Capitalism & Benevolence | Yaron Brook Show

really to Western siev and and religion. Uh to to the search for meaning, search for meaning, and three is to a better understanding of capitalism, what it is, how it applies, where it applies, and so on. So this is the first one capitalism. But of course, God, there are hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of me talking about capitalism online.

There's a ton of content already on this. So this is not really a start but a continuation of what I'd be doing for decades now in talking about capitalism. So we're going to jump in. I will remind you that you guys, we'll talk about trade a lot, but this is a this is a trade So remember that

you can support the show you. You can trade with me by you know, doing things simple things like liking to show if you're not a subscriber, becoming a subscriber, by you know, financially supporting the show through us, or kind of asking a question. And questions are great because questions get to shape the show, right, You get to get me to talk about what you want me to talk about. And I do promise to read all the questions aloud and to answer all the questions in comments

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the show, don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber. And so let's jump in. Let's talk before we get the benevolence. Let's talk about capitalism because this is a concept that is so misunderstood out there in the world. There is so much confusion and about what capitalism actually is.

I just saw a video this morning from some I don't know Marxist professor saying, most people think capitalism is about markets and about competition, and then she goes, oh, no, no, but Carl Marx said that capitalism is about what happens inside the factory, where capitalists are exploiting labor. And the reality is, of course, the capitalism properly understood. The things that indeed Marx was observing when he used the term capitalism are not about any of those things. Capitalism is

not indeed about markets. So though markets is a feature of capitalism, but markets existed throughout human history. Markets have always been around. You wouldn't say capitalism has always been around. Competition has always been around. And yeah, you wouldn't say the capitalism has always been around. Now, you know, competition might have been restrained by various means, but there's always

been some competition. It means nothing to define capitalism in terms of markets, or to define it in terms of competition, as so many people do, but particularly conservatives and leftists, center rights and the left and so on, in terms of understanding what happens inside the factory, and talking about this in terms of exploitation doesn't really teach you anything, because the reality is that again, even if there is

exploitation inside the factory, and there isn't because it's fundamentally voluntary. We'll get to that. But even if it was, exploitation can't be because exploitation, again is the whole of human history. Indeed, capitalism is the first system that exploitation. It's the first political,

economic social system that frees us from exploitation. But to look inside the factory to see exploitation is bizarre to begin with, given the fact that the people inside the factor you seem pretty happy with the fact that they're there, they voluntarily came there, that people employing them seemed to be happy, they employed them voluntarily. It seems like mutually beneficial transaction. No evidence, no science, unless you're a shallow materialist,

as marxis, of any exploitation going on. And indeed, this is the reason, I mean, the idea that it's not competition, it's not markets, it's not even you know, the existence of property rights, property rights to some extent or another again have existed throughout and and uh, you know, we today have some property rights, but property rights is at least getting closer to what it is. Unfortunately, conservatives again

center left, center right, but even even libertarians often confuse about what capitalism actually is. And in that sense, everybody thinks of it as an economic system. You know, the term capitalism is being dominated by economists. They think this is primarily about economics, but it's not. It's about human life. It's it's very much a social, political, and economic concept. So, you know, so what is what defines a capitalism? What

what makes capitalism? What makes capitalism different than other economic systems? What makes capitalism different than economic systems before it in all of human history. Well, if you look at capitalism, if we observe the phenomenon of capitalism, you know, at its beginning in the early nineteenth century, as capitalism was spreading in the United States and in England, and it's no accident it's the United States and it's England where

it's happening. Is what is being recognized, what is being recognized in society, Well, what is being recognized fundamentally is that force coercion is not a means by which individuals should interact. What is recognized is the idea that individuals have this right to pursue their own happiness, to pursue their own life, to pursue their own values. There's a recognition that individuals should and can be free, that is, act in pursuit of their values in the absence of

cosion and force. Now this is not necessarily explicitly stated, although the Declaration Independence does a pretty good job job expressing it explicitly. But it's in the very political I guess movement that is happening in Britain. And it's certainly because of the way the United States is established, because of the Declaration and because of the Constitution. It is

the governing ideology of the United States of America. Freedom, freedom, and the principle guiding freedom, the principle that defines this freedom as the principle of individual rights, a principle articulated by John Locke and developed and explained by John Locke and then picked up by the Enlightenment, and ultimately it is at the foundation, at the origin of the founding of the United States and the establishment of a government

in the United States. It's not an accident the capitalism evolves. Capitalism comes into being in those places where there is a recognition of the idea of individual rights, and in particular of property rights. But individual rights more broadly, and those two places in the world in the nineteenth century, in the early part of the nineteenth century, late part of the eighteenth century were the United States, the two

relatively capitalists places on planet Earth. So individual rights, the freedom, the freedom to pursue your values, the freedom to act in pursuit of the values that you rationally believe in your self interest that they you know that that will enhance your life. That freedom means the absence, absence of cosion and force. So what is capitalism. It's a system

that is based on individuals. It's based on the recognition of individuals. It's a system where the sole purpose of government is the protection of those individuals. It is a system where property rights are so dominant that all property is privately owned. Now we know that in that sense, no system has ever been capitalists, because no system has ever achieved this. Early America had slavery. Later America had regulations and a lot of private a lot of property

that was not privately owned. It was state owned, but it came close. Much of the property, much of there, certainly used and usable property, was privately owned post slavery. The level of cosion within society, the level of cosuing inflict by government. The level of cosion allowed by between individuals was indeed minimized, and those economies, the economies of you know, mid nineteenth century Britain and late nineteenth century the United States were as close to capitalism as we've come.

But capitalism is a system, a separation of state from the economy. It's from economics. It's a system where the state does not have an economic policy. It's where the state protects individual rights and other than that leaves us alone to negotiate, to trade, to produce, to create our lives. It entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships, because physical force is the only way in which rights can be violated. And I'm including under physical force fraud.

