Lex Fridman Podcast - #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy

Episode Date: April 24, 2021

Michael Malice is an anarchist. Yaron Brook is an objectivist. Both are podcasters and authors. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Ground News: https://ground.news/lex - Public Goods: https://publicgoods.com/lex and use code LEX to get $15 off - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil - Brave: https://brave.com/lex - Four Sigmatic: https://foursigmatic.com/lex and use code LexPod to get up to 60% off EPISODE LINKS: Michael's Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelmalice Michael's Community: https://malice.locals.com/ Michael's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5tj5QCpJKIl-KIa4Gib5Xw Michael's Website: http://michaelmalice.com/about/ Yaron's Twitter: https://twitter.com/yaronbrook Yaron's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ybrook Yaron's Website: https://yaronbrookshow.com/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (09:43) - Desert island thought experiment (15:00) - Communism (18:30) - Immanuel Kant (19:39) - Donald Hoffman (30:10) - DMT elves (38:52) - Humility (55:45) - Jordan Peterson and religion (1:05:23) - Ben Shapiro: facts don't care about your feelings (1:19:23) - Why Ayn Rand is controversial (1:41:01) - Selfishness (1:44:43) - Communism and fascism (2:11:42) - Authoritarianism (2:20:02) - Bitcoin (2:46:13) - Anarchy debate (3:44:08) - Dangers of communism (3:49:47) - Favorite character in Ayn Rand s Atlas Shrugged (3:58:25) - Advice for young people (4:15:24) - Does love require sacrifice? (4:23:12) - Back to the island

The following is a conversation with Michael Malis and Yaron Brooke. Michael's third time on this podcast and Yaron's second, but together for the first time. Michael is an anarchist, political thinker, host of a podcast called Your Welcome, and author of Dear Reader, The New Right, and two upcoming books, anarchist handbook and the white pill. Yaron is an objectivist philosopher, chairman of the Iron Rand Institute, host of the Yaron Brook Show, and co-author of the free market revolution, and equal is unfair. Quick mention of our sponsors, ground news, public goods, athletic greens, brave, and forsegmatic. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note,

let me say that this conversation is a kind of experiment. Both Michael and Yaron are thoughtful and passionate, united in part by an interest in the history and philosophy of Onrand. But they are also very different in style. Good conversation, like good food, is often made delicious by pairing of contrasting elements. For example, someone suggested I try a peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich, which apparently is very good. Among the three of us, I don't know who's the peanut butter, who's the bacon, and who's the banana.

I'm guessing it's probably me. I'm the banana. But I hope the final result, the final dish, if you will, is equally delicious. We talk through, I think, a lot of interesting ideas. Sometimes disagreeing. Sometimes even, in rare cases, saying something humorous, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes even in rare cases saying something humorous, including dark humor, especially Michael's case. All three of us are sensitive to the suffering in the world today and throughout human history.

We think about it, we talk about it, and we deal with it in different ways. Be patient with us. Whether you agree, disagree, enjoy, or dislike the result, I hope you feel listen, hear a wiser person on the other end of it. I know I was. Mostly, I really enjoyed this conversation because no matter what, Michael and Yaron believe, underneath it all, they are genuine, kind human beings. That I'm lucky to be able to hang out with and learn from. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now, no ads in the middle.

I try to make these interesting, but I give you time stamps so you can skip. But if you do, please still check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It is the best way to support this podcast. I'm very picky about the sponsors we take on, so hopefully if you buy their stuff, you'll find value in it just as I have. This show is sponsored by a new sponsor, a really interesting one, called Ground News, an apolitical news website that helps me get all perspectives on a story and analyze my blind spots politically.

They draw from 50,000 outlets across the world and across the political spectrum. The point is to see every side and come to your own conclusions. This approach, I think, is the future of news. Whether ground news succeeds as a company, I don't know, but I really hope they do, so please do support them. But in general, with my conversation with Max Tagmark, for example, these guys give me hope that there's a technological solution to make it more frictionless for us to consider alternative perspectives to

challenge our own world views to detect blind spots through analysis, but also through a nice interface. I think these guys do a great job of it, so worth supporting. Try them out by signing up at ground.news slash Lex. It's inexpensive, so definitely worth it. But more importantly, just like I said, subscribing to them shows your support for people who are trying to fix the problem. I think clickbait journalism and the state of the media today is definitely a big problem in public discourse. Go to ground.news slash slacks to sign up and show you support. This show sponsored by public goods, the one stop shop for affordable, sustainable, healthy

household products. I use their hand soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, and I think a bunch of other stuff. Their products often have a minimalist black and white design that I find to be just beautiful. It warms my soul. I recently gave away almost everything I own as a kind of regular act of minimalism and stoicism that I practice. So, almost any time I move, I really make a deliberate action to give away almost everything I have. I think financially in the short term, this can be quite painful, but psychologically, it's truly liberating.

It really forces your mind to focus on what is important in life. Anyway, go to publicgoods.com slash Lex or use code Lex, and check out to get 15 bucks off your first order. Plus, you'll receive your first choice of either a free pack of bamboo straws or reusable food storage wraps.

Visit public goods.com slash Lex or use code Lexit checkout. They are testing our podcast this month. So this is a good time to try them out if you're interested. Cool design, good products, I'm happy. See what you think. This show is sponsored by the thing that feels most days for me, a flatted greens, the all-in-one daily drink to support

better health and peak performance. It replaced the multivitamin for me and one far beyond that was 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day and I actually been drinking to a day. For me, it tastes good, it makes me feel good, it builds a very basic, base of nutrition on top of which I can do whatever the heck I want in terms of both exercise and all the crazy brisket, delicious brisket, incredible barbecue that I've been eating in Texas.

I've been picking out, I'm not sure any of it is good for me, but I know I feel good. Actually, I'm pretty sure the brisket is pretty good, but on top of that, the thing I've been doing that's not probably good for me is all the whisket I've been drinking. It's good for the soul, maybe not so good for the body. That's where I thought of greens steps in and helps out. I can still feel good doing all the crazy hours of work that I'm doing.

Anyway, they're also giving you a one month supply of fish oil, which I also take. I think it's essential. Check them out at athleticgreens.com slash selects. That's athleticgreens.com slash selects for the drink and the fish oil. Trust me, it's awesome. You will not regret it. This show is also sponsored by Brave, a fast, privacy-preserving browser that feels like Google Chrome, but without ads or the various kinds of tracking that ads can do. I love using it, it's become my favorite browser, better than Chrome.

Yes, I still love Chrome, but this is even better than Chrome because it's super fast. You can tell the amount of incredible engineering has gone into it. The philosophy behind it is really interesting. I think it has a potential to just revolutionize the way people pay for attention on the internet. It's giving power back to the consumer to the individual. You should check out my conversation with Brendan Nike, the guy who created JavaScript, created a Mozilla and Firefox, brilliant guy, brave I think, has a chance

to be even more revolutionary than that. Of course, despite all the hate that JavaScript has gotten over the years, I've always loved it. I love it even more now. I choose to focus on the beautiful aspects of things and JavaScript I do think has beautiful things to it. Now, some of you may be deeply upset by me saying this, but I actually find beautiful things in PHP as well. I think if something is useful, it's also beautiful. Function is beauty, my friends.

Anyway, get the browser at brave.com slash Lex. It might become your favorite browser too. That's brave.com slash lex. Check them out, support them. It's good for the internet. It's gonna be good for you. This shows also sponsored by ForSigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee and plant-based protein.

By the way, I heard Cal Newport deal read on his podcast called Deep Questions. He should definitely check out for ForSigmatic. He loves them too. You may be asking does the coffee taste like mushrooms? It does not. It tastes delicious, which is all that matters. Well, actually two things matter.

Does it make you feel good? Yes. Does it taste good? Yes. Okay. There we go. So, if you want to partake in the performance enhancing chemical that is caffeine, you should definitely be drinking four-sigmatic.

Get up to 40% off and free shipping on mushroom coffee bundles if you go to foursigmatic.com slash Lex. That's foursigmatic.com slash Lex. And remember to check out Cal Newport's podcast both for the coffee recommendations but also the productivity that maybe you'll actually be getting some sleep if you follow his productivity advice. Unlike me, when I rarely have my stuff together, I just take the leap into the madness and love every moment of it. But when I grow up, I want to be like Cal Newport. Anyway, forcing mag.com slash Lex. I don't remember if I said that,

but there you go. There it is. This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Michael Malis and Yara on Rook. I've been a huge fan of the two of you for the longest time. Is it recording? Is it starting? Or are you just talking? I'm not recording at all. I'm not going to compliment this if it's not part of the show. Yes, he does.

He speaks very highly of me. You, I don't know. Maybe he's being charitable. He only does this to me on the show. Objectives don't like charity. He's a little compliment and he won't think it's sincere. There you go. So it's an incredible honor that both of you

will show up here. If we, let me just ask this sort of profound, philosophical question, how old do you think we would get along for stuck in a desert island together? What would life be like? I thought the original question you had, that you sent us this question, how long would it take for us to murder one another,

something like that was murder in the question, if I remember. I listen, he sent us homework, right? All these questions. I ignored it. I didn't spend four years at Patrick Henry University to do homework to answer your question. I think it would be very easy for us to live together in a desert island in terms of

interpersonal. I know I say this because I know a lot of people who have been the show survivor. And I know a little bit about the dynamics. So when you have people who are intelligent, who are going to have the same goals, I mean, and there's space to go away if I'm annoyed at you, I don't think it would be that hard at all. What's our goals in a desert island? Food shelter. Survival. Survival. Yeah, well, basically. Survival and getting out of there, right? You don't want to stay on the desert island. So yeah, I don't think, I think that's true of any three, you know, semi rational people who basically share the goal

that they want to survive, they want to thrive, they want to get off of the island. Why would they be conflict? Well, I mean, they would be conflict, but and they can be conflict, but they find ways to deal with it. I don't have this negative view of human beings, particularly not as individuals. It's when they get into mobs and groups and collectives that ideology can really motivate them to do horrible things. One of the things that really drives me crazy is how sinister an impact the book, Lord the Flies has had on our culture.

I read in high school. It's a superb book. That's not even a question. But it's not accurate. We see in many situations where people are trapped together under difficult circumstances, obviously that book is about children, that very quickly it is not about conflict. It very quickly becomes about cooperation. Let's work together. We all have the same goal. This is not a time to worry about other things. It really, the human beings, the animal instinct that kicks in is the social animal. And I'm gonna shut up and go over there

and have, like, stop my feet instead of argue with your own because we're really trapped in the situation and we need to make it work. Well, until the extent that they're bad people, bad people, adult with, right? So this is true of all of, how did we survive a species, right? How we survive the species?

We've been on a desert island in a sense of species, forever. Tribe survived. They survived by cooperation. They survived by dealing with bad people. Civilization is created by people cooperating and working together and allowing individuals to thrive within the group. And when bad people arise, they deal with them. Sometimes these

groups get captured by bad people and bad ideas. And probably from day one that was going on, the whole tribe is probably a bad idea to begin with. But underneath it all, the fact is that to survive as a species, we need to think, we need to be rational. And if we don't have any respect for reason, then we would all die. We would die off. So that's a hope for message.

But where does that go wrong? So with three people, it might get along. We would focus off. So that that's a hope for message. But where does that go wrong? So with three people, it might get along. We would focus on the basics of life where someone goes once women are introduced, they're incestent irrationalism. No, unless they're hormones, look, so well. Look, the opposite of the desert island would be nice, but without women, it wouldn't be fun. I'm going to edit out half the things. Michael said to us. As you know, I used to run the Iron Rand Institute. She was a woman last time I looked. Oh, wait a minute. And you know, you know, you know, it's like I'm gonna say, when Ludwig von Mises or Haslid, I was, was Mises was praising Iron Rand. And some, I think it was Haslid

who said it to her. He said, Ludwig von Mises said, you're the smartest man I've ever met. And Iron Rand said, did he say man, right? No, she viewed as a compliment. All right, but she wanted to be clear that he said man, she was excited. Absolutely. But she was. She was.

I took it as her perceiving him as seeing her as a full equal. Oh, I think that's right. I think that's right. Plus, plus I think the perception out there, the perception and the culture of man as being rational was a compliment to her. And this is also. Because that was a firm, a firm that he viewed her as a rational.

Yeah, because Mrs. Old School, he's an older Eastern European guy, so he would definitely have these rigid views of the, like his wife, I read her autobiography, Marquis von Mises, and basically he made her his secretary to the point where like he's typing something where he had something handwritten, she had to type it out. And if she made a typo, he would tear up the page, he had to start from the beginning. But it's like, that's the, this is the role of the man, this is the role of the woman. So for him to regard her, this was kind of a breaking through moment, not that she was secretly, you know, misogynist.

So I think we go wrong when people try to understand the world around them and come up with wrong ideas. And it's natural that they would come up with wrong ideas because it's hard to figure out what's right. So we start with trying to come up with mystical explanations for the existence of the things around us. And that I think very quickly leads to some people being able to communicate with the mystical stuff out there and some people not being able to communicate and some people wanting to control other people and using those pseudo explanations as a way to control. So you always have a rant called it a tiller in the witch doctor. You always have a witch doctor, the mystic, the philosopher, the intellectual, the

philosopher, you know, King is a unitive, and you have an Attila, you have somebody who wants to control other people, who's willing to use force to control other people. And when those two get together, that's when things go bad. And unfortunately, 95, 98% of human history is when those two are together and so the not having them together, having the right ideas and the right ideas are ones that are not exclusive to those guys and where we don't allow Attila to have that kind of physical power over us, that's an exception and that's rare and that's what needs to be defended. Stalin's not personally killing people, Hitler's not personally killing people, Charles Manson, not personally killing people, they need their goons.

They need their goons, but also they don't have original ideas. Nothing Stalin says is original to him, right? He needs a Marx, even Lenin, right? They all need a Marx, right? And Marx needs a particular line of thinkers that come before him that that set him up for these kind of ideas. So so a stall in both needs is goons, even though he's somewhat of a goon, particularly stalling He has a bank robbery, yeah, and then so take Lenin Lenin, I think is a better example because Lenin's more Intellectual if you were but Lenin needs his goons. he needs his stallions, but Lenin also needs his mocks.

And we don't want to let mocks off the hook because mocks knows, I think, implicitly, that his ideas have to lead to Lenin and Stalin. His ideas are not neutral. I don't think it's implicit at all. I think Marx very much glorified revolution, blood and terror. This is not implicit in the society. No, I absolutely, I mean, there are letters between him and Angles where they talk about which peoples will be have to be eliminated,

because they don't have that proletarian thing. Right. So, so I think that there's certain, certain peoples in Southern Europe are not appropriate for, for, for, for the utopia to come and will have to be gone. And Mark's also had this concept which we still see today in Garbled Ways of Polylogism, which is the fear of a capitalist and I'm bourgeois or I'm a worker, your logic is different than mine. It's literally gonna be impossible for us to communicate. And at a certain point, you're gonna have to be liquidated

and they pretend that doesn't mean murdered, but it means murdered. And very quickly everyone becomes a capitalist of bourgeois and then you have the holiday moron, things like this. No, he knows exactly what it's going to lead. And this is why people say, oh, Marx is not evil. He just wrote books. No.

It's the people who write books who are responsible for the way history evolves. And they know the bad guys certainly know the consequence of their ideas. And they need to bear the moral responsibility for what what happens when the ideas implement. Here's a wait can I ask a question? Yeah.

Because I I think I know more about random yarrondo so let's see. Oh, okay. The god has been thrown down. Who did I ran say is the most evil man who ever lived the amount of content? That's right. Correct. No, that I know. I mean, yeah, it's a it's a big deal than the amount of content is.

And most people don't understand why, because if you read content, there's certain passages in content that sound pretty liberal. They sound pretty, he's for the individual. It sounds like he's for the individual. He sounds like he's for the American revolution. Things like that. But when you, when you actually read this philosophy

and what he's trying to defend and what he's trying to undermine, he's trying to undermine the foundations that make the revolution possible, that make freedom and individualism possible. He's trying to destroy the enlightenment. And the enlightenment is all those ideas that make freedom, individualism feasible. He's trying to undermine reason. And without reason, we're nothing. We can't survive as a species. So, and that's why she thought he was the most evil person because his ideas undermine the very foundations of what it requires to be a human being.

Reason and individualism. Those are the things he's trying to eviscery. I know you've talked about Hoffman before. So Hoffman is a modern day attempt to... Donald Hoffman. Donald Hoffman. Donald Hoffman. Donald Hoffman is the University of California, O'vine, neurologist, neuroscientist, something

like that. Simon and once, and we were at one of these conferences where you do a quick intro, you said and you're doing a quick introduction was, I've just written a book that proves that evolution has conditioned us not to see reality. Okay, that is very content. Yeah, and he is basically just presenting pseudoscience to defend cons position about epistemology

and about metaphysics. And there's nothing original there. And he puts up a bunch of equations. And he says, I ran a simulation and it proves I'm right. So, Yaron is a little bit frustrated with Donald Hathensworth. Let me, let me frustrated. I just think it's completely wrong.

And it is, and it's anti-life, anti-mind, anti-evolution. I think it's an anti-evolutionist at the end And I think it you know anytime you say look here's the important point anytime you say reality doesn't exist Well, who are you? What do you mean by we are what are any of your words mean? What does anything you say even mean if it doesn't refer to something that's actually out there in reality? Let me try to defend this point of view because in a certain kind of sense, I hear it as being humble in the face of the uncertainty that's around us. When you speak with the confidence of Iron Rand and yourself, that reason can be this weapon that cuts through all the bullshit of the world

and makes us like have a ethical moral life and all those kinds of things. You kind of assume that reason is a superpower that has no limits. Wait, I'll call that. You'll call that so go ahead. But I got this one. See, this is already leading to a murder by words. Yeah, and we've been all these talking. We're getting together.

We're gonna get a log. We just made him our slave. We're all gonna get along. He's just gonna do the work. I'm afraid I cannot provide any value as a slave. So this is not gonna welcome me. I'd free free my values dinner. That's the problem I'm trying to get.

That's a solution. Okay. But Donald Hoffman says that there is, like, he makes an argument that the, exactly as you said, that the, what we perceive is not, is very, very far from actual physical reality. In fact, we're not able to perceive the physical reality at all. And he also makes the bigger claim that evolution prefers beings who are not attached to reality. So like, evolution created creatures that are basically functioning way outside of what

the physical reality is. Now I got this. I got this. Okay, because there's a lot to unpack here and I hate all of it. Okay, first of all, no, no, I'm serious. First of all, when you were making that comment about how, you know, reason is a super power beyond limit, you're being ironic, but it's true. And I'll give you one example, which is astronomy. If you look at the physical size of the universe, it's literally in one sense, in comprehensible. So he's right in the sense that I do not understand and none of us understand what it means for 93 million miles away for the sun to be. It makes, it's a number, I'm not on the screen, right? That said, the fact that my mind and I'm not one of the great

thinkers of all time is capable of getting there, is capable of appreciating what the sun means, what heliocentrism means. The fact that you're a math person, that you could look at galaxies and reduce it to 10 to the 64th power in terms of distance, that shows the unlimited capacity of the human mind and reason. Number one, number two is if he says that evolution favors those who are not in touch with reality, and I don't know in what context he's saying that, because that sentence can mean a lot of different things. Evolution is what guides. Reality is what guides evolution. Evolution works because you are fitted to the reality of the situation around you. It's not that someone is sitting down and says, well, I'm going to add a fin to this animal, and that fin helps it swim. Swim, I engineer a checkmark. It's that mutations occur.

The vast majority of these mutations are against reality. They do not further this animal's life, or this plant's life or this fungus's life, but the ones that are in touch with reality, such as, okay, it's really cold here. There's no predators here. If I could figure out, and I'm using that term very loosely, a way where I could survive in the cold, I don't have predation. It's really great. So the fact that unconsciously and mindlessly this process can force the mutation and evolution of the form precisely means that they're in touch with reality. Now if he means the consciousness is not in touch with reality, that's another thing that I really hate.

You're referring to the reality as like the biological reality of evolution, but all of that is based on many other layers of abstraction that Ultimately has quantum mechanics underneath it all and he's saying somewhere along the layers You start to lose more and more and more attachment to the exercise I'm not sure. Yeah, I do not I despise the idea I say despise I'm not using this. I'm not joking and I idea that the reality we don't live in is somehow more real than this. That is a very dangerous idea to say, well, quantum works in this way, and I'm sure he's correct, and none of us disagree with that. What we perceive macro works in a different way.

Well, that's the real reality, and this is fake. Bullshit. This is the real reality. That is a different type of subset, but no one's living there. Well, and it's a subset. And humanity is the real reality. That is a different type of a subset, but no one's living there. Well, and it's a sub-spec- And humanity is the starting point. It's a subset that has to integrate with this world. There isn't two world, one in the quantum world and one here.

They're integrated. Now we might not have the scientific knowledge to know how they're integrated. But so what? We know that there's only one reality, and that's this one. He has this difference. He says evolution matches up to fitness,

not to reality and he creates this dichotomy between fitness and reality. But that's complete nonsense. There is no such thing as a concept of fitness outside of fitness to what? To reality. The fitness and reality are the same thing. They're not separate things. So the whole way he sets this up intellectually is wrong, I think, to some extent dishonest and suddenly philosophically corrupt. And it's content. Again, he's accepted content ideas and everybody pretty much has accepted content ideas

for the last 200 years. And they give it a different facade and he's giving it an evolutionary facade. But it's just a facade for the same idea. And that is that somehow because we have eyes, we cannot see because the light waves are going through a medium and that medium necessarily distorted. The medium changes the resolution at which you see, right? Like if I take off my glasses, I'm seeing it a little differently.

But the thing is still there and the thing is still there in the way I see it because the handle, I'm grasping the handle, I'm seeing it a little differently. But the thing is still there. And the thing is still there in the way I see it because the handle I'm grasping the handle I'm lifting the cup. That's not an illusion. That is a real cup. So do you think some things are more real than others? For example, money. There's a bunch of things that seem real. This is not an animal farm reference. Is this because he felt love? There's nothing as real as love, right, Lex? What is love? Love is a fundamental part of the quantum mechanics. Yes. No. No, no. Is there some things that have become reality because we humans in a collective sense to believe it? You can't believe something collectively. Now, it hasn't become real. What does it mean to say something's real? That is, you can so love example, it loves a good example, right?

Love is an abstraction, right? It's not, it's not something I can touch. It's not something I can see, but it's only something you could feel. Well, it's something you could hear. Right. We love different. You and I, I think I'm just starting to understand. I can't love.

Love. You can't, love is, love is an abstraction. So is love real? Yes, it's real because I feel it It's an existence, but it's not an existence in the same sense as this cup is so You know abstractions A real but at the end of the day all abstractions have to be able to be You know reduce to actual concrete so you can use it

I really don't like criticizing someone whose work I haven't read second hand. So I want to take this away from speaking about him personally, because I'm not familiar with his work, but I was a nice guy. That makes me like that. I know I made it. That makes him like me. I think now you're back talking about fitness, evolutionary fitness. I think there's, um, uh, disingenuousness when we talk about the word real in terms of ideas are real versus the cup is real and you try to switch back into between those two meanings and it's a little bit of linguistic word play that is trying to force a point that's not accurate in my opinion. Well, I think the issue is, and what he's challenging is, and what conscious challenging

is, do we know reality? And I think the answer is, yes, we do. We know reality. We observe it. We now do we know everything about reality? No, we can't, for example, sense what a bat's, bat sense is as reality, right? A bat observes reality through what is it to sound waves, right?

Yeah. So it has a different sense, but it's the same reality. It's still a table. It the bats spatial relationship to the table is different than ours, but the object is still the same object. But how do you know that's true? Are you not just hoping that's true? But that's assuming that's true.

No, that's what no means. No means I have identified an aspect of reality. That's literally definition of knowledge. Now if you say how are you certain, well, that's a whole other question, but one of the reasons I know it was certain is because this happens. Okay. And I know this is going to happen. And if I tell you, if you go downstairs, you're going to see, you know, Mr. Jones,

and you walk downstairs and I see Mr. Jones at the very least, you know, something's going on there. So what about all the things that mess with our perception? For example, we've talked about psychedelics before, talked about in dreams where you detach from this, I mean, there's certain things that happen to your brain to where you're not able to pursue it. So you're not perceiving reality. This right. So your brain is creating a different reality. It's not real. That's how brain to where you're not able to pursue. So you're not perceiving reality. That's right.

So your brain is creating a different reality. It's not real. That's... How do you know it's not real? How do you know the elves who meet in the... Because I need, because, partially, because I need to take a drug in order to do it, because I'm asleep when I'm dreaming,

it's not reality. That is, that is clearly a creation of our mind. It's not a creature. Hold on, let's get to theed. Let's get the psychedelic. The drug is real. If you are, I'm not, I think you're going to be thinking I'm joking a lot more than I am this episode. I'm going to be the humorous objectivist.

He could be the jazz, the court jester. In terms of psychedelic, when people are perceiving these elves, these machine elves, these other entities, whether they are, they could either be real or not, I don't know, but the point is that doesn't go to his broader point because if these beings exist and the only way to perceive them is to take a drug, they still exist. This is just, for example, if I'm in, in, in, uh, uh, walking outside in the woods at night, right, and there's a deer deer and I can't see it. But if I put on night vision goggles, I can see it. That deer was there the entire time.

It's not that the night vision goggles caused a deer to appear. You can recreate it not only using night vision goggles, but you can then use so-now, you can use other mechanisms, but which to prove that the deer is there. The thing with psychedelics is that, now I don't know, because maybe I'm the least experienced with psychedelics here probably.

My yes is every time you take this side, you have exactly the same experience of the deal. No. Second, are there other mechanisms, other scientific mechanisms by which I can find the deal out there other than the psychedelics? We don't know yet. No, well, we don't know yet.

