well, I have Tom Bison, withdraw symptoms because
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: I haven't worked out with him in a week. And,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: you know, all my muscles in my body are feeling it.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: They all want to go push some weights. And where's
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: Tom to tell me it's okay to push the weights?
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: Speaking about being relatable. So what impressed me is not,
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: he didn't just say, oh.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 2: This is.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: He almost had some emotional healing vibe. So he saw
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: me and he understood everything, what needs to be done.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: So again.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: He would make a very good activist, I think. He
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: would make a very good communicator. Because he gives you
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: the idea that I see you.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: I understand. I'm with you.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When I'm struggling under sweating unbelievably and lifting weights
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: that I never thought I could budge, I don't get
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: the sense he's with me at all. He's pushing me.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: He's telling me I have to do it. But, yeah,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: it's me suffering, me sweating. All right. Yeah, we pushed
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: some big weights the last couple of months. So, okay.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: Lone dissenter. Yeah, we need to do an official push-up
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: competition at Ocon or something. It's some conference. We need
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: to get everybody on stage doing push-ups. A common object
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: of this refrain is that every movement has weirdos. But
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: our weirdos seem especially off-putting. The rational minds we're trying
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: to reach will supposedly look past them. Nevertheless, objectivist weirdos
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: don't seem harmless. Are they? No. Weirdos are not harmless, generally.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: And objectivist weirdos are not harmless. But what are you
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: going to do? There's nothing you can do. And let
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: me tell you, however bad the objectivist weirdos are right now,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: they were a lot worse 30 years ago. I mean, God,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: I have stories which I didn't tell in my autobiography.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: I haven't told yet. But in my first Ocon, God,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, mentally, you know, really ill people who are
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: showing up. And, of course, in Ocons following that, there
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: were Satanists who showed up to try to convince us
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: all that Satanism and objectivism were compatible with the same thing.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, objectivism today is like super modern. you know,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: normal in comparison to how it was not that long ago.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: And most people have not been to other movements conferences.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: At least objective is weirdos don't smell bad. That's a
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: big improvement from previous movements I was in.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: But look, it would be great if we didn't have
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: any weirdos. It would be great if not only we
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: didn't have any weirdos, if people were nice and friendly
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: and normal and ambitious and productive and great creators and producers. Yeah,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: we would be, again, decades ahead if that were the case.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: But we have what we have, right? I don't know
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: any way. And yes, there's no question it turns people off.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: I know people who have attended Objectives conferences and are
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: turned off by it and won't attend more because the
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: people they meet are strange. But I think you have
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: to get over it and interact with the people who
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: are not strange. There are lots of them. That's the majority.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: I wonder if.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: I think, again, you people, you don't have a frame
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: of reference. I've been to four Ocons. I never got
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 3: the vibe that, oh, there are too many weirdos here. Again,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: you should try for once to go to other movements,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 3: even to libertarian conferences.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: Yep, definitely. All right. How do you organize people inclined
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: to individualism? They're tempted by the warm embrace of collectivism
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: fulfilling their need for belonging. Right.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: So, again, I will use the example of a concert.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: You can be united with two other people based on
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: values and you can totally keep your individuality. And you
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: understand that actually we're here for a common person, for
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: a common cause. Maybe forget the concert. You are in
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: a gym, in a dojo. You have to work with others.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: I cannot spar by myself. I have to spar with
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 3: someone else. But we both recognize that we're getting better
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 3: together through this. Does this mean we're throwing away our individuality?
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: We might even wear a t-shirt of our dojo. This shows, again, that...
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 3: we have something that we share. We have something that
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: is in, that we have something in common. So I
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: don't want people to fall for this message which comes
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: from the other side that, oh, you're individualist, how can
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: you cooperate with people? It's like the thing, oh, you're individualist,
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: you might believe in a Robinson Crusoe economy. There is
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 3: zero contradiction in being an individualist and fighting together with
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: other people for a common cause and caring about these
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: people and consider them your intellectual comrades.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. And then having a warm embrace of individualism when
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: you all share the same values and are fighting for
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the same cause or listening to the same music or
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: in some way sharing values. That's not collectivism. That's individualism.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: And there's no reason only the collectivists get the warm embrace.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: We can get warm embraces too. It's like we can
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: have sex too. It's not just collectivists who have sex.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: And it's actually, it's even stronger, the feelings that we
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: have for each other.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: It's stronger than the leftists with this abstract collectivity that
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: no one really knows why they are there and they
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: can't really tell you what exactly is that they are after.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: For us, it's stronger. I will give you an example.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 3: A few years after, a few days after October 7,
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: there was an activist from another objectivist organization who got
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: into trouble in the UK from some anti-Semites. They, something
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: like they doxed him. I felt such a sense of solidarity,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: although he was in a different, quote, camp. I immediately,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 3: I wanted to reach out to say, hey, stay strong.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: Don't care about this. You know, you're strong, you're brave.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: So of course we feel, we feel that we fight
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: the same enemies. We feel that we are, we are
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 3: fighting for the same idea. So there is zero contradiction.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: It's between strong emotions of, We have something in common
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 3: and being individualist.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. All right. Remo, best Steven Spielberg movie. How many
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: stars would you give it? Remo says, I would say X.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah it's obviously Josh and it's obviously five stars with
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 3: the exception of the undignified death of Quint it's the
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 3: one thing that I prefer the book where his death
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: is way more dignified but the answer is Josh Josh Josh.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: All right, in my view, my favorite Steven Spielberg movie
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: is Amistad. I think it's by far the most dramatic, interesting.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: It's a brilliant movie. If you haven't seen it, you
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: should definitely see it. From the opening scene, with the
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: cameras zooming in on the slave's face, it's riveting. It's
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: got real intellectual content. I love the character of Quincy Adams,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: the son of John Adams, who defends the slaves in
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: front of the Supreme Court. And yeah, Amistad. I don't
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: like Schindler's List. It's not a movie I like at all.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: For another time, I can explain why. And I don't
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: particularly like Saving Private Ryan. I find it too violent.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: too much of an attempt to be realistic. And at
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, I don't find it convincing.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: That is, the story is not that interesting. Okay, they're
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: trying to find this private line. Who cares? And then
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of... Steven Spielberg is a master. And
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: I think he does this particularly well in Schindler's List,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: which is why I don't like the movie. He's a
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: master at manipulating our emotions and squeezing them and getting
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: those tears out. And I find that he does that
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: in Saving Private Ryan in a way that the movie
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't deserve, in a sense. Like, you have to earn
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: my tears. If you're going to make me cry in
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: a movie, I want you to earn it. And I
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: think both in Schindler's List and in Private Ryan, I
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: don't think you earn it. He doesn't earn it. But
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: that's a whole other discussion, and we'd have to go
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: through the movie. Amistad, incredibly powerful. I also like his
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: lighter movies. I like Jaws, but I also like E.T.,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: and I like... the sci-fi one where aliens have come and, and, uh,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: communicating with this one guy. And, uh, that's kind of
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: an interesting movie. And generally I like Steven Spielberg movies.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: They're all, they're always, there's always something there. There's always
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: some entertainment value there. Again, with the exception of Schindler's List,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: which is the only of his movies that I almost
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: walked out in the middle of. I just couldn't take it.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: It was too, yeah, too, too real, you know, and
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: too manipulative in my view.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 3: And just to comment on something, because people should know
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 3: after the show, I scan every single comment that you write,
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: that our audience writes. Some people said in one of
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 3: the previous episodes, Joss is a film about Sark.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: Absolutely not. Joss is a character film.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: Even if the Sark had not appeared at all, it
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: would still be a great film. And actually, for what
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: it's worth... The shark doesn't appear for at least half
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: the film. He's somewhere in the background, but still Jaws
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: is a great film because it's a movie about characters
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: and about character development and character interaction.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: And there's an interesting political aspect to Jaws as well.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: The whole mayor, the decisions the mayor of the city
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: makes and why he makes them and what motivates him
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: to make them. So there's that kind of pragmatist... Typical
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: politician kind of character. But yeah, I agree. The Jaws
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: is just a mechanism to move the plot forward. The
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: essence of the movie are the characters and the decisions
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: they make in response to... It could have been a hurricane.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: It could have been some other natural disaster. It didn't
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: have to be a... Now, he uses... And again, Stephen
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: Spielberg is very good at this. He uses the shark
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: incredibly effectively. from the opening scene of the movie with
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: the girl swimming out into the ocean and, uh, and, and, and,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: you know, gets us emotionally and captures us. And he
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: does it very, very effectively. Absolutely.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: All right. Neil says, Nikos, Madrid lost Atletico today. Yes.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: This is an official Diego Simeone fan club, or at
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: least 50% of this show is an official Diego Simeone
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: fan club. Every victory of Atletico is a victory, maybe
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: not of football because he plays haram ball, but it's
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: a victory for the Yaron and Nico show. Every defeat
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: of Mourinho and Real is also a victory for football
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: and for civilization.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: So he plays what kind of ball? Haram ball? What
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: is that?
