What were the main bullet points that brought you from Social Democrat to really Market Advocate at? Well, I'll never forget at one point. He said my marginal utility for you is rising. I had no idea what he said, but it sounded really good, you know, he just talked about how how the free market provides a way that to to distribute to create and distribute Shoot goods and services how it takes. It takes raw materials and adds to it Innovation and labor and create something better.
You know, the iron being a great example of how you take some iron and you manipulate it and then it becomes a nail or a pin or a wagon or wheel or something. And so, under the mercantilists, there was this belief that there's a finite amount Resources in the world. And because of that, if you wanted to get wealthier, you had to take it from someone else because there was just this finite amount. So if you wanted more for yourself, you had to take it from someone else.
So we have this, this world Empire kind of philosophy going in and taking natural resources from someone else. But Adam Smith recognized that you could make the pie bigger simply by adding to the resources, Innovation invention. Action and and labor to make it into something else. That's more, that's more valuable. And so you didn't have to just Scurry around trying to get a bigger part of the pie, you can make that pie bigger and that's
what the free market does. And and and what he taught me is that and what I like to try to teach others about capitalism is that capitalism is a way of saving your resources, not spending everything that saving your resources and then Using them to create a bigger pie and you do that by finding out what other people want and, or need or even telling them before, they know they need it. And then providing it for them,
it makes their lives better. And it makes your life better when people complain about billionaires about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. I just hold up this phone and I say, I can own everything. I all of the intellectual stuff I need, I can have right here on this phone. All of my contacts, all of my documents, all of my music, Music. Everything I need is in this little handheld device that I bought for $350. So Steve Jobs gives 350 billion dollars. I don't care cuz he gave me this, right?
You made my life better. When I was a young mother, I watched how diapers went from cloth diapers and safety pins on plastic, plastic pants to disposables that originally, we had to use with safety pins and then they had tabs what. Like Band-Aids. And you had this little plastic thing that you had to throw away and sometimes the baby would get it and get it stuck in their mouth.
So then they came up with the kind that are that are self adhesive and now you can undo them and do and put them together. No government agent would ever ever have created diapers the way diapers, are they even have them for boys and girls, depending on whether they, they pee front or back boys, pee front and girls pee back? Well, no one would have done that, but the market does it because there's a demand for it. Or they created demand for it, they're always making our lives better.
And the price comes down. Our very first. One of these was a, was a gigantic computer, this High, you had to formate every single page, had to be formated formatted separately cost us 15 thousand dollars. And we were really grateful to have it because we were writing books and I've got it right here or the laptop. I'm looking at right now and you know, cost under $1000. So price goes down as as quality and demand picks up.
The market is beautiful. How it decides look at what happened when the pandemic started and we didn't have enough toilet, paper and paper towels. Georgia-Pacific immediately stopped making typing paper and started making paper towels and toilet paper. With alcohol companies started making hand, sanitizer GM started making ventilators. I mean, the market, the market does that we live in Florida where they have hurricanes and it used to be that if if Perkin was coming, you had to get
supplies. Flies by a week ahead, because they would be nothing on the stores now. They Supply constantly because they just, they know A hurricane's coming. So they divert trucks to a different place and and they get everything where it needs to be. We don't need a government to do that. We have a market, we have businesses, we have capitalist. I take my students at Chapman University to see the statue of Charles Chapman, who founded our University. And I tell them, this is a capitalist.
He could have spent all his money on him. Elf. But instead, he saved it, he bought this land, he put buildings on it. And he created the school that you could attend, because he cared about the future. That's what capitalism does? Its savings. It's put to a better use. So, I just think the free market is beautiful and makes mistakes. Yes. But, those mistakes can be
corrected very quickly. Once a government gets involved, you can't get rid of them, but if a business makes a mistake, they either correct or they're out. And so it has a wonderful Eating balanced as well, what you said about the price? Going down is so vitally important because it used to be like, if I saved up for a long time, I could responsibly go to Barnes and Noble and purchase a book, maybe two. If I had really saved up and it would have come out $25 a book or so.
But now with Amazon, I have saved so much money and gotten access to more information than I ever could have dreamed of different points of view. I can get the Communist Manifesto and Rothbart's ethics of Liberty for so cheap that it's worth actually purchasing them for that. I was previously an Obama supporter.
And basically with me, it was so similar to what you said, but it was just every shortcoming that the free market had applied tenfold to the government because they didn't face competition and you couldn't opt out of harming them. So, so no matter what it was like, but what about X whatever X was existed under both state has and fascism? Communism voluntourism. So it just once I ran things through that methodology, I was just out of it.
I mean I just went from like Barack Obama to Mitt Romney to Ron Paul. Just let me give you a great example. Just a great example cord. Angeles is one of my heroes. He's been working on on school choice for years and I adore the man because he found the right metaphor, when he said the money should follow the student. When he said, if I decide to buy to buy my groceries at Walmart, instead of Safeway, should my money continue to go to Safeway? No, it goes to Walmart or whatever.
The grocery store is that made sense. But recently our local school system, starting started sending out postcards saying here's what we're doing and what would you like us to do better? And and come and join us and I just found it really interesting. What we've been saying all along is that School choice is not going to end the public school system, it's going to make the public school system better. And that's exactly what's happening with the competition of charter schools, and private
schools and home school. The public school is finally realizing we need to do some advertising. We need to step up our game. We need to attract parents to choose our school. Because, you know, in terms of convenience the local Public's was certainly the most convenient to do. So, here it is the school. A choice is leading to the competition that is going to lead to Improvement and our Public Schools just like we've been saying all along. I love it.