Well, but this is, Arkham's razor, right? This simplistic explanation here is the most likely. And that is that you're, you've taken something that's messing with the chemical in the brain. Something is being that your brain can project with dream. Nobody's arguing that the dream is real and reality's not. Or if they are, I think they're nuts. The dream is a dream. Your brain is creating an image of telling you a story. Psychedelics are simulating the same thing. That's probably what's going on until there's evidence to the contrary. Well, I'm going to disagree with you a little bit because let's take Adderall, for example. No one here disagrees. That's something much more simpler than, unless, you know, out of this world. I think what he might be speaking to, I know Joe Rogan talks about this and other

people in this space, is that when you take certain drugs, it changes your perception. It doesn't have to be otherworldly. It changed your perception of what's around you. And as an example, they talk about is that three of us are talking, there's lots of other stuff in the room. We're only aware of it vaguely on a personal level. So let me finish. Let me change the...

Hold on, let me finish. No, I don't do that. Well, yeah, you're really. You're about to start. Just back to the desert island murder. No, but we just resolved it within three seconds. We did. There's no, there's no Hong.

He's trying to get us. Yeah, it's not gonna happen. I'm trying. There's no Hong. I'm trying to create murder. No one has asthma. It's gonna be fine. So if the two of you murder each other,

there's more food for me. There's no, just saying. What do you, you're all, you're from from the alcohol. Waitings would go up. You more food for me. There's no, just saying. You're all, you're from from the alcohol. Waiting should go up, you should go up. Yeah, for the ratings, yeah. But if you take, for example, at our all-er speed, right? People, like you focus on things,

you perceive things that aren't there, but that doesn't mean those things weren't there to begin with. There are absolutely ways to change human perception, chemically, through glasses, through getting drunk. None of that changes the fact that the reality underneath it is real and is causing this effect.

Absolutely, and it has a particular nature, right? And all it's doing is changing the focus, right? So if I take off my glasses, I'm seeing the same thing. I'm just seeing something is out of focus, and maybe in a distance, I can't see something. It's just gone, and then I put it on there it is. That thing was always there. It's just my desensit sensitivity I have to it is changed.

And it's absolutely not sensitive to everything equally and drugs can change the relative sensitivities. It doesn't change reality. It changes our ability to focus on reality. Let me give you one great example. Let's take a look. The microscope, I forget who it was, his name was with an L, the scientist who discovered it.

He had a drop of water and he's seeing monsters, the protozoa in this drop of water. For him, it is like a drug experience. Wait a minute, I'm drinking this and there's alien beings whose shapes are completely crazy in this water. Those beings were always there. Those beings who were there before any of us were here.

They've been there for billions of years. But because he had this apparatus, now he's able to see protozoa. No one's arguing protozoa or extra-dimensional. No one's arguing the supernatural. Amoebas are well-studied, Parmiseo, all the other lots. So if these elves, the machine elves are real, and the only way to perceive them is through DMT or something like that,

that doesn't contradict the broader point that they've always been there, and this is the mechanism for perceiving them. So here's the word I was looking for. So it would actually Greg taught me this. So Greg told me, so it's resolution, right? So it's resolution. My resolution changes with the glasses. My resolution gets funny now with the microscope. So there's probably some bacteria here on the table. 100 percent, right? There's no doubt about it. I can't see them. So I need I can't see them. So I need a Microsoft to see them, but they're either there or they're not there.

And I have the tools to discover whether they are there or they're not there. And that's called a Microsoft. Microsoft. Now, they could be even smaller beings than even with a Microsoft, I won't be able to define it. But that's completely arbitrary to claim that that they're there until I find a tool to be able to discover it. The same with what you see if you're seeing other beings when you're taking psychedelics. Unless you find another tool to be able to see them with, the simplest assumption is probably the

tourist assumption. But even the not simplest assumption doesn't contradict the broader point. No, which is again, it turns out that there are these creatures that you can only see with psychedelics, and there are these creatures that you can only see with psychedelics, and our resolution while we're not on psychedelics, it's not fine enough to observe them. So what? That doesn't change the fact that we evolved

to survive in reality as it is. What do you do with the possibility that our resolution as a currently stands is really, really crappy that basically? But you don't know that no, we know it we know it compared to who compared to the future possibilities like artificial It is true But that's not relevant much much like yes, the magnitude here Well, he's the standard that that often uses evolution, right?

The reason I know that our resolution is phenomenal is phenomenally good, right? Is Look at us. We're sitting here comfortably and in in in an apartment with air conditioning and in warm Austin with microphones and it can't wet it all the stuff with really good at survival and changing environment. Indeed, if you look at the species that we know of, there's not a species that come anywhere close to ability to deal with reality, to observe to reality, to understand reality, and to shape it. Now, in the future, well, we'll come up with machines that can figure out stuff that we have no clue about today.

Yeah, but only because we're so well suited to reality that can we create those things. And I promise you, it's in the future, it's going to be much more what you're saying. That's how it's going to happen. No, but the thing is when the creatures from the future look back to the things we're saying now, what I ran as saying, what you're saying, with certainty, do you think they'll laugh at the level of how much confusion there was, how much inaccuracies. Did you know?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no you know? No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, can I let me get this one? You know what they're going to do? They're going to do what you do when any of us read Aristotle, or read any of these great geniuses of the past. It's like, these people didn't have electricity. They didn't have, like, warm clothes or anything, and they're able to figure out the diameter of the earth.

Like, the creativity to be, and to get it within like a few miles the creativity And to figure out the speed of light when you don't even have a stopwatch Like when you look back like a lot of its nonsense and we but we're at the same It's like when you're talking to a kid you don't you disregard the nonsense and when they get something right It's all that's you so it's never a numbers game, right? So it's the the few that Validate and justify the rest. So when you look at Aristotle, he's talking about the, there was one of those causes, which is like time travel, and it doesn't

really make sense. But you look at the rest of his stuff, right from Plato, or any of these grates, it's like, oh my, this is an amazing miracle. Not, I wouldn't say literally miracle, I got you around. But at the same time, yeah, a lot of these other people had stupid ideas. You don't care. You care about those great, great minds and how they moved us all forward. To this day, we still study Pythagoras. And it's not even just the sciences in the math. Think about philosophy.

I mean, how much is they to learn from reading Aristotle? Plato, or Socrates, when you disagree with them. I mean, how many giants have they been in all of human history that have had the minds of a Socrates, a Plato, and an Aristotle? A thousand years, will they look back at Plato and Aristotle and admire them?

Absolutely. Well, they find certain things that are wrong, yes, but certain things that Aristotle discovered are absolutely right and will always be right. Certain things that I invented discovered will always be right. I think a lot of what she came up with was some things we'd be discovered to be wrong. Yeah. You know, I that wouldn't shock me. But the genius and the and the and the the truth of the we know today is amazing. It's stunning to be pessimistic about us

because in the future we'll know more. Not pessimistic, but more humble. There's a reason to be humble. I mean, I really think humility is a vice, not a virtue. What's it to be humble about? Look, look at life. This is amazing. No, I know.

But the word humble has different. No, I know. I know. I was going to get humility in a sense. But the word humble has different. No, I know. I know. Okay. I was going to get humility in a sense of, humility in a sense of not appreciating the genius and the ability and the success and all the stuff that we as individuals, I think, in our lives.

But as a culture, as a movement, if you think about moving in terms of those of us who respect reason, have achieved in spite of the odds, we should be proud of that and pride is the virtue. Humility in the sense of, yeah, I know there's more to know. I know there's a lot more to know and in the future, well, no more. Sure, but I don't think that's the way, see, I take humility as the way the Christians use it, which is the other way. And I think it's a real vice. It's, it's, don't think of yourself too much, just because you can think, you know, that's not a big deal or just because you can create this. It is a big deal. Your achievements are a big deal and you should

take credit for them. So be careful with the word humility because, because the real meaning is the Christian meaning, which is a very, very bad meaning. Well, hold on. Let me be a little pedantic because there's not just thing as real meaning is the Christian meaning, which is a very, very bad meaning. That's what I'm trying to say. Hold on, let me be a little pedantic, because there's not just things real meaning, right? So there's different meanings, okay? Hold on, this is semantics, but here's another real meaning

that you're not gonna disagree with. Sure. Which is, the smartest person on earth is ignorant of 99.9% of knowledge, right? So if I meet someone who is less intelligent than me and less informed than me, it is still certain that this person has things to teach me.

If I go to a mechanic and maybe this guy is dumb as rocks, I don't know anything about cars. What he tells me about that car is going to, I could take it to the bank. He's going to be in a position to inform me. So one of the reasons humility is extremely important is very often you have people and you see this very much in academia who think you know we're exactly going around who think they're no adults and they think oh I have this degree you're a layman you've never been formally educated therefore not only you dumb and uneducated and you're wrong

and it's like this person might be have you want a great example of this, and this is an example Yaron might not like, is a lot of times you have these native populations, and they'll have a better understanding of the animals around them, the plants, the fruits, whatever, and you'd have these scientists and be like, oh, they're talking about this monster in the woods, yeah, whatever, this giant ape. But it was real, it was the gorilla, but you know, you dismiss them because, oh, these are stupid ignorant, whatever people. That's kind of changed a some extent, but that is an aspect of humility that I think behooves Especially highly intelligent people because there is such a presumption to be dismissive of people who you regard as less than But they're often right so I agree I agree with all of the concrete examples

I just think we should come up with a better word than humidity and I don't have have one, because I'm not a witsmith, I'm not, this is not my strength. But humility is a word from the Christian ethics. And it means something very specific in the field of ethics. And it means the opposite of of what I think virtue requires. It's demeaning, it's to put you down, it's to resist pride, and I think pride is a very important thing. I don't know, you're on. But again, you have to define your terms properly. Hating myself has been quite useful for me as a... Well, but that's because you're Russian and Jewish, so by... What? This this changes everything. You know, this is this is what happens right.

We're brought up to you know, to to feel exactly that way. Like that. We're in a good Russian boy. So we got him. Oh my god. What is this? What is this? Gimato again.

What is that what it says? Yeah. It's gimato again. I can't. I'm blind. Yeah, but it's but as long as you're good But it's a good But it's a kosher Did you check of its kosher?

This is Ukrainian my friend. Oh, oh my god. That is a sense there you that is really simple You know, be a survivor of the same town. Okay, my dad is a Korean don't get mad so I don't think I don't think self, self, well, where did you, how did you define it? You're self hate? Yeah, I think, I think self hate is quite instructive. Speak for yourself, fear of. I think that humility is quite destructive. Humility in the sense of, I'm no big deal.

No, I mean, if you've achieved something in life, you are big deal. You are big deal because you don't look, you got the two of I'm no big deal. No, I mean if you've achieved something in life, you're a big deal You are big deal because you don't look you got the two of us to fly into town Just to sit down here and have a conversation with you. You're a big deal. That says more about you than me I'm starting to question your ability to reason with the decisions you're making. On the aspect of, and I should mention that the idiot by Dusty Esk is one of my favorite novels and there is a Christian ethic that runs through that. I mean because, yeah, I mean particularly, I hate to bring this up, but particularly Russians and particularly Russian Jews and particularly Eastern European Jews are incredibly Christian.

There is a real Christian theme in Judaism that's about guilt. Guilt is not, there's no guilt in Judaism. David doesn't feel any guilt, Solomon. There's no guilt in the Old Testament. Plenty of guilt. Once Christianity has an impact on Judaism, we're raised to feel this way. We're raised to be humble. We're raised not to feel special. We're raised to think we're no big deal and our mothers put us down and use that against

us and try to inflict guilt on us. They raise us up and then they knock us down. It's a mechanism, but it's a cultural mechanism and I think it's very destructive to self-esteem and to happiness. Let me and I'll give you a great, he's absolutely right with what he just said. I disagree. Well, yeah, why? Why is he right? Because like my family, for example, could still doesn't really understand how I could pay the rent because I'd have gone to an office. And like when I started out trying to be a writer, the immediate reaction isn't, which a lot of times I talk to kids, right?

And they won't have these aspirations. And I'll tell them, go for it while you're young. If you fail, you'll go to your grave with, like, I tried my best. I didn't make it happen. Whereas if you don't try and never achieve, you are going to feel horrible for the rest of your life. And this is the example I use all the time. I bring up many times.

I go, go to any bookstore and look at all those terrible, terrible books in the shelves that you wonder, how is this a book? That could be you. You could be that crappy writer. But the thing is in that culture that Yaron was talking about, you tell your family, I'm going to be a writer.

Who do you think you are? Why do you think you're going to be a, you're no Stephen King. And it's like, why do you have to be Stephen King? Why can't you just be a mediocre, crappy writer making the rent? The best that you can be, right? But even that is an amazing accomplishment.

Yeah, absolutely. If I don't have to go to an office and I write books that not that many people read this is story of my life, at the same time, I do have pride because I made this happen. You can be the best version. I mean, this is a cliche,

but you can be the best version of yourself. It's not a competition. And yet, our Jewish mothers, that's not what they aspire us to be. They aspire us to be the best version of what they imagine, what the culture imagines. You know, what society imagines, not what, not what's, it's not about you in their minds. And I've seen it. I see it all around me. People putting their kids down, putting themselves down.

It's not healthy. I've never told this story. I'm going to tell it now. When I graduated college, I was a temp for a while because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Right? And when you're a temp, it's like playing roulette. You're going to have jobs that pay well, that suck, and pay well that are great, or that are great that don't pay well and suck and pay poorly. But it's you in your 21 you have that that kind of space. And my grandmother was talking to her brother, he's talking about his kids, she's talking about me, she's from Odessa. And she told me she lied to him about how much money I was making. And that's something I've never brought up and it still hurts me because it's like, And that's something I've never brought up and it still hurts me because it's like you're approval of me Should be a function of my character my happiness and my and the fact that you feel ashamed over how much money I'm making Especially at this point in my life. I thought was very

Really misplaced priorities. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. I don't know what to make make of that I think that there's a huge benefit to the humility really misplace priorities. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know. I don't know what to make of that. I think there's a huge benefit to the humility terms aside for believing that others can teach you a lot. Everybody can teach you a lot. I just mentioned that. But I have to make it out. No, you only do it.

Exactly. Yeah. At the point. But for that, I do believe you have to not constantly sort of break your ego apart. And constantly question whether you know anything about this world. And sort of there's a negativity with it that that I think is very useful. And it's also very fulfilling just constantly.

I don't know. It's the other way around. I find that the more the more I know, the more I know, I know the easier it is for me to learn from other people. The broader context I have, the more curious I become, the more areas I know, you know, it's true that the more you know, the more areas you know, you don't know. And the more I find myself attracted to people who can teach me something about things I don't know.

Whereas if I was ignorant, if I truly believed, I didn't know anything, I don't know how it would live. It would really completely challenge everything, everything about life in me. Where would I even start? You would know where to start. So no, I think, and if you don't recognize what you know, you don't have a full

appreciation of yourself. So really building a recognition of what do I know? Right? And how much do I know is really crucial to living? And I'll tell you something else that furthers my life enormously is when you reach a certain point in your career in your life and you're talking to people who are a lot younger, and they might be smart, driven, intelligent, they lack data. When you're 23, you don't know how to speak corporate, you don't know what the code words are. So if I am in a position to sit down with this kid and be like, do x, y and z. And here's why I'm coming to this conclusion. This is the information that really leads me to this conclusion. And I can save them from some

of the suffering I went through. That is very gratifying. It's making the world a better place. And it's also the opposite in a sense of humility because like in this context, I'm an expert. Or at least knowledgeable enough that I'm comfortable giving you advice. Yeah, and look, everything I do

is about me knowing stuff that other people don't. And I know a lot of stuff other people don't. And I do. And it's fun. It's, I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher at heart always happy. It turns And I do. And it's fun. I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher at heart. Always happy. It turns out I didn't know that early on. But, you know, I like becoming an expert and then trying to teach people. Doesn't mean I know everything. Quite the country.

Again, the more I know, the more I know that there's certain things I don't know and there's certain areas of expertise I don't have. But look, pride is a broader concept than that. Pride is about, and humility is the opposite of pride. And Christianity has that right. Pride is about taking your life seriously. Pride is about wanting to be really good at living, wanting to have the knowledge. And I think what you're describing is,

you're describing as a constantly learning. Sometimes I have to re-achallenge myself. I have to question what I believed in or to gain new knowledge. That's all good, but that is a drive that is driven by pride. You want to know that lots of people out there that don't want to know because they don't have that pride. They don't have that commitment to live, the commitment to achieving something. And I'm going to say something. And I'm gonna say something else that's,

I think it's crucial. Humility is extremely important when it comes to politics. Because if you feel comfortable telling someone you've never met, how to live their life, that is a complete lack of humility. Well, I lack it, obviously, because I tell people how to live all this time. Not through the force.

Not through the force. Not, and of course not in the concrete. Not, I don't not in the concrete. I don't tell them, you know, move talk, although I just tell them to move to often, but I don't tell them this is, this is what you do is a profession, but I give them the principles,

because I think they're principles of our own. They're making the choice, that's my point. No, politically what I'm saying is, it shows a lack of humility to be like, I've never met this person. This is how I'm gonna take money from him. I'm gonna see, but I don't see that humility. There's nothing. No, it's the lack of humility. No, but it's not even a lack of humility because it's who am I to tell him how to live? No, of course you're

an humility. No, who are you to tell him how to live? Is an issue of, it's an issue of of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, there. I think it's a lack of being a human being. It can be both. For sure. I think it's, who gives you the right to dictate to somebody else how to live their lives? Yeah, but that's a lack of humility. If you think you have that right. Again, we're using humility in a very different way.

No, we're using the same way. I don't think I don't think it's a good thing. Because the person who feels comfortable, they think, I know, I know better than you, how you should live your life, to the point where I'm couple forcing you, because I know it's going to be best for you in the long run. And the answer is you don't know. Right, but that's a lack of humility.

I think in your mind, you're on humility somehow tied to the Christian concept, the humility, and so you're kind of allergic to the word. Well, absolutely, because it's part of, if you look at the cardinal, the cardinal, virtues, the cardinal sins in Christianity pride is a cardinal sin and humility is a cardinal right? Virtue, but they they don't mean it in the sense because they're happy to tell you how to live

right? They're happy to be philosophy kings over your life and they believe that's being humble and you should be humble by the way in listening to the Pope or listening to God, because what do you know? You know nothing. God knows everything. So you should shut up and do what you're told. That's the sense in which I don't think you should be humble. I mean, it's a sense in which I was used example of Abraham, right? God comes to Abraham and says, go kill your, your, your eldest son, your own son, right? Your own. He said, go it's like in what is they bam dooses? Yes, sir. I'll follow and he's a moral hero for Judaism, Christianity, any storm. He is a moral hero because he follows orders because he's humble. He died. You

know, I would tell God to go to hell. Screw you. I'm not killing my son. You know, you know, I mean, he killed his son. That's only fair. Well, this is before he killed us. I didn't know that. But no, but part of the evil part of the evil of Christianity is that he's killed his son in the most those torturous form of death possible. I mean, the whole story of Jesus is one of the most immoral unjust stories ever told and that Christians elevate this to a position of I'd love to have this conversation with Jordan, right? Jordan Peterson, the idea of elevating... That'll never happen. That'll never happen.

No, it won't. But elevating Jesus, exactly. Elevating Jesus to a super hero status for one of the most immoral acts in human history is horrific. So, yeah, I mean, I'm opposed to God sacrificing his own son, never mind my son. But yeah, let him go do it to his own son. But he did get his son killed to go.

The story is about Abraham He killed the God. The story's about Abraham, not about God. First of all, God is mean, right? To put Abraham through that. But, but Abraham has to assume that he's going to kill his son and he lifts his, he's going to do it and he stopped. So the whole point is obedience. That's where humility leads to.

It leads to the opposite of the story you were telling. It leads to people saying, yes, I should be told what to do. Where's the authority you actually know something? I don't know anything. No, I know a lot, and I know a lot about my life. The science. So you stay away from my life, because I have pride in my life. The science is settled, right?

Look at these experts. Who am I to argue with these experts? They tell me to drink dog pee. I'm going to drink what am I going to drink? Not drink dog pee? Yes. Let's go back to the island. We're on island again. We're back to the island and let's let's go to the island. Let's let's let's live on island. So it's everything is an island in some context like earth is an island, these universe is an island in a multiverse.

like Earth is an island, these universes an island in a multiverse. There's only one universe. All right, so let's invite Jordan Peterson to this island. You wish, hold on. Hold on, this, big girl. What's she doing? Lex, Lex Friedman, look him up. Lex who? Yes, I don't know.

Lex says, no, I'm being of a following almost. No, I know, I know Jordan, I know his family actually through Jim Keller, who's his relatives and engineer. So, and I just talked to Sam, who is perhaps a little bit aligned in some sense on your perspective on religion and so on. So, let me ask, is there some other things? Same here. Oh, sorry, Sam Harris. He's on first name relations with these guys. I just talked to Sam. I thought, I'm just like humility. Let's talk about humility, like my buddy Sam, I said, Barack, you might. Yeah. I simply knew you went out the window.

I'm just a natural language processing model that I assume that once I mentioned Jordan Peterson, it becomes an obvious statement what Sam means. This is how neural networks think. This is how robots think. Michael, you should know this. I thought by now, you'd be a scholar. I'm not the couple. For the sake of the audience.

Humility. Everything can teach you something even a robot. Okay. So, do you think there's value in religion or broader? Do you think there's value in myth and it's within talking about the value of reason? Do you think it's possible to argue in society as we grow this, the population of our little island that there's some value of common myths, of common stories, of common religion? There was value.

There is no value today. So human beings need explanations, right? They need a philosophy to guide their life. They need ethics. They need some explanation of what's going on in the world. And it's not accident that the early religions had a river garden, they had a sun god and a moon god. Because they, everything they didn't understand, they made god.

So so they had multiple gods because they didn't understand very much. As human understanding evolved increased as we knew reality more, right, we came to the conclusion of, you know, this is very inefficient to have all these gods. This is a genius of Judaism, right? Let's just have one bucket to put all the stuff we don't know in. And we'll call it one god. And then we don't wait as we gain new knowledge, we can just take it out of the bucket that's God and put it into the bucket of science. At some point though, at some point, and that point suddenly came during the scientific revolution, I think, we could come to the conclusion that no, we don't need this bucket that's called God to explain the things that we don't know. We can say we don't know. And we're learning. And slowly, the knowledge is increasing.

And yet there's a lot more that we don't know, but we don't need to throw it into some bucket that's called God in order to have it. And I think that's true from morality. And it's true for everything else, right? As we gain the tools to understand what morality requires, we don't need a set of commandments. We can figure out morality from human nature and from reality. So I don't think we need religion anymore. I think I think religion needed to die probably about 200 years ago and was dying. I think up until Kant, it seemed to be dying. And one of Kant's missions, as says, is the revival of religion against the attack of reason and enlightenment. Now, mythology's a little different

because it depends what you mean by mythology. Certainly we need stories and certainly we need art. Art is a, and Rand writes about this a lot. And you know, she's an artist and she writes, I'm a huge fan of the romantic manifesto, which I think is one of a underappreciated masterpieces. Oh, I hate it. Okay, that's it.

Okay. So I think we have a real need, right? As a conceptual being, we have a need for aesthetic experiences. We have a need to concretize abstractions, to concretize abstract ideas, to concretize the complex nature of the world out there. And that's what painting sculpture, to some extent, music, but painting sculpture literature does for us. So to the extent of mythology serves that purpose, it's just art, right?

To the extent that it serves another purpose, that is that it's a way for the gods to communicate with us or it fits some kind of pre-existing mental construct that we have again, kind of a conscient perspective, right? That we have these categorical imperatives and these mis- this mythology links up to, then I think it's false. It's an art-hawful and destructive. So I believe religion today is a destructive force

on planet Earth. I think it's always been a destructive force. It was just a necessary force, right? You need it in explanation. People needed something to believe in. Once you get philosophy and once you get philosophy that starts explaining real life, real world, you don't need religion anymore. And indeed it becomes a destructive force.

And you look around the world today, it's an unbelievably destructive force. Everywhere touches is is is is bad for life. Again, mythology depends. Art is essential. Very, very crucial in the human existence. I mean, I love to hear what you think. But you don't see religion and philosophy and mythology as just a continuous spectrum.

Yeah, so religion is a primitive form philosophy. I know it's pre-philosophical. Where I thought, I thought, you're on, was gonna go and he didn't go, was that I think he I agree with what he's going to say. Rand was a mythologizer in certain specific context Atlas shrugged as a myth. It's one thing to sit down and say these are the people who move us forward. These are the values that are important. When you experience it through a story, through a movie, through a TV show, a poem, or a painting,

it affects you in a very visceral, very different way. Talk about American history. You have the founding fathers, then you have the myth of the founding fathers. Now, unfortunately, the term myth often means lie, but it could mean in a useful sense, an abstraction to help you systematize and concretize ideas.

So you have the myth of Reagan, you have the myth of that, you're the reality, often falls very short. But when you look at how these different figures are mythologized, not only is it very inspirational on a personal level, very motivating on a personal level, it's also a great way to concretize ideas because just how humans think. It's one thing to think about ideas, but when you see someone who embodies these ideas, Miss America, you know, I was saying early, I hadn't asked her on my show. These people

may be jerks, but when you look at them one specific aspect of their life and you extrapolate it, that can be to anyone very motivating, and it's very important for people to have the belief that happiness and achievement is possible. Because it's very hard to keep that in mind, especially if you're depressed, if you're anxious, you're unemployed, you don't have a girlfriend, you think it's gonna be like this forever. And then you look at someone's story,

and they're like, you know what? That astronaut, he had to be Clayton Anderson. He applied 13 times, didn't get a call back, applied the 14th time, got a call back, didn't get the job, 15th time, he get the job, he talks to kids, and he goes, listen, apply 13 times, even if you don't get the call back, you'll still feel I'm doing something, and having heard him and the myth of Clayton Anderson, this is going to tell people, yeah, you know what, that could be me. You don't think so. And it's not just happiness. It's the fact that virtue works, that the integrity, I mean, what's the power of the fondet? I know you love the fondet. Part of the power of the

fondet in head is how it walks absolute commitment to integrity. He is committed to integrity and he gets and he's happy, right? And it's very rare in life to see that, to actually share concrete of that. And it's very hard to hold it in your mind. Yes, I'm going to be stuck in the quarry or I'm going to be stuck doing this horrible job. But if I stick to my principles, I'm going to be how it would work. Now I've got that concrete. I know I can immediately relate to that success. So I think art is essential. And I think in a sense what we do to that, and Reagan is art, you have to be careful in two stories,

not to diverge too far from reality, because then when you discover the reality, you don't want to whitewash it, and particularly when it has political implications, and then it's really bad. So particularly with Reagan, at that, you have to be. You don't want to whitewash it, and particularly when it has political implications, and then it's really bad. So particularly with Reagan, at that you have to be careful, because they won't anyone year as good

as people try to make them out to be. But these are powerful, powerful, powerful stories. And people are moved by it. And the integration of emotion with reason is crucial. One of the goals to be happy is to bring your emotions in line with your thinking. And I think that stories and arts more broadly. And when I go and see Michelangelo's David, it does the same thing to me. I can stand up to anybody because he did and look he succeeded.