And it basically says nobody can initiate force, no group, no tribe, no collection of individuals, no business, no government, nobody. The government can only use force to protect those rights as retaliation. So, as Zion puts it, the only function of government in such a society is the task of protecting man's rights. That is, the task of protecting him from physical force. The government acts as an agent a man's right of self defense and may use for us

only in retaliation and only against those initiated issues. Thus, the government is the means of placing retaliated to reuse of force under objective control. So that is capitalism. It's again to quote imand a full pure, uncontrolled, unregulated las efat capitalism with a separation of state and economics. So when we talk about capitalism, that said, now, when we think about the modern world, what we see in the modern world are remnants of this attitude, elements of it.

We have some private property, or at least we have a pretense to some private property. But you know, those private property is limited by state initiation, of course, whether that state invitiation, of course, is through zoning regulations, taxes, property taxes, you know, in all the other ways in which the state courses and forces forces us. Now, this is not you know, well understood out there. I mean, people believe that this is what we have today is capitalism,

that we are living in a capitalist world. It is not. We are moving away. We have moved away from capitalism and are steadily moving further and further away as the state, our government intervenes more and more and more in all areas of our life, our economic life. But generally our lives. Now,

what does this all have this have to do with benevolence, because one of the things that we're seeing out there in the world, I think quite clearly, is the real collapse of any kind of benevolence in our society, particularly if you're in social media. But I think it's in the world that there is will. People resent one another, they're angry at one another, they're afraid of one another. They wonder, you know, are you one of my tribe? Are you one of the other tribe? Are you are

legal immigrant or just an immigrant? Or you are you know? Who are you? What are you? What we're seeing is a real collapse of any kind of sense of what is benevolence. Benevolence kind of a good will towards man, goodwill towards others. You know, some definitions a disposition to good to what being of others, according to these dictionary definitions,

expressed through acts of kindness or generosity. But just I think, well than anything, it's just a sense of other people are good, They're good for me, other people are beneficial, they're beneficial to me. I mean, it really is this

deep sense of hostility. It's why people. It's the only reason you can explain why people can stand around and cheer as ICE agents just you know, invade places of business and just handcuffed people and pull them down onto the ground and drag them out and put them under arrest. Whether those people are quote citizens and not citizens, immigrants, not immigrants, illegal or legal or whatever you want to

call them. The relishing of that, the pride taken by some people in this activity, the Twitter thing where they say this is what I've voted for on the videos of this kind of abuse, is a clear lack of any kind of benevolence towards those people. Remember, the people being arrested, for example, by ice, they're not people who violated rights. They might have violated the law, but they haven't violated anybody's rights. They've not they've not violated property rights.

So what we get today and what I think we see really everywhere it is kind of a suspicion of other people, a distancing and generally and anger at others targeted at others, a hostility towards other people, particularly if we suspect in the world in which we live today that they might belong to the wrong tribe, to the

other tribe. There's no spirit of goodwill, spirit of benevolence, spirit of treating other people as equal to ourselves, as human beings, as you know, not knowing anything about them as an assumption of that they are productive, good, healthy, I mean healthy in the spiritual sense. Traders who benefit my life and therefore you know, view them as positive. The the the whole attitude of people today is again a negative, angry, malevolent view of other people. Malevolent view

of other people. How does this relate to capitalism? Well, I think that capitalism is a system of benevolence. It's a system that encourages, nurtures, and sustains it's sustained well, it's sustained with ideas, but it's product is benevolence. One of the great products of capitalism is a benevolent society. It's society way people feel good about other people, where they feel good about the relations with other people, They

feel good about just the existence of other people. It's very much the merria can attitude towards social interaction, which is benevolent and positive, kindness and generous and even charitable. Now, why is that? What's the relationship between capitalism and this world. Capitalism is the exact opposite of what call Marks claims it is. Capitalism is the first system of government, first system of economics, first system of social organization, which eliminates

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

our own judgment. Physical force, violence, I mean, that is what's the big challenge that human beings face when they form societies, when they come to groups, and you know, the primitive way of solving the problem of how do I deal with other people who might use violence against me is to join a tribe, I mean, tribal society was a primitive mechanism by which we try to solve the problem of violence. We appoint a leader who responsibility

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

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

on ourselves. It doesn't actually solve the problem. The problem of violence is only solved through a massive intellectual feet, and that is the discovery of the concept of individual rights and the creation of a government who's of a government, an institution, a man made institution whose sole purpose is to protect those rights. That's the reason it exists. Maybe it should have a different name other than government, because government has such a bad rap right, but in an

institution that rejects violence, all violence. So capitalism provides us with that kind of government. And therefore the one thing you know is that violence will not be afflicted upon you in living in a capitalist world. And that is liberating,

that is truly liberating. That you know makes you want to deal with other people in a much more harmonious, benevolent, positive way because you know, yes, there's still gonna be cooks, there's still gonna be bad guys, but the numbers are going to be shrinking because there's an entity responsible to catching them, imprisoning them, distancing them from all other interactions.

So almost all your interactions on a day to day basis are ones that are done in peace, ones that are done free of violence, and that instills a positive sense of the world, that instills a benevolent sense of life. You know, it's now easier and more fun and more exciting to engage. Whereas if you live in a corrupt country even today, and you know the police are not enforcing the laws, you know the laws are co upt

to begin with. You know that, you know, cooks and criminals and thoughts dos just bribe their way out of whatever laws against them. You don't know who you're dealing with. You're always on the lookout. You're always potentially going to get screwed. If you live in a war zone, you know, violence could erupt at any point in time against you. You could be caught in the middle of it. Between gangs, you deal with other people with trepidation. You want multiple

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

disavow the contract. How can you plan long term? How can you engage with other people on a long term basis when you know that it all could go up and smoke because the use of force is implicitly legitimized in that society. The more fraud, the more corruption, the more violation of rights, the less your relationship with other people is based on this non aggression, this idea of non aggression, this idea of peace, this idea of banishment

of physical force. Physical force now can be used, and therefore you act, you behave in suspicious ways capitalism by

protecting you, by saying no, no other contracts. We've got a court system that will protect your contract, your rights. You could plan for the very long term because that court system is probably not going to change dramatically. The invitation of the laws is stable, the protection of your rights is stable, and therefore we can plan long term. We can interact with one another not as potential enemies, but

as allies. And the more we interacting with one another as allies, as jointly working for some for each own interests, but mutually doing it mutually, the more you're going to generate goodwill, the more benevolence you're going to have. So by banishing physical force. By banishing physical force, capitalism creates an environment in which we can deal with the best in others, with the best, with the best that they

have to offer. And as a consequence, we are going to make an assumption about most people that we meet that they have some value, they have some value to give, they have some way in which they make my life, our lives better. So the primary way in which capitalism, you know, creates an environment of benevolence is by banishing physical force. That is number one. But it doesn't just banishing.