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 3: Haram, you know, haram is what the Islam is called sinful.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: Teams that play very defensively and they just want to
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: destroy the opponent, the meme is they play haram ball.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 3: So they play sinful football.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: So why are we supporting Atlantico if they play sinful football?
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: Because we love Diego Simeone. We love how he dresses.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: And we love this ethos of, you know what? You
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: might have all the stars. I'm going to play such
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 3: a tactically clever football that I'm going to beat you
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 3: not with my... lavish money and players i will beat
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: you with my tactical football and i am the general
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 3: and my players are gonna die for me on.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: The pitch and i love this.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah so so you notice that you know before we
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: ever got to football the thing nikos commented on about
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: this coach was how he dressed So there's your hierarchy
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: of values when it comes to... And this is why
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: I will never get excited about this coach. This coach
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: is never going to get me excited because I don't
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: get excited by the way people dress. Quite the opposite.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: The biggest disagreement that Nikos and I have, the biggest
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: disagreement we have is probably over the look. The look.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: of the foremost coach of the LA Lakers and the
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: general managers of the Miami Heat. What's his name? I
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: forget his name now.
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 3: It's a bigger hubris, not that you forgot his name,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 3: but that you doubt Pat Riley's aesthetic choices.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: Pat Riley, yes.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 3: Let's tell people, though, that in London, I took one
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 3: for the team. I took a step back. I dressed
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: down so that Leroy.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: Could be the.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: elevated stylistically figure. And I persuaded him for the biographical
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 3: interview to adopt partly the Diego Simeone style.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: He's black in black.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, Nikos definitely embraced the look of a revolutionary Marxist.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: For the documentary on Marx, he had a leather jacket.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: He had a ruffled up shirt. It worked perfectly. And
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: I looked like a good capitalist with a collared shirt
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: and a nice jacket. so uh so the contrast was
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: there but but.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah so that's how i dress everywhere except conferences so.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah um and i wore my black and black travel
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: uniform so uh it all worked well roland says uh
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: ocon money for you on thank you roland i really
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: appreciate it increases likelihood i'll attend ocon uh gail american
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: capitalist party could it could it be at least a
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: movement I mean, it's got a good platform, but I
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: don't see the energy there. I don't see a plan.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: It needs a plan, right? If it's going to be
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: a political party, it has to register in all these states.
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: It has to have candidates. It has to raise money
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: around it. You know, there has to be a real
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: plan for it. You know, the two founders of it,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: one of them is....
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: Mark.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: Mark Pellegrino. But the other one is a guy I
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: know who's a huge Trump fan and defends Trump constantly.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: So I just don't see how this takes off, where
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: it takes off, where it goes, and what the vision
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: is for it. So again, it's a great document. This
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: is the problem we always have. We put together great
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: documents with ideas. How do we market them? How do
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: we have them make an impact on the world out there?
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: And I still don't see a plan for that.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: What I do know is I will be cheering them
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: from the sidelines because I appreciate both Mark particularly as
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 3: a person. He's such a benevolent, good person. And also,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: he has good ideas. And of course, also Mike Lipovic,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: with whom I've been having some discussions lately. He's a
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 3: very well-read person. He's an intellectually honest person. He tells
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 3: you what he knows and he doesn't know. And his
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: whole life, he spent a quarter of a century behind bars.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: And he came out... significantly better person than what the
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 3: person that went in prison. I think that's important. And
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 3: he's genuinely having good content. So I'm teaming them from
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: the sidelines. I'm not involved.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: I don't know exactly what they're up to, but I
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: hope they do well.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: So is Leibovic part of the capitalist party? Yes. Oh,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that. Yeah. All right. I'm just looking
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: at who's involved. All right. We got the two co-founders.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: Andrew Bernstein is still listed as chief advisor. Um, for
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: what it's worth. All right, let's see. Mary Alene. I
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: love the scene in The Fountainhead where Dominique, Rourke, Valerie,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: and Mike are in Valerie's shack drinking coffee and enjoying
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: each other's company. A wonderful example of the warmth of individualists. Absolutely.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 3: I love this scene. And I like the whole background
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: of the scene. If you remember, I think it is spring.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: It is one of these times where you get the
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 3: idea that everything in life goes well. The summer is near.
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: The building is being completed. It's such a benevolent... It
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: almost makes me, you know, it's like, this is life
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 3: how it should be. And of course, all of the,
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: actually not all, I don't know how Dominique has earned it,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 3: but Rourke has, you feel like, okay, you have arrived.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: You've earned this and this is who you are. You
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: work hard and you are with two people because you
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 3: don't need three people. I think also Mike is there.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 3: You are with the three people who matter the most
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: It's very nice. It's peak life.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 3: Of course, later life becomes even better for Ork, but
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 3: it's such a nice scene. And I now, you raise
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: to my estimate, Maria-Lynn, that you had the eye to
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 3: spot this scene, which is a scene which is not
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 3: important in the plot of The Fountainhead. And I don't
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: think I've ever heard anyone commenting on this scene. So
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: good eye.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. All right, Michael, thoughts on car seat laws
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: for infants. Seat belt laws for adults are ridiculous, but
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: for infants... Is there a case to be made? No.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: It's not the job of government to, you know, should
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: there be, if you have stairs in the home, should
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: it be the law that you have to have guardrails
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: so the kid doesn't fall down the stairs? If you
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: leave a knife on the table in a home with
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: an infant, should you go to jail because the infant
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: might pick up the knife and harm yourself? You know, now,
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: You could argue that under certain circumstances, if there's an
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: accident and the infant is not, you know, not wearing
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: a seatbelt and is really harmed, you could argue that
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: the parents could be prosecuted for criminal negligence or something
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: like that. But you can't have a law that forces
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: them to put a child in a seatbelt. I don't think. Now,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe this is also my context is I
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: grew up with no seatbelts. There were no seatbelting cars
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: when I grew up. My parents had a mini-minor. And
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: a mini-mine are not like the minis today, which are
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: pretty big and pretty heavy. But these light little cars
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: that they used to be used to throw us in
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: the back with no seatbelts. You know, they'd lower the
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: seats and we'd sleep in the back. And they'd go
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: on long road trips. And nobody thought about it twice.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't wear seatbelts until I was, and I'm not
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: proud of this, but it's the reality. And I think
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: until I came to America, I don't think I ever
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: wore seatbelts in Israel. Almost never wore seatbelts. And I
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: would drive like a maniac. So, you know, this was
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: bad stuff. Didn't make our autobiography, but my crazy driving
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: in Israel. But, you know, I think parents need to
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: be responsible for their kids. And the government should not
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: try to dictate what kind of behavior defines responsibility and
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: doesn't define responsibility.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 3: I'll respectfully disagree here. I think it is gross negligence
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: if you don't take care of your... Because part of taking...