And it makes sense that he could. So there's a really interesting idea of bringing your motion line with your thinking with your reasoning. So Ben Shapiro famously has this saying, how do you like that transition, Michael? You gave me props, I know you do. He's not Ben, it's Ben Shapiro.

Yeah. Someone is not taking your calls. Ben, Benny. I guess it's a daily, don't take the caller. Okay. Back to the island with the murder. I think we know. Benny Benny. I guess it's the daily don't take the collar. Back to the island with the murder. I think we know we would know who would be committing the murder. I have the suit for it. So he has the saying of facts don't care about your feelings. And that always I've always felt badly about that statement somehow. Like it was incomplete. So it's interesting to the you mentioned bringing your emotions in line with your thinking.

Like what do you think about that statement? I got this one. What Ben is doing. Ben, what he's doing in a loose way is attacking Kantianism. Because Kant, it's almost impossible for Westerners who aren't schooled in this to understand the idea of philosophical idealism because it sounds so crazy

that you're like, these great minds of all time can't really be saying this, I must be missing something. So the idea, when we hear idealism, we think John F. Kennedy, right? Is a big example. You aspire things, you think life could be better than it is. That's not what it means in a philosophical sense. In philosophical idealism, it means ideas are more

real than reality. That I have this idea, then this comes along. It's the reality. That isn't correct. My idea is still correct. A good example of this that you see all the time on the internet is when they refer to Mitt Romney and John McCain as rhinos Republicans in name only and it's like what is who is more a real Republican? The nominee of the party the senator the governor of the party or some person in your mind who has never existed and there's no evidence for them existing So what Kant did is he bifurcated reality into what we see around us, the phenomenal world, but then it's inferior. The real world, the new human world, we can't access it.

Because we have eyes, we only see the thing as it appears, not as it is in itself. And because of this, everything we know is a shadow and a secondary. And that's Plato. And the real reality is straight out of Plato. And the real reality is this realm of ideas. So when Ben is saying facts don't care about your feelings, what he is really saying is, reality comes first. Your feelings have to be a response or a reaction to it.

You can't say this is how I feel. This table doesn't care. You can yell at it all day long. It will still be indifferent to your emotional state because it comes first. So it's a great statement. I think he's cribbing it for my N-Rand in a sense. I mean, there's a sense in which he is. I mean, who popularized that kind of idea? And Ben is as Red-I-N-Rand quite extensively. Not enough. Not enough. Well, not enough to reference her. That's where the Yomica. So So yeah, obviously, he may be read enough, but didn't understand enough.

But it's so it's absolutely reality. Reality is unaffected by your emotional state and your feelings about it. And this is a great claim against the idealism, the philosophical idealism of much of the world out there, both left and right. I think politically, culturally, the left and right are detached from reality. They live in a different dimension, in a different space, that they are creating in their own minds, that has nothing to do with the real world. And when they fail, they make stuff up to justify their failure. Right. So this is, you know, all of really the ideas that are promigated today on both sides are this kind of detached from reality.

We're putting emotions or ideas before reality itself. But I believe that, you know, I am motions of responses. The responses to reality conditioned by our existing concepts. You're gonna have to talk slowly to talk emotions to Lex, because he doesn't really understand what I mean. I don't understand. So really, you gotta really take some words. But he's big on love.

What is love? He's big on love. He's trying to learn. He's pretty big on love. I'm all in, I'm a love maximalist. I mean, I could create, we could create an environment on this island where you would really feel emotions. Like fear is an emotion.

We could, we could, that's the matter of the story. We could easily turn our lives you to the point where you felt fear, right? So we could teach him about emotions. But emotions have a response to us. So some people, for example, you could take five different people and show them exactly the same thing. And some of them would feel and some of them would actually

you know, feel indifferent. And other people might feel love, right? I think Leonard Peacoff uses the example of looking through a microscope and seeing a I don't know, a virus or bacteria. And for one, it's a scientist he's made a new discovery. He feels or a virus or bacteria. And for one, it's a scientist he's made in, you discover he feels pride and love. And you know, the one is, has no clue, right? And he's looking at this and it means nothing to them and somebody else might look at it.

And you know, it's a bacteria, you know, and they feel fear because of what it could do to them. So it's conditioned, but what you know, what your values are and your level of knowledge and what the thing is out there in reality. And it's that into so your emotions respond to that. So aligning your emotions with your reason is making sure that your emotions are really conditioned

by what you know explicitly versus what you've internalized implicitly that you might not agree with anymore. You know, things might happen in your childhood and they probably do, right? Where you get a trauma, I don't know, I'm afraid of dogs. And maybe when I was a five-year-old, some dogs jumped me. And I don't even remember it, right? But I came to a conclusion when I was five, dogs bad, dogs dangerous, right? And now anytime I see a dog, oh my God, that bringing my emotions

aligned with reality, right? With my ideas is, no, no, I understand dogs don't have to be scary. I can work through this. I am various techniques and hopefully, if there is such a science of psychology, but in psychology to get you to the point where you can get rid of that fear

and align your emotion now with you explicit ideas. That's what I mean by that. And let me build on that. Talk about your friend Putin. I think I mentioned this before, maybe on the show. He was meeting with Angela Merkel. Oh, Vladimir, please. Yeah, Vladimir.

My boy, Vlad, he was meeting with Angela Merkel. Angela Merkel has a fear of dogs. So he brought out his big Labrador retriever. Now for people who don't know, Labradors are very big dogs, but they're also like the least aggressive. You could punch them in the face, they don't care. That dog is not going to be more likely to attack just because she's scared. And I know they say animals can sense fear, domesticated dogs, If they see you're scared, they're not going to be aggressive.

They're going to try to play. I remember when I was a kid, I will never there's a dog racks. This German Shepherd. I'm five. This dog is gigantic. And I'm sitting in the couch. The German Shepherds have been bred for intelligence. They're very bright dogs.

They're very good with kids. He's sitting next to me. This thing is three times my size. He very gently puts his paw on my leg to be like, kid, like he can sense my fear. He's like, I'm not going to do it. I want to be your friend. I'm still freaking out. He licks my hand. It's just very scary. You know, animals are so bright, but that's the thing is in terms of facts don't care about your feelings. That dog is not more likely to attack someone because their emotion is so intense. It's not that I feel something very strongly, therefore, this thing is more likely to happen.

So my intensity of my emotion does not, in any way, correlate, when you're being irrational, to the likelihood of that thing actually happening. No, you could have a dog that does respond to your emotion. But then it's not, it's not a part of reality. That's a fact of reality that certain dogs respond to your emotions, right? But then it's, but then it's not, it's not a part of reality. Yeah, that's that's a fact of reality that certain dogs respond to certain emotions. But isn't this emotion a part of reality? This is like, okay, let me, let me say it. Yes. So part of that, I would even say, don't let your emotion about your emotion, right?

Because sometimes you have an emotion about your emotion. Don't be repressed. Don't be repressed and identify the emotion as reality. And evaluate it. Don't judge it. Evaluate it. Is it a rational emotion? Is it consistent with my, like, if I'm afraid of these dogs, if I feel that fear,

is it rational? It would be afraid of these dogs. But you're speaking to your own individual trajectory. The human being is the growth of the world and try to understand reality and connect yourself the reason to reality. What I'm talking about is a term like lived experience. When you observe and analyze the conversations with other people to try to understand how other people see the world doesn't emotion fundamentally integrate into that like is an emotion lived experience So everybody experiences the same reality But the way they experience it might be very different and that has to do with what?

Does that what they are used with their conclusions with their ideas with their experiences with a million different things But it's a but at the end of the day It's about the conclusions that they come to which are then shaping their emotions, but look emotions are not something to be Avoided or ignored that is I can sense your emotions to some extent Okay, it is laks I can sense emotions. I can sense my goals emotions and that's part of the fact a reality, right? So if if if if Michael responds to something that I view is really, really important, right? If we were standing in front of Michelangelo's David, a micro-sponsored Michael Michelangelo's David was, yeah, and turned his back to it and walked away. That would

be really meaningful to me, right? Now, I would respond emotionally to that, and cognitively, I would say, what is it about Michael that makes him, you know, a response this way, that is, that gives me a lot of information about him. Say, emotions are information laden, right? But they are not primary. They are responses, responses to something. So once one must be very aware of one's own emotions, recognize them and analyze them. And one should be aware of other people's emotions, if they're important to you, if not important to you, it doesn't matter, right? You don't care about a stranger's emotion. Yeah, like a stranger walks up to Michaelinsville's David and so that and walks away.

And I go, okay, glad you're a stranger. But it's not, I'm only one Michael's response to Michaelinsville's David was David was or is so I'm a little worried about what he's gonna say. You got candy too, that was great. Hey, do I get a queen? I thought I was special. I can't read either. What's the saying? Joshua, what does that say to him? Is this you, queen and candy as well?

I thought it was, it was sent to me. Do you know that Atlas shrugged was the best selling book in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016? Do you know Atlas shrug sure I was translated to Russian by someone who's not crypto like billionaire and he made like six copies and I've one of them. And I sent it to my great grandma. No, they're more than six, but yeah, but they were like, I have a copy too.

Okay, not I personally, they ensued as a copy. I sent it to my great grandma and she said, why is he sending me this? I want to read books about love. I'm like, you know, why is he about love? Yeah, that's what you should have said. What's that, is that say? So this says it's

said here to the Tamiya and the Imiñarali it has vitamins and minerals. There's a there's a bunch of Russian I don't believe it. It sounds really sounds really strange to read like health information in Russian. But there's already this stressful there's a Yosya like you have. Exactly. Already this. There's a Yarsik like you have. Exactly. I mean, I'm much I like it. It doesn't mean it more than I like Moscow. Wow, strong words, but this is this is not it's like hard candy. I don't know. I think this some of my friends sent me that's made with blood to give the kids iron.

Who's blood like cow blood? Oh, like with chocolate. All right. You can keep it. That's all you. All right, I'm keeping both the key. Can I take all of the good stuff? Speak something you're talking about with the motion. Something that is very pernicious in terms of emotion is people denying the validity of their

own emotions. And here's one example. Someone could be in an abusive relationship or have had an abusive childhood. And they think, well, I didn't have a black eye. We had dinner on the table. It wasn't abusive because you hear some other story. So they feel their emotion isn't valid. Or like, oh, he never lays hands on me. He gets drunk and is mean to me. He's still basically a good person.

You're denying that emotion. And that emotion is a response to something real. There's an expression, I've friends who are in 12 step programs. There's an expression there, which I think is very profound, which is if it's hysterical, it's historical. Meaning if some minor incident is having an extreme disproportion impact on you, think ask yourself,

why am I responding in such an extreme way to some minor thing? And I will tell you 10 times out of 10, you'll go back and you'll be like, oh, I'm feeling now like I felt when I was eight and my dad came home and he was a total jerk and I didn't do anything wrong and he thought I had and I was complete perilous. And now I'm in the same situation my boss. I'm not that eight year old and once since I am another since I'm not But I feel the same way I did as a kid and this is a very useful mechanism in terms of furthering one's happiness

Because you kind of deep program all those things that you picked up as a child But it's also you know if you're feeling something wrong in terms of furthering one's happiness, because you kind of deprogram all those things that you picked up as a child. But it's also, you know, if you're feeling something wrong, even though you're trying to rationalize it in a way, you know, it's not abusive, because he's not hitting me, no, the emotion is telling you something real about what's going on, so acknowledge it and fix the situation, right?

So one of the powers and motions give you is they send you signals about something that might not be in cognition yet. And when you examine their motion, it brings it to cognition. And now you can act on it. So maybe the boss is abusive. But I didn't really think of it in those terms. And my emotions is sending me signals.

And now that I signal it, I'm going to resign now. I'm going to find a better job. I'm going to complain to his boss or whatever. I'm going to take action. Why do you think I'm random complain to his boss or whatever. I'm gonna take action. Why do you think, I ran to such a controversial figure. Last time I spoke with you on this particular podcast, the amount of emails I've gotten, positive and negative and certainly negative.

I don't usually get negative emails. But you do. Yeah, I can't relate. I'm sure mine were all positive, were only positive. It was mostly women sending pictures for me to forward to you. I didn't send me anything. I always wrong email address.

I'm sorry. I kept bouncing. You also need to hear me. Oh, this is love. Love hurts. OK. Yeah. But why do you think she's such a divisive figure? Why do you think

that she provokes such emotion in both the positive and the negative side? I'd love to hear both the your viewpoints on this. Well, I think on the negative side, in both the positive and the negative side, I think it's because she's radical. She's consistently radical. She upends the premises, the ideas She upends the premises, the ideas that are prevalent in the culture, that were brought up on that are like, you know, they're like milk and, and, you know, the basic stuff that we're growing up, you have to be altruistic, you have to live other people.

That's just basic stuff, nobody challenges that. Nobody questions it. And if they do question it, they usually question it from the perspective of a cynic or a bad guy, right? You mentioned the joke, right? Oh, before we start, right? You know, I'm gonna upend the world because I don't care about other people, right?

So, the presented with these two alternatives and it's real in people's lives, right? You either live for other people or you're an evil SOB. And, you know, yeah, most people in either one of those, but the ethic is right here. It's living for other people. And when you challenge that, they have no way cognitive to go with that. And the only place they can go with that cognitively is to the Joker. It's the evil guy. It's the somebody who wants to smash everything in the store, because they don't have this alternate conception of, oh no, you can be rationally self-interested, and that does not involve destruction, and that

does not involve, you know, they're, you know, they're, you're, you're, you're, you're exploring other people. They can't conceptualize that. It's not in their framework. So it's the fact that she's so consistently on the side of self interest, for example, on the side of capitalism, on the side of freedom. It's the fact that she dismisses faith to the extent that she does or to the extent that I do, right? That alienage people because that is completely different from what they brought up. Now the flip side of that is it's also really interesting to some people. So you know, a lot of you got some positives, right?

And I got a lot of positives from the appearance. So I know a lot of people came to my podcast because I appeared on your show. Why? Because they hear something that's completely fresh, new, different, they've never heard before. It appeals to something in them that maybe, you know, a lot of people say,

I read I and ran and it confirmed everything I believed. Now for me, it didn't. It was the opposite. It turned upside down everything I believe. But there are a lot of people out there that who have a sense that something's wrong in the world, that altruism is wrong, that socialism, that just the stuff and religion is wrong, but they don't have an alternative. It hasn't coalesced. And they listened to a lot of podcasts because they're trying to get ideas of what is it? What is it that I'm sensing the drawing out there? And suddenly somebody comes out and gives them some

clear explanation of things and they go, wow, that's what I've been looking for my whole life. So that's the positive for people. You know, an I read I read it just all made sense. It all clicked and it made clear that everything I believed to that point was just wrong. It didn't integrate. And I always knew to some extent it didn't integrate, but there was an alternative, so I believed it. What else was there? I remember saying to myself as a kid, probably 15, why should I, why is this, why is

Moraleo about other people? Why is that? Well, that's just the way it is right and and I couldn't couldn't come up with an explanation She gave me the explanation and she gave me the explanation why it's wrong to do that And I think so I think that's why people respond. It's just too radical It can't fit into their Cognitive framework that they've been brought up on that they've been educated on that just their whole life revolves around work that they have been brought up on, that they've been educated on, that just their whole life evolves about.

Like, you don't bring up, I ran that much in conversation, except as kind of references everyone's in a while as part of the humor of just the general flow and the music of the way you like to talk. Well, why do you think you don't integrate her into your philosophy when you're like explaining ideas and all those kinds of things. Like why is she not you know a popular reference point for discussion of ideas? Because I don't know if you're wrong, it's going to agree with or can't agree with me. I think for a certain percentage of population, actually I talked to someone from the Iron Man Institute, I forgot his name,

Older Guy with Glasses, and he didn't disagree with me, he said this is changing. I said, I think for a certain percentage of population who are uninformed about her work, higher than 10% less than 50%, you mentioned on Rand, they have been trained to think this is identical Scientology. So, as soon as her name comes up, it's like, okay, I'm out the door. I'm not going to have anything to do with this and everyone who follows her is a crazy person. That's one thing that has happened. Another thing is Rand in her personality was very aggressive and antagonistic. She was for a long time, the lone voice in the wilderness,

being like, this isn't like, you know, like one of her big adversaries in a certain sense was Milton Friedman. And she really hated how Milton Friedman was like, oh, you know, having rent control is inefficient. And she's like, inefficient. We're talking about mass homelessness and people dying. And you're talking about this.

Like, what color is high goes with this color shirt? Are you in, like, in fact, it's hilarious. There was an organization called the Foundation for Economic Education, Fee. Leonard Reed was the head of this. And there were a series of letters, and she was helping him. She was much more, was full stop the way grounded in certain contexts than he was.

And there was an essay, a pamphlet that he published called Roof's or Ceilings. It was co-written by Milton Friedman, later Nobel Prize winner, and George Stigler, also later Nobel Prize winner. And basically, the argument was, well, if the government controls all housing, how's that gonna work out?

And she's sitting there and she's typing in all caps. So you know she's holding on the shift key and doing this on a typewriter. On a typewriter and being like, how? And you can imagine her with her cigarette holder, apoplectic, being being like how is an organization ostensibly Devoted to free enterprise

discussing these Stalinist idea in the most casual of terms. She's like have I taught you not and what's amazing is so at at fee They only have her letters because she sent them to read. The iron ran astute must have let it read letter. Let her do. I was able to knowing random enough predict exactly what the conversation would go like because he also did something she didn't approve of, which is he asked other people for feedback on her work.

And she goes, I gave this to you to read. Who are you shopping around to some jerk that I don't, I mean, they're approved. What are you doing? So it was a very interesting situation but so that's one issue I remember this is I knew when she's young she wasn't I mean she's probably the young right yeah it's before I was before I was before she's super famous and before this is just the fan has been published but you know she's she's trying to work with others and they're disappointing her left and right.

Yeah, and also when you are a, what she takes away from bad people, you have these kids, right? And you're gonna sit down with them, and they're gonna be like, yeah, I'm gonna take your guns, I'm gonna lock you in your house, I'm gonna take 60% of your income and all this other stuff. And they might up to reading ran.

They might sit down and have a discussion and ran goes, Hey, you know what? You didn't have to give them an answer. You could say, Go to hell. We're not having this conversation. And you have no right to one second of my life. And this is not a legitimate opener. This is a declaration of war. If I sit down with you, I'm like,

hey, Ron, hear my plans for your wife. Go to hell. This isn't a conversation we're having. Oh, I'm going to make you unsafe in your house. What? This is not a discussion. So what happens is these people who five minutes ago were able to have a debate with this kid, because people read ran when they're young often.

And now that kid is like, yeah, I'm not even talking to you. It's her fault, whereas in reality, it's that person's fault, because that person had no right, although they've been trained to the contrary of our culture, to believe, yeah, I'm gonna sit down and we're just gonna equally have a discussion of our year-ones life,

and you have one vote, not have one vote, and we're gonna, oh, Lex has a vote, and that's how it's gonna be like, it's the last. And Rand's not having it. So I think those are two issues and there's some other things which which I don't need to get into but I I because one of the things that Rand said consisting her life is that her philosophy is an integrated whole right. So to be an objectivist isn't just like I like Atlas Shrugged, it means I accept objectivism as a totality.

Since I do not, I think it is proper to be respectful to her wishes and not constantly be, especially given that I have somewhat of a platform to be like, I'm ran, I'm ran and ran because I don't think I'm ran would have liked it if I was talking about I'm ran this much. So how do you, how do you deep program? Because I, I don't like to bring up on ran just because I do see what like how people roll their eyes essentially. So how do you upside, you know, what's the outside exactly. But what is that pro can we can you speak to that programming?

I think people have I mean look at the end of the day, if you talk about the ideas and the ideas make sense and people attract it to the ideas and you say oh by the way And this came from my man that's how you deprogram them right if you make the ideas prevalent in the culture If people start viewing self-interest or something that's kind of interesting and worthwhile and something with investigating and they said oh that came from my man Then I think I think that then we'll we'll deprogram them and get them and get them changing their minds about these things. And also, you know, going on shows where people are going to watch your show no matter who you bring on, right? So even though now you do, you put, you put, you put in in the title that immediately reduces the number of people who watch. So, so in the future, you put a mouse in the title and then at least the female The female to you know, absolutely just to say

So so you go and you try to make them as credible as possible to as many people as possible over time It takes time and ultimately I don't think the culture will have this response to her They might still disagree with her, but I think over time and already you're seeing it younger people I think today a far less there was a generation who never read Iron Man and was like this being alcoholic in the crosses. We don't want to have anything to do with it. And I think today there are many more people who've read her and might disagree or not disagree right. And then there are a lot of people who haven't read her but who not opposed to it or willing to have an engage to engage. So I think it's changing already and I think

in 20 years it'll be completely. And I would just two more things that she does So I think it's changing already, and I think in 20 years it'll be completely different. And I would just two more things that she does that I think it says that I think people find very, very off-putting given our culture. One is she will, basically you could sit down with Rand and be like, your fear is not in any way a hold on my freedom. Just that one sentence. And for a lot of people that's very off-putting

and very harsh, it's correct. But for them, it's just like, wait a minute, I'm still scared. It's like, I don't care. Like, for example, with lockdowns and things like this, it's like, well, I'm scared and maybe I have a right to be scared. Well, I'm scared that you have a gun in your house. And it's like, I respect that you're scared. I don't care. At the end, as you say, at the end of the day, this is my house. I'm going to live my life as I please, as long as I don't hurt other people. Well, you are hurting me because I'm scared. No, that's not.

This is a feeling versus fact. Yeah, yeah. So that is one situation. This is like a feeling versus freedom. Yeah, so it's where Rand is, that puts a lot of people off. I also think that historically, a lot of people who were drawn to her are drawn to her for the wrong reasons, that a lot of times, like Howard Rorck, the hero, we're gonna still say hero, you're supposed to say protagonist, the hero.

The hero of the fountain head, he's extremely intelligent, but he's also extremely uncompromising. What often ends up happening is you'll have a young kid who is somewhat intelligent, but then they pick up the personality and now you're someone I can't work with. And then it's like you're not how it works. Relax. You're not that skilled. You're not that talented. But because the character has the personification and have certain aspects together, when kids read that, they're gonna might get the wrong idea. And that's not Ransfold. And it's more than that. It's so so I can really agree with that, but it's even broader than that.

So here is a, in my view, you know, one of the geniuses of the millennium, presenting a philosophy. And she's got not just the questions in my view, she's got the answers. And you're reading them at 16, and you're reading the answers. You don't know at 16 that this is true. Yeah, yeah. You might have a sense that it's true, but you don't have the life that this is true. Yeah, yeah. You might have a sense of this too, but you don't have the life experience, the learned experience.

You don't have the fact, you don't have the knowledge. You're picking up truth, it's just being absorbed. You're accepting it as true, but you don't know it's true. And then you go out into the world advocating for it, which we all did, or at least I did, when I was 16. And you're obnoxious. You can't prove what you argue. Yeah, yeah.

Because you don't have the experience. It took me, I don't know, 10, 20 years, probably 20, to figure out that I really do think she, what she said was true, right? But I didn't know when I was 16. When I was 16, I just absorbed these ideas and accepted them in a sense. Well, you know, with some connection to reality,

but in a sense, unfaith, some connection to reality, but in a sense, on faith, right, at least presented it that way. And as a consequence, you come off as a detached from reality, obnoxious human being. I think a lot of young objectives are, and it's hard not to be, because you are, you're confronted with genius, and you're not a genius, I certainly am not a genius.

And I'm confronted with just genius and have all this information in my head now. I cannot articulate it. And it's hard to deal with this. There's a need to say joke. No, you said I'm a genius, I plan to ask. Yeah. I'm going to fund it with you guys. I'm at an age where I know how to deal with geniuses.

But I'm going to say there's something else. This is not why people don't like her. But there's something that the fountain head does, which I think is very, and I don't blame her, but it's a bad consequence. If you read the fountainhead and you're young and you're intelligent and talented, the message, at least I got, and I know I'm not alone, is you are going to think that you're going to be a pariah that a lot of people are going to be against you, and you're going to and you're basically doomed for a short period of being isolated and alone.

And that may have been the case when the fountain head was written, but I think now with the internet and in my experience both as a youth and someone who's a little bit older, I didn't appreciate and you're not going to get it from that book and you can't get it through that book because it has to have a certain narrative how many people who are a little older are giddy

when they find young talent. How inspiring it is, how many people who are a little older are giddy when they find young talent. How inspiring it is, how exciting it is, like when you talk to these kids who are doing things on the internet or writing, or whatever achievement, you want them to flourish. You're not threatened by them as the antagonists of the Fountainhead are. And that doesn't come through in the Fountainhead because it depends on your profession, right? I mean, so these parts of the world are better than others. If you're in, of course, if you're an artist, at least the way I can see for a while, and you, you want to go study art today, you're going to be

put out and so on. So yeah, I agree. I mean, and in my generate, when I read Iron Man, you know, there was no internet. There was, and I was in Israel. So we were isolated and there was nobody else who has shared their ideas And he did feel that kind of isolation and but rock gave you to me He didn't teach me about you know, you're gonna be isolated because partially because I wasn't

Maybe I was humble right When I when I read Atlas shr, I identified with Eddie Willis. When I read the fun hit, I didn't identify with how it would work. How old were you read the fun hit? So I read Atlas when I was 16, I probably read a fun hit when I was 16 and a half, 17, something like that. That is on the floor. And I read.