It banishes physical forts not just from our interactions, but also for an interaction with the tribal leader, from my interactions with the government. Banishes all physical forces. What's another way in which benevolence is encourage supported created under a capitalist society. Well, it's the very fact that in order to achieve anything under capitalism, one has to be a value creator. One has to work, one has to produce,

one has to create something. And the only way in which you know that becomes something that sustains us is then we trade it. So the very idea that everybody in the capitalism is a trader, a value cretor, and then a trader means that it's likely that when I meet people in the street, when I'm hanging out with people, when we're doing stuff together, the people that I'm hanging out with unlikely to be parasites, unlikely to be living off of other people. That system just doesn't exist in

a capitalist society where there is no welfare state. I mean, we live in a world today where our money is taken from us by for us through courgion, and then redistributed to who knows whom, and some it's redistributed to some people who just don't work, some people who are just completely parasitical on those who do. But it's also distributed to some people do some work because somebody in higher ups decided that what they do has more value than what other people do call it subsidies. I mean,

when you met business leaders, farmers, how many of them are being subsidized? How much of their value creation is artificial versus real. We live in a world in which the dollar, the money that we have, is constantly being inflated away, its value constantly changing. We live in a world in which there are moochas and parasites. And it's not clean in any kind of sense. It's not clear where the line is. It's not like, Okay, those people

over there, they're that, and then these people. Everything's mixed up. This is the mixed economy. There is no clean line because everybody is intertwined with what the government is doing, with the redistribution of wealth, with the regulations, with the controls, and therefore it's not clear who's the value creator, how much value is creating, how much that value is worth to me? In the world in which we live today, contracts are not invulnerable, you know, they can be violated.

We're not exactly sure how the courts are going to treat them, or how Donald Trump is going to treat a fraudster who he could pardon on a whim and and and therefore re enter society and commit fraud. Again, we're not really protected from those people. I mean, we live in a world in which it's very hard to tell the value creator, the real trader, from the mucha and the looter, which means that to some extent, all

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

But you're signing a thirty year contract and you don't read it because there's no way to read it. There's no way to read it and understand it, comprehend it. And the reason for that is the regulations, the controls, and all the overlays of distrust that exists in the system that are imposed one on top of the other and create one on top of the other that make it impossible to have a trust of benevolence with the

institutions that you're dealing with. You don't know if it ever went to court, what's actually in there, and whether you'll be in the right or the wrong. I mean you can kind of estimate. So benevolence is destroyed by the mixed economy. The mixed economy encourages us, as we've

talked many, many times on the show. It encouraged us to, you know, to try to figure out which group, which gang, which tribe we should join in order to try to access the goodies being handed out by the government, the stuff that the government is taking from some to give to others. Well, how can we get in on that. Inland has a great lecture, really encourage you to listen to it. It's it's online as part of Inland Instruye

Campus AI Campus. It talked about I think it's called a nation's unity, a nation's unity, and she describes what happens to kind of a benevolent neighborhood, a neighborhood where you know, you like some of your neighbors and you're kind of nice and friendly to them, and you don't like others. You don't like other your neighbors so you just ignore them. But everybody basically lives in peace and

in harmony. But once the mixed economy gets involved, then some of your neighbors might be organizing, you know, to to to tax you, or to regulate you, or to or to re educate your kids, or to do something that offends you that you you must fight against. Other neighbors might be doing, you know, some other kind of political or community activism that might attack you in a different perspective. And given that they all now have power, they all have now the ability to use physical force,

i e. Use government force. It is very difficult to maintain that benevolence nice atmosphere in a government. I mean, you can understand why the right hates the left so much. I mean, it's completely understandable when people want to take away your stuff and redistribute it to groups that they hold dear and that you don't know anything about and

don't care for and don't want to be involved. And you know, if you want to do charity, you can do charity yourself, or more than that, if they want to take your money and they want to impose on your kids a type of education and ideas. Let's say about gender that you find offensive. They go against your principle. But given that all kids go to be a government schools, what choices do you have? But now somebody else is imposing their values on you without you having any kind

of real say in it. So what happens You start resenting those people. I mean, it's fascinating that they ultimately would really cause people to get upset at the left when not it's socialist almost communist ideas about economics, but it's ideas about culture. That's interesting. But it's the same since they can impose those ideas by force. I mean, you're you're making it possible for me to pursue my values. You're imposing your values on me, and people get upset,

and when they get upset, they look for allies. How am I going to fight this? I can't fight it alone. I mean, the whole point of democracy, is the whole point of you know, a majoritarian democracy, is we form groups and we need voting blocks. We need numbers. It's all about numbers, and therefore we have to join tribes in order to get our way, in order to in order to defend ourselves. Again, it's almost like we're returning we're voting back to old tribalism, the tribalism of ten

thousand years ago. We need a tribe in order to protect us from these forces that in their values on us. I mean, none of this happens in a capitalist economy. If somebody wants to teach I don't know, radical crazy gender stuff in school, well you pull your kids out

of that school and you send them to another. You get to choose the school your kids go to, and there's competition between those schools, and those schools have to appeal because of competition to at least they have to make the case for you to send your kid and your dollars to them, and therefore they have to appeal to you in one way or another. Under capitalism, you know, private owners and bathrooms can label exactly who they want in the bathroom and who they don't want in the bathroom.