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 3: You have duties towards your children, and I think because
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 3: the driving aspect is a potentially significantly risky aspect of
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 3: one's life, I think you should... I think, yes, there
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 3: is a case for having a mandate for seatbelts for kids.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: I think, again, you can hold the parent after the fact,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: grossly negligent. I don't think you can mandate. I don't
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: believe in preventive law. You can penalize people after they
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: do a bad thing. And that's what needs to happen. That,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: I think, is what happens. I think it's a very
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: slippery slope once we get into that. And the government
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be there to assess... What are the risks? What
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: are not the risks? If a child gets injured, then
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: a court of law can decide that was gross negligence
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: or wasn't gross negligence. But to decide in advance what
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: is and isn't, I think, is too much.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 3: But even then, practically, the court once would say, yes,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 3: it's gross negligence, so wouldn't this create a precedent?
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: Well, it's gross negligence because the parent was driving 100
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: kilometers an hour on a highway. Is it gross negligence
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: if the kid wasn't wearing a seatbelt, if we were
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: just driving in the neighborhood and never exceeded 20 kilometers
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: an hour? No, I don't think it's gross negligence. And
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: it's unlikely the child would be injured in an accident
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: at that speed. So it's context-driven, and that's why after
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: the fact, you can establish the context before the fact
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: you can't. And therefore, I don't believe in these preemptive rules.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: It's not the hill I'll die on.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 3: My most quote non-libertarian views all have to do with
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 3: driving and highways and stuff. I'm in favor of metaphorically
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 3: of snipers shooting anyone who goes above the speed limit,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 3: particularly in populated areas.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: And I would love to be that sniper.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: I would be dead many times over. Many, many, many
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: times over. I'm one of the biggest violators of... speed
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: speed although the one time we drove together i was
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: i was in my best behavior although i did get
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: a speeding ticket on that trip it was mail to
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: me after the fact but uh you didn't notice so.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 3: No no it was a first of all it was
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: entertaining your battle against google maps because you always wanted
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 3: to arrive slightly earlier than what google map predicted yes
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 3: yes but it was uh yeah i didn't feel uncomfortable
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 3: and if i had felt uncomfortable you'd know about it.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: I'm, I'm not one to stay quiet.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah. I do have this thing about, you know,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: trying to be good. I'm competitive in that sense, uh,
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: more in driving than in many other aspects in my life.
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: And I want to beat Google maps. If Google max
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: says you have to be there, you'll be there at 10.
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: I want to be there at, at nine 58. And,
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: and I'm, I'm, I'm happy if I shave two minutes
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: off the, the Google estimate. So yes. Um, Michael, you
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: did not get a, I don't know if that was
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: a satisfying answer, hopefully. Remo, best movie starring Denzel Washington
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: and how many stars? Again, Remo would say Glory, Man
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: on Fire, American Gangster or Training Day.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: It's so weird.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 3: I haven't watched almost any of these movies. So the
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 3: answer is, I don't know. I should be watching at
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 3: least American Gangster. I've heard very good things.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen all the... Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: Isn't he also playing Malcolm X?
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, he does a great job as Malcolm X.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's very good as Malcolm X.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: Really good job as Malcolm X. And yeah, definitely Malcolm
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: X is one of his best... Just as a pure...
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: I won't say the movie's great, but as a pure acting,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: I think he was fantastic there. I really liked the
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: movie Man of Fire. It's quite violent, so I warn
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: people of that. But he's an incredible hero in The
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: Man of Fire, a tortured man of incredible integrity who
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: fights for something he really loves. So if you haven't
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: seen The Man of Fire, I think it's a good movie,
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: and I think he gives a great performance. Glory, of course,
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: is very good. It's about a black regiment, I think
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: it is, during the Civil War. that fights for the North. And,
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: and Denzel Washington leads that. I don't remember that being
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: as an extraordinary acting performance, even though the movie is
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: very good. Um, training days, a cynical cop, which is,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't like the role particularly. I also
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: like him an equalizer. I like the equalizer movies. I
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: know the action movies, pure action movies, but he is
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: the agent of justice in those movies. He kills the
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: bad guys in such great creative ways. It's, um, Particularly
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: the third one is unbelievably violent. But I do recommend
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: the first one. The first one is very good. So...
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: And American Gangster is good. And he's very good in it.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: It's a gangster movie. But I like... Of the movies
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: you listed, my favorite is... My favorite in terms of
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: his acting as Man on Fire. Glory is a great movie.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy the movie Glory. So as a movie Glory,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: as an acting for Denzel as Man on Fire. Malcolm X...
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: should definitely get a mention for his acting.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 3: Remember, we have a review to do at some point.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, we do. I think we have two reviews, two
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: TV shows, but we'll do it when I'm back home.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: All right, Marilyn. Oops. Yes, Marilyn. We expect government to
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: take care of us, including mandated children car seats, It's
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: not the government's job. We don't know what innovations freedom
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: would make possible in terms of child safety and so
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: many areas in life. Yeah, I agree with you, Marylene.
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, the key is the parent needs to take
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: care of the kid, and it shouldn't be the government
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: mandating how to take care of the kid. That's why
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: I think after the fact, If they're accused of gross negligence,
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: that provides the right incentive to protect the kid without
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: specifying how to protect the kid and under what circumstances
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: that protection should happen. All right. Andrew. Ever notice a
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: person agree with objectivism but won't call himself an objectivist
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: due to some granular disagreement with one premise? I think
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: it's an inferiority complex. about Rand. I'm not sure what
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: that means. Their disagreement is usually muddled confusion. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: I've noticed that, and I think that's right. I've also
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: noticed the opposite of the liquid Zulu type. I'm smart
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: enough to expand objectivism. Objectivism now includes anarchy, and to
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: hell with what Ayn Rand thought objectivism was. This is
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: new objectivism. So the people who latch onto the label,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: even when they fundamentally disagree with Ayn Rand or something
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: really really core to the philosophy but yes I do
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: see people like that you know why it is self-esteem
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: maybe I think people are also afraid that if they
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: call themselves an objectivist it's almost like they've joined a
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: religion or cult and they're afraid of that association I
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: know a number of people who I don't want labels.
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be labeled. I don't want to
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: be a member of a group. And I think it's silly.