You read the fun hit after Atlas Shrug? Yeah. If anyone listening to this, should read found it for you read found head for me after at least Ragnote that is a war crime no for me reading out of sugar was much more your I don't know. It is more important But my point is I think the found head in many ways is redundant in certain aspects if you read at least Ragnote first and because the found head is such a masterful book and such a personal book. I agree, I agree with that. So ideally you would read the found head. That's what I'm saying, yes. And here's the other thing people don't appreciate. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

People think ranz always about politics, politics, politics, politics. Thaunhead is not a political book. It's about, well, she talks about politics in Mansoul, sure. But it's about ethics, how important everyone has to have a moral code. That's the other thing why people find brand-off putting. If you have young people who now find it very important to live a moral life, who are like, what does that mean to have morality, to have ethics, to live with integrity for people who have gotten

a little older, who have made these little sacrifices, who are like, I'm not going to fight at work. Do I really need to look for another job? Yeah, my wife's kind of, you know, getting annoying, but am I going to make a fight about it? These little sacrifices that they make every day. Big ones.

And big ones. Oh, absolutely. So when you have someone who's saying, forcing you to look in the mirror and say, those little sacrifice and big sacrifice that you made, you did the wrong thing and you're evading that you betrayed your unconscious. That to many people, I think, is very threatening. But this is why so many people say

that Iron Man is for 14-year-old boys. Right. Right, and there's a reason why it appeals to 14 is a little young, but 16 18. Yeah. It's because those are the ages where we're still open to idealism, idealism in a positive sense. Right? To beautiful things, the ideals, the seeking perfection, the seeking, the seeking of great life, I think as you go, all the most people have become cynical. They give up on their ideals. Why? Because their ideals were wrong and their ideals failed. Right?

My parents were socialist when they were young. Those ideas failed. So where do you go from socialism to your ideals failed? Sinicism. Yeah. But just horrible. Right. Almost all adults out there are cynical.

And that is that is that is failed. Idealism. And when they look at the young people, they see their idealism. Oh, well, that's the, I was idealistic too. And they don't question the ideal, well, they're good ideals and they're bad ideals, they're right ideals and they're wrong ideals. And that's why they attribute it to you.

So it's a threat to a lot of people, a lot of people who it's too late for. For some people, it's too late to change their minds. And they know it. And they've too invested in the job, in the wife, in the compromises. In the comfort. And they're too invested in the comfort.

Too invested in the compromise, too invested in the comfort. And they know that they shouldn't be. They know they should change. And these young people are challenging that. And that is really, really scary for them. And that's why they reject it without even without too much consideration.

One of the things that Rand, the working title for Fountainhead was Secondhand Lives. And Rand had two definitions of selfishness in that book. One is selfishness in the sense of my life is the most important thing. It's not the only important thing. My family would be number two friends. They certainly are extremely high values, but you can't have these secondary values out the first value. But in the context of my life, right? Because your family might not number two friends. They certainly are extremely high values, but you can't have these secondary values without the first value. But in the context of my life, right? Because your family might not be a value.

Right, right, right. You might hate your parents. Sure. The point being selfishness. Then there's the other kind of selfishness, which is Peter Keating, one of the villains of the book, which is he's selfish in that he's greedy.

He's looking out for number one, but he has no values. He has no sense of character. He just wants to be wealthy. He wants to have a beautiful wife. He wants to have a big house. Why? He couldn't tell you because other people have it

and he wants to have it more than them. His sense of reference is other people. He's living second hand. What the problem with that is, a lot of young people read Rand. And when they start arguing online, they just start trying to talk like Rand. Whereas Rand would be like, be original, be an innovator.

If you wanna argue for objectivism in Rand's views, take her ideas, articulate them in your own way, because that's a good way of showing that you understand what she thinks, but what they end up doing is just talking like her. It sounds dated and comical, and that's gonna be off-putting, because it's like, Rand wouldn't expect someone else to sound like Rand. She's a, you know,

a person. And she, of course, wouldn't view Keating as selfish in any sense because, or even greedy, greed is a tricky word, but, well, selfish in the old school sense. Yeah, he's selfish in the old, but even there, it's not as if, it's not as if he has some passion and he's going after a passion no matter what. I'm going to, you know, light cheat steal, I'm gonna. He doesn't have, his passion is painting, right? And he doesn't pursue his passion.

He pursues what his mother wants to pursue. And he pursues money and he pursues. That's completely second-handed in the sense that he follows other people's values, not his own. Can we actually just backtrack and can we define some of these ideas that Iron Man is known for of selfishness? Selfishness, egoism, egoism, greed. I mean, those, basically all of those words

are seen as negative in society. And Anirhan has been reclaiming in her work those words. So, she speaks to what they mean. I think she's trying to, you're on my disagree. I think she's trying to be needlessly provocative. And it's off-putting. And on one hand, maybe you want to be a provocateur, because that gives you people like, what does this woman mean?

On the other hand, many people are going to be risked really put off. When I was on Donahue in 1979, he asked her explicitly, define to me the virtual selfishness, which is the title of her collection of essays as well. And she, this is Rand, it immediately says, use a different word, self-esteem. And it's like, yeah, it's like, why are you championing this word, which has extremely negative connotations? Whereas if you just say, and this thanks to her and her work, my life matters, my values matter, I'm not going to apologize for that. That is a lot less off-putting. Then this caricature of Rand, which is when people here, I'm for selfishness, they hear,

oh, someone's bleeding out in the corner, but I want to get a coke, that's nice. She condemned that. She says, I'm against this kind of sociopathy. That's absolutely crazy. But that word selfishly is. It goes a mistake to be provocative in this one dimension, to go and to stick with it. I mean, just stuck with this idea of selfishness and so on. This term, and I often use terms for provocative effect.

Yes, that's true. You're a master, you're a scholar of the trolling arts. Thank you, sir. But I think this is one example where the cost that way the benefits. And go ahead, your own. What do you think? Yes, I'm open to that idea, but I don't think that's right.

When you actually dig deeper into what people object to, they're not going to object into the word. They're objecting to the ideas. And she addresses this explicitly in the version of selfishness in the I think the introduction. Wait, hold on, I got, that's a clarification. You're saying they're objecting to the ideas,

but when they talk about her, they're not talking about her actual ideas. They're talking about the caricature. Well, sure, but the caricature is a defense mechanism. Okay. Not to have to deal with the ideasature. Well, sure, but the caricature is a defense mechanism, not to have to deal with the ideas. So they create the caricature in order to ignore the ideas in order to, and some of them do it consciously.

Like when people like Kugman and others do this, they know exactly what they're doing. Well, Kugman is an on-read, is elsewhere with Tui. Yes, he's a pretty much with Tui. And he knows Iron Man, he's red Iron Man Man and he knows she's the enemy in some sense He knows check out our episode with with Krugman. I think it's number 90 as a great conversation Didn't get as many views as me, but what are you gonna do? No, we got a Nobel Prize. So what you got I've got a ticket to heaven Sorry Paul. Yes, your offer has an overpriced.

And Hitler was a times man of the year. Yes, it is. But you could, you, that really bothers me when people ring that up. Are you really? Yeah, time of the year. It's called the joke now, Michael. Good. Is it?

Man of the year is not representative good. It's the represents the most influential person of that. Yeah. And Hitler was. So, well, what were you upset about? When people like, well, look at time magazine, they go, Hitler man in the year, like, you're on set, they won't say this guy's awesome, they say, this is the guy who moved down to the world, no. They know. They know.

Yeah, I don't know. It's not like he was slow. I don't go out there. No, that's the way he'd like. Hitler's terrible. Stalin guy. Oh, no, no, I'm not even joking. The attitude between, the attitude of people, between Nazism and fascism and communism

is stunning. And in my upcoming book, I have all the receipts, how the things that they were saying about Stalin at the time are, if you look back, it's unconscionable. And these people have had no accountability in the way they did the rest. It's not even at the time. And we need to get back to the selfishness stuff. But it's not even at the time. And we need to get back to the selfishness stuff. But it's not even at the time. So I was once, I think I've told this story, I was in the green room going on John Stassel

show. And so a bunch of libertarians are hanging out in this guy walks in, he's younger, he walks in. And somebody says to me, you know, he's a communist. I said, what do you mean? They said, no, no, he's a communist. I said, what do you mean? Said, they said, no, no, he's, he said, cod carrying will member of the Communist Party, he's a communist.

And I said, and that's okay with you guys. And they go, yeah, yeah, it's a nice guy. And I'm like, no, this is not acceptable. Oh, God. Let me quote Rand. Rand said she would rather talk to a philosophicalist. Right? Did she not say this?

Yeah, but this is a communist in the context of 21st century. Right? So I said, well, in a sense that we know exactly what exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm like, this guy has the blood of 100 million people on his hands. I'm not letting him off the hook. So I get, I engage with this guy and literally we get into this, you know, I'm not letting him off the hook. So I get, I engage with this guy, and literally we get into this, I'm telling him what I think of his ideas

and therefore what I think of him. And the people from the World War Department come out and their chairs are put aside and this little gladiator ring. It's like the libatures are sitting there, I'm used, because to them it's just, and I'm not gonna name names, but to them it's just like,

yeah, he's a communist. know, and I don't, you know, I'm not gonna name names, but to them, it's just like, yeah, he's a communist. And I said, I said at some point, and I said at some point today, I won't name names because I said at some point to them, if somebody walks into a room and says, I'm an Archie, do you just treat him as, okay, let's go hang out and get some good things to do? I do, I don't.

Because I wrote a book about this, then you write, and I did talk to Nazis, and I went to North Korea, because you were writing a book about this. Then you write. And I did talk to Nazis. And I went to North Korea. Because you were writing a book. Yeah. Right. But you're not, you're not going to hang out with a Nazi or a Communist, just like the regular person. Right. To me, a Nazi and a Communist are the same. I don't under. Okay. Please explain this. Because at first of all, anytime you have equivocation, I hate that because I don't like equality. I think it's a bad concept. Sure. We're all sitting here as Jewish people, right? We're from the, we're from the Stovie Union.

To say these two things are basically the same. It's a matter of life and death for all of us. We'd be dead under Hitler. We're not doing so hot in our stall and but we're still alive. So sure. So there's some very big difference. Sure. So one more thing.

There's a context. Hold on one more thing. There's also one very big difference in that one has a lot worse of a brand name and the other does not even though the other should. It's a brand. Yeah. Yeah. So I agree. So there's a context in which I would fear Stalin, Mozen Hitler.

There's the different context in which I would fear Hitler. But as ideologies, they are equally evil. Well, wait, but not the same because the difference has been communism and fascism. But as ideologies, they equally evil. They both view the individual as insignificant, unimportant. Well, wait, but not not the same because the difference has been communism and fascism, but as ideologies, they equal evil. They both view the individual as insignificant, unimportant, and they both basically want to kill any independent minded. Well, you're equating communism and Stalinism. So you're equating communism. I don't know

what Stalinism says. I don't care. Stalinism is one version of communism. It's an implementation. Communism is an evil ideology, no matter who practices it. I don't think that's, I think that's to loose, because here's one example. The first person who went to the Soviet Union from the left and denounced it was Emma Goldman. She was an anarcho-communist, right? So she went there, she got deported for the United States.

She went to Lenin to his face. Hold on, let me finish. You're already dismissing what I'm saying. Me, your body language, your emotions, your... Emility, yeah. His speed doesn't carry your feelings either. She goes to Lenin, she goes, we're supposed to be about free speech. We're supposed to be about the individual freedom, what are you doing? And he goes, free speech is a bourgeoisie extravagance. You can't have it during a revolution too bad. She comes back to the West. Wait what are you doing? And he goes, free speeches of bourgeois extravagance, you can't have it during a revolution too bad. She comes back to the West, wait, he's right. Oh no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's more consistent. She's a compliment. Yeah, you're right. Well, she comes back to the West, the big red Emma, the big hero of the left. And she goes, you guys, this is a, this is bad. She didn't say bad. She was very random. She goes, this is a, not she didn't say bad.

She was very random. She goes, this is pure evil. This is horrifying. What they're doing to the workers, which she's supposed to care about, completely oppressing. And one person described they go, when she got up to talk, it was a standing ovation. And when she was finished, you could hear a pin drop. Because she wasn't some capitalist. She wasn't some bourgeois conservative.

She was as hard left for violent revolution as it gets. So I don't think she, as a communist, is an evil person. I think she is. Because if she wasn't evading, and you know, with Rand, and I think in reality, the essence of evil is evasion, is ignoring the facts of reality, it's putting your feelings ahead of your facts. She would realize that what was going on in the Soviet Union was the inevitable consequence of her ideas. That could be just a thought.

So she could have changed her mind. She could have coming back to the Soviet Union said, these ideas are wrong. I now repudiate my ideas, not just of implementation, but my ideas. And then I would have said, yeah, she had mistaken before. And now she's confronted reality. But if she stayed a leftist, if she stayed a leftist to that extent, not just my outlet. Oh, yeah, she passed off.

Then I think she's dishonest and they're folly moral, right? So you're using three words identically. You're saying dishonest and moral and evil. And I'm saying evil is evil is is more is is an extreme form of humorous right. Sure. So okay, so she's she's immoral. The ideology she holds is still evil because the ideology she might be delusional. That's but delusional evil on the same can be delusional.

She cannot be delusional. See I I'm willing to accept a delusion before she's gone to the Soviet Union and seen it. When she's gone to see it, I don't think that excuse holds anymore. I think now she's been confronted and she's lying to herself about the implications of it. Logically, it's inevitable that what happens in the Soviet Union has to happen in any communist context. To play a little bit of a devil's advocate here, is it logically inevitable?

Is it, can you imagine that there is communist systems where the consequences we've seen in the 20th century or not the consequences we get? Imagine future societies under different conditions, under different, you know, with the internet, different communication schemes, different, certain resources. Well, we are. Now, the book, you remember the book from Star Trek or whatever the series was. Okay, nerd. Yeah, I mean, okay, okay, I'm a nerd. Okay, the book, the highest of compliments, the book is the highest of Lex. The book is the highest of Lex. The book is the book is communist, right? The book is a different species. It has a different biology. It has a business, different form consciousness.

Now whether such a being could survive evolution is a question, whether such a... Oh, the ants, they don't have to be intelligent. Yeah, but then the question is, can you have free will, cognitive cognition and be a book. Right, I don't think so. But maybe, maybe in another planet,

but you gotta be able to see to meet the board. See, human beings, no, communism is anti, the reason communism is evil is it's anti reality, anti human nature, anti the individual. And therefore, it is inherently evil. It cannot result in anything good coming out of it. Only bad can come of it. You think you could have predicted that before the 20 years? Yes, and plenty of people did. It's not. You know who did? Mikhail Bakunin.

Mikhail Bakunin, who was an early communist, Marx's rival in 18... This is going to be in my upcoming book. In 1860, he sat down and wrote and said, goes, what Marx is advocating is insane. This is going to be worse than the czar. You're talking about complete totalitarian nightmare. When you put this into practice, it's going to be something we've never seen before. It's a pure horror. He was a hardcore leftist.

Look, Marx predicted it. Right? Yeah, yeah. Marx at some point says, certain people cannot be part of the polytarian. They have to be liquidated. So this idea of mass murder and mass killing is not new to communism

It is an inherent part of what it means. You either proletarian or you're not and you look and in Marx It's in Marx right the individual doesn't matter now. He might matter in his utopia because he knows he's got a marketing problem See Marx has a marketing problem because the fact is you have individuals How do you convince individuals to give up their individualism, to give up the individuality, what you say is, well, we have to go through this difficult process. To get to this utopia, and then this utopia, I mean, he's very Christian.

I mean, this is the other thing about Marx. The end time. Marx is very Christian in everything, in his morality, in his collectivism, and in the end time, the end times for Marx is going back to the Garden of Eden. The end time for Marx is you don't have to do anything. Food is just available. Every wealth is just available. You can do your hobbies, you can do everything. You can do whatever you want, whatever feelings, whatever. So it's going back to Garden of Eden, Perception, Perspective on Human. So he knows what that is going to require.

It's going to require this dictatorship to the politician to get there. And he never tells you how we get there, right? There's no game plan. There's a dictatorship in these utopias. It's like the underpants. No, nothing. Step one dictatorship. Step two question marks. Step three utopias. And the question mark is where the action is, right? In I elite. Yeah, you yada yada the important part. And and people buy this garbage, right? So there's nothing of value in Marx. I mean, let me be very clear. There's nothing he gets capitalism wrong. He gets the politician wrong. He gets the workers wrong. He gets the labor theory of value is wrong. There is nothing of value. There's nothing of value in communism. It is a wrong unfitted

to human nature ideology from beginning to end. The clarity with which you speak is just not something I, I don't think I have that clarity about anything. So I mean, it has to do with that thing that where everybody has something to teach you. I just feel like I've been reading mind-com recently, for example, for the first time. Something to learn from Hitler? Well, there's a lot to learn from Hitler about the nature of evil, about wrong ideas, not about anything good, not about anything positive. Oh, so yes, so that's probably a really bad example. And why is Hitler different than Marx?

Well, that's a very good question. No, I get that, but in terms of ideas, why is Hitler different than Marx? Why do we have to assume this is something to learn from Marx, but we acknowledge that there's nothing positive to learn from him? Because, I mean, all right. But I can tell you something, in the sense that there's an interesting question is, how did this person get from step A to being able to implement the ideas? I know, everybody should read anybody who's interested.

Should read Marx, because it's really important. It's important in the history and a lot of people were influenced by it's how, how I was an influential, what is it that he says that appeals to people. I find it interesting to see all the parallels with Christianity. I think that's why Telegraph extended appeals to people because they got to give up the unimportant part of religion and got to keep the fun parts of religion, the important parts to them of religion and morality, for example. But no, there's not something positive to learn from everybody. In Iron Rands view, in your view, who was worse, Stalin or Hitler? I think worse is this is something that I'll do a Randy and sin and be evasive.

It really drives me crazy when people sit down and have these competitions about like, if someone who's Jewish brings up the Holocaust and someone who's African-American brings up slavery, and this is a conversation that I think is pointless and very hurtful and harmful and is really silly and ridiculous. So it might make sense in some kind of stoner context about like you're doing the math and trying to figure

out, but it's like, you know, and yeah, you could be like, what would you rather have like this kind of cancer or full blown AIDS? And sure, I mean, there's got to be life expectancy, but these are such I'll evade your question, reframe it. I think we understand, and a lot of this is a function of the propaganda at the time, and I'm not using the word propaganda in a negative sense, the horrors of Hitler and Nazism. I think, and one of the things I'm trying to solve with my upcoming book, there is a very

poor understanding about the horrors of Stalinism and what that meant in practice. One of the reasons I wrote Dear Reader, my North Korea book, and what I was shocked and delighted by when I started writing Dear Reader, I thought to myself, look, I have very little capacity to affect change. What, but I can tell stories, I can write books. This is my competency. If I move the needle in America,

we got it pretty good here. If I move the needle in North Korea, this could have really profound positive consequences. So I said a very limited goal. And that goal is to change the conversation about North Korea, to stop it being regarded as a laughing stock, and start regarding it as an existential horror. And the metaphor I use always, and we brought up earlier, was the Joker, because people look at Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il, his father. They look at a clown. This guy's a buffoon, and that's valid. And I go, and I said, this is what I can do. I can move that camera a little bit. And now that camera, instead of looking at Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il,

you see behind him literally millions of corpses. And when you see people putting on these performances in these shows, look at these fools, then you're like, everyone those people, their kid has a gun to their head right now. If someone puts a gun to your kid's head, you're going to put on a clown makeup, yeah, you are. What color? And put on the shoes, whatever you want. So in terms of, people do not appreciate the horrors of Stalinism. I think this is a big fault of the right wing. You can't expect necessarily New York times to do this because of the blood on their hands. And for a long time, I was berating conservatives.

I go, this was the big right wing victory, the bloodless largely, the victory of the Soviet Union. No one's talking about it, no one's informing, and let's be clear, there are very many people who are Democrats who are on the left left who are violently opposed, literally violently opposed to the Soviet Union, it's ours. This is not the silly partisan issue. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to do something about it.

So I know that's not really literally your question, but that's kind of information that feeds us. Let me ask you that question if it's okay. So what, which do we, can we learn more from, from a historical perspective, looking forward, from like, which has more lessons in how to avoid it, just general lessons about human nature? Well, I agree with Michael that it's not important who's more evil, because they're both evil and they're both just so evil that the differences don't matter.

What matters is, what is the ideology, what is the consequences, what do we understand from it, what are we worried about, what are we going to avoid. So I'm not worried about Nazism, Quant Nazism, because everybody hates Nazism. I mean, it's uniform that that's out. Even the people I think on the far right in America, staying away from the cliches of Nazism, those some of them are stupid enough not to. But but in the end, if if if the United States goes authoritarian right, it's not

going to be Nazism, it'll be some other form of fascism because that is so obviously, you know, being understood as evil and bad, that there's almost no understanding that the evil of communism. I mean, you brought it up earlier, right? Almost nobody understands that communism is an evil ideology that there's nothing worthwhile there that any any attempt to go in that direction in any Sustainable way is destructive there. They are as you mentioned the economist out they claiming they are communist I mean, I find that's pickable that anybody would claim to be a communist

Economist or communist anything because I think that that's, it's an ideology that has no basis, but we haven't learnt that. So to me, communism is the much bigger threat, because we still think it's some kind of beautiful ideal in the world around us. I think not systems are, but I think fascism is a massive threat out there, because I don't think we've learnt real lessons of, but I think fascism is a massive threat out there because I don't

think we've learned real lessons of nobody knows what fascism is. Everybody thinks fascism is not system. They don't recognize that in a sense we already fascist and we're still heading in that direction. So they don't know what it is. And again, we haven't studied, and the real lesson here is we haven't studied what unifies them both because there's not a big difference between fascism and communism. There's no big difference between notsism and communism. What does unify them? What unifies them is the common good, the public interest, what unifies them is this idea that there is some elite group of people who can run our lives for us for the

common good, for the public interest. And that you don't matter. You as an individual, you individual don't matter and they will dictate how you live. And so these are for laws for kings it goes back to Plato's philosophy. But it really unifies it. Think about communism. Communism is about the sacrifice of the individual

to the politician. Who is the politician? It's this collective group here. Who represents the politician? Well, somebody has to. Somebody has to tell the politician what they believe in, because they don't know, because there is no collective consciousness. So you need a stalling. And this is the point about Marxism. Marxism needs a dictator, because somebody has to represent the values, the public interest. what's good for the public. Nazism needs the same thing, just Nazism replaced the Aryans, the Aryan race, and you have

exactly the same thing. You need a dictator to tell us what's good for the Aryan people, so we can do what's good for the Aryan people. So it's impossible to have a communist system or a fascist system without a dictator naturally emerging. It's not possible to have a George relates. It's ideologically. It's absolutely impossible to have that. On scale, you can certainly have communes with people behave communistically because it's not inside the ideal. Let's talk

about fascism. Let's talk about fascism because fascism definitionally is going to have a strong man. I don't even know how it could be fascism without that. And let's talk what you said earlier on is about how people don't know if fascism is. Fascism don't know if fascism is. So there's a superb book by John Diggins from the early 70s called Mussolini fascism, the view from America. So I find Mussolini to be a far more interesting figure than Hitler. Because he had a much more nuanced career. He was much more of an innovator. He was intellectual. He was intellectual. He was intellectual. He was shocking, but he always comes across as a buffoon. But he was actually a thinker in a wireless tunnel.

Hold on. Hold on. So one of the things with fascism is it's a direct line from Kant to Mussolini. So basically, there is a philosopher who I adore, who I'm sure you don't, called Shopenhauer. And Shopenhauer, the question became, Rand was not a particularly humorous person. She had some moments of wit.

There's a great moment when she was on Tom Snyder's show in 1980, I believe. And she's talking about Kant. And she goes, Emmanuel Kant, and all his, it'll legitimate children. If you catch my meaning, she me and all his bastards. But the host Tom Snyder did not pick up on it. If you watch it on YouTube, you could pick up on it. And what happened was once Kant bifurcated reality into the phenomenal world, the pure idea world, and the new-manal world, the question became,

well, what is the nature of this world of ideas? And Hegel had it meant reason. I don't know, even know what that means theoretically, that the world of this world of ideas? And Hagle had it meant reason. I don't know, even though that means theoretically, that the world of reason is idea. And this is Schopenhauer who hated Hagle, who constantly attacked him by name and Kegel's followers in his work. He was a very big innovator in a malevolent way,

because he said the nature of reality, this idea, is will. Meaning the universe doesn't care about you, and it's constantly in this reality putting urges in your mind, values. And when you denounce these values and urges, that's the basis of morality. And from there it went to Nietzsche, and the will is at mindless, it is a will to power. Mussolini took this and basically said, because the will to power is the real reality, the Kantian idea, therefore all of this is secondary. So if we will it, we can make it happen. When you have this concept of my will power is stronger than reality.

And you're like, okay, how's this program gonna work? We can make it happen. That was why fascism is not a very coherent ideology because explicitly, there's a book called, from 1936 called the Philosophy of Fascism, which I had to codify, this is 36, this is a long time ago, where they're like, we're against reason and explicitly rationality. We are for willpower, for strength. And if you are strong enough

and united enough, you can force these things to work. So it's, there's a lot that is not taught about this ideology. I highly recommend people read the books from the time. And what was fascinating about Mussolini is he was regarded as the moderate. Because the 1930s, you had the Great Depression. All the intellectuals said this proves capitalism can't work. The Great Depression, obviously, or quotes, is capitalism's fault. Then you have the alternative, the USSR. Well, that's not tangible for us.

Here comes Mussolini. And Mussolini says, I'm going to take the best of both worlds. I have aspects of markets, capitalism, but I don't have this chaos. But I also don't have complete government control of the bureaucrats. I'm going to have this combination. And there was a Broadway song, you're the top, you're Mussolini. That was later edited out because that's when he took a bad turn. But this is kind of the fascist idea.