It's simple private property. And if you don't like it, don't go to that establishment with those bathroom rules. It's the abandonment of capitalism that makes any one of these cultural issues an issue of coursion. It makes it an issue of for us. It makes it an issue of the imposition of values on you. By the way, if you want to ask a question, Superchat is open. Very little super Chat is going on, so please be free to We've got very few We've got three questions. So

but when I'm finished speaking, the show's over. So if you want richer, longer, more content in the show, ask us a chat question's that's how you get it. And I see people have questions in the chat. The way to get me to answer them is put them in the super chat. You can do it for two dollars, five dollars. It's pretty cheap to get me to answer a question, So do it. Do it. So most of these issues are issues of Most of the issues that people get upset about not only really issues because we

lack private property, because we lack capitalism. It makes the economy, destroys that. It makes the economy in which the government owns a lot of private a lot of property. It makes the economy in which the government owns a schooling owns a healthcare where the government decides on you know, I don't know. Let's take another controversial issue, vaccines, where people hate each other over vaccines. It's very simple. In a free market, you don't want to vaccinate your kids,

don't vaccinate your kids. Private schools will then have vaccination policies. Some private schools will require vaccines. Other private schools maybe won't qui vaccines, and you'll seguegate. But more than that, I mean, they might be private parks that requires your kids be vaccinated. I don't know. But the point is,

once you take away government ownership, once you take away all decisions made through the democratic process, but now you elevate property rights the way they need to be as an essential right that needs to be protected. A lot of these disputes, a lot of the angst, a lot of the disagreement ultimately goes away, and benevolence can fill in the gap because at least you know that this person over there, you might not agree with them, you might have different values, but they do not have the

ability to impose day values on you. They do not have their ability to impose day values on you. And that's that's huge. That's the difference between benevolence and lack of benevolence. If I'm living in a society where all around me people can impose their will on me, they can use force to impose their values on me, I'm always afraid, and I'm always scared, and I'm always angry, and I'm always worried, and I don't trust anybody. But if I know, my interactions with everybody else again free,

free of imposition of force, benevolence. Treating other people, you know, with the assumption that their value create is is natural.

It's just part of it. And look, one of the greatest evils of call Marks, maybe the worst thing the car Markus did, of all the things that he advocated for, in all the things that he uh you know, talks about, probably the most evil of them, the most destructive of all of them, is the idea of exploitation, the idea that people who voluntarily agree to a employment contract are somehow being exploited, that the managers and the capitalists are

inherently exploitative of the workers. I mean, think of how much you know suspicion and and and angst that has created over time, that people hold that and believe that they resent going to work, employers worried and cautious, and

how they deal with employees. And of course we've to loge extent institutionalized that in the mixed economy, with all the label laws, all these label laws are basically created under the assumption of exploitation, and that makes the whole employee employee relationship tenuous and filled with suspicion and instead

of harmonious driven by value creation. Marx could not see this essential in capitalism, which is the traded principle, the idea that one is providing value for value in voluntary transactions, again in the absence of fraud and the absence of error, their mistakes. We all make mistakes, but in the absence of error and in the absence of fraud, the reason we engage with other people, the reason we engage in transactions with other people, is because we're gaining value. We're

giving value, We're gaining value. We're trading value for value, win win relationships. That's the employee. That's true with you, you know, in contracts, that's true in you know, going into store and buying something. Once we understand that these relationships are fundamentally trade of relationships, value for value, win win relationships, it changes the entire dynamics, you know, negotiation. And we want to negotiate because we want to try to benefit ourselves the most that we can, but we

have no interest in the other side losing. We have an interesting benefiting the most that we can't, given that the other side is trying to do exactly the same thing. And then we settle on the right price, on the right wage, on the right level. But we do so in a benevolent, goodwill kind of way, under the assumption that I don't have to do this. I can walk away. I don't have to buy your stuff, I don't have to come to work for you, and I don't have

to employ you. That knowledge that we can walk away, that knowledge that prosion cannot be placed upon us, that physical force we cannot be forced, like in feudalism, where you are forced to be on the land, you were forced to work, you were forced to do what your law told you. Businessmen are not lords. You can leave,

you can resign, You can go in and negotiate a higher wage, and you know, if you don't get it, and if you feel strongly about it, you leave, you design or you can be fired if the you know, the business person doesn't believe that you're adding value. So again, the whole premise of capitalism is voluntary exchange, win win transactions, the trade of principle. We trade for everything, and that

is that is an unbelievably benevolent principle. Think about think about the idea that every transaction in the world in a free society is at least intended to be when when intended to be value creating for both parties, For all parties involved in a transaction, the contract is not meant to screw you. It's meant to benefit you and benefit the other party. That's an incredibly benevolent system under

which to live. And every time we move away from that, anytime we allow physical force to enter into our relationships with other people, anytime we allow redistribution of wealth, even a little bit regulation, even a little bit government in position, government subsidies, government controls, government ownership. Anytime we allow that, we chip away at the idea of a traded principle. We chip away at the idea of voluntary exchange. And therefore we chip away at win win. There's no win

win when you pay your taxes. There's no win win when the government forces you to fill out, you know, one hundred different forms in order to get a business license. There's no win win when you have to go through years of government bureaucracy in order to get your product approved. It's lose lose throughout. Maybe some party wins in the short run, but everybody loses in the long run. So capitalism is the system of benevolent It's a system of good will between men. It's a system of harmony. It's

even the system of unity. Were united under a principle, the principle of individual rights, the principle of the banishment of physical force, and any move away from that, any you know, attack by using force on our values is an attack on benevolence, is an attack an ability to have these kind of relationships with other people. So a fight for capitalism is not just a fight for wealth. It's not just a fight for you know, material values.

You know that would be a lot, But it's also a fight for benev elevalent kind of life, a life where we view other people as allies, as trading partners, as people who add to our lives. It's a fight for benevolent society, a benevolent world. Socialism is a system of malevolence. Socialism is the system where the majority can vote away all of your rights at any point in time. Socialism slash democracy, real democracy. Majority rule is a system that can that others can take away your stuff at

any point in time. That mixed the economy is somewhere in between. But the mixed economy always leans towards the socialism because it leans towards the democracy. Since rights are no longer a principle, They're only going to a road.