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: I think it's dropping the context of what kind of
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: group this is. And to call yourself an objectivist, all
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: that means is you adhere to a certain philosophy of
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: life that you learned from Iron Man.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 3: And there's also the category of people who say, I
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 3: don't want to be in any ism. I always found
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 3: this such a silly thing. liberalism is an ism and
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 3: Nazism is an ism. Would you put this in the
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 3: same category? Abolitionism is an ism. What's the problem with ism?
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 3: It's almost this juvenile, like, you know, I don't belong
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 3: to anyone. Usually it sounds like independence, but sometimes it
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 3: might even be either cynicism, you know, everyone is the same,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 3: or even contrarianism, like, I have to find.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: A problem with everything.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 3: And by the way, if you are not though, you
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 3: might not belong to any ism. So if you are not,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 3: if you disagree with Ayn Rand, good for you not
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 3: calling yourself an objectivist.
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: I don't see a problem with that.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: Yep. Particularly if you disagree with her about something important.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: That's honest. That's called honesty. All right. Roland, a liberty
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: movement is not in a position to gain traction until
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: a reason movement has succeeded. Yeah. Although it's not these
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: things are not sequential. That is, they can happen simultaneously. And, and,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a question of what is, what is a,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: what is success for reason movement look like?
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 3: And let's bring also the elephant in the room here,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 3: which would be the victory of Millet in Argentina. A
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 3: victory for which I was, and I still am very
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 3: excited about. So people will say, yes, but Millet disproves
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 3: your theory that we are losing. Keep in mind the
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 3: very particular context in Argentina, which was the context of
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 3: we've literally tried everything. We've tried every variety under the
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 3: sun of statism. And the second thing you need to
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 3: take in, and the never-ending crisis, and the second thing
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 3: you need to take into accordance is Millet is a
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 3: once-in-a-century figure. The combination that he has of knowledge, politician,
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 3: clever attributes, charisma. It's very difficult to expect that somehow
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 3: you're going to have a Millais in every country. Millais
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 3: is the exception that proves the rule.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: Yep. Enric, the Enlightenment was preceded by aesthetics. Art inspired
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: from Greek perspective of man is noble. The concrete art
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: influencing philosophy. Philosophy isn't sufficient. abstractions can easily dilute an
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: accepted cultural philosophy. The concretes of art, movement goals, slogans
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: should permeate the culture. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: I think aesthetics is crucially important. You know, the danger is,
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe Nikos and I will disagree on this.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: I don't think the art has to be propaganda art, right?
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: I find communist art and Nazi art propaganda and I
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: find it shallow and superficial, uh, but it has to project,
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: that has to project the fundamental ideas that the movement represents.
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: And in that sense, the Renaissance, which already had embedded
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: in it, the, the, the theme of individualism, for example,
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: even before the concept of individualism came to the forefront
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: and ideas behind individualism and embedded even reason through their
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: adoption of perspective, for example, um, you know, its adherence
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: to reality, you know, and it was great art, the
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: combination of that, I think, created a soil, created a
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: culture that was going to be a lot more receptive
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: to Enlightenment ideas in the future. By the way, I'll
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: talk a lot about this, I think, I'll talk a
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: lot about this in my course for ARU on Western Civilization.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, and of course the art doesn't have to be propaganda.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 3: Usually propaganda art is not good art unless you are
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 3: a giant like Eisenstein and still out of the 10
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 3: things you'll produce, one will be good. But think, for example,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 3: to use a stereotypical example, think of the music Whiplash.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 3: The guy who made Whiplash didn't make it because he
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 3: wanted to make individualist art. But those of us who
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 3: understand how important it is to have an aesthetic representation
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 3: of the things that we like and appreciate, It's good
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 3: that this is out there and we can use it.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 3: We can adopt it as our own, as a symbol for,
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 3: I don't know, for me, social media or whatever. So
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 3: we need to keep an eye for such things. You
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 3: cannot order these things. You cannot go to someone and say,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 3: make individually start. But when you see it, appreciate it
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 3: and try to see how you can use it to
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 3: lit this fire in people's hearts. Yep.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Justin Pokey, if rights belong to the individual, What
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: is the purpose of citizenship in an objective society? What
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: morally distinguishes a citizen from a peaceful non-citizen resident? I mean,
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: that is an important question. It's an interesting question. I
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: think that the difference is, so you have the fundamental
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: rights you have, whether you're a citizen or a non-citizen.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: Every human being has the right to life, liberty, property,
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: and the pursuit of happiness. Every human being. It's in
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: some of the application of those rights, what we call
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: typically civil rights, that apply to citizens and don't apply
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: to non-citizens. So, a few examples. Voting. Voting, which in
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: an objective society is not that important, is something citizens
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: do and non-citizens don't. Now, there's a whole discussion about
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: who should be a citizen and who's not a citizen.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: How do you gain citizenship? Which we're not going to
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: get into right now. It's a long discussion. And I
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: have views that I don't think, I don't know what
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: Ayn Rand's view of them would be. But I know
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: they're not necessarily consistent with a lot of the views
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: of other objectivists on the question of citizenship. But also,
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: for example, I'll give you another example. A citizen is
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: trapped in another country. Let's say he's taken hostage by
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: terrorists in another country. the government is obligated to figure
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: out how to get him out, to help him, right?
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: A non-citizen is taken hostage by terrorists in another country.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: Government is not obligated to help him out. Same if
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: your property is confiscated in another country. The purpose of
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: an embassy is to help you as a citizen. If
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: you're a non-citizen, the embassy is not going to help you.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: So it's relatively, ultimately, in the big picture of life,
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: it's relatively small things. And that's why I don't think
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: it's that big of a deal if you're a citizen
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: or non-citizen in a truly rights-respecting world. But there are
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: advantages to being a citizen. And I think voting, obviously,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: is the one big one. But yeah, so I think
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: that's the differences. In terms of the government can't confiscate
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: your property, it goes for everybody. Even in America today,
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: the Bill of Rights applies to citizens and non-citizens. Now,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: if you're in the country illegally, there's a question about
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: whether the Tire Bill of Rights applies. But this is
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: the whole travesty of ICE, is that these people have rights.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: Even if you don't like them, even if they hear
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: you without your permission, they're right they're human beings and
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: the government has no right no authority to violate their
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: rights i don't care i don't care if statistically immigrants
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: commit more crime or less crime or same crime it
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter each one of them has individual rights if
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: they're a criminal then they've lost those rights but as
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: long as they're not a criminal They have rights and
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: you don't have, you know, ultimately that's the argument for
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: open borders. You can't stop them. You can't use violence
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: against them. By what right do you use violence against them?
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: Here's a thought I just came up with on the
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 2: whole citizenship.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 3: How would it look in a rational society? I know
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 3: it's not a society, but it's not a state. But
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 3: think about Gold's goals and think about Dagny. Why doesn't
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 3: Dagny have equal quote rights with these people? Because she hasn't,
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 3: in a way, accepted their values. So to become a citizen,
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 3: you need to show that I understand what you guys
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 3: are doing here. I understand what it takes to be
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 3: part of you. And I spend the required time to
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 3: show to you that, yes, now I get it. And
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 3: then maybe I get also citizens. Dagny is not convinced
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 3: that the way you people live here is the proper way.
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: So.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 3: In my mind, it's not, quote, citizen, although obviously the
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 3: valley is not a state.
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: I think that's right. And since you bring it up,
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: so my view is that at some age, everybody has
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: to take a test to show that they have the values.