And it's about power and it's about control. That's the essence. It's about will. So they don't care. Fascists don't care who owns stuff, owns, in quotes, because what's important is who controls it. So you can own your home. But if I get to tell you when you can sell it,

for how much you can sell it, and what you can do on that home, then I'm in control of it. That's the essence of fascism. And if you think sell it, for how much you can sell it and what you can do on that home, then I'm in control of it. That's their sense of fascism. And if you think about it, we live today in a much more fascist economic context than anything else. We pretend that corporations are private. But when everything they do is regulated, who they can hire, how much they pay them, when and how they can fire them, what they can do in their property.

It's all controlled. That's the way fascists start controlling everything. But it's not possible to have checks on power and balance on power at the top of fascism or communist systems. The question was whether in fascist systems or communist systems, we're saying the dictator naturally or must emerge.

If I don't say emerge, the dictator's the one who makes the fascist system. Yeah, fascism, well, it could emerge, because for example, I think today in America we're moving much, much towards fascism, socialism. And at some point that manifests itself in some kind of dictator and the dictator might be different than a Mussolini on

Nazis it might be couched in some kind of Constitution pseudo constitutional America. It would be a lot easier for a female to be a fascist dictator America than a male because you have that softness she's not going to come off as a strong woman.

People won't see it coming in my opinion. Maybe I think it's going to be I've I've owned view. I think it's going to be, I've owned view. I think it's going to be a, a, a nationalist, religious and vime analyst. I think somebody who can combine those three. Well, I did those. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And somebody who can combine those three and articulate the case foot, I think America is ready. So you think it's possible for the fascism to arise in the world again? Oh, of course. It had never went away. It never was. It's just the doctor name. And because the fundamental ideas, the conscient ideas, the ideas that are behind fascism never went away.

There's still this popular, if anything more popular, then they were back there and Marxists as popular. I think these ideas are prevalent throughout there. And absolutely, we, I think America's ready for them. Again, it won't be quite in the form that we've experienced in the past, that'll be in a uniquely American form, counted to the flag, and of course, it was counted to the flag before.

But no, yes, there was some form of authoritarianism and the necessary, because the fundamental principle behind both communism and fascism is the unimportant of the individual. The individual is nothing. The individual is a nobody and the importance of the collective. The collective will, the collective soul, the collective consciousness, but the collective has no will, has no soul, has no consciousness.

So somebody has to emerge to speak for the collective. Otherwise everything falls apart. So it's necessary, whether it's a committee or whether it's one person, how exactly create somebody has to speak for the collective. Even a committee doesn't function as a committee, most committees, particularly when the committee is about dictating how people should live, somebody is going to, because now it becomes really, really important, somebody is going to dominate that committee and rule over it, because you don't want to independent, independent voices, because the individual doesn't matter. And also, the individual doesn't come.

People in natural hierarchical, so you have seven people and they're ostensibly have the same role, someone is going to emerge as a leader naturally and some people are going to be high. It's the same reason you cannot have the Richard Wolf type socialism of. And this is the more if you will, innocent part of his ideas. Oh, why can't we have corporations or be worker owned and everybody votes and everything and we vote on who should be CEO and no communism fascism. Most ideas necessitate ultimately authoritarians. And that's most of human history, we forget again. This idea of liberty, this idea of freedom,

even the limited freedom we have today. It's a recent invention. It's a recent invention. It happens in little pockets throughout history. We had a little bit of this democracy stuff, partial, only if you, you know, some people got to vote and it wasn't rights respecting because they didn't have the concept of rights in Athens

Right yet in every Greek cities. We maybe had a version of it in Venice with a version of it in city states around the world But then it was invented by the funny fathers in this country that that that's that's what makes the founding of America so important And so different and such a radical thing to have happened historically Freedom is rare though a where authoritarianism is common. So I was looking at some statistics that 53% of people in the world live under authoritarian government. Only 53. Oh, because India is democratic. So I guess they don't count India. But yes, so how do we use to be 100? How do we change that? And even the authoritarianism in a country like China is a lot less than it used to be on the mouth.

Right? So I would, you know, they were better off than they won't amount. That's a reality. How do we change it? We have to declare, we have to change the ethical views of people. This is good because it's big suspect of selfishness. It, because it, it, as long as the standard of morality is the group, others. As long as the standard of value is what other people

and what other people think. As long as you are alive, only to be sacrificed to the group, that's why you have to challenge Christianity. As long as the, the, the, the Jesus on a cross dying for other people sin is viewed as this noble, wonderful act instead of one of the most unjust things that ever happened to anybody, as long as the common good and the public interest

are the standards by which we evaluate things, we will always drift towards fascism, some form of authoritarianism. Absolutely. Can I answer your question? I think there's something that has to go along with what your own was saying, and I know he's gonna agree with me, which is technology.

Because if it becomes harder technologically for the authoritarian, and it's more expensive for him, to input or force his edicts, that is going to create a pocket of freedom, regardless of what the masses think. And the masses, as we're all done in finish, the masses of rule are not going to be able to think in general anyway. I've a much more leadist view of mankind the masses think. And the masses, as I've all done, they finish. The masses of rule are not going to be able to think in general anyway.

I've a much more lead as few of mankind than Randas. So let me give you one specific example, which I mentioned in my book, than you write. Let's suppose it's 1990, not that long ago. We all remember 1990, and we're having an argument about censorship. And Yaron says, I want full sense, full freedom of the press, freedom of books, publisher

every want, whatever free speech. And I say, well, what about books like mine comp? What about, you know, people read the see the wrong idea? What about child pornography, things like this? Like where are you going to draw the line? And we could argue along. Lex appears from the future and he goes, Hey, guys, this conversation is moot. And we're like, Lex, you look exactly the same.

Yeah, of course, Robuston age. And you like Lex you look exactly the same. Yeah, of course robust on age And you go I'm from the future and I go wait a minute black president and you go Look this conversation is moot because in a few years from now You will be able to send any book anywhere on earth at the speed of light You can make infinite copies at and second, and you could send it to anyone such that they can only open this book if they know a magic word. And I go, well, how much is it's going to cost? Oh, it's free. And I go, wait, you're telling me I can make infinite copies of any book and teleport them at the speed of light anywhere for free. And

you would say, yes, we would think he's insane. But that's the status quo, right? So technology has done far more to fight government censorship of literature and ideas than has spreading the right ideas. So when you have things like crypto, which makes money less accessible than a gold block in your house, when you have things like people being able to travel quickly, those are also necessary compliments to having the right ideas. And Rand herself said that she couldn't have come up with her philosophy before the industrial

revolution. So as time goes forward and we have more technology and we have more discourse. But for a very difficult reason, but it's also a lot easier to persuade people the right ideas. So I kind of agree I'm maybe I'm more pessimistic or maybe I don't get the technology completely That's because you're a boomer. There you go Okay, I get that in so I think I'm the last year of the boomer generation. It's a line. I think I hit that last year some mindset there you go I think I'm the last year of the Boomer generation. I think I hit that last year.

It's a mindset. There you go. I love you so much. So the reason she said she couldn't have developed her, the reason she said she couldn't develop the philosophy without the industrial evolution is the link between reason and wealth was not obvious before the industrial evolution.

And that, for example, it's not obvious to Aristotle. Aristotle doesn't see the link between rationality and wealth creation. Business is low. And money is barren. Money is barren. You're interested, has no productive function, bankers don't have.

So you had to see it existentially to be able to see reason is the source of wealth creation. So, I think that's a little different. Now, there is a sense in which, yes, technology makes it more difficult for authoritarians to achieve their authoritarianism. I wouldn't, I'm not convinced that they can't. I just say can't. Yeah, I just say can't.

Yeah, so, so, you know, at a certain point, I'm just at a certain point, I'm saying, I'm just saying it becomes more expensive. It becomes more expensive, no question. It becomes more expensive. And we're still beings that live in a physical reality. Therefore, they can still harm us in this physical reality. But let me say this, like, it's going to sound as absurd. If there was technology that we could teleport anywhere in Earth at the speed of light, that would certainly go a long way towards heart hurting authorities. If there was some way to go, and of course they could teleport too. And this is of course the danger of they can use the technology too. And look at what the Chinese are doing with social scores and with monitoring people and cameras every way. So there's a sense in which you probably had more privacy

before some of this technology. So it's not obvious to me that, so to me it's all about ideas. And if we don't get the ideas right, technology will be used for evil. Yes, and it will allow some of us, maybe, to escape for a little while in some realms, but others not.

You know, Iran and North Korea do a pretty good job shutting themselves away from technology, although a lot gets through in the Iranian, at least with Iran, I don't know about North Korea, how much gets through. It's real undermining them, which is wonderful. Yeah, which is great. So yes, but it's more than that,

and this is what leads me to be optimistic, it's that we live in a world today where seven billion people basically have access to all of human knowledge, all of human knowledge. It's not like in Rome, when Rome fell, all of human knowledge disappeared. Now some of it escaped to Byzantine. Some of the Byzantines had and ultimately

landed up with the Arabs and found its way back into Western civilization through them. But a lot of knowledge disappeared. Just wiped out, right? How to build a dome? How to build a big dome? How to have, you know, in Pompeii they had faucets. They're running water in faucets. They didn't have faucets for another thousand years, right? A lot of they couldn't build tall buildings. Yeah, once Rome came down. The great pyramid of Egypt was the tallest building on earth till like 1840. It was crazy.

Rome was a city of a million people. Other than China, there wasn't another city of a million people in the West until London in the 19th century, 1500 years later. So it all disappeared because all of it was concentrated basically in one place. Today none of that exists because of the internet, because of universities everywhere, institutions.

I mean, think about how many engineers they are in the world today, right? Who have basically all, basically the same level of knowledge on how to build stuff. So even if the United States went to some kind of dark ages, it's unlikely the whole world goes into that kind of dark ages. So I am optimistic in that sense that diffusion of knowledge is so broad today that other than wiping out all of it just the on the planet, everything electronic on the planet, it's just it's not going to be possible to control us all. And in that sense, technology is going to make it possible for us to survive and to stay semi-free because I don't think full freedom but semi-free because

full freedom you need the ideas because full freedom means you need some political implementation. No, full freedom means that I keep it we know that. Well, we need to get into that because we can't leave without going out that we fundamentally disagree about that. Oh, that's beautiful to be continued on that one. Let me ask about on one particular technology that I've been learning a lot about, thinking a lot about talking about, which is Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general, but Bitcoin specifically, which a lot of people argue that Bitcoin, that setting ideas aside,

when you look at practical tools that governments use to manipulate its people, is inflation of the monetary system. It within the monetary system. And so they see Bitcoin as a way for individuals to fight that, to go outside those specific government control systems and thereby sort of decentralizing power. You know, there's a case to be made, historic of the 20th century, that you couldn't have Stalin, you couldn't have Hitler, you couldn't have much of the evil that you've seen the world, if they couldn't control the monetarism. You couldn't have had the New Deal,

and FDR realized this very quickly. Everybody knows FDR is going to come into to become president and get to confiscate the gold. So one of the one of the mythologies that the myths about the Great Depression is that there were all these bank runs that what bank runs happened because everybody was afraid that if they all would get elected confiscate the gold. So everybody ran to the bank and took the gold. Little did they realize that he would confiscate their private holdings in their own backyards. He would dig, he would force them to dig up the goals from their own backyard. But yes, one of the first things FDR did in spite of denying it throughout the campaign, right? He was asked about this over and over again and denied it. One of the first things

was, was take over the gold and take the United States, the Federal Reserve off the gold standard so that they can in a sense print money in that he could start spending. Yeah, but people don't realize just to clarify what you're on set is FDR, this is something the gold standard so that they can in a sense print money and that he could start spending. Yeah, what people don't realize just to clarify what you're on set is FDR. This is something that's so crazy to us that we think, okay, I'm misunderstanding it. FDR made it illegal for people to own gold unless it's like a wedding ring. And before that, contracts because inflation was a concern, I make a contract with the road. Right, I said, okay, you're either going to pay me in $1,500 for my work or the gold equivalent because if that $1,500, you know, you know, you know, Y. Marge, Germany, and you have hyperinflation. I don't want that $1,500. Just give me the gold bullion and FDR said all of those clauses

He broke every contract. No, they don't matter. So now, if I say, you're on says, okay, you owe me three feet of drywall. And I go, here's three feet of drywall, it's 12 inches. And you go, ooh, three feet is 36 inches. You go, no, no, not anymore. I was like, what am I supposed to do? And because you have, when you print more money, the value of every individual dollar matters less, it becomes that much harder to

plan anything, either in the government level or in the private level, because if I'm managing outlays, if I'm trying to pay my work as I'm trying to build factories, I'm thinking long term, and I don't know what this dollar is going to buy in 10 years, that puts an enormous incentive for me to spend it now and not save it, because if I save it, it's going to be worth a lot less. And the worst thing about inflation, and this is something I think people who are pro-capitalism don't talk about enough, they do talk about it. I would just like to see it more.

This by far hurts the poorest of the poor the most. When we came to this country, my mom told me they would go to 86 straight in Bensonhurst with the fruit stands, they buy meekachka, some grapes, and you go to 86 straight in Bensonhurst with the fruit stands to buy me kachika some grapes And you go to this fruit stand and she'd walk all the way to the other corner And if it was three cents more a pound or less a pound she'd walk all the way back because that three cents matter Now if I have this dollar and it's 5% inflation whatever and next year it's 95 cents Me and you the three of us might not care And next year, it's 95 cents, me and you, the three of us might not care, but if I'm destitute hand to mouth, and I've got 5% less, that is really a material consequence of my life.

So inflation really is evil because it hurts the people for who those pennies matter. Well, one of the ways the government gets around that, and it's because they get smart to that, right, is they index everything, right? So they index just a security, they index welfare, they try to make sure, but that only makes you more dependent on that. And the people in the modern context, the saving hoods, the inflation hoods the most, the savers, people trying to save money and fed policy right now is just horrific if you're a saver, right? Because the Fed is an interest rate to zero. You get nothing on your saving. And cost of living is going up, maybe not at a huge level,

but it is going up. And yet you can't even save to keep up, to keep the value of your dollars. So here's the other. And the government controls, and this has massive perverse effects, because it's not just the prices go up. It's that prices don't reflect reality's not just the prices go up. It's that prices don't reflect reality anymore.

So some prices go up, some prices might not. Investments get distorted, things get produced, it shouldn't get produced. And then people like Richard Wolf turn around and blame all the distortions and the perversions and the crashes and the financial crisis on capitalism. Not on the fact that the Fed, look at the financial crisis.

Financial crisis was caused, you could argue by inflation. And we could get into that if you wanted, but that's probably a three hour show just that, right? It was caused by the Federal Reserve. And who got blamed for the financial crisis? Who would Richard Wolf is gonna jump up and down? This is a crisis. So capitalism, this was caused by capitalism.

But capitalism is the negation of the Fed. Capitalism says they should be no Fed. That's item number one on the list of the things capitalist want is to get rid of the Fed and then grant you guys your wish, have competition for currency and let's see if Bitcoin wins. I'm skeptical, but I don't care.

My point is under freedom. I don't care who wins. I just want free choices and let the best currency win. I doubt that becomes Bitcoin, but it doesn't really matter. I'm wrong. Great. Let me add to this. And I think people appreciate, and this is a leftist,

leftist is what it's best, that the government and the banks are in bed with each other. This, I don't think is particularly controversial statement. Well, I don't like that statement. Let me just say why I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it because it assumes that they're equal partners or that their causality goes in both directions.

From day one, and this is really from day one of the establishment of the United States, banks have been regulated by the state. And the reason for that is Pymeli Jefferson and others found as distrust of financial finance. So from the beginning, banks are being controlled by the state. Now over time, if I'm controlling you, you won't have influence over me because I get to, so yes, they get into bed over time.

But so I don't like it that they're in bed together. One is dominating over the other and the other is participating because what choice do they have? I should explain to you how things work when you get to bet in bed and it's not always equal. Well, okay, so the bank, let's talk about safe words. Which is very random and tough. She hasn't like those. I had to read that scene three times in the fountain head. I was like, I'm sure you did.

No, because I'm like, I looked at the back cover. I'm like a woman wrote this book in like, I looked at the back cover. I'm like a woman's book in 1943. I must be misunderstanding this. 43. Yeah. She sure had a lot of shades of gray. Yeah. So no, she hated that.

All leave black and white. No, but what I meant is 2008, right? You have the bailout of Wall Street. Whereas in 2020, we saw every medium and small business under the sun go under. There's not even a pretense that these are going to be a bailed out. So the priorities of the politicians, in my view, are always going to be towards powerful entities, powerful corporations, and they're not going to be about the medium-guy and the middle guy.

Let me just finish my point because I see a champion at the bit. At the very least, if you have regulation, people influencing each other with Bitcoin and with crypto, that is not a possibility. You do not have any agency who is king of Bitcoin, who is the Federal Reserve of Bitcoin. There is no organizing management team. Now, you could say this is a bad thing, but you can't say that this is a different thing to money as opposed to federal reserve system.

Yeah. So I agree with that description of Bitcoin, my problem is a Bitcoin elsewhere. Let me just say about the financial crisis. It's, I don't like it phrased that way again. They let Lehman go under and destroyed Lehman brothers. In the past, they destroyed Drexel Bonham because they didn't like Mike and Malkin. They are vindictive.

Yes. It's not an accident that the Treasury Secretary at the time was an ex-chairman of Goldman Sachs, not Lehman Brothers, and Goldman H. Lehman. And, you know, on the next day, they bail out EAG. What I got out of financial crisis more than anything, and by the way, there wasn't a bailout. So it wasn't even a bailout because they gave money to every bank, whether they had problems

or not. And indeed, I know several bankers, including big banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo and a phantomine, John Alcindor B.B. and T, who told them explicitly, we don't want your money. We don't need your money. We don't, and they were basically a gun was put to their head. And they said, you don't take the money. We don't need your money. We don't, and they were basically a gun was put to their head. And they said, you don't take the money.

We'll shut you down basically, right? They're equivalent of that. So they, they wanted a virtue signal. So there's a big virtue signal. We're taking care of things. Don't worry, we've got everything under control, even though they were completely panicking and they had no clue what they were doing. One of one of the things that the financial crisis really illustrated was how

pathetic, ignorant and incompetent the people at the top are and they knew it and they, you know, Supposting goes to Congress. This give me 700 billion dollars. Don't tell me how to use it because I have no clue. Just give it to me and give me your authoritarian power to do it in any way I want. And that was not out of a sense of grandeur. That was a sense of panic. He had no idea. He had no clue. None of them did. They bailed out everybody they could. Everybody under the, you know, within their periphery, when they thought it was appropriate, they were vindictive about some people like Lehman. It was complete arbitrary use of power. The bank has been benefit from this. Indeed, many bankers took their money, lost from it. Bank stocks got crushed after the bailout. Before the bailout, bank stocks were doing okay. Right after top was announced, bank stocks crushed because

this was bad for banks. It wasn't good for banks. This is just central planning gone amok. It's it's not them bailing out elites. It's them, you know, throwing money at a problem without knowing what they would actually do and what the consequences would be. Right, but the point it, sorry, to where we agree, the focus will always be on bailing out elites. It's almost a bit little banks got money too. No, I was saying that last year, there's no talk of saving ICE advice, saving Century 21, saving all these other industries.

But should they work? It's just, it should it was, if you look at the, if you look at what the Fed did, the Fed was bailing out third, fourth class businesses in all kinds of areas that you wouldn't consider elitist areas. Oh, PPP, the way that's 2008. Yeah, no, I'm talking about now. Okay, I took about COVID last year. What the Fed did was unbelievable. The kind of bonds that they were buying even 2008, even after 2000, I couldn't believe what they did last year. PPP, the

Payball Protection Program was targeted at everybody. Everybody got PPP. It's not about, I don't think it's about bailing out elites. It's about securing their power base. And if they believe that securing their power base is wall street, then they'll bail out wall street. They believe securing their power base is writing checks the restaurant owners all over the country. They'll write checks the restaurant owners all over the country, which is what they did with PPP. It's all about power for them, and it's whatever will achieve power,

whatever will result in power. I don't think it's about elites. I don't see a leadism in the bailouts of last year. I agree. I agree, I wasn't last year. I'm saying that's one distinction between 2008 and 2008. And I do think, just one more thing, I do think getting in good bed with the elites

is a great mechanism in general for maintaining one's power. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's not the idea. It depends depending on how we define it. Of course. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned there's some criticism for Torres Bitcoin.

There's a lot of excitement about the technology of Bitcoin for the resistance against this kind of central state pursuit of power. So that's part of my criticism, because I don't think it works. So, yeah, I can imagine a world. I can imagine, I'd love to see a technology evolve that way money is competitive, and it's a financial instrument that the government cannot touch. You think the state is too powerful and it's too strong?

I think right now, and maybe this won't be true in the future, right now I think crypto is ill, it cannot function as money right now, it just can't. But it does. No, it doesn't. It functions as a mechanism, it functions as a mechanism to transfer, it's a technology that allows me to transfer fiat money from mechanism to transfer. It's a technology that allows me to transfer fiat money from place to place, but it doesn't function.

And it can't, because it's too volatile. So I've sold things at Bitcoin. I don't have much money. I'm running. But I can buy things and sell things with my airline miles. There are lots of ways in which you can use things as money, but it doesn't make their money. So if you're using something as money,

so let me take something use, no. So let me take something use, no. So let me take something you said before and the contradicts, I think Bitcoin. You said one of the things about money is that it's stable. I know what it's gonna buy tomorrow, right? And this is why we're against inflation because I know what the dollar today I can plan because I can't plan, I don't know what Bitcoin's

gonna be with tomorrow. So I can't plan with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is way too volatile to serve right now as money. Now the argument from Bitcoin is is yes, it's still being adopted. It's some point it'll reach a certain crucial high-professionalization. Yes. And then it will become money because at that point it can be used as money because they don't have a stable value. Maybe right now it's not useful as money because I can't predict what I can't invest in in it knowing what the value will be in five years.

It right now it's an asset. It's not a it's not a monitor unit. It's it's much more functions as an asset. Asset's value can go up. I agree. It's function much more as an asset than as money. That's not in dispute. So I don't think so.

I don't think it's money. But so I think it's it it's, I think it can compete as a money with something tangible. So I think in a free market, some kind of crypto backed by gold would be most successful. So Bitcoin folks argue that Bitcoin has all the same fundamental properties that does gold. So it's backed by, there's a scarcity to it and it's backed by proof of work. So it's backed by there's a scarcity to it and it's backed by proof of work. So it's backed by physical resources. And so they say that's a very natural replacement of gold. So it doesn't need to be connected to gold. So the two things the gold has that it doesn't have. One is gold is not finite. Gold, gold

supply actually grows over time. Bitcoin at some point is truly finite. Yes. At least unless you count the fact that you can split bitcoins and create coins, but you know, but that's a whole other question. So that's one. The second is that gold has value beyond its use as a currency. Beyond its use as a... For jewelry and stuff. Yeah, but you minimize that. But jewelry and stuff has been important for the human race for 100,000 years.

You can find jewelry in caves, for the cavemen designed jewelry and wore them. So we obviously assume being valued jewelry a lot. And almost all jewelry evolved to be made out of gold because whatever it is within us is attracted to shiny gold, in particular, shiny object generally. So there's something about gold

that appeals to human beings. There's some value that gold has beyond it's being a currency. It doesn't, it's not, that Bitcoin doesn't. Now it's not enough to use it as money. Lots of things appeal to human beings. But there was a two characteristics,

one that it's not finite in second that it is a value beyond that Bitcoin doesn't have. Don't you think the finiteness could be a frame as a feature, the scarcity of Bitcoin? No, because I think it creates a real problem with scarcity. Economically, it's the issue of planning. There is a mechanism, there's a beautiful mechanism in markets

that as the supply of gold is in a sense, the quantity of gold is prices are going down because there's two little gold, right? So the value of gold in a sense in dollar terms, the surprises are going down. What happens then is there's an incentive to then go mine for more gold, right? Because it becomes cheaper and cheaper to mine as the price goes down to you, mine for more gold, keeps increasing and keeps increasing. Basically, very correlated to the rate of increasing productivity. That's the beauty of gold mining because prices are related to gold.

Gold is the dominant money. And it increases at the same rate as productivity. It keeps prices relatively stable. You still have bouts of inflation and deflation, but it keeps it relatively stable. With Bitcoin, it's finite. It ends. Now prices will only decline. What rate will they decline at?

They decline at the rate of productivity increases. It's hard to predict what the rate to which productivity increases. For example, technological shocks can change that dramatically. You could get you could get bolts of dramatic deflation, dramatic price drops that could be problematic in terms of planning the same problem of inflation just reverse that you had before. So I you know again, that it's a technical issue. I'm sure they're ways to get around it. And again, I'm not sure. I don't know if you guys consider Bitcoin the end or the beginning, that is, is Bitcoin it or is Bitcoin just the first example of its technology that I'm evolving? I was just going to say, I don't know.

There's the same technological issue with regard to gold, which is we now have the technology that was very expensive to turn elements into different elements. And at a certain, yeah, you could fire electrons at it or whatever, you could make gold. They figured out how to do it. It's not cheap and it's called the cross-experiment. If gold is the standard, a lot of resources are going to be going toward turning other things into gold, making the production of gold cheaper, and that's going to have a similar consequence that's learned to talk about. That's kind of the category of security that Bitcoin

is talking about. That's very difficult to do that. Bitcoin. But I would argue that's exceptionally difficult to do that with gold. It is now, but the thing is there's not huge incentive. If gold is the basis and if gold is worth that much, it's not gold isn't worth that much. Gold is worth. Let's say I'm saying in this world that we're talking about the future. In the future, yeah. Gold is not going to gold is what let's say I'm saying in this world that we're talking about the future Yeah, gold is not gonna be worth let's say right now gold is about two thousand bucks. It's a listen to them Let's say two thousand bucks. That's that's price in terms of all in dollars So you'd have to it would have to be worth you all to create something of two thousand dollars How much would be willing to put into it at some point you're right?