You're only going to have less of them, and they're going to erode in the direction of socialism or one form or another of other groups gangs, collectives, tribes taking over your stuff, and that that is only going to generate angst and suspicion and fear and anger and malevolence. Socialism is a system of malevolence, and the mixed economy is a mixture of a lot of malevolence and growing malevolence and some benevolence. And this is the world in which we live. I mean, the world in which we

live is a world worth growing malevolence. I mean of tribalism again, tribalism people gang up in tribes as to some extent, as a way to protect themselves from other tribes. Now it's it's a self fulfilling loop. Right, everybody forms a tribe and that only makes things worse. And you have to form a tribe just to protect yourself from the other tribes, and that creates other tribes, and it's there's no end to it. But we you know, all the angst that were feeling today, all the all the hatred,

all the anger. To a large extent, this is a cause is caused by the disappearance of freedom, the disappearance of capitalism, the disappearance of private property. Private property is an over you know, arching principle that applies to everything, to healthcare and education. And you know why is there a housing crisis because a lack of private property. So you know that the reality is that today when we see debates going on between left and right and all

these groups, they almost never talk about capitalism. They never talk about economic freedom. But the reality is that economic freedom, particularly properly understood as the protection of property rights, the protection of individual rights, and a shrinking role for government to just do that, a limitation of what government can

and cannot do. That's the solution to almost all the problems that we have out there, all the cultural problems, all the economic problems, all the social problems, I mean, go away, not all of them, right, You still need to have a proper understanding of individual rights, so you can protect an abortion, the right of people to invite foreigners into the country or to immigrate into the country. I mean, those issues don't go completely away without a

really good definition of individual rights. But just moving to a limited government, moving to the idea, I mean, the idea of limiting government control on the basis of individual rights solves almost every problem that we have out there and creates a society it has benevolent and friendly and positive and filled with love and generosity. And that anger again, the anger is driven by fear, and the fear is not completely irrational when physical force is all around us.

All right, you should fight for capitalism because it is, among other things, the system of benevolence. It's it's it's a system that just makes life so much easier and so much better to live under. And all these things that people are obsessed about. I don't know what was it? Something reading our You know, why do you care unless it's forced on you, unless your course to participate. That causion is what we must eliminate for our lives. All right,

Thank you, guys, I appreciate you being here. We are almost at the end of the first hour. We're about almost one hundred dollars short of our first hour goal, so please consider if you want me to do more of these Saturday shows and shows on capitalism and its application. We'll get into economics, we'll do social stuff, will do a bunch of different things. Then it has to be worth my while, so remember two fifty an hour is

the way to make it worth my while. You can also support this show as a trader of value for value by signing up a Patreon to become a monthly support of the show, which is incredibly valuable. And or please consider doing that. Let's see what else. Yeah, well we'll just we'll stop there. We'll take some of your questions and oh wow, Troy just stepped in with five hundred Australian dollars. Thank you, Troy. That that really helps in terms of the making for our second hour goal.

So I appreciate that, Troy. That's that's fantastic and thank you. Thank you. All right, we got a few stickers Troy, thank you in particular. But let's see, we've got a Nature Observer, thank you. We've got Catherine thank you, and Jeffrey Miller and Cepy Milking which I think is Jonathan Honey and Greg Lewis, thank you guys, really really appreciate

the support and that is that is great. All right, let's jump in with your super chat questions and if they're particular topics around capitalism that you would like me to address, So particular topics around capitalism you'd like me to address, uh, then send me an oates. You can do that on you're on at your on bookshow dot com. You're on at your on bookshow dot com. I will and I will address those issues in the future shows

on capitalism. Also, I want to remind you that I'm interested to see if they're if there are people in Austin or people willing to come to Austin in the first week of February to participate in a half day seminar with me, so let me know. It could be public speaking, it could be the rules for life, how to be a better how to live a self interested life.

It could be just a you know, kind of a live session, four five hour Q and a there is a there's a bunch of different ways different a bunch of different topics we can we cover in doing this, but please consider doing that. And but you need to let me know if you're interested in coming, So dropping an email you're on at yourn bookshow dot com or text me on Twitter or something to let me know that you're interested. Either you live in Austin or you're

willing to come to Austin. The price is going to be somewhere between five hundred and seven and fifty for the half day, depending on how how many hours we count half day is. But yes, let me know so I know if to plan for that and start organizing it and everything. I need to start making lists of names of people actually willing to commit you run at your run brookshow dot com. All right, Chasbat fifty dollars, Thank you. Chasbat was ted striker on an airplane. A

hero or buffoon? Here's the guy who successfully landed the plane after the pilots were incapacitated. Well, I mean he's he's a buffoon in the end, right, I mean to the extent that he succeeds in landing the plane. It's all luck. He's only heroic and that he's willing to even take the initiative. He's willing to try. But everything else is buffoonery. The whole situation is buffoonery. He is a buffoon. I don't think a movie like that has heroes in any meaningful sense. A hero is somebody who

is in a sense self determined. It's somebody who is driving the plot, who is making decisions that drive the plot forward. And you know, there's very little of that in airplanes. So I think we have to really think carefully about what a hero is. It's not enough to

show bravery or courage in artwork. It's that you are moving things forward, that you are engaged in a struggle, in a real struggle, but that it is a struggle that you have initiated that if or not if you have initiated, but you are driving, you are pushing yourself. It's your decisions that matter. And it's very difficult to create heroes in a comedy because you're on the one side of a hero and you're constantly making a fool of him. Well, there's nothing heroic about a fool, so

it's very difficult. I don't think you can have a comedy with a real hero. I think the whole point of a comedy is to make fun of certain characteristics. Sometimes a lot of comedies are there to make fun of heroes. It's one of the things I don't like about many comedies is, for example, Blazing Saddles. The whole point of Blazing Saddles is to make fun of the of the model of a hero in a Western. It's to make fun of the whole, the whole conception of a hero in westerns. So I comedies are great if