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: And if they pass the test, they become citizens. If
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: they don't pass the test, they're not citizens. And that
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: includes people born in America and includes immigrants. It includes everybody.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: So in order to become a citizen, So being born
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: and living in a place for a long time should
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: not automatically grant you citizenship. To vote, for example, in
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: the United States, you should know a lot about the
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: American system of government, why we have separation of powers,
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: why we have a president, why there's a Supreme Court.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: What are the rules of each branch? And if you
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: don't know those things, you shouldn't vote, shouldn't be allowed
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: to vote. So you're not a citizen, you shouldn't be
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: a citizen. But not everybody in objectivism agrees with that. So,
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: you know, that's my position, certainly not an objectivist position.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: Lone dissenter. Whatever its fault, NBI, Nathaniel Brandon Institute, positioned
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: objectivism as the embrace of a certain way of life
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: with local groups and a range of lectures and social activities.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: Are there positives we can take away from the NBI days? Yeah,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think what you mentioned, I think the lectures...
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: the local organizations, the newsletter, which had events and movie reviews. Oh,
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: they used to have screenings in New York at NBI,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: movie screenings. I've actually got some where I have some
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: of the movie programs. So what movies did Ayn Rand
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: approve for watching at NBI? I also think it did
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of harm. We can talk about that sometime.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely, I think the things that you mentioned
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: are the positives.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 3: And also, it was very successful if you think that,
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 3: I think at its peak, it had 5,000 students. And
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 3: keep in mind that to be a student at NBI,
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 3: there was a very high threshold of a very high
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 3: barrier to entrance. And I think the objectives had the
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 3: circulation of something like 20,000 copies. And also, it was
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 3: interesting as a business model. that it was a business endeavor.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 3: So there was things to take away from that.
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: Justin Poki says, Nikos, what do you make of the
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: whole Manchester City charges saga and how the Premier League
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: has handled it?
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 3: Well, it's very difficult because the Premier League is a
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 3: voluntary private association, but they do have rules. So the
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 3: question is, what happens if you scam people a private
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 3: association where business interests are at stake so um for
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 3: people who don't know manchester city has done various shady
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 3: things in order to surpass its allowed budget so there
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 3: are rules in english football on where you can have
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 3: income so for example if elon musk gets crazy and
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 3: wants to throw a billion to a team it's not
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 3: allowed there are other ways that you have to so
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 3: i have so that there is some level playing field,
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 3: which in sports it makes sense if it is voluntary.
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 3: So it's very, very difficult to answer based on principle.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 3: I still think that if in a voluntary business association
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 3: someone is doing things that are scammy, so if it
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 3: were to be proven that Manchester City did things that
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 3: were against the rules, there should be civil repercussions. All right.
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 1: Apollo Zeus says, Malcolm, ex-objectivists, MXOs. Justin Pokey says, you're on.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: Was the event recorded? Would love to watch the heated
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: exchange you just described. It is. All the events are recorded.
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: The problem is that once in a while they'll release
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: something in front of the firewall, but almost everything is
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: behind the firewall. So you would have to subscribe to
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: the Institute of Art of Ideas TV channel or YouTube
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: channel or whatever they call it. And there you can find,
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: you can also find my past events. I've done five,
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: six of these panels in the past, and a lot
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: of them got pretty rowdy. But you can find them.
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's where I met Kimmy. The place where
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: I met Kimmy Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: right now, I met her at one of these conferences,
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: exactly this kind of conference. And we were both defending
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: capitalism against some explicit socialists. And she did very well.
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: And she thought I did very well. And we ended
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: up talking. And she had read Ayn Rand and She
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: was very good on capitalism. Now, she's a politician, so
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: she does what she has to do. But I was
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: very impressed with that date. And she once in a
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: while will respond to something if I write to her directly.
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: So she's friendly. So all of that, for example, that video,
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: I think is up. I think that is in front
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: of the firewall. So I think you can actually see it.
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: So you put your own book, Kimmy Badenoch, and see
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: if something comes up. But there's a bunch of these.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: But to really see them, you'd have to subscribe to
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: the Institute for Art of Ideas YouTube channel or TV channel,
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: however they call it. All right. Apollo Zeus's high-intensity passionate speaking.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: This is like high-intensity training, but high-intensity speaking.
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 3: Well, if you've got something there, I always think we
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 3: should try to.
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: Be brief when we don't.
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 3: Now that's funny for someone who advocates a 10-hour documentary
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 3: with Yaron. But still, you see how many things we
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 3: left out. So maybe the documentary should be 16 hours
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 3: and it would still be as brief as needed in
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 3: order to have the result, which is the result that
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 3: we want, which is to know everything about Yaron's life
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 3: and his career in objectivism and how he ended up
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 3: leading the movement and what he did while he was
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 3: leading the movement.
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There are definitely a lot of stories from my
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: army days that I did not tell. And, and there
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: are probably a bunch of stories about objectivism that it's
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: too soon to tell. Uh, so, uh, this might be
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: an ongoing project where we update this every five years
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: or so as the world changes. Um, and, uh, I
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: reveal more over time.
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 3: We don't shy away from difficult issues. So I explicitly
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 3: ask you, how did you experience the split, for example?
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 3: You were 30 years old when it happened. And you
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 3: answered it and it will be in the documentary.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: Yep. There are other things that won't be in the documentary.
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: But they will be one day. So, you know, life
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: is long. I intend to live life many more years,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: so we'll have lots of opportunities to fill in the blanks.
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: Apollo Zeus, drama classes teach emotional expression. True, and I
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: think I recommend that people who want to become better
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: public speakers take drama classes. Particularly improv. Improv. Improv. I
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: can't say it right now.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 2: Improvisations.
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 1: Improvisation classes. Yes, I think it They teach you how
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: to use your voice in acting classes. They teach you
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: how to be more expressive with your body, how to
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: be in the moment with your body and your voice,
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: and I think it's incredibly valuable. I learned a lot
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: from a Shakespearean actor, but he was at that point
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: in his life a director of Shakespearean plays from Canada,
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: and we brought him down to the Institute, and I
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: learned a lot from him about public speaking.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 3: I used to work in a drama class, not as
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 3: an actor, as an asser, how it's called. I remember
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 3: one exercise was walk from here to there as if
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 3: the person there is something.
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 2: Like the love of your life.
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 3: It's like, wow, what a difficult and interesting exercise.
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: Paulo says Gloria Alvarez is passionate. She is. And she's
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: also pretty, which is an advantage.
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: And has a big audience in her native language.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's very passionate, articulate, and she also experiments. She
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: does a variety of different formats and different things. Let's see.
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: Let me thank some of the stickers. Wes, thank you. $ 100. Really, really,
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: really appreciate that. Let's go and see who else we have.
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: All right. The other Quint. Thank you. All right. This
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: is difficult. Okay. Let's go to questions and then I'll
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: look again. Time. Megan Kelly said Fauci was worse than
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: Epstein and Victor Davis Hanson was nodding along. Victor's an
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: absolute joke. You know, I don't think he's an absolute joke.
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: I will always respect Victor Davis Hanson for how much
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: he taught me about military history. He is a great historian.
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: I did an event once at Berkeley with Victor Davis Hanson.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: I have a huge amount of respect for those days.