And it's at that point. I think gold stops being money, Right. Because they're useless. Once I can create it like, like, like, like, silicon, then, then, then once I can make out official gold. So I'm just not, I don't think Bitcoin is the solution. I, I, I think, you know, I don't know what the solution is. I wish I, I wish I was that innovative. But I think, I think you need a solution that has more of the characteristics of gold than Bitcoin currently has. And I'm, at a lot of the technologists who view Bitcoin as the end game, where it strikes me as it's the birth of a new technology. And who the winner in that technology is going to be, we have no clue. Bitcoin is one of the players.

There are other players. There might be a new technology that is even better than anything we can imagine right now. That so Bitcoin doesn't strike me as optimal. And that that we should be moving to what's up. Can you please stop shilling a rand coin? Five minutes. You know, it was you know, way that was rand coin. It was ran.

So I was no, I was a recurrence. Africa. No, I was in recurrences in Rand. That's true. No, I mean, Rand is South African $1. Yeah. Iron Rand coin was I was in China in 20. I think it was 2015 or 14. China, China. I was in China 20.

So she liked that. And this entrepreneur came up to me. She said she's bought this massive quantity of land in this area in China is a little secluded. She's starting what she's calling golds, gold. I mean, she's serious and she's issuing and she issued crypto currency based on the land right back by the land called ran, but I ran with a little portrait of vine, you know, a little portrait in the in in the, uh, in the marketing. I didn't think it went anywhere. You're not gonna be a janitor.

A janitor in China. Go check out. Yeah. By the way, I do want to point out something I do enjoy about objectives. I constantly talk about Anne Rand and her vampire novels. And I, that's the joke you're on. Thank you. Uh, and inevitably someone feels they need to point out

that she did not write run by novels and her name is actually I. So thank you, thank you, you're on. We've been talking about two hours. I own her copy of the town head. Somehow, I thought her name was I. Thank you. Thank you. And it's an anthem.

So this is really interesting way of phrasing it, which is I was kidding with the I. I know you knew how to pronounce it. which is... I was kidding with the I. I know you knew how to pronounce it. I know you know you know that you know. Yeah, I know you just got confusing. I think we all know, and we all know that we're joking. We're all one.

There's no Batman in this conversation. This is your only one. So it's an interesting way to frame it as Bitcoin the end or the beginning or something. And I've, as sort of with an open mind and seeing kind of all the possibilities of technologies out there, I also kind of thought that Bitcoin is the beginning of something. But what the Bitcoin community argues is that Bitcoin

is the end of the base layer, meaning all the different innovations will come on top of it. Like for example, there's something called Lightning Network, where it's basically just all the different innovations will come on top of it. Like for example, there's something called lightning network where it's basically just like gold is the end. And everything is built like the monetary systems like cash and all that is built on top of gold. Bitcoin is the end in that other technologies

that build on top of Bitcoin. That's their argument and doesn't exist. I get that and I get that all the time. And I just I don't quite understand that and I think Bitcoin has limitations that potentially other cryptocurrencies might not have. You know, my attitude to it's something like this is that logic is that I don't understand the technology.

My views let it play out. I think I have more fear of physical the ability of the government to crush these things than I think many in the community. So for example, so I gave a talk with Cornie, you know, and they were hyping the acceptance now. A lot of vendors will accept it, and this is great. And I said, yeah, it's absolutely great.

More options is better than fewer options. But I said, you know that that could be taken away like that. Now, it's true that we could exchange Bitcoin and the government that would know, I think, wouldn't know that we do. But once he's advertising on his website that he accepts Bitcoin, or once he tries to turn his Bitcoin into particular goods, once you manifest it in the physical world, now the government can step in. So the government could say, you can't sell anything to anybody using Bitcoin. They can do that and you won't be able to sell it.

It will be, you have to go into the black market. So, but that is an able to sell it, just to just sell it in the black market. Yeah, but that's where the government thrives, right? The government thrives on letting you do stuff in the black market so they can decide when to put your jail in it, right? So, if I'm buying a sweatshirt from the government thrives, right? The government thrives on letting you do stuff in the black markets so they can decide when to put your jail in it, right? So if I'm buying a sweatshirt from the government,

sorry, if I'm buying a sweatshirt from somebody using Bitcoin, the government can monitor my exchange of Bitcoin to him. But they can monitor the sweatshirt being sent to me, right? That's where they can interfere. And I think that at some point, to the extent Bitcoin is successful, it will be stopped.

That is it. And that's what I'll stop it from becoming money. See, money can only become money. It can only become money if people are using it as money, right? And if the government can stop it being used, if I can't go to the grocery store and use my ATM that charges on Bitcoin or whatever. Then it's not money and I think that the government is going to step in and stop People from doing that and that's that's what I saw I have more respect and fear for the power of

Of government today. I don't see that at all. However, I could be wrong and I'm sure Yarr Ron hopes he's wrong I don't see that at all. However, I could be wrong and I'm sure Yarron hopes he's wrong Absolutely And I hope the government just give in and and the fed Tomas says yeah, let let Bitcoin thrive Well, but I think that one regulated controlling the only way to regulate control it is the is to stop it Yeah, there's a bunch of people who argue that Bitcoin is too compelling to argue to government That they'll actually embrace it like a person who's personal. That is, if government has positive goals and wants to do good things, you can ask. You can.

No, no, it's a greedy. They say government is greedy because they would Bitcoin has had this whole linko. They say, number go up. Government is not greedy. Government is not greedy for money. Government is greedy for power. Government is greedy for control.

Government is much more, and now money greedy for control. Government is much more and out money is good too. They'll take the money if they can get it. But it's not fundamentally about money. It's fundamentally and this is something that many libertarians don't understand. This is something many of the Bitcoin community don't understand. They have far too benevolent of view of politicians and the people in government today. By the way, I'm on the today. I know why he's laughing. I think I know why he's laughing. You know exactly what I'm laughing. And we should get to that issue at some point here.

But, you know, so I think there's a lot of naive, naive attitude. Yeah, there's a lot of it that you're on. No, okay. I'm not naive. I'm actually providing the warning and all these bit coiners who are saying, no, no, no, government doesn't from now on. No, I'm not naive. I'm let's actually providing the warning and all these Bitcoiners were saying, no, no, no, government doesn't from no one says I'm naive.

Naive people think they're not naive. So let's put this on the table, speaking of naive, I still more than the two of you by far, I think have faith that government can work. Okay, let's put that on the table. I got it. I'm not trying to be pedantic. What do you mean work? Government can't achieve goals, that is not in dispute.

Can achieve goals effectively to build a better world of functioning society? So I'm gonna take it one step further than you. Oh boy. The only way to achieve a better world is through government. Michael, what do you think about that? He almost dropped and I said it on purpose that way. No, I so you land a mask is dropping. You cannot, you cannot achieve, you cannot have liberty or freedom without a government. Now, not anything like the governments we have today. So I think I think the idea that you

can have liberty of freedom without government is the rejection of the idea of liberty and freedom. And and the undermining of any effort, any attempt to do it. So in that sense, I do it here. Right. I know exactly on this side, we can agree with Lex. Yeah. That government is good for freedom. You're agree with the guy who's reading my concert. That's not a surprise. Who's dressed in black. Yeah. That's the bad guys. No, the fascism, I mean, the road to fascism is anarchy. It's not.

What are you talking about? Anarchy. You can't even one example when anarchy let the fascism. Well, every example of a stateless society leads to authoritarianism, every single one in all of human history. And it has to. Because why did Germany was the of Anarchy? Well, it was, it wasn't pure Anarchy, but it got close.

But no, I said the reverse, by the way. I said the reverse. I didn't say that every form of authoritarianism started with Anarchy. I said that every situation in which human beings lived under Anarchy led to authoritarianism. So I said the flip. Anarchism isn't a location. Anarchism is a relationship. The three of us are in an anarchist relationship. Every country is in a relationship of anarchy toward each other. The US and Canada have an anarchist relationship toward one another. And to claim, you know, going back to Emma Goldman, who I love, in 1901, William McKinley, President McKinley was shot by this guy Leon Salgas.

And it was very funny, but he was a crazy person. And they rest to him, he shot the president, and they go, why did you shoot President McKinley? And he just goes, I was radicalized by Emma Goldman. And she's like, oh, God damn it. So now she's on the lamb, she had nothing to do with this guy. She's trying to flee, she gets arrested, they caught her. And she said, and this is the hubris of this woman, which I admire, as the subject of the good hubris.

She goes, I'd like to thank the cops for doing what they're doing. They're turning far more people into anarchism than I could do on my own. So, given everything you've said in these two hours, and then to pivot to being anti-government is being anti-liberty, I don't feel like to say anything. Well, for people who are not familiar, if you're, I don't know why you would not be familiar, but Michael Mellis talks quite a bit about the evils of the state and government and as far as those ideas that anarchism is actually what is it, the most moral system, the most effective system for human relationships?

There's this great book called Atlas Shrugged, and the author posits an anarchist private society. She calls it Galt's Gulch, where everything is privately owned, and everyone is no one is in a position of authority over anyone else other than the landowner. That's an anarchist society. There is one judge, and one authority. Yeah. And that's what everyone hold on. And that's what everyone has voluntarily moved there and agreed to be under. It's a very small community. That is right. So I have no problem with competing governments. That's the definition of anarchism. What's got him over not not definition of this not definition of anarchy at all. I'm awful competing government. He did it. He did it. Yeah, you're wrong. I'm over.

Red Roman. The winiens. What is this? Clouds of the winiens. That's my people. Dorsky. Yasnaj Palyana. Miodum. It's honey. no claims of health. Yeah, the one claimed hell. This one, no claims. No, I'm for competing governments on different geographic areas. That's, that's fine.

Why don't you have a, okay, let me, it's, it's really crucial that, that it's on different. So you don't have two judges in Gold's Gold. You have one. And there's a reason one. There's one authority. There's one system of laws in Golds Gold. That is that all the people under the Golds abide by this one. There's two because they're under they're in America. No, they're not. The whole point is they're not right. They're not in America. They're in Colorado. I know, but the whole point of the novel is they've left America. They haven't left America. They've they've hidden themselves. So they're not under the whole point of the novel is they've left America. They haven't left America. They've they've hidden themselves

So they're not under the authority of the American, but they are don't think that it, but they're hidden They're supposed to be on the whole point is that the hidden stuff is not under the If you if the three of us hide We're still under the authority of Washington But not if they don't know it. This is why they haven't established a state and it's not it's not a government and it's not in that sense But this is why they haven't established a state and it's not a government and it's not in that sense, you know, an example of really the way we form societies. It is a private club that is hidden away from everybody else. Fine.

I'm fine with that. What happens if an American kills a Canadian in Mexico? What happens in American, it depends, depends on the nature of the governments of the three places, right? But usually what happens in most of human history is that America will launch a war either against Mexico or Canada. Okay. Just first of all, so usually violence results in much more violence. Anarchy is just a system that legalizes violence. That's all it does. And international fears, that's the reality. The reality is that the way you resolve disputes, that are major disputes is through violence.

Ine Rand said, the definition of a government is an agency that has a monopoly of force in a geographical area. So you can't complain that anarchism is legalizing violence when the definition of government, according to Rand, is legalized violence. No, but because you're taking the definition of government, according to Rand, is legalized violence. No, but because you're taking a definition of violence the way she defines it, right, in this context.

A, she talks about retaliatory force only. And has that ever happened? That's not the point. That is the point. Before there was Aristotle, was there an Aristotle? Before there was an America, was there an America? The fact that something has never existed means that it will never exist before.

The fact that the ideas haven't been developed to make something exist means that it will never exist before. You know, where young, human race is a young race, the ideas of freedom are very young, the ideas of the alignment are just 250 years old, the idea that you can't create the kind of government I ran and talked about, I talked about that it's never been before means it will never happen again. That's a silly argument. It's not a silly argument.

It's you're being a Platonist. No, not at all. I'll explain to you how you're being exactly a Platonist. So if I was sitting in 1750 arguing with Thomas Jefferson, he was telling me what kind of state he was going to create. And I said, is it a state like this ever being created? And he said, no, was I being a Platonist? Of course not.

No, you're being a Platonist. No, you're being a Platonist. No, you're being a Platonist now. You I being a Platonist? Of course not. No, you're being a Platonist. You're being a Platonist now. Here's why you're being a Platonist now. Because one of the things that Aristotle believed in, one of the things that I ran in other contexts believed in, the cover of her book, the philosophy who needs it, is I think it's the Sistine Chapel, the cover,

or wherever it is. It's Aristotle and Plato walking. No, it's not, yeah, but it's that painting. I figure what it is. It's a school of Athens. School of Athens, thank you. It's Aristotle and Plato walking. No, it's not. Yeah, but yeah, what's that painting? I figure what it is. It's a school of Athens. School of Athens. Thank you. It's a rock. So Plato is pointing toward the heavens while they're talking,

and Aristotle's pointing to the earth. Reality. Reality. Absolutely. So if you want, there's two approaches. There's the Descartes Cartesian approach, which is I sit in my armchair and I deduce all of reality. Or if I want to study the nature of man, if I want to study the nature of dogs, if I want to study nature of the sun, I have to look around. I have to open my eyes. I have to

look at data. It's very difficult. When Rand was on Donahue, he asked her about aren't you impressed with the order in the universe and she goes, oh, now you have to give me a moment. And the point she made, which was very hard for many people to grasp, as hard for me to grasp, is one's concept of order comes from the universe. You can't have a disorderly universe because order means describing that which exists and which has existed. Now, if you are looking at governments throughout history that have always existed, and when you were on Lex, you said, what I'm talking about has never existed. To say that this, therefore, that that has a possibility of working in reality, I think, is certainly not a point in that favor number one. And number two, Jefferson was a fraud. What Jefferson argued how America would look did not come true.

Jefferson's concerns about the Constitution were accurate. And the fact is the federal government did become centralized, did become a civil war. So if you told Mr. Jefferson that our government you're positing can't work, you would have been correct. That's not what I'm saying. It's not're positive and can't work, you would have been correct. That's not what I'm saying. It's not the issue of can it work or not. It's the issue of can something exist that hasn't existed in the past? It's a silly argument.

Now, we can argue about the fact of reality where the such a thing can exist, but to say it hasn't existed in the past is not an argument about whether it can exist in the future, but that's argument you made. But no, no, you're talking about history and now you're dancing around it. No, I'm not. Yes you are. I'm saying that something different happened

in the founding of America. It might not have been perfect, might not have been ideal, it might have been some people even think it was bad, right? Sure, it was different. It was something different happened. And you could have said 20 years before and said, well, that's never happened before,

say it can't happen in the future. That is a bad argument. It's not a good argument. It irrelevant. No, but you're making the argument that's just because something hasn't happened before. That's certainly not a point to say it's likely to happen or possible.

No, I'm saying, I'm saying, first of all, I agree that everything we know about what's possible or what's not possible has to be from reality. That we agree completely. I think Anarchist completely evade that point. I think you guys live in a world of mythology, of abstraction, of decards, to imagine the kind of Anarchy that David Friedman or Rothbard describe. It's complete fiction.

And it's complete. Let's just name it. Okay, let me ask you just a few dumb questions. So first of all, what do we do with violence in terms of just natural emergence of violence in human societies? Sure. So the idea that anarchists and proposes is that we would, as the community grows, there may be violence and then we together form collectives, that sort of fund mechanisms that resist that violence. I mean, that's, I'd love to sort of talk about violence because that seems to be the core thing that's the difference between the state that hasn't, was definitionally, I

guess, is the thing that has a monopoly on violence or controls violence in such a way that you don't have to worry about it. And then the anarchism, I don't know. I'm using bad words. I'm using bad words. No, your definition is accurate, but the point is that being the definition of the state

versus how state's act of reality is just absurd. Yeah. And then the idea of the anarchism will be is that it's more kind of a market of defenses against violence. So you have like security companies and then you hire different ones that you have more companies. You have things being made affordable. You have more accessibility to security.

You have accountability when people misuse their power, and you have more layers of security than having a government monopoly. But so every objective is to understand, and they don't deny this, this is something you talk about constantly, is any time you have a government monopoly, it's going to have enormous distortions as a consequence, it's going to be expensive, it's going to be ineffective. And when you're talking about ineffectiveness in markets, that's not just like the cup sucks, it often means mass death, it often means persecution.

So this is something that anarchism, if not entirely prevents, certainly mitigates enormously. So can I just, as a thought experiment, say it was very easy to immigrate to another country country like where you could just move about from government to government Sure Would that alleviate most of the problems that you have towards the state which is like people being free to choose which government they operate under Wouldn't that essentially be yeah, so like what is I I'm trying to understand why governments aren't

I'm trying to understand why governments aren't already the thing that's the goal of anarchism. The kind of collectives that emerge under anarchism seems to do what government is. You're equating two terms. So there's something called like private governance and there's government. So for example, if I go to Yaron's house and he has a rule, take off your shoes, become your house, become your house. If you wanna really be kind of silly about it, you could say he's the governor. But it's really not sensitive to say that.

If you go to Macy's, right? If you wanna return your sweater, Macy's rules are right up there. You have seven days, if you don't have receipt, you're gonna get store credit. If you do have receipt, you get a refund. So every organization, every bar, nightclub, your house has rules of governments. This is often they're unspoken.

This is unavoidable. No one in America by law has to pay a tip, but it's just customary. You go at the waiter, you give them 15, 20, so on and so forth. Now, what anarchism does is it says, okay, security is something that is of crucial, essential, human need. We all need to be safe in our property, safe in our purpose. The organization that, by far, is the biggest violator of this and always has been, always will be, is the government. Why?

Because it's a monopoly, because it has no accountability and look at the writing last year, right? If you have one agency, pretend it's not the government, pretend it's Apple. And Apple has the charge of security in this town, people lied, writing, people looting. And Apple says, yeah, we're not going to send people into work. And if you try to defend yourself, we're going to put you in jail as well. That's the problem of having a government monopoly and that's something that anarchism solves for. So, okay.

But don't you, because you said no accountability, don't you mean to say poor accountability? I mean to say no accountability. But isn't that the idea of democracies? I'm not for democracy. No, not for democracy, but like the system of governments that we have, there is a monopoly on violence, but there is, I mean, at least in the ideal,

but I think in practice as well, there's an accountability. I do not think I know you're a critic of the police force and all those kinds of things, but the military is accountable to the people. I do not, the police forces accountable to the people, in perhaps imperfectly, but you're saying not at all. I do not. Police forces accountable to the people. Perhaps imperfectly. I do not. You're saying not at all.

Not at all. And we've seen many examples of police officers doing horrific things on video. And they don't even lose their attention. But there's a lot of amazing police officers or not. You I mean, no, they're not. So you're saying by nature, police is like a fundamentally flawed system. No, by nature, government, monopoly, and police is a fundamentally irredeemable system.

We'll talk about private security. If I have a private security firm, you could have that under a government. And as a result of my private security, my person who I'm bodyguarding gets shot, that's gonna be very bad for my company as compared to competing companies. However, when you have a government monopoly and I get people shot, what are you going to do?

So the problem is that all the examples are going to be within the context of an existing government. This is why I said the cell phone example and all these are the examples of us being here. We're not in Anarchy. That is absurd. We're under a particular system of law and the system of law is applied. And we know that the system, particular system of law is absurd. We're under a particular system of law and the system of laws applies and we know that the system, particular system of laws applies. So the problem is when you

have, there are many laws that we're not going to be enforced that we're not. We know that violence related. No, there are lots of laws that are not going to be enforced. Right. And, and, and that, that doesn't make this anarchy because there are the laws out there. They could be enforced, which makes, which makes an enormous bit. But look, there's a, there's a number of issues here. There's an issue of the role of force in, in, in, I got to clarify I think, because I think you misunderstood what I said. I, I'm not saying that America is anarchist.

What I'm saying is the three of us have an anarchist relationship between us because none of us have authority over the others. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but that is a, that's a bad use of the wood anarchy. No, that's the correct use of the wood anarchy. It makes a meaningless. It makes it every time any people get together they have an anarchistic relationship.

No, we have a voluntary relationship. That's what anarchism means. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. It's a political system. What do you get a dictionary on? You're taking a wood and it's accepted usage. And then you're saying, oh, no,

you know, selfishness. Maybe. And we never finished that discussion. You're taking a word, we're taking a word that you're defining as, as replacing a voluntary. Now, I'm not for anarchism or voluntaryism. But let me, let's, let's understand what voluntary means, right? So we, for example, going to stores and, and there's a certain relationship that we have with the store that we engage in certain voluntary transactions with the store. Now, I believe that that works because there is a certain system of law that both the store and we have accepted that makes that possible. Now, if that didn't, there are certain people who would like to walk into the store and just take the stuff, right? So there is a not we might not, but there are certain people who would like to walk into their store and just take the stuff. Right? So, there is a, not, we might not, but there are certain people who might want it to go into

their store. There's a certain system of law that regulates the relationship and, and, and, the, defines the property rights and then provides protection for the property rights. Now, you would like all that privatized. That is the store would have its police force and they, that would be privatized. Now, I don't believe that force can be privatized And the and the many reason I Don't think it can and I don't think I think I think it's interesting distinction

I don't think it can because I think that it's an unstable equilibrium right? I don't think competing Police forces can work. At the end, the police force with the biggest gun always wins and always takes over and becomes a third year. Look at Iran and Iraq, excuse me, we had the bigger guns. We didn't win. Look at Afghanistan. We didn't win partially because none of that is an example of Anarchy. No, but you said you just said the guy with the biggest guns going to win. Yeah, the guy with the biggest guns going to win. Yeah, the guy with the biggest gun.

We didn't win it yet. No, we had the bigger guns. But again, you're taking it outside of a context. That was a context in which there was a context in which countries are fighting not a context in which there is no. You, okay, let's go. You y'all wrong have a rocket launcher. Yes.

And there's a hundred people with handguns. How are you going to win? You have the biggest gun. Oh, believe me, I could win with one rocket launcher against a hundred launcher. And there's a hundred people with handguns. How are you going to win? You have the biggest gun. Oh believe me, I could win with one rocket launcher against a hundred people. Yeah, it's a good. Well, it depends how many rockets I have in the rocket launcher and what where them willing to use them. But that's, but so now it's democracy because they're more of them that they win. Look, that they any one of these scenarios, all it does. So, so let's go back to the store. This is fascinating, by the way. I'm really enjoying this.

I just want to say that. This is great. I look because I'm glad you are. I am enjoying the pain. And I'm also enjoying the comments that are going to happen. Oh, the comments, the comments are going to be overwhelming on your side. I don't think so.

I don't think so. So I think the Anarchy position is completely designed. I'm a modern day. What's his name? What's the guy who was defending communism? Oh, I'm a modern so. No. I think the Anarchy position is completely dishonest. I'm a modern day, what's his name? What's the guy who was defending communism? Oh, I'm a modern day richer wolf. There's a sense in which I think Anarchy is all evading reality in the same way sense. You know, so we've got this solution.

Do you think I'm dishonest or delusional? I think you're a delusional. Calling someone dishonest is a really, I think you're a delusional. I think you're a delusion. I think you're a delusion on it. I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt of being delusion. Okay. And that's fair. We all love each other. And as I said on the show, on the previous interview, I said, only smart people can be anarchists, because it requires a certain level of abstraction of being divorced from reality that is hard for people who actually connected to reality.

He makes a good point because I always talk about this with people on social media and they talk about a lot of people who buy into the corporate media narrative and how they're dumb, I go, it's easier to train smart people than dumb people. It's easier to convince smart people of the systemic that's the worst reality

that it was somebody's dumb. You can deal with it, I don't have to deal with it of the systemic that's the worst reality. It was somebody's dumb. Yeah, yeah, yeah I don't have to deal with it with the concrete should actually happen This is an example I gave Debating another anarchist so who was it? Chemos the sucked Well, you were the best hopper hopper fans. Okay, hop like a hopper fans not one of my least like the people I liked least in the world

out there. You know, you like them better than the communists, don't you? Barely. Oh, come on. Seriously? Yes. Because I think it leaves the same place. I really do. I think it leaves the Gulags. Fine. I think I'm okay. And I think Hoppe's view of Anarchy definitely leads to Gulags. I'll grant you just for the sake of argument that it leads to Gulags. However, surely you can see that they are against grulags, whereas the commis have no problem with it. And that's a big, I think some do. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure people like hope they do because if you read, if you read some of this stuff, one wonders, right? You know, but once monarchy is and you once once said, he said monarchy is a preferable to democracy, which is true. No, it's not. Oh, God. I mean, one of the problems with anarchist is... One judge. That's the monkey.

One of the problems. Yeah. One judge. One authority. This is why... Monter. That's why I think... So you're a hodotian.

So a thovotian. Yaron Brooks is a hopian. No one. Get a chopper. I don't want an obituary judge. I want an objective judge. There's an essay by John Hasnast. I think his name, I'm going to bungalow it. It's going to be in my upcoming book on anarchism and he just discusses and it's a very long

complicated technical issue that the idea of objective law is incoherent. Well, yeah, I mean, that's why we disagree so much because I think objective law is the only coherence is. Do you disagree that we in effect have competing systems of law under America? Meaning there's different ideologies. You have the sort of my ideology versus the Scalia ideology and that effectively. And the point being, when you and I file a lawsuit,

it completely depends on who the judge is. Yes, and in theory, I don't think the system works this way, but in theory, the way the system would work is that on new issues, there are, there is some competition. Nice to meet you. Syria wasn't talking. Technology. Capitalism. So in theory, the system works.

And this works, I think, I think with competing states, but also with competing legal views, particularly on a new issue. There's some, this is a common law, worked, right? There's some evolution of it, and at some point, that gets codified into the law, and it gets objectified in that sense. That is, there's some conclusion that people come to, this is the role in theory of a legislation. The legislature would be nice if it was composed of people who had some idea of legal philosophy.