they're not making fun of something really good. The comedy should be making fun of something insignificant, of something bad, but not of the good, of the good in the good, which is I think, what what to logic extent in Sattles, for example, does all right? Thank you, Chez batt Andrew, I know I should read ominous parallels. Can you give the twenty dollars answer to how German culture became right

for nihilism of Hitler? I mean, yes, it's it's what we talked about yesterday, a question you asked about the connection between between content nihilism. It's it's a culture that

took cont seriously. They took cont seriously in the sense of the detachment of their own reason from reality, in a sense that morality was about pursuing duty, and given that they couldn't find the kind of categoricy competatives. Inside their mind, it was just a matter of who would provide the categorical imperatives that we must do out of a sense of complete and utter duty, with no thought to own well being or to any kind of reason

based sense of what is right, what is just? What is mom And if you combine that with I don't know, let's say Hegel's emphasis on statism, on the nation, on the nation as the be all end all, as the primary, as what we should all be sacrificing for, and therefore the what do you call it, the the thing we

should sacrifice too, the thing that determines how duty. If you combine kind of content with Hegel, I think what you get is is kind of a Nazi kind of mentality that is devoid of any kind of sense of individual value, any kind of sense of individual pursuit of values to the individual, things that are important to the individual. And what you get is a commitment to pursuing duties and to doing whatever you are told in the name of the nation, the state, the race, the collective, which

is kind of straight out of Hegel. You are you know, Hegel, You're ultimately just a pawn for some larger agenda, bigger than yourself, And how are you going to argue against that when we have made it impossible utive to reference reality in your argument. So the combination of I think, the combination of contin hegel basically eviscerate the individual. Eviscerate the individual. And then it's the question of who fills

the gap. And in Marxist case, what fills the gap is the politarian and in the Nazis case, what fills the gap is the Arian race or the German nation or the state. So you get that kind of you know, Nazi nihilism right out of the philosophy that that came out of it and looked alternative that the Germans were we're facing with was the complete subjectivism of the vioument of republic, which is also a consequence of cont which since we don't have categoric competatives, anything goes and then

there's no more standard, there's no truth. We've separated a reality from our senses. There's no authority to tell us what the truth is. Certainly the authority is not ourselves, it's not our senses, it's not reason, but it's not other people either. It's just whatever so what you get is a left in the standard characterizations where anything goes, where you get a hedonism and nihilism of the left. And that is not sustainable, that can't survive, That can't

we stand. Then somebody coming and say, no, your life does have purpose, your life does have meaning, and that purpose and the meaning come from you sacrificing, fulfill in the blank, God, the Church, your neighbor, the proletarian, the furor, the arian race, the nation. And that's how you get all these different horrific forms of Viihilism, all these different horrific ideologies, you all get them from the same source.

You detached. Once you detach morality from reason, you detach morality from reality, you make it impossible to link morality to reality or to link it to reason. Then really anything goes, anything goes. And then it's just a question of which dogma of people are going to follow, the dogma of the state, the dogma of the proletarian, the dogma of Christ. Which dogma do they fall? And you know, then argument becomes which dogma is least harmful, which dogma

kills fewer people? But they all kill, all of them, kill all of them. Are destructive to human beings as individuals, and it turns out as groups cure. Poland banned the Communist Party of Poland. What do you think about this? I mean, I think it's wrong to ban a political party in the context in which we live, where there is no physical threat of communism, so not agents of fun power that is trying to invade. I don't believe you should ban a communist party. I don't believe you

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

violate somebody's free speech or freedom of association. So I would be against against it for the same reason I'm not for, you know, banning religion, even though religion least to force, you know, whatever that religion is, unless it's a religion that is engaged in active violence against me. Right now, Islamism, for example, you can ban Islamism, jihadism,

ISLAMI to Telitumanism because it is actively engaged in violence against us. Jennifer says, it's so sad the lack of imagination nowadays, how could private roads work If people had been liked that in eighteen hundreds, we never would have accomplished anything. That's absolutely right, you know, and it's you know, it is important for us to be able to articulate the case for private roads and for private testy companies

and four private sewer systems and private water systems. Because people have such you know, poor imaginations, we at least need to be able to articulate kind of the principles by which they should work, and imagine a few scenarios in how they work. But it's pretty pathetic that this is the thing that really gets them, this is the thing that upsets them. I mean, the first canals, the first road roads, the first bridges were all built by

private enterprise and only then monopolized by government. But what about the poor, oldand asks, Well, the reality is, and I know he's kidding, but the reality is that the poor better off under capitalism than any other system. The poor better off under a benevolent system, a system in which there are plenty of work. They get paid based

on their productivity, not based on this skin color enough, based on their nation of origin, not based on their immigration status. Not based on you know, who their parents were.

They get based on their productive ability and a benevolent society in which when bad things happen, when we are out of luck or whatever, we live in a benevolent society in which people are much more likely to be charitable and which much more likely to be helpful, in which they're much more likely to assist us, assist the poor, and not resented because they're doing it voluntarily, as compared

to the welfare state where we do it. But we kind of we're not happy about the office there, we're not happy about our taxes, we're not happy about how they're spent. We resent it. So the poor better off because they live in a much more benevolent society and a society in which they have many, many, many more opportunities to raise themselves up. Thank you orland zg whatever rung schlang my first super chet ever. Keep thank you, thank you, thank you, Keep up the great work. We

need more rationality and you're leading the way. I'm trying. We'll keep going and I appreciate the super chat. Lincoln. How does their pollution work under capitalism? It's simple for land and water pollution because private owners want to keep it clean. But you can't divvy up the sky intersections and sell them off like you can with a plot of land lake. Well, there's some extent you can, right, So, if I live in a plot of land and somebody

is doing something somewhere and through the air, pollution is coming to me, and let's say it's blackening my lawn, it's dropping on my lawn and making it black, then if I can find the source of that pollution, I

can sue them for violating my property rights. Or if what they're spewing out into the air is clearly harmful to my health, then again I can sue them demanding that they stop or they move their factory further away from people so that they don't, you know, affect the health of the people breathing in the air that they are producing the pollution that they are producing. There are