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: I do think he's gone off the rail in a
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: sense in the post-Trump era. I think Trump generally has
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: caused a lot of bright people to go off the
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: rail And I think Victor Davis Hanson, you know, is
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: not the power he used to be. And something like
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: this is just silly. Yes.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 2: On issues, foreign policy and stuff, he's still part of the.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 3: Good guys.
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: Neil, why can't the Saudis take on the Houthis with
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: all their military power? Well, it's difficult. It's hard to
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: win wars, as we're seeing. It's hard to defeat an enemy.
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 1: And the Saudis are badly trained, badly motivated. They've got
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: incredible equipment that they don't know how to use. For
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 1: many years, the Saudi army was primarily manned by Pakistanis
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: who they basically paid to come and man all the
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: beautiful weapons that they get from the United States. They
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: don't have good strategy. And they're worried about killing Muslims.
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: They're really worried because there's a You know, if they
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: kill Shiites, the reality is that there's a significant minority
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: of Shiites in Saudi Arabia. Those Shiites happen to live
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: where all the oil is, and the Saudis are afraid
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: to piss them off. So if they go in and
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: really crush the Houthis, what are the Shiites within Saudi
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: Arabia going to think? All right, let's keep going. Amin
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: Nawabi's community on school is called Liberty Politics. They are
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: mostly Republicans who consider themselves Classical liberals, check it out.
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: Amin Nawabi, I've never heard of the guy. I'll check
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: it out. All right, time. In the 1930s, social democrats
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: argued that a welfare state and modest regulation could prevent
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: communism and racism taking hold in the West. I heard this. Yes,
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's always been the argument. It was Bismarck's
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: argument for establishing the welfare state in Germany was to
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: heed off the communists, right? If we give the workers... welfare,
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: then they won't rise up against us and overthrow us.
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: So this has been the compromise from the beginning. It
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't work. The communists, you know, either the communists or
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: the fascists rise up ultimately anyway. Appeasement never works in
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: the long run.
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 2: Historically, it has worked.
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 3: For example, why was there no communist party in the UK?
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 3: Because there was such a strong Labour Party. But because
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 3: there was such a strong Labour Party, the UK was
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 3: the basket case of Europe for decades.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's also because the English, particularly in the
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: late 19th century, early 20th century, valued freedom. So they
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: weren't attracted. The working class typically is not the ones
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: attracted to communism. It's the intellectuals who are attracted to communism.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: And the working class gets it to some extent. They
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: know they work. They own a living. They're proud of
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: that living. They don't want to, you know, if they
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: have a, if a working class person who's a really
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: good worker and works hard and he doesn't want to
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: give his pay to the guy who's lazy over there.
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're much more, you know, meritocracy oriented in
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: their own area than the intellectuals certainly are. Roman says, Nikos,
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: can you debate Varoufakis?
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 3: It's not that I've declined his invitations to debate Varoufakis.
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 2: It would be very difficult to do so.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 3: I don't want to get involved at anything that has
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 3: to do with the Greek cultural and social sphere.
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 2: It's a sewage.
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 3: And particularly with Varoufakis, the level of disgust is so
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 3: high that I don't even think I would be... Anyway,
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 3: but it's not that realistically it's about to happen. And
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 3: the only reason this is not happening is because I
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 3: wouldn't debate him.
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: I've tried to debate him. He won't debate me. I mean,
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: you know, and he's moderated a debate I did once.
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: So Varoufakis actually was the moderator at the debate in
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: the University of Texas, University of Austin, University of Texas
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: in Austin, that I did once. And he refuses to
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: debate me. We've approached him and he said no. Several times.
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 3: We're talking about the guy who went to the embassy
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 3: of the Islamic Republic of Iran to show his solidarity.
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 3: to Iran for its war with Israel in the United States.
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 3: This is the creature that we're talking about.
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 1: Nikos, to understand Islamism, you have to understand the life
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: of the Prophet Muhammad. I'm surprised objectivists haven't given this
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: more thought.
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 3: First of all, I don't agree at all with that.
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 3: To understand Marxism, you don't have to understand the life
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 3: of Karl Marx, although it could help. Also, how do
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 3: we know the life of the prophet? I mean, it's
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 3: all so blurry. If you want to understand Christianity, do
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 3: you have to understand the life of Christ? You have
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 3: to understand how people later perceived that life, understanding the
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 3: life itself.
• 2:24:14
  Speaker 1: And I don't know why you say objectives haven't given
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: this more thought. I mean, If you take my class
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: on Islamic totalitarianism, my course on that, or the history
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 1: of the Middle East, I talk about Muhammad's life, the
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: extent that we know about it, or the extent that
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: it's come down through tradition. You know, it has some importance.
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: The fact that he was wealthy, the fact that he
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: married a nine-year-old girl, all of these things play a role.
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: And so I don't think objectivists, I don't think it's
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: right to say they haven't given it much thought. Certainly
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 1: I have. and I've talked about it.
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 3: We did a whole deep dive on mostly the CIT
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 3: Islam and its relations to the left. Soon we will
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 3: do a deep dive also in the Sunni part and
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 3: the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and its effects.
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: Mr. Diagel, I don't know what that means. Okay. There's
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: one former objectivist who explicitly said he abandoned objectivism for
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: Christianity because objectivism places all of the responsibility on you.
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 2: As opposed to.
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 1: I say good riddance. I mean... Yeah, I mean... My view,
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: and I think Nikos' view, given his comment was... I
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: don't want responsibility for my life to be on anybody else.
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: I want full responsibility on my life. It's too important.
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 1: to hand it over to somebody else.
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: I don't even trust people. Ask Jonathan.
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 3: I don't even trust people to drive me around on
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 3: the German highway, which is the safest street in the world.
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 3: And you think I would want to, to give the
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 3: fate of my life.
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 2: On more on. No, no.
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: I love that song. Do you know this song? Nico's
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 1: country song called Jesus. Take the wheel.
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 2: No, but I don't want Jesus to take the wheel.
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 1: So it's a, it's a woman. She's spinning out of
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: control in the highway. He says, Jesus, take the wheel.
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: You know, I can't handle this. I can't do it.
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: And that to me is the mentality. Jesus, take the wheel.
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: The other Quint. Bill Maher is a voice of reason
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: against the horrible ideas of the left, but somebody got
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: to stop him swiping it around. Yeah, but Bill Maher
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: is good on certain issues and terrible on others. He's
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: a hugely mixed case. He's a center left. He doesn't
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: get economics. He doesn't get self-interest. He's a mess. But yes,
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 1: he's honest enough to criticize the left when he goes overboard.
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 3: And also, his audience is mostly people who really need
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 3: to hear that.
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 2: Because it's mostly... I don't like the term progressives. Central
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 2: leftists and leftists.
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: What's your opinion of Stanford's Hoover Institute. Having an objectivist
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: intellectual at Hoover would significantly boost objectivism in the movement. Yeah,
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: I agree. But I don't think Hoover is about to
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: accept an objectivist unless we had an objectivist intellectual who
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 1: was a superstar and was recognized as such by the
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: conventional world. Hoover's good. It's home to a lot of
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: very good intellectuals. Uh, uh, Nikos is one of Nikos's
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: favorite historians is that Hovind Kotkin, his name is even Kotkin. Yes.