And it gets codified. And because these things are complex, and at some point it goes through all the arguments, and then a certain truth emerges or certain truths is identified, and that's what gets encoded in law. That's what the purpose of a legislature is. Now, if you have competing mechanisms that don't converge on one authority, because there's no one authority. There are multiple authorities,

that is, in a sense, a multiple governments or multiple systems or enforcement, right? Then you get not just something emerging out of it, what you get is competing legal systems. Competing legal systems that now have competing mechanisms of enforcement, competing police forces, competing militaries, however we wanted to find it. And now there's no mechanism to resolve that. Now yes, we couldn't negotiate and there's good will and so on.

Right? No, there you go. No, but now we're talking about the law. What each view, each position, views as true and right. Right? And it might involve, for example, it might involve the fact that the legal system has come to the conclusion that it's okay for children to have sex with adults. And this legal system thinks that is evil and wrong.

Right? And this something has happened between the two. Right? How do you resolve that conflict? There is no resolution. You know, this adult wants to have sex with this child. This legal system thinks it's okay. That's a good system.

The only way to resolve that system is through one system imposing itself on the other. An example of countries is exactly that. When good system. Think so. The only way to resolve that system is through one system and posing itself on the other. An example of countries is exactly that when you had monarchies, when you had little states all over the place, the way any kind of dispute was resolved when there were issues of territorial disputes or issues of marriage or issues of, of, of illegal interpretations about was war. No, it wasn't. Yes, it was marriage.

A lot of times people would marry a princess from another country. Sure. Of course, marriages, which was not very pleasant. I'd rather sacrifice one princess than a car. No, I don't want to sacrifice anybody. And in addition, I don't want to sacrifice the royals. And in addition, I don't want royals. Well, that's what I think I think I wasn't pretty disgusting. And then on the fastest. And then on top of that, you look, those periods in history are filled with violence, much more violence than we have today, much more bloody than they are today, fall less freedom than we have today.

So, you're comparing this to this 20th century. Yes, I'm comparing a monarchy, right? You said that's preferable to democracy, right? I'm comparing. I said Hoppa said that. I'm not saying I'm saying that. Oh, I thought you agreed. I thought you agreed with it.

I thought you agreed with it. Hoppa said that. And I think it's ridiculous. These kings and queens were fighting constantly. I mean, the wars back then were violent in a way that- Unlike now? No, much more violent than now. If you look at the actual percentage of people killed in war-

Yes, this is even thinker book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you look at percentage of people and not just that, you can look at other stats. The percentage of people killed in war back then were far greater than percentage of people killed in war. Yeah, the Stephen thinker book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you look at percentage of people and not just that, you can look at other stats. The percentage of people killed in war back then were far greater than percentage of people, even during World War II and World War I. So Anarchy, and David Fiendman loves to quote the sagas

of Iceland about how wonderful the Anarchy. And I mean, it's funny because a lot of people read David Fiendman never read the sagas. It's worth reading. The sagas of the sagas of the Iceland are filled with violence, constant violence, constantly people killing each other over I stole your chickens and you slept with my wife and the only way to resolve disputes,

the only way to resolve disputes was violence. There was no authority, there was no mechanism to resolve these disputes, there was a council, but the council couldn't enforce anything, so in the end of the day we just resolved the violence. There was no authority. There was no mechanism to resolve these disputes. There was a council, but the council couldn't enforce anything. So in the end of the day, we just resolved to violence. And this is legalized because there is no, there is no mechanism by which to make the violence illegal. So all anarchy is is legalized violence constrained constrained up, you know, for a while and up until people stop that constraint by, you know, arrangements between the security organizations. But the security organizations have us by the balls to put it to put it figuratively,

right? They really do. Sure. Unlike the state. Oh, the state today has it, but I would retrofit the living this state much rather live in the state much rather live in many more authoritarian states than this, then a place where there's constant violence. I have a bunch of questions. I'm enjoying this. I think he said is

wrong. Okay, yes. First of all, the idea of competing legal systems is inevitable. Because what Rand talked about is what she wanted was, and this is really kind of Eric Attic character with her broader ideology is, I think this was her term, and I'm not saying this to make fun of you, when she has a judge and he's looking at the information,

she wants him to be basically, I think she's the word robot, someone without any ideology, that they're just looking at the facts, they're not bringing their kind of worldview to it. That ticket is a compliment. You are welcome. I think that given otherwise,

her correct view that ideology, causing the ideology is just a slur for someone's philosophy, that someone, especially someone is aerodite, educated and informed as a judge, has to and in fact, should bring their ideology to their work is in one sense of a contradiction interview. Number one, number two is we have right now the DA in San Francisco. I forget his name. He's the son of literal terrorists, communist terrorists. And he has made it to the decree unilaterally that if you shoplift for less than,

I forget $200, we're not prosecuting. I know. You know this gets right, right, right. So now you and I, certain, and Lex, I'm sure, probably agree that his ideology is a part that this doesn't help poor people, it doesn't help shop owners. It creates a culture,

an area where it's just deleterious to human life. However, he has in one sense given that he is a state operative, a legitimate worldview. Can I ask you just a quick question? Sure. Why couldn't a security force in a particular context say, yeah, if you take stuff on that store, we're not going to have any problem with that. I agree with you. That's very fair. That's a very legitimate question. The point is, in the context that I'm talking about, that firm is like, wait a minute,

I'm hiring you for security. You're saying we're not going to provide security. Why am I writing you a check? And we have examples of this in real life. If I get into a car accident with you, right, you have your car insurance, I have my car insurance. If your car insurance had their druthers, they wouldn't pay me one penny. If my car insurance didn't have their druthers, they wouldn't pay you one penny. We already have all that you were saying early

that we need to have one kind of umbrella mechanism of the views. There are already more cases that you can count where there's private arbitration. Now, the argument is that private arbitration only works because they have recourse to the government. But my point is, there's many examples where even though that recourse is theoretically possible, it's not a realistic concern specifically because they know that if you have recourse to the state, you have no concept of what that outcome is going to look like, except knowing it's going to be exorbitant, it's going to be time consuming. We can't use the state, right? I mean, I'm as critical as the state as it is right now, maybe not as critical as yours, not as critical as yours.

But I'm quite critical as the state is in this right now. But let's say, let's say we got into traffic accident and you have a world's voice. And I destroyed your world's voice. And my insurance company, now, owes you insurance company a lot of money. And let's imagine it's a lot of money just for the sake. And then you're clearly guilty.

Yeah, clearly guilty. And my insurance company looks at the books and it goes, you know, I don't really, I don't want to pay this. Sure. And you know what? I've got bigger guns than his insurance company. Sure. And I'm going to just going to take over the insurance company.

And hostile take over takes on a whole new meaning when I can, I can muster guns on my behalf. Are you sure? Then in a hostile takeover in a capitalist context. That to me is what happens. That to me is inevitable, Lee, what happens. And I think this is where the delusion comes in. The idea that when big money is involved and power is involved, remember, again, the

same kind of politicians who today get into politics are likely to want to run some of these security agencies because they have a lot of power over people. So same kind of maybe social pass will be there. I don't think it's the same skill set, but that's separate issue. I think it very much is. But you think people, the people who watched in the same, the CEOs psychologically and skill set wise? Well, today's CEOs yes.

Okay. Yes. Because I think that's what we're awarded for CEO is somebody who could get along with government. Okay. And I think the kind of CEO who is going over on a security company, which is not just about

business, it's about the use of force, it's about control, it's about negotiation with other entities that are using force, you know, diplomacy, then negate and we should get back to objective law because I think it's essential to this whole argument. I would love to get that something. I think all you get into is security agencies,

fighting security agencies, and again, the biggest gun. And I don't mean here, the guy who has the biggest literal gun, the rocket launcher versus the guns. I got excited. This is, by the biggest gun. Yeah. The party that has the more physical force. However, that is muster either by numbers or by weapons is going to dominate and will take over everybody else. Now one of

the things that's common in a market is takeovers. It's consolidation. And here the consolidation can happen through force and it can you can roll other other security companies. And that's exactly what will happen until you dominate the particular geographic area. Okay, so let me explain why I disagree with that. You were just saying, and I agree correctly, I agree with you, that, listen, if I have access to the bigger gun, why am I paying you or whoever is paying wherever, I'm just going to use force and not pay them. We have that right now.

It's called lobbying. Yeah. So instead of me, and I'm sure in your example, you weren't being literal, instead of the insurance company literally having the army, they could be like, hey, let me call corrupt co with Amafia. I agree. Go out and take him out.

By having this federal government, as you know, and certainly I'm not a fan of, has takes more through asset forfeiture than burglaries combined. What assets forfeiture, then burglaries combined. What as the forfeiture is, people don't even understand this. This is something crazy, which you which are on,

is as opposed to me as opposed as I am, which is I'm a cop, I go to your house, I think you haven't been charged or convicted of anything, I have evidence. Usually in a car. Yeah, yeah.

It's like drug deals, okay? I go to your house, you're a drug dealer. I say and you can understand the reasoning. Well, if someone is getting profit through illegal mechanisms, their profit isn't real, their property, and they shouldn't be rewarded that property. So basically, I go to your house, you're a drug dealer. I seize all your property.

You don't really have recourse, even though you haven't been through deep, I'm just explaining to you all this, through new process, and S.O.L. That combined for people who don't know is more than the total amount of burglaries in America. It's a huge inc- and what happens is the police department, which seizes your car auctions, it sees your house auctions, it's a great way to line their pockets. This is a huge incentive, it's horrible. It's a huge incentive for police departments to do this because it's

like, look, this guy's a crook, maybe he's not a drug dealer, but he's clearly a pimph. Let me just take all this stuff and it's going to go to the community. Well, the rationale originally was, if I try him in the meantime, he'll take that money and funnel it somewhere else, and I did, and I'll never be able to get access to it. And it was past the 1970s, under the original season laws, we're kind of re-co-act, going after them off you. And one of the reasons I despised Giuliani as much as I do, and there's very few politicians out there that I despise more, is because he was the first guy to use Rico on financiers.

And so it wasn't even a drug deal. It was you accused of a financial fraud. Not you weren't shown to be guilty. Not accused. Yeah. Innocent is basically what forfeiture. Innocent is a proven guilty when I went out. If you were managing money, you were done.

You were finished. So you're saying this kind of stuff, naturally, or just with a state. Hold on. So my point is, what are presented as the strongest criticism of anarchism are inevitably descriptions of status quo. What you're describing is already the event.

I am a big insurance company. I don't want to pay you. I call Washington. Either I pay you and Washington gives me a subsidy. So what you're describing is an inevitable aspect of having a government. See, but so what I'm describing is the inevitable evolution of Anarchy into a government. I just think that the markets don't consolidate into monopoly. That's the leftist propaganda myth.

Not markets, not markets where you have substitute products, but this is the problem. The problem is force has no substitute. That is force is not a product you can have. So this is my fundamental issue about turning police, competing police forces. Force is not a product. Force is not a service. It's not a service and it's not a product. Security is not a service. No.

Well, security, security in the context of a legal system is, but this is the point. The legal system, the laws are not a service or product. They are a different type of human institution. Science is not a product or service. It's a different type of human institution. The different types of human institutions. Some are market, you can create markets and some you cannot. Law is not a marketable system. Can I ask the question quickly? Is there any other field other than law that you think you can't create markets? Well, science. Science is not marketable. The science itself is not marketable.

What science is true. And the same ethic is in law. Law is not marketable. Law is the system that allows markets to happen. You need a system of law, whether it's private law, in a particular narrow context or whether it's broader law. Law is the context in which markets arise. So one of the reasons we transact is we know that there's a certain contract between us, explicit or implicit, that is protected by a certain law, whether it's protected by private agency or private, the government doesn't matter, but there's a certain contract that is protectable, right, by theoretically.

Yes. So law is the context in which markets arise. You don't create a market in the, because there's nothing above it, in a sense, there's no, it is the, it is the context that allows markets to be created. Once you market it, markets fall apart. So you're a hun. So, you think that law could be a market. And it already is a market. And we see it, for example, eBay. If I am buying

something from your own, I won't even know his name. I don't know. Maybe he's in another country. I, and, you know, he screws me out of the money. I don't have acts. I can't sue you. Like, or if I sue you in England, it's good luck with that. You're not going to argue that I'm going to sue you. What happens in this case, which has already been solved by the market, eBay and PayPal, which has access to your bank account, they act as the private arbiter. They're going to get it wrong a lot,

not even a question, just like Yaron's not going to argue that the government right now gets it wrong a lot. That's not even a question. The point is, at the very least, I'm going to get my resolution faster, cheaper and more effectively. So the issue with having any kind of government, anything, and your one's not going to disagree with this, is at the very least, it's going to be expensive, inefficient, and cause conflict. Yeah, but I think what it allows is exactly what the Supreme Court's gonna judge Again, you're moving us to today's environment, which I'm trying against right no, but reality reality doesn't have to be what it is I mean that's the most anti-ranquart

No, in a sense in a sense of of the politics. No, we are political reality. I know but the quote myself is great I know I know you'd love to agree with Donald Hoffman I know, but the quote by itself is great. I know, I know. You'd love to. He'd love Donald Hoffman. That is what he said. Yeah, they were, he turns out I agree with Hoffman. He's an elf.

It's what it is. So it's, it's, where were we? So I believe that because we have a certain system of government, right, it allows for these private innovations to come about that facilitates certain issues in a much more efficient way than the government would deal with it. But it's only because we have a particular system that has defined property rights, that

has a clear view of what property rights are, it has a clear view of what a transaction mean and what the contract law is, and eBay has a bunch of stuff that you sign, whether you read it or not. Of course. All of that is defined first. And then there are massive innovations at the at the level of particular transactions at the level of an eBay that facilitate increased efficiency. And that's great.

But the fact is none of that gets developed. None of that gets created in a world in which I might be living under different definition of property rights. eBay might be living under separate definition of property rights, eBay might be living under separate definition of property rights. You might have a third definition of property rights. And there's no mechanism by which we can actually operationalize that because we all have a different system.

There is a mechanism. We already have that. Let's change the example I just used. What happens if a Chinese person who has different definition of property rights kills an American in Brazil? Again, in a smaller community, what happens is lots of violence.

No, but I'm talking about it right now. A Chinese person has... Right now, the only reason that it doesn't lead to violence is because people are afraid of even more violence, and it affects many people, large numbers of people who don't wanna go to war. But if you have small, in a state where the states were small, like in those little states,

all the time for exactly those reasons, because the cost was lower, because it was more personal, because I knew maybe the person who was killed over there, and I went to my king and he college him to go to war. You know why there was war? It's constant. You know why that was? It's constant. You know why there was war?

Because there had been no iron, no iron, and good ideas lead to good societies, which leads to good people, which leads to good behavior, good interrelationships. So now that we have iron, all this stuff in the past is irrelevant. Because if they studied her works, we would be, and Rand was on Donahue again. You could watch the clip and he asked her, she goes, he goes, you're saying that if we were more selfish and acted more self-interest, there'd be less war, less Hitler and she said there wouldn't be any. Right. Well, if we were all selfish, there wouldn't be any Hitler's, right? But who do you regard

Right. Well, if we were all selfish, there wouldn't be any hitlers, right? But who do you regard as the overweaning authority? If I am buying a product from you as a prominent England via eBay, who is the governing authority? The governing authority is other other legal systems in England and the United States, which have to be synchronized pretty well. Right. But what I'm saying is why eBaybay why ebay doesn't function in certain countries because there is no legal system. I agree with you. The legal system in those legal systems have to be a function specifically of geography

as opposed to why can't I sitting here? Well, I could sit here. You're not going to finish by point. Yeah. I can sit here and be a British diplomat, right? And as a British diplomat, I'm going to be treated differently under American law than you are as an American citizen as you are. Why can't you have that same process sure we're geographically proximate, but I'm a citizen of this company and you're a citizen of that company. Why would that be different in your opinion?

If it's England in the United States, it's probably not going to matter that much, right? But if it's Iran and the United States, then the fact that we're sitting next to each other makes a huge difference. Oh, I am massive difference. And the fact is that, and I enraged, I think would be the first acknowledges, and this is why she was so opposed to Anarchy. It's not why it is because of Rothbard. No, it has nothing to do with nothing has nothing to do with nothing

Nothing. How do you know nothing? How would you know because I'll give it against Against Anarchy is an intellectual one not a personality can't be both anyway, but yeah, no It's a factor on back to Iran. No, it has nothing to do with Rothbard You know that you're not a psychic you know or necromancer. Don't you weigh what you're gonna resolve this is on wrestling right? It's too violent. Our wrestling is not violence. Words of violence. Words are violence. Words of violence. Emotions of violence. So wait, we're supposed to be off with this stuff, but it's the problem. He's very, very good, not not facts. It's true. I mean, there's stochians and arbitrary statements, because your statement about whatbott is an arbitrary statement

that has no cognitive standing. And therefore I can dismiss it. I'm not doing like this because I want to talk about it. It has no cognitive status. The fact that she disliked Rothbott doesn't mean that everything he said she was going to dismiss because she disliked it. I agree with you, but what I'm saying is,

it would not be impossible. But there's no evidence. I'll give you some evidence what I'm saying is it would not be impossible, but there's no evidence. I'll give you I'll talk I'll give you some evidence a human psychology. It is not impossible That if you hate something what's his name? What's that guy's name? Richard Wolf, right. It's not impossible That if Richard Wolf said something that you would otherwise agree with You hold on. Let me finish. You'd be dismissive or less likely to get them credit for it being a human being That's all I'm saying. It's as silly as to say what but came up with this theory of anarchy because he he he was pissed off with iron ran and wanted to write some

I don't know bring it down because bring it down so that he can speak to and let's let's keep it because I don't think we're getting agitated. No, you guys aren't. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no don't know. I do think that, Michael's, I mean, that's interesting that you disagree with this. I do believe that psychology has an impact on ideas and I'm ran. You don't think I'm ran had grudges that impacted the way she saw the world. I would like to think that I don't think any of her grudges entered into philosophical statements, at least not that I can tell. And I don't see, and given the centrality I and Rand gave, and if you, to the role of government, to the existence of government, to need for government, to establish real freedom, and the way she defines freedom, which is very different than Rothbard, and

the way she defines government, to say then that her opposition and her kids, because I think is just just an opportunity. I said because of that. And not, and not, and not, and not, and, and, and I don't see why psychology would answer it. Now, maybe the tone in which you responded to, to answer might have been motivated by that. But given the amount of thoughts she gave to the role of government in human society and why government was needed and why

you needed laws in order to be free that you that freedom didn't proceed. The right, you needed to write hierarchy. I think that I think that we could say that it give at least a respect that she, this was, she might have been wrong, right? But she, she had a particularly theory that rejected Anarchy and the thought Anarchy was wrong. Well, I really resent, and I don't want to say you're doing this, the implication that if Rand was guided by her passions,

that somehow is the criticism of her or lessens her. I think Rand was a very passionate person. I think she loved her husband enormously. She despised certain people enormously. Sure. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. It don't be true. We change a philosophical position about something

because she just liked somebody. I agree, but what I'm saying, the amount of thought she gave to that philosophical person. All I'm saying is, it is possible that if someone comes across ideas that she had not considered before, if she regarded this person as a bad actor, like all of us, she would be less likely to take them under consideration. Sure. That's all I'm saying.

Sure. And I think other people confronted her with ideas of Anarchy, I don't think Rothbard was the only one. Correct. Right, Charles as well. Yeah, Roy Charles certainly did. And she rejected them. And she rejected them because she had, and whether you agree with her or not, she had a thought out position about why you needed to have this particular

structure in place so that markets and human freedom could exist. But it's just really interesting because this is the one time in my view, and please correct me from wrong, where she invokes need as kind of a basis for political activity. So if, let's suppose you want this federal government, whatever you want, you don't want to like it is now, like your version of the government. I don't see why it's an issue for you, for me and Lex to say, we're not privy to Washington. We're going to do our own thing. And given if we go about our lives, not initiating force and being productive actors, why she would have an issue in this?

Why would I care? Well, you would care because if you're saying the government has a monopoly on force between these two oceans. So you can do that. I don't know if you don't violate somebody else's right? Sure. But what I'm saying is we just declare ourselves sovereign We're not gonna pay any income taxes. We're gonna be peaceful people. We're gonna get you and and when we relax and I have disputes

We're gonna call Joe that's Joe Rogan. You're never gonna get to meet him, but he's a good guy. I know We're gonna call Joe and Joe is gonna resolve it. He's so good at it like you know, needling and getting you off topic that way. It's really, he's really effective at it. He is. Look, Marallini. I always say when I debate, when I debate communist, I always say to him, you mean Lex? Yeah, maybe Lex. Maybe I should do Tom Rad.

I love you. That if they really believe, if they really believe in what they think, then they should be advocates of capitalism, because under capitalism, under my system believe in what they think, then they should be advocates of capitalism, because under capitalism, under my system of government, capitalist government, they could go and start a comment. They can live a cop, they can live to each according to each, to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability, or they want and live their pathetic, miserable lives that way. And the government would never intervene because the whole view of capitalism

is freedom. We live in the way alone. As long as you're not violating my rights, as long as you're not taking my property, as long as you're not engaged in it. So in that sense, yeah, you and Lex can form your own thing. I don't believe in compulsory taxes anyway. So you and Lex can do your own thing, never pay taxes. As long as you're not violating the laws and the laws are very limited right because they're only there to protect individual I said lines you're not violating somebody else's property rights or inflicting force on anybody else. You're peaceful You can do what you want you know, don't have yeah, right? Don't don't have sex with kids. I will stop immediately good immediately. Good. The rest of us are just playing chess. So just playing chess. Yeah, I mean, I'm like a government that protects individual rights properly is a government

that leaves you alone to live your life as you see fit. Even if you live your life in a way that I don't approve of that, I don't think is right. I mean, that's a whole point. Okay. Then we're in a great minute. The only thing you can do is you know, try to enforce arbitrary laws that you come up with on me. Of course, absolutely. Okay, great.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we lived in a world where the rights protecting laws are super dangerous, but the reality is usually that somebody violates them whether by accident or intentionally, and that you need some mechanism. Now, if you guys can resolve that dispute without getting involved, fine. But if you guys land up not wanting, not resolving, there is another authority that will help you resolve it. Yeah. So, Gasko question. Under anarchism, what kind of systems of laws do you think will emerge? Do you think we'll have basically a similar kind of layer of universal law to where, like,

let me answer this, this is a great question. I know what you're going to do is, this is often presented as a criticism of anarchism, and this is actually something I think you're on would agree with as well in other contexts, which is this, one of the reasons communism can't work, central planning can't work, and this is one of meises' great innovations is,

if I could sit down, it's like asking, what would the fashion industry look like if the government didn't run it? There's no way for me to know. What the fashion industry is, which all of us are in favor of it being free, is literally millions of designers, of seamstresses, of people who make the fabric,

also references throughout history and these creative artistic minds putting things together in every year, and there's no shortage of clothes. In fact, we make so many clothes that we send them in landfill sizes to overseas poor countries, and you have people in these desks

to countries wearing like a deed of shirts, they can't even read English, but because we don't know to do with all these clothes. That's how the glory of free enterprise is the problem is you, it's problem used to lose sleep. It's everything comes cheap and over abundant. It's the food, you know.

Well, it doesn't actually come over abundant. It's done properly. It's the, that's fair. Supply meets demand. That's fair. But I'm saying is like, if 150 years ago you said, you know, one day we're going to have an issue where there's going to be so much food and that's it.

The kids are too fat, it's just gonna be like, I have forward dead in the crib, I wish. I mean, like kind of paradise is this. So what you would have, we have this right now in certain senses, you have the Hasidium, you have Sharia, you have different, you have, I'm sure in the medical system, they have their own kind of private courts and court marshals is another example of the so the obviously that's through the state. So you would have, uh, innovation in law under markets, just the same ways you'd have it in and we have this already.

Maybe it's not, Yaron doesn't like in terms of like murder and rape and I can understand why, but in terms of like business and interactions, he would have no problem with different arbitration firms, having different rules for like what kind of evidence is allowed, maybe you only have 60 days to make your case and so on and so forth. And the market is a process of creative innovation. And it would be dynamic. It would be changed. So what's interesting, what's interesting relating to this is one of the ways I and Van proposed raising revenue for the government, because she was against, uh, was, let's say we have a contract, we could just have it obitrated without government intervening. But if we wanted to access the courts of the government as a final authority, we would

pay. And that's how governments would raise some of the funds would be raised that way. So this definitely a value to having this innovation and the public space. But I don't believe that is the case with motor. I don't believe that is the case with violent crime. And it's funny you bring up Sharia because David Friedman when he gives, when he gives a- I got to ask you to clarify, I'm not trying to drop you.

You were talking about with murder. I mean, you would agree. I think it's just a clarify for the audience that there is room for innovation in murder because there's things like matter slaughter, there's murder, one murder, two, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think it happens at a market level. I don't think there's a market innovation for murder.

Somebody has to figure out what those standards are. But they will evolve as we gain, right, but we're all agreement that the word murder means very different things. Oh, absolutely. And so it comes to matter and and and what do you standards of proof and standards of evidence. All of that, there has to be consequences too. Yes. All of that, there has to be a standard. And that's that's what the worst, what I think the proper government provides. But so David Friedman uses in some of his talks about private law. He uses

He uses Sharia law in Somalia as an example. Look legal legal systems evolve privately independent Yeah, authoritarian ones ones that don't respect the rights of women at all. Are you married? No, no, but we all want to have sex with our mother as Freud would say Oh my god. Can we make that a clip? Yeah, where the hell did that come from? That's much better than what I was just saying about the kids. I appreciate that. Okay, so we went in a voluntary way, although sometimes for a year on and sometimes for Michael it felt in voluntary.

But we all got the big guns. So how do we land this, clearly there's a disagreement about anarchism here. I think we're in a, I think we there's a big agreement because if your own was saying that if I want to have my voluntary stupid thing with you and his government is not going to tax me and is not going to insinuate itself unless we're murdering each other something like that. I'm okay with that.

So if you take the example of Sharia law, which was mentioned earlier, so if you have a little community within this, within my world, right, that imposes Sharia law, if it starts mutilating little girls, then that then you impose your low on it. You impose the low on it because it's initial protecting individual rights. If they want to treat women, if women have to cover up and the women are okay with that,

that's fine. If the woman wants to leave but is not allowed to leave, that's where my government would step in and allow, you know, prevent them from using force against her. And that's it, right? Okay. Now, I think it's more complicated than that, right? Because I think there are complex issue property rights often where it's not gonna be easy for you guys to resolve.