other cases where that where it's impossible to do that. So, for example, the pollution generated by all automobiles on the road, there's nobody to sue, there's nobody to go after. Now, if the pollution is such that it's really killing people, then I think the state has a rule to step in and say Okay, you can't use that pollutant. It's literally killing people. But if the pollutant is just reducing the quality of life people have, then people can either

suffer it or move. I mean, one of the real options that existing life is, and I keep emphasizing this, is to move. You don't have to be stuck. You don't like the pollution in La Move to Montana. There's no pollution in Montana. Or move to northern California north of you know, anything north of the Golden Gate Bridge is pristine, beautiful and no pollution. So there are a million options. And part of one of the options you have is

to move away from the pollutants. If that pollutant doesn't have a particular singular source, that pollutant is just necessary for progress, for civilized life. So you know, those are the options you have. You have to clearly define the harm and clearly define the source of the harm. So I don't think it's that hard to do. Stephen Hauffer,

not a lot of questions, guys. So if you'd like to ask questions, if you have questions on anything on the topic we discussed today or anything else, please feel free to jump in anytime. We will end when the questions end. Oh but yeah, thought of a detail in

Atlas during this show, the composer in Gold's gulch tells Dagni his concert is twenty five cents, and she laughs as if to say, of course life should be this simple. Yeah, I mean it's a trade and it's benevolent, and you want to pay for the stuff that you get. I mean, when you get stuff for free, it should make you a little uncomfortable, and you want to charge for the values you produce because you value your own life and

your own time. It's a trade. So yeah, that is a beautiful scene because life in the valley is super simple because it's all out in the open. It's all explicit, a lot of what we take as implicit, and all the garbage is just not there. There's no underlying guilt, there's no underlying assumption that people are trying to exploit

other people. I mean, that benevolence that we talked about during the show today isn't Gold guilt in spades, because they've created this community where they all, you know, not only share values, but physical forces just unaccepted and they are all under the premise an assumption of voluntary trade. Win win. They're all on the traded principle, and it's explicit that they're all on a trader principle. Let's see

what I want to say. Yeah, I want to remind you of a few things. Remind you again, if you're interested in one of the one of the programs for Austin, Texas, let me know. Remind you also that I'm going to be at a Florida conference at Rands Day, the Rands Day Confidence in the last weekend in January, and you should come. It's going to be a blast. It's going to be a lot of fun. I will be speaking, There'll be a bunch of other people, lots of time

to socialize, lots of time to hang out. Last year, I was sick at the beginning of the conference, and you know, didn't have a lot of time to socialize. This year, hopefully I won't be and and so I'll be there and hang out. Lincoln asked, what day in February. What day in February is what Austin. Yeah, at this point, just send me an expression of interest. Austin is probably the fourth of the fifth of February. Fourth of the fifth is February. Yep, not probably those are the dates.

It's either the fourth or the fifth of February would be in Austin. All right, so yes, so rains Day you can find information about just by going to ransday dot com. I think you can find information about the conference on that website. I'm just gonna Ransday, don't come put it into the browser. Yeah, just go to the bottom of that page and you'll see Ramsday Weekend Confidence

and click on that and you can get that. I think prices to attend go up at the end of December, so sign up now, and yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. And you know, you should come and engage in person with with other objectivists. There's you know, it's it's it's fun to do superchats. It's fun to do by video and interact by video, but in person beats all of that so much more fun. All right, let's see, Richard, in a pure capitalist system, how would you separate state

from economics. Well, by the very fact that the state has no economic policy. There's no view about what interestrate should be. I think Trump said yesterday that interestrate should be below one percent? Like why by whose standard? Who

gets determined. There's no setting up prices, there's no setting up wages, there's no regulating, there's no controlling. So separate state from economics is the government passes law to protect property rights. It doesn't pass laws that are preventive laws. But it only passes law that deals with real risks, real dangers, real violations or potential real potential violations of rights. It doesn't tax it in terms of compulsory taxation. It

doesn't regulate. It doesn't control economic activity in any sense other than those things that are necessary for the government to function. So it enters the market to buy those things that it needs to provide the protection for individual rights. It's establishes buildings properly, you know, places, nests, say, for the protection of rights. That's it. But there's no involvement in the economy beyond that. And again it doesn't have

a position on economics. It's not Keynesian, it's not Austrian. It's not free market, not free market. It's hands off. There's no federals of the Only thing it cares in terms of money is it accepts a certain denomination of money in it, you know, you know, to fund itself. But that's it. So it's just not involved in our economic decisions. Again, and except for those the spenditship money, the buying of products, the you know, the securing of

manufacturing necessary for the protection of individual rights. So you know, in a war, it would buy a lot of stuff and in you know, promote the manufacturing weapons systems and all this stuff, because it was doing that not for the purpose of any kind of economic manipulation, but for the purpose of protection of individual rights and a sign war, for the protection of raising up for the purpose of

raising an army and defeating an enemy. Andrew Rand strongly agreed that the great philosophical divide is between between Plato and Aristotle, is that the difference between primacy of consciousness or existence. Was Aristotle opposed to Plato or did he build on Plato? Yeah, I mean it's it's it is the primacy of consciousness existence, but it's primarily epistemologically. It's

where does where does knowledge come from? For Astola comes from our census, and it comes from from using our reason to observe the world and to integrate the facts of reality and to induce from it. And for Plato, knowledge basically comes from a phone of revelation. He calls it reason, but at the end of the day, it's a it's a phone of revelation. Uh so it's it's

primarily apistemological. Now in morality again, I think Astola is much more focused on the individual's well being, an individual's happiness, and what the individual must do to achieve that happiness. And Plato has the seeds of collectivism already there. So that but the primary is I think a pistemological And there's an implication of this metaphysical difference. Was Aristot opposed to Plato? Did he build in Plato? I think both right.