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: Steven Kotkin. One of my favorite economists is at Hoover, uh,
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: John Cochran. Um, and, uh, I think, I think, uh,
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: you know, McMaster's pretty good. I don't trust Condoleezza Rice
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: who runs Hoover. Uh, and, uh, And I do know
• 2:27:59
  Speaker 1: that there are a bunch of people at Hoover who
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: are very compromised, who are not Liberty Movement people, who
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: are much more on the left, because Hoover has cut
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: a deal with Stanford, which has compromised its independence. But yeah,
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: I'd love to have an objectivist at Hoover. Who? And
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: how do we get them in? You know, I think
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 1: I could raise a lot of money if Hoover would
• 2:28:24
  Speaker 1: take the money to put an objectivist at Hoover. But
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: we've never had a person... who fits the profile. You
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: know one of the curious things? Nico says we don't,
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: there's no objectivist economist.
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 2: That's very surprising, yeah. Since George Riesman.
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: Since George Riesman, there's no objectivist economist, which is really surprising.
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, Rob Tarr is, but he's not very, you know,
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: he's in the background. But you'd think we'd have a
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: lot of economists, but I find that objectivists who then
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: go study economics at George Mason become libertarians. So you
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: have to be careful. Roland, yeah, go ahead.
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 2: Let me also answer when it comes to Hoover.
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 3: I respect a lot their intellectual seriousness and how particularly
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 3: their podcast is one of the two or three podcasts
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 3: together with Yarons and a sports and a football podcast
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 3: that I follow every week. They've managed a way for
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 3: their podcast to be fun and at the same time
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 3: intellectually serious, which is very difficult and good for them. Also,
• 2:29:30
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite shows is Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson,
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 3: who invites authors. Actually, recently I had an idea about
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 3: a possible book and the vision I put to myself
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 3: that you will have made it it will be a
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 3: good book, is that I'm invited there and it's like
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 3: my dream podcast to be in.
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: People have asked Peter Robinson to have me on and
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: he won't, for what it's worth. But that's okay. Nikos
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 1: will break through. Switzerland has a balanced budget, thanks in
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: no small part to speeding tickets issued to me. That
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 1: is Roland. I'm definitely not driving on Nikos' roads.
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 3: Or the other day, did this happen or did I
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 3: see it in a dream? Didn't you get a ticket
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 3: and I was telling you maybe it's a scam?
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a ticket for something I did in Israel.
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what I did exactly. I really
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: haven't looked into it. I've ignored it so far. But
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: I got an email from some Israeli authority. They got
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: my name from Hertz, the company I rented the car from,
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: to say they want almost 200 bucks. some fine for
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: something that I did. And of course, my fear is
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: that if I don't pay it, the next time I
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: try to get into Israel, they're going to arrest me
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: at the airport or do something. So, you know, I
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: have to figure out what it is exactly I did.
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe it's speeding. I did speed in
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: Israel quite a bit. So it could be speeding. It
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: could be a traffic. It could be a parking violation.
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I have no idea. I have to
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: check it out. But yes, I go through these periods
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: in America. I used to, I haven't done, this hasn't
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: happened to me recently. But there was a period where
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: every six, seven, eight years, I would get a bunch
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: of speeding tickets all like in the same month, even
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 1: in different states, because in those days I'd rent a
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: lot of cars as I was traveling to speak. And luckily,
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: because they were in different states, they didn't all aggregate,
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: because otherwise I would have lost my license more than once. So, yeah.
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: Nikos' views on traffic show the remnant of the European
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: mindset On the other hand, we don't have the autobahn.
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: That's America. So I guess we'll call it a draw. Yeah.
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 3: When you walk on a road that is that wide
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 3: and someone runs with 50 kilometers per hour in a
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 3: road where there are kids, pets, cats, dogs. No, I
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 3: stand by my sniper idea.
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. Molten Splendor. contextually, wearing seatbelts wouldn't be a discussion
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 1: if the government had not mandated that car manufacturers had
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: to install them. What about letting car companies add them voluntarily? Oh, absolutely. Indeed,
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: the first car seats to be installed were installed in
• 2:32:29
  Speaker 1: a car called the Tucker in the 1950s. And because
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: the Tucker was so innovative, because the Tucker represented a
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: threat to to the big three auto manufacturers in the
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 1: United States, they lobbied the U.S. government to basically run
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: Tucker out of business and delayed the introduction of seatbelts
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: into cars voluntarily by probably at least a decade. There's
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: a fantastic movie, I think it was with Jeff Bridges,
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: called Tucker. It was the same director as Apocalypse Now,
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: So Francis Ford Coppola, it's, it's one of his, I
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: think better movies and it's beautifully shot. It's, it's Bridges
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: brings an energy to the, to the lead character. That's fantastic.
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: It's a celebration of the entrepreneur. It's one of the
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: most positive movies about entrepreneurship, but it's, it, and it
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: shows the evil of cronyism. It really shows how cronyism works.
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: So it was actually voluntary. He, He innovated. There was
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of innovation in the original Tucker. There's still
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: a few out there. I think he sold like 10
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: or 15 of them and they're still out on the road.
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: And they were very innovative machines, particularly when it comes
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 1: to safety. So Molten Splendor also seen on a church bulletin.
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: An atheist is a person with no invisible means of support.
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: That's so good. I love that. An atheist is a
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: person with no invisible means of support. Yep. Except his mind,
• 2:34:14
  Speaker 1: which is kind of invisible. All right, Roman. What does
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: Emily Schrader think about objectivism? You know, I don't know.
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, she is a fan of mine. She was
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: very friendly when I met her in Israel. But we
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: didn't have a chance to really talk, so I don't know.
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: Boaz would be a good person to ask. She's very
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: good on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and maybe on other issues
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: as well. But I don't know how much of Ayn
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 1: Ranchi's read and what her views are. I know she
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: likes me, she likes Boaz, but I don't know more
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: than that. Wapa, this is the last question. Yuran, someone
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: a while ago said you should stream on Twitch. Will you?
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: It's a different new audience, not in the best way,
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: but it might be interesting. So here's the thing about Twitch. Yeah, no,
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: I don't care. I'll stream on any platform in the
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: world that will connect to Restream. So Restream is where
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: I stream to right now. The stream is going from
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: Zoom to Restream, from Restream to YouTube to Facebook accounts
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: and Twitter. And actually now I'm streaming on my Patreon page.
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: And Nikos, this reminds me that I could be streaming
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: to your Patreon page. I could be streaming to your
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: YouTube page I just need your credentials I need to
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: be able to have Restream log into your page in
• 2:35:42
  Speaker 1: order to stream so we can talk about that so
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: Restream allows me to stream to Twitch this is the
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: thing Twitch requires that every time I stream to it
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: I establish a code like right now YouTube and all
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 1: these other things it goes automatically I don't have to
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: do anything I don't have to think of another step
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: Twitch requires me to to input some stuff and to
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 1: copy paste it into Restream. And that's just too much
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: work for me. It's just, I mean, as it is,
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: I have to prep everything. If I had a producer,
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: it would be easy because before every show, he would
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: create the stream thing and make it happen. But let
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 1: me look into Twitch again and see. I don't care
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: where I stream. You know, the more the better. I
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: stream to every platform on planet Earth. If I could,
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: I tried at some point to stream to one of
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 1: the Chinese platforms. But I couldn't figure out how to register.
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: So you have to register first. And it was all
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: in Chinese. I don't think they accepted American credit cards
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: and it just didn't work. So yeah, I'll stream to
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: the moon if there was anybody there to listen. So
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: I'll travel anywhere to have my voice heard and I'll
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: stream anywhere in order to get my ideas heard.