He definitely opposes Plato on some issues, and he builds and Plato on others, and he embraces certain ideas of Plato. So he's not a clean break. One of the great meeknesses is that he doesn't quite have the right epistemology. So he ironmand is the first real clean break from Plato, and Aristotle doesn't fully do it. Now, I'm not an

expert enough to be able to tell you exactly where and what and so on. I encourage you to These are the kind of questions that are good when a philosopher is here to ask them about that, But yeah, he does this both. Paul, do you think the crackdown on Spanish speaking truckers results from the rights as you know, phobic and tribalistic tendencies. Yes, I absolutely think that that's

the case. I mean, who cares if the truckers they make a big deal out of a few cases that are horrible, But horrible cases exist for non Spanish speaking truckers as well. So yeah, this is part of their

anti immigration, anti multiculturalism, anti everybody different than I am tendencies on the right, and they're looking they're looking for any kind of example to paint, you know, people who look different than them, people coming from other cultures, to make them look bad, to make them look like they are disaster to human life, American life, you know, our culture. What else did I want to say? There was something else I wanted to remind you of, but I think

it has slipped my mind. We talked about the Florida Confidence, we talked about Austin. By the way, you know, for those of you in the UK, I'm thinking of doing the same thing in London. You know, we've already done a seminar in public speaking in London. We've done one

on how to be a rational egoist. I'm thinking in London on the last weekend of February of doing a half day seminar which is kind of a kind of a Q and a a ask Me Anything type thing, but live in person with a small group where we just go back and forth and you can follow up on your questions and on any topic you want, and maybe four or five hours of that on a Saturday afternoon. So if you're interested in that again, drop me an email. You're on a your on bookshow dot com so London

and Austin. This is your call to action London and Austin. If you're interested in attending events like this, jump in. Oh, Andrew, thank you. I wanted to remind you of tomorrow's show. Tomorrow's show is a member's only show, so you have to be a member. You can become a member by clicking on clipping on the member button on here on YouTube. So it's only YouTube members, not Patreon, not what do

you call it? PayPal? Only YouTube members. That's why I encourage you to do membership data at the minimum level five dollars, because many of you are already supporting the show in other places. So do just five dollars, just see you become a member, and tomorrow will do a show. It'll either be at one or two pm Eastern time. I'll let you know tomorrow. It'll be on Iinman's essay The Missing Link, which is one of her most brilliant essays. So it's the essay The Missing Link. So check it

out and you can read it. You can find it online, and then join us tomorrow for the show. All right, Lincoln to quote from a song for my mom's favorite band called the Band is no Doubt. Oh it's my life. Don't you forget? It's my life. It never ends, it never ends. That's good. That's good. Your mom has a good sense of life. Lincoln also says, will legiop ever be able to leave Christianity even in the sixties Goldwater pretended to be Christian for political benefits, And it's even

worse today. Yeah, it's much worse today. I don't know. EVA is a long long time, but not in my lifetime. I can't see them leave Christianity. Dia drevn hell sing whatever.

What led to the Great Depression? I mean, that's a big question. You know, I've got an economists on Monday evening. We're going to be talking about economics. We're going to talk about the late nineteenth century, about capitalism, about tariffs. But this would be a great question to ask him,

if you can make it. It'll be a seven pm Eastern time, just ask this question, what led to the Great Depression? I mean, I'll tell you what I view has led to the Great Depression? What led the Great Depression? Primarily, I mean a lot of a lot of bad policy, right, so, you know, just a lot of bad policy when Hoover was around, you know, doubling the income tax or raising taxes, let's put it that way, raising tariffs, trying to regulate

business and control business. And then you know, FDR embracing that. Another element of the Great Depression is an unbelievably irrational structure of our banking system in the United States, you know, so a very rational banking system. All of those contributed, but the main thing that led to the Great Depression, the thing that caused the Great Depression is really bad

federers of policy. Federals of policy, the cause banking crisis because of the bad banking structure just spiraled out of control.

But you know, eighty percent of the Great Depression is a federerserve that basically kept the money supply tight, way too tight, much tighter than a free market would, causing banks to withdraw their lending capacity and force businesses to go under in an attempt to pay back their debts, which forced people to lose their jobs and for it not to consume stuff, which caused businesses to go under,

which then they couldn't pay the banks money. And since the FED was tight in the monetary policy, money just got sucked out of the economy. It just disappeared. And now in capitalism, in a free banking system, all of that is self correcting. But when you have a central planner, when you have one central entity respons responsible for it all, there's no self correction, there's no mechanism to fix it. And so without the FED, and if you have a

truly free banking system, there's no Great depression. There's no great depression. It's unlikely there's a nineteen twenty nine stock market collapse, but there's certainly no great depression. A great depression caused the Federals have caused the Great Depression again because the banking system was in many respects broken. They might have been. There might have been some problems they might like in nineteen oh seven. They might have been

some businesses going bankrupt. There might have been some banks going out of business. It might have been all that, But that's because of a badly designed banking system against central planning. But it would have self corrected. You would have had some pain, it would have been relatively short lived,

and it would have everything would have been fine, just like in nineteen oh seven. The reason this could spiral into a great depression which lasted arguably for fifteen years until the end of World War two. The cause of that, the reason for that is the federalism Lincoln. The School of Athens painting in the Vatican is a wonderful showing of this. Plato points the sky, Aristotle points down to it. Yes, Aristotle,

I mean people understood this doesn't take objectives. Don't understand this that Plato is about that world, the other world in which you get revealed truths, and Aristotle is about this world, this world ism Plato. You know, it's why Christianity is ultimately Neoplatonists. It's an adaptation of Plato and the counter to Christianity as Aristotle. All right, all right, final question, looking forward to seeing the statue of David in person while I'm in Italy over spring break. Hopefully

it's as wonderful as you say. No, it's much more wonderful than what I say. It is, much much more. That's great. You know that's spring break is in a few months. That'll be fantastic. All right, guys, thank you really appreciate the support. Don't forget to email me you on at your on bookshow dot com if you have any interest in face to face seminars either in Austin, Texas or in London and so I can start organizing those. Thank you again to Troy in particular for his five

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