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 3: And that people is urgency.
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, I have urgency. So if you can figure out
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: how to connect Restream to Twitch... in a way that
• 2:37:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't require extra labor on my behalf, I will stream there.
• 2:37:12
  Speaker 1: And that goes for any platform you can imagine. I've
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 1: tried to stream to LinkedIn, and LinkedIn won't have me.
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: They keep kicking me off. They won't allow my stream.
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: So I don't know why. but it you know so
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: some some platforms don't want me but um so i
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: stream to anybody that's willing to have me all right
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: this this like two hours and 40 minutes i mean
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: we can't do a short show i i was hoping
• 2:37:37
  Speaker 1: today would be short because i'd like to go to
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: sleep because i've got a very early morning flight tomorrow
• 2:37:42
  Speaker 1: but so i'm gonna go pack now and uh get
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: and go to sleep.
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 2: Just to let people know next week There is no so.
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 3: The week after we come back, we are going to
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 3: talk about the Yom Kippur War. It's not going to
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 3: be a history episode only because there are so many
• 2:38:00
  Speaker 3: parallels between the fiasco that Israel had to fail at
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 3: the opening stage of that war that translate to today's era.
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 3: So it is going to be an interesting episode, even
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 3: if you don't care about the military history of the
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 3: Yom Kippur War.
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 1: We'll hear about some of the military history of the
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: Yom Kippur War. We will talk about certain aspects of it.
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 2: Of course we will, but it's not going to be
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 2: the main thing.
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: And we'll also talk about Yuan's biography vis-a-vis the Yom
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: Kippur War, because it's the one war, it's the first
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: war that I had first-hand experience and first-hand exposure to.
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: And it was an important event in my life, I think.
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 1: So we'll definitely talk about that. And then what are
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: we doing the week after that?
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 3: If there's not too much Israel overload for people, we
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 3: can do a review of Fauda. So people make sure
• 2:38:49
  Speaker 3: you watch season five or maybe all the seasons till then.
• 2:38:54
  Speaker 2: Or we'll see.
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're definitely going to do a review of
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: Fauda soon. Whether it's the next week or the week
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: after that, we will definitely do a review of Fauda.
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, and we'll do also a review of Suicidal Empathy
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 3: at some point.
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we were thinking of doing Suicidal Empathy and
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: then Fauda to break up the Israel stuff. So I
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 1: do encourage everybody to watch Fauda. It's a great show.
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 1: Season five, I haven't seen yet, so we're waiting a
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: little bit for me to see it. But watch the
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 1: first four seasons. If you don't have time to watch
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: all four seasons before the show, watch the first two seasons.
• 2:39:29
  Speaker 1: Those are the most important ones. And season five. I
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 1: think three and four, particularly four is not that good
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: in my view and less important. But one and two
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 1: and five I think are really, really important to watch. Okay,
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: Rafael has a quick question. Why in the art event
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: you mentioned the Romantic Manifesto was the most difficult book
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: Rand wrote? I find it the most difficult because, and
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know about Nikos, but I think because it's
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: a massive integration. I think what she does in the
• 2:40:03
  Speaker 1: Romantic Manifesto is she's integrating metaphysics and epistemology. into, and
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: then there's an element of ethics as well, but primarily
• 2:40:13
  Speaker 1: metaphysical epistemology, into this really original and interesting theory about
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 1: something we don't really understand that much. She understood and
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 1: we don't. She understood it because she was an artist.
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: So she really understood it in a first-handed way. But
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: it's really metaphysics and epistemology. And metaphysics and epistemology, when
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: you get technical with them, it's hard. What is a
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: metaphysical value judgment? I mean, I can name them, I
• 2:40:41
  Speaker 1: can spout the objectivist stuff, right? And I think I
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 1: understand it. But it's taken me a long time to
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: really understand it. What is sense of life? What is
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: sense of life? I mean, that's a hard concept. It's
• 2:40:54
  Speaker 1: very complicated. What does it mean to concretize, you know,
• 2:41:02
  Speaker 1: your most abstract ideas? I mean, again, you can understand
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 1: it superficially, but really get it. And then you get
• 2:41:08
  Speaker 1: to music, which is all abstract. I mean, even she
• 2:41:13
  Speaker 1: says what she's presenting is just a hypothesis. She doesn't
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 1: know for sure what it represents. So it's difficult because
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 1: of the integration. It's a culmination of a philosophy in
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 1: many ways. It's a grand integration of the deepest ideas
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: that she has. Oh, and there's a huge psychological element,
• 2:41:32
  Speaker 1: which again is hard. So it's primarily epistemology, metaphysics, and some,
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 1: that's it. It's psychopistemology, right? Psycho-psymology, which is the relationship
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: between your subconscious and your consciousness. The relationship between your
• 2:41:46
  Speaker 1: emotions and your consciousness. That's, I don't know, I think
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 1: that's difficult stuff. Every time I read the Mormonic manifesto,
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 1: I go, huh? I mean, I learn new things. I
• 2:41:58
  Speaker 1: discover new things in the text, and I gain a
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: deeper understanding of the whole entire philosophy. But I find
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 1: it difficult. It's not easy. All right, cool. So you've
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 1: got the plan for the next few weeks. No show
• 2:42:12
  Speaker 1: next week. Definitely Yom Kippur or the week after that,
• 2:42:15
  Speaker 1: and then we'll see. Late October, November, going to be
• 2:42:19
  Speaker 1: tricky because I'm traveling a lot. That urgency again, this
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: time mostly in America and North America and South America.
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be bouncing around, and Nikos might join
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 1: me in North America. Maybe not. We're not sure yet. And, yeah,
• 2:42:36
  Speaker 1: I will see you guys. I don't know when. You know,
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 1: Tbilisi is going to be an interesting place from which
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 1: to do a show because it's 11 hours from the
• 2:42:48
  Speaker 1: West Coast and, you know, eight hours from the East Coast.
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 1: So I have to do it really late at night
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: to be to be a decent point. OK, Nikos has
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 1: a point. I will soon meet Tony Robbins, a great guy,
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 1: but also God worshiping man. What should I tell him?
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: This is Michael. Nikos, what should he tell Tony Robbins?
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 3: Whatever is important about you and your life how can
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 3: i how would i know it would.
• 2:43:17
  Speaker 1: Be you're not there to teach you're not there to
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: convert tony robbins to atheism don't try it's not.
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 3: Yes just just try to you to get value of
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 3: the of this uh of this meeting and uh you
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 3: to wait is this an audience question or are you
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 3: yaron asking.
• 2:43:33
  Speaker 1: Me oh it's an audience question i'm not meeting tony robbins.
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, okay.
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I would have to know so much context
• 2:43:39
  Speaker 3: about this guy. But hey, you're meeting a very interesting person.
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 3: This doesn't happen very often. You make it about you.
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 3: Don't make it about... You're not going to convince him
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 3: about anything. Ozark is going to forget about it five
• 2:43:51
  Speaker 3: minutes later because you'll have 1,000 of such meetings.
• 2:43:55
  Speaker 2: It's about you. Enjoy it. Take value out of it.
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 2: Get inspired. That's it.
• 2:44:00
  Speaker 1: I agree completely.
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 3: All right, guys.
• 2:44:03
  Speaker 1: Have a great night. We will see you soon. Thank you.
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 2: Bye everyone.