And particularly if you interact with people outside of your community. Sure. But yeah, you know, that's, my view is government is there to protect individual rights. That's it. And otherwise leave you alone. I think this conversation is going to continue for quite a while.

Michael has a new book on the topic coming out eventually one day. So you're working also on the still called the white pill. The white pill. And the first line of the white pill is I ran, did not laugh. I'm not joking. That's literally the first line of the white pill is, I ran, did not laugh. I'm not joking, that's literally the first line. Believe it. Because it opens up with her, who knows what the book's going to look like when it's done. But as of now, that's the beginning.

Because it opens up with her testimony at the House of the American Activities Committee, where she's trying to explain to these Congress people what it was like when she left the Soviet Union and they are just befuddled by it. Can you explain she did not laugh? Well, because the first line, the fountainhead spoiler alert is how it worked left. So this is a little inversion of that. It says, I'm ran did not laugh because she had this, she, I'm ran was a huge fan of America as a my.

She took our political system very seriously. She had enormous reverence for institutions one example of this is one of the villains of the Atlas Shrugged is based on Harry Truman I think Thompson is the character's name and because she had such respect for the name for the title of president She refers to him as the chairman. She couldn't even bring herself. She had a huge respect for the presidency. Yeah, I wonder if she'd still have it. Right, maybe not. Even the last string of presidents we've had. So having her, which sets up the broader point of the book,

which I'm sure I'll be back on the show to discuss assuming this bridge hasn't been burned, but I'll try my best. All three of us are canceled. Some are more canceled than the others. Yes. Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

The point being that sets up the broader point of book is how ignorant many people are in the West about the horrors of Stalinism and Communism. But also how many people in the West were complicit in saying to Americans, go home, everything's fine. This is great. Sure, you know, this is why Pence saw the race or share their mistakes.

And they really made a point to downplay really gratuitously some of the unimaginable atrocities of the communism and we'll just want more sentence. And going through the work and learning about what they actually did is so jaw dropping that it's and if I didn't know about it and many people I'm friends with who are historians who are interested in the space that you know this isn't common knowledge to them, then we can assume that almost no one knows about it. And I think it's very important for people to appreciate whether Republican Democrat liberal, whatever, how much of a danger this is. And I think Americans have this, there's a book called It Can't Happen Here, I think

by Sinclair Lewis about a fashion that comes to America. American exceptionalism has a positive context, but also have a negative context where you think, we're invincible, all these horrible things that have these other countries that can't possibly happen here. We're America, we're special, and it's completely an absurdity. Yeah.

All right, if you've seen the movie, Mr. Johns. I, my friend wrote it, no, I haven't, but Walter Duranty, and his quotes, I have a, the thread on Twitter, Walter Duranty and his quotes, I have a thread on Twitter. Walter Duranty, for those who don't know, he want to pull it, sir, because he was the New York Times man in Moscow. And endlessly, he was talking about how great it was, how if you hear about this famine in Ukraine, this is just propaganda, I went to the villages, you know, everyone's happy and fed.

A lot of it was explicit lies, you know, and when you realize you're talking about, let's give them the absolute benefit out. An accidental genocide, it's still mind-boggling. And also, you know, Ann Applebaum, who's just a phenomenal, phenomenal writer, she wrote a book called Red Famine, Stalin's War in Ukraine, and she talks about how what people in America don't appreciate is how clever in their sadism the Soviets were, and what they knew to do in Ukraine is everyone is starving. So they knew if you got some meat on your bones, you're hiding food. Yeah. So they come back at night, take your hand, put in the door jam, keep slamming the door, ransack your house. They didn't have to find the food, burn down your house, take all your clothes,

good-bye, good luck. I don't recall saying good luck. Yeah, so it's just- So I highly recommend the movie because it's very well done. Okay. It's very well directed, it's beautifully made, it's stunningly effective. Okay. It's very well directed. It's beautifully made. It's stunningly effective. Okay. Again, illustrating exactly the scenes in Ukraine during the famine. Oh, you're hard. I mean, it's just, it's crushing. And it shifts the black and white. It's very, very well made aesthetically. So highly recommend it. And it's written by Andrew Shalupa. She's a

Ukrainian friend of mine. She interested me, Yon Mi Park, who's a big North Korean defector. And this is the kind of thing where I think more people need to... When I wrote the new right, which talks a lot about the Nazis, or the kind of neo-Nazis, one their big complaints about, you know, against people who are Jewish, she's like, oh, we hear all about the Holocaust. How come you don't talk about the Holocaust anymore? I'm like, I'm trying to do my part. I agree with you.

Yeah. We need to talk about the Hall of the Morrow. Absolutely. And it's sad, and I'm more movies than an anti-Soviet, which tells you a lot about the view of the intelligence. Yeah. It's a great idea. It just was badly implemented.

And no, it's a rotten idea. It's an evil idea. And it was implemented. It was exactly how it has to be implemented. There's no alternative. Can we talk about the Fountainhead and Ella Shrugged and which character do you find most fascinating ones that kind of you meet in your own mind? You almost have conversations with her as an influence on you and your life in general.

It's a great. You know what character I like because I know no no no one never gives this answer, but this is my just aesthetically, you know how sometimes you're drawn to a character and it's if this person were real, you think they're just are, but there's something about the resonates with you. I can't even explain this, but I love the character in Atlas shrugged of Lillian Reardon, whose hand-credits wife. And what I, what is amazing about her, she says she's his wife, he's his big industrialist, innovator,

and she's this like former beauty, but she's so cold and soulless that there's, I mean, I joke about, you know, Anne-Ran's vampire novels, that character is as close to a literal vampire as you're going to see in Rand. And there's just this great scene where, you know, Hank Reardon invents Reardon Metal. It's this great metal, which is extremely strong, but extremely, it's like light. So this creates all these innovations. And he brings her a bracelet made of the first Reardon Metal. This is his life goal. This is like, premiered the spring fire. And she's like, what the fuck is this? I'd walk me diamonds.

Yeah, you could've probably died. What is this shit? And Dagnie, who is another industrialist, she's a heroin, very strong female character in Atlas Rugg, is at a party. And she goes, I got diamonds. Let's trade. And she really wants like, you want the this?

And she's like, yes, because that's the concretization that human mind. These are rocks. And Lily is like, yes, because that's the concretization of human mind. These are rocks. And Lily is like, okay, whatever. And that character is someone who has a lot of resonance in our culture, this kind of solace. It's easy to write a solace male figure, like Peter Keating in some ways a solace, but that is for some reason, when it's like a solace female, it seems that much more chilling and effective. Do you not agree though that Lillian

really is amazingly, very powerful figure. Powerful figure. And I think, I think, Reardon is too. And what I love about Reardon is his evolution, right? He's so flawed. He's a hero who's completely flawed. And it drives me nuts when people say

who characters are cartoonish, they never change, there's no emotion. Really? Did you read the same book I did? Because if he take read and he's struggling and he's trying to deal with Lillian and his family and all this stuff and we know family members like this, right? I mean, they were leeches and parasites. But he's excusing them because that's what he's supposed to do and then as he evolves To fully realize what's going on that evolution is so is difficult. It's hard like the scene after he has sex with Dagnif Of course, he gives a speech, but the speeches It's such a good speech in terms of conveying his mind body split, right? He thinks he really had fun. He really enjoyed the sex, right? But he thinks it's animalistic and he thinks it's

a sign of his depravity and he thinks and here he is this woman he loves and he adores her and and and he can't and he can't connect it to he can't connect the sex with the love. He can't connect the sex with adoration and with the values. So, who characters anything I think but called board characters? Because I think they're a daugny and the scenes where she's listening to music and gets captured by the music and the way Rand describes that, I think it's just beautiful. Or the scene, my favorite scene in Atlas is the scene where they're crossing, where they're crossing,

where they're taking the first train ride across the John Gold Bridge. And the patch one. And she's there in the engine room and it's traveling through. And the way she's describing Dagnie and it's almost like Dagnie's having sex with the machine, right?

With it, with it. It's so powerful, emotionally, their success, the fact that they did it. They, you know, everybody told them, it was impossible. And the train is going really fast. And that whole, it's got a sexual vibe to it. It's all about passion. It's all about success.

And it's all about the success of their minds. And nobody else matters. What, nobody, what's really great about that scene, just in terms of constructing a novel, I'm not going to spoil anything. So that list of shrugged has three acts, like three act structures not uncommon. And the first act is about Hank Reardon overcoming all this adversity at home in his personal life and in his business to create this great achievement. So Rand really makes the reader invested in this character and his accomplishments. He's unambiguously doing something good.

There's no downside here. He's making it easier to transport people, transport food. This is really just great. And it's just, once you read it and you look back, you're like, she does such a masterful job of making, you have to be a fan of this person and root for them. Because she's like, oh, you think he, things are going great. He's overcome. Hold on a minute. And then the rest of it, she's just re and your sense of injustice is triggered

as a reader to such an end degree, because you saw what he went through to get to this point. And now you're seeing it taken away people in fear and fear to him. And one of the quotes on Twitter, I use all the time is I'll see someone politician or a bureaucrat or a thinker just advocate for something completely Unconscious and I'll just quote and say my favorite criticism of Iran is that they say her villains are too evil and unrealistic Because the things that people posit with a straight face are so much worse Yeah, then she has in her book. And not just politicians, you find it's intellectuals today.

Oh, of course. Oh, yeah, yeah. We, we, over the time, you know, even when I was at the truck that was going, nobody really talks like this. No, they do. Let me give you one example. There was a story she wrote, which she never published. They published her journal, The Iron Man Institute.

And there was one character, and this is a prototype of Ellsworth IIi, who's the villain of one of the villains of the fountain head. And basically, the kid had like, deformed legs or broke his leg, just like that. And he wants to get leg braces. And the dad is like, oh, we're not going to do that. Why should you be better than anyone else? Like, you should just have like, this is a form of it. Except to fate. And you're reading this and like, what dad is not going to give his kid leg braces

is ridiculous, but now it's not uncommon for deaf children to not get cochlear implants and not be able to hear because their parents say, well, we're going to lose deaf culture. Hearing is just information. And you're sitting there and whether you agree with us or not, this is very close to what she was saying. And when I read what she was saying, I'm like, okay, crazy on Rand, this is not a thing. And I was like, oh, yeah, the craziness is that,

it's not braces, it's hearing. It's, yeah, in what evil? To deny your kid hearing. I mean, God. So, was that, here's the other thing. If you want dev culture, which I would believe is a thing, sign language, whatever, they could turn it off. Yeah, if you want, you give them the choice.

Yeah. Let's go. Tonight, whatever. They could turn it off. Yeah. If you want, you give them the choice. Yeah. Tonight, I'm sorry, one more thing. You know, Rand used the word evil frequently. And I think maybe I can make the argument to use it too loosely. If you are denying a child the gift of music, I will say that's evil.

I agree, completely. Unambiguously. Yep. Go online and listen, watch videos of people getting hearing aids and being able to hear for the first time. I promise you you will cry because there's no pure, I'm getting teared up right now. There's no pure expression of humanity and technology at its best than seeing a two year old or one half-year-old who can't even talk. And then you see the reaction when they hear mom's voice.

It's so beautiful and moving. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a few things that's moving. It's like it's one of the ways to rethink technology perhaps. And there's this real estate funny because sometimes it'll be this tough dude, right? And he's been deaf all his life. And then he put hearing in the girlfriends like, can you hear me? And he's been deaf all his life. And then they put hearing in the girlfriends, like, can you hear me?

And he's trying to be tougher, three seconds. And he just, and you just sit there. It's just this. No, absolutely. And that's true of any sense. I mean, like colorblind people see in color for the first time, that kind of thing. I think there's a few.

It's not quite the same, but it's somewhat, but if you're blind and suddenly can see, yeah, I mean, it's just stunning. I mean, and how just stunning, right? I mean, and how do we form our concepts? How do we think? We have to, we get information from reality, right? We interact with reality through our senses

and that's how we become conceptual beings. And you deny an element of that from a human being. That is horrible. There's a potential that will then your link to so further developments there. So yes, I mean on that There's a powerful question of who is John Galt. I don't know if we can do this without spoiler I don't know if we can do this without spoiler Okay, but you can say you can say what what's the importance of this character? What's the importance of this question?

I mean without the puts so I want to give a talk on who is John Galt and who John Galt in a sense is anybody Who takes their own life seriously. Anybody who's willing to really live fully their own life, use their mind and pursuit of their rational values and pursue their happiness fully, uncompromisingly with no compromise and sticky to the integrity. Anybody can be John Golden, that's it. I think one of the motto I live by is all we are tested. Maybe this is a little bit religious, but I think your on is gonna agree with it. I'm sure you'll agree with it. All any of us can do is leave the world

a little bit of a better place than we found it. And I think if you do that through hard work, being honest, being a kind, not at the expense of other people, you can go to your grave, patting yourself on the back. I mean, to me, the living the world a better place. Yeah, I mean, that's not what drives me, which drives me is, I mean, what I think drives people, I think, just live a good life.

And good life means a life you're happy living. And part of that is the impact you have on the world. But it's, you know, so many people live wasted lives, live mediocre lives, leave conventional lives. You know, maybe they even leave the world a better place, but they didn't really, they didn't leave the world a better place. They left the world a better place, but they didn't live their potential. They didn't or they died feeling guilty about it or they are a million different things. So there's so many productive people, I mean think about all the innovators and the technologists

and the businessmen who leave the world a better place by a big shock, but I'm never happy. Never happy in their own souls and in their own life. And to me, that's what counts. And if you're going to be happy, you'll leave a better world a bit. And that's what John goes on realizes. To me, it's, it's living your life by your standards, by your values and, and, and pursuing, pursuing that, that happens. Well, I take, I'm sorry, I, I, I take in a different context,

because I think a lot of, and I don't think you're going to disagree with this. I think a lot of times when you're young, you have unrealistic expectations about you're going to accomplish. And you think to yourself, well, I thought, let's suppose someone wants to go into politics. Well, if I'm not elected president, I'm a failure. That's nonsensical. There's lots of people who are successful who haven't achieved literally the top position in their role.

So if you can go to your grave, having defending everything you've done, and you move the needle in the pot. Successes should not be relative. Yes. That's the second handed. Success is not being better than other people. Success is not being the best. Success is maximizing your potential, whatever that is.

And look, I know people, I have a son who could be a really good engineer, a really good mathematician, really good scientist, but he, he decided he wants the right comedy, right? So he might have been a better mathematician than he'd a comedian, but that's his values. That's, that's his goals. That's what he wants to do. And hopefully he'll be really, really good at that. And he'll be incredibly successful at it and material in every other sense.

But that's, that's what you pursue. You know, so it's, it's really being true to yourself in a deep sense. And if you're all true to yourself, yeah, you'll leave the world to better place. But that's not the essence. The essence is you. Focus on you. Focus on making your life the best life that it can be. And if you do that, you'll make the world a better place by almost by definition.

But yeah, we'll impact people. We're looking at the same thing in different ways. It's at least in my little corner of the world, it was disappointing how rare that is. So one of the reasons I'm here in Austin and one of the reasons I, my word, gravitated towards Elon Musk is because he represents that person for me in the world of technology, in the world of CEO and the world of business. It was very surprising to me the more I've learned about the technology world, and it was disappointing to me how many people compromised their integrity in subtle ways at first, but then it becomes a slippery slope. There's this great quote, and I always forget if it's Steinbuck or Hemingway, and the quote, and this applies for money and a placer for morality.

And I think that's the way I'm going to say it. I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I I say this? There's this great quote. And I always forget if it's time-backer Hemingway and the quote, and this applies for money and applies for morality. The quote was, how did you go bankrupt? And he says, two ways, gradually and then suddenly. It's very hard to one day be like, I have no integrity. That doesn't happen. It's very easy.

If it's like, look, I stole this candy bar. What's the big deal if I steal this thing? Then you're still, I... People say they're no slippery slopes. They are. And they're big. And they're very slippery. And people slide.

And this is the biggest one. And people violate the integrity, even without stealing. Just little things about how they treat other people, they treat themselves. The values they pursue, they don't go after the profession, they really want it to. They compromise in ways that they shouldn't with their spouse or with their mothers or whatever. They made a way on the same way. They see each other as they see.

Yep. Yep. And this is why people go through middle age, middle life crisis. Middle life crisis is a crisis where you suddenly realize, I didn't do it. I didn't live up to my standards. I didn't live up to my youthful idealism. I compromised and I sold out. But I also would warn you about Silicon Valley. Yeah, I think I think at the top, very few of them stick to it. And partially, it's the political pressure

is unbearable. I mean, how would you? How can you? It would require to be a hero and very few of them all. But there are a lot of people who do really well at all kinds of levels in technology, who little startups, people, and this is the point Michael is making. You don't have to be the best. Yeah. You know, you don't have to be a CEO

to lift your max and to live with integrity and to live a great life. I know people who do, because they joined Amazon or whatever have just made a life for themselves an amazing life for themselves and have done great work at Amazon, let's say, and then have lived a great life because of the opportunity that created for them. So I think there are more good people out there, but yes, one of the saddest things of growing up is is noted or even when you're when you're a teenager looking at adults and Noticing how few of them actually live. I mean a really alive

Yeah, yeah in a sense of living their values and enjoying their life And you start with your parents and you look across the people everybody lives such mediocre lives Yeah, and the other thing is they don't have to that's what people appreciate Particularly not in the world that we live in today. They're so wealthy. And so many, we all have so many opportunities, right? So by way of advice, what advice would you give to young people to live their life fully?

I mean, Michael and I have talked about this, but it bears repeating. So if you look at John Galt, if you look at the highest ideals of what we, of a life we could live, what advice would you give to a 20 year old today? 18 year old? I don't think, and I think Rand would agree. When Rand was writing John Galt, she says, when you have this character's human perfection, you don't want to get too close.

So he's a little bit of a vague character because she was aware that when you're dealing with day to day, it kind of, the shine comes off. I think Rork is a lot better character for a young person. Oh, oh, yeah. But Rork is the entirety of the fountain. He's Rork. So, and we're just the one of the seven. We barely know Junko. Yeah. So, but Rork is someone where you could be like, okay, and what Rorck also gives young people is the strength to persevere because when you're young, you're going to have down times. There's going to be times when you're lonely. There's going to be times when you don't have a girlfriend.

There's going to be times when you're out of work and you're thinking holy crap of falling between the cracks. I'm going to accomplish that. I'm going to be a failure. And he gives in the courage to there is even a scene in the fountain head, which is this amazing scene. I love that it's not talked about enough. Where basically, Rourke is looking at one of his buildings and this little kid on a bicycle

comes up to him and I wrote, you're wrong, please correct me. And he's like, who built this and Rourke said I did. And the line is, you know, Rork didn't realize it, but he just gave that kid the courage to face the lifetime. And I think that is such a beautiful thing where you can find inspiration in this character. Don't become needlessly difficult. Don't start parroting his lines. You're not Howard Rork. And he's not a real person. But there's aspects of him that you can applaud your life.

And here's something else I'll give you one example, because this happened to me. When I was working at Goldman Sachs, I was doing tech support, and my great-grandmother had passed away that year. And I promised my grandmother I would have, thanks, I've told the story several times, I would have Thanksgiving dinner with her. I was working second shift for it to midnight midnight and we were 24-7 help desk. And I got the schedule for the next week and I sold my grandma and I'm going to lunch with her in Thanksgiving. And they had put me down from four to midnight the day before

Wednesday, which is my normal shift, but then the day shift the next day. And I go to my boss, I go, I first saw a second shift, I'm like, this Thanksgiving, I promise my grandma. And they're like, well, if you could find someone to fill this, we'll do it. And I asked everyone, they're like, no. And I said, I'm not coming in. And I, I, 100%, not even a question. If I asked my grandmother, can we have dinner instead? You would have said yes. But this was one of those moments.

Maybe this is from my huge ego, where I felt like I was in a movie and I'm making a choice. Am I going to ask grandma or am I going to just bend the knee? And I go, I, I go, I couldn't find anyone and I go, I'm not coming in. And they go, if you're not coming in, you're fired. And I go, fire me. And they did fire me and I have no regrets.

And because if I compromised, I'd have money in my pocket. But since I didn't compromise, I could look at that story. Rand talks about how man is a being of self-made soul. I could look at that story. And next time, I have a time where it's a tough decision where there's really pressure. I could be like, you know what? This is the kind of person you are. Stick to it. I'll give one more example. Sorry, you're on. I've given talks on networking. And I tell people, I like to use humor because humor's a great way to shortcut the brain and get the truth to them directly. I say, if you know someone is in town with it's their birthday and they're not doing anything, take them out and I say, I do this

for a random reason. I do it selfishly and the audience laughs and I go, you're laughing but I go, the guy who takes people out for their birthday is awesome. That could be you. There's nothing stopping you. You're just not thinking of these terms. What's it going to cost you $30? But for the rest of their life or a few years, that person will remember you. Be like, you know what?

This person did right by me and I'll give you a concrete example which changed my life profoundly. Ted Hope, who was the producer of the film American Splendor, which starred by mentor Harvey Peacar, sent an email to his firm that said, family. Ted Hope, who was the producer of the film American Splendor, which started my mentor Harvey P. Carr, sent an email to his firm that said, Harvey's in town with nothing to do. If you want to hang out with him, here's your chance. They worked at a film company. And I was the only one I got the email. I wasn't working there from a friend who took him up on it. And as a consequence, Harvey wrote a graphic novel about me, he got a hubris,

which is $250 in eBay now, and it moves at that, not too shabby. The point being, you know what? Someone had a movie made about him. Someone has an interesting figure, take the lunch, and stay overtime for an hour. But so many people don't think in those terms, and there's so many opportunities for them.

So that's the advice I give. And I think it's also good to give advice, the anecdote. So not only is the person getting the advice, they are learning why you got to that point. And maybe I'm wrong, but at least they've thought about it. Yeah, I mean, I agree with all that. And I like the line, I mean, it's line about Manage the Self-Made Soul is a creature of self-made soul is huge. And it's something most people don't realize. And it's something that modern intellectuals undermine. I mean, even somebody like Sam Harris, when you keep telling people they don't have free will,

then you don't have a self-might, so, because what is self made, there is no self, according to Sam, right? He meditates and he sees that he doesn't have a self. So you're undermining the ability of people to take control over their own lives and make the kind of choices that are necessary to create the kind of moral character

that is necessary for them to be successful. So I'd encourage people to go read found hidden out with shrugged because put aside the politics, put aside even aspects of the philosophy, focus on these models. These are, you know, how do I, is a great model for all of us. It's a great story to have in your head, in your mind, when you encounter challenging choices

that you might make. And then spend the time, and this is, I don't think I ever did this when I was young, I don't think people do this, but spend the time thinking about what your values really are. What do you love doing? What makes, what gets you going, what gets you excited? And how can I make a living at this? How can I do this and live through this?

And then, think about what kind of life you want, what kind of, I don't know, what kind of people you want to hang out with. Don't just, don't let life just happen to you. Think it through. What kind of people, for example, if you want ambitious, excited, maybe you should move to Silicon Valley, to Austin, Texas, right? If you want to be around OTC people, I mean, you should go to Hollywood, maybe you should go to New York, you know,

I don't know, but figure out what kind of life you want to live, what kind of people you want to hang out, what kind of woman you want to spend your life with, what kind of romantic relationship you want to have. Figure that out and go and do it. Don't sit around. Life is not... Or try and fail, it's okay.

You're gonna fail. Failure, failure, so little. And learn from that failure. And that's the other thing. Think about what you're doing, why you're succeeding, why you're failing, and keep improving. Keep working on it, because it's not just going to happen like this.

Nobody is fancised to take a character out of Atlas Shark, to succeed at everything for his try. Right? We all need to fail a few times. We all need it. But what if you got to lose? Every second is never going to be back. I mean, these are all cliches, but they're all true cliches. So think, figure out what your values are,

and try to apply your reason, your rational thought on getting those values. And try to, we talked about early on in the show, in the interview, we talked about integrating your emotions with your cognition. I think that's crucial, because you don't want to be fighting your emotions as you move towards these things. You don't want your emotions to be barriers to your own success.

You want them to be cheerleaders, right? To cheer on when good things happen, and to be negative emotions when it's justified that they're negative. So work on integrating your soul. So creating your soul, that's the real challenge. And I'll give one piece of meta advice. When you're young, you're going to be clueless because you're going to be ignorant, you're

not the data. Don't ask your dopey friends for advice because they want to be helpful. Well, the friends want to be helpful. They dopey as you they've uninformed as you So they're just gonna give you platitudes and you're gonna be worse off because now you're gonna confused Especially with social media reach out to people who are older than you who are accomplished You'd be surprised how often that you got a cent of 20 bucks by them dinner by their book whatever it takes You are getting free world-class advice for very cheap and how often that you got a cent of 20 bucks by dinner by their book, whatever it takes. You are getting free world class advice for very cheap and that is really a mechanism

for success. And here's something very unpopular and not sexy. This is why people probably unfollow me. That's not why. Read. Well, you'll tell me, you'll tell me why afters. Read, read, read. Because you're not always going gonna have access to those experts.

And I'm not talking about self-help books. I'm not even talking about self-help books. Read the world's literature. I mean, literature presents you with all the different characters. Or, you know, read Dusty Evsky, right? Read, read who go, right? Read all these authors that have taken time to really create

characters and put them in situations that maybe you will never face those exact situations, but you'll face similar situations. And and they play it out for you. You'll see what the consequences are. Great literature is a real tool for building your soul. Great art generally with literature in particularly because it's more conceptual. What maybe you could speak to love and relationship in your own life, but in general, if we look at Al-Ashrog, if we look at Fountainhead, and maybe this is going to become a therapy session for Lex, but also just looking at your own life in a form of advice, how can you be a heroic, weird, and type character and do it? Live your life to the fullest in creating the most amazing things that you're able to create and yet

have others in your life that you give yourself to in terms of loving them fully and having a family, having kids, but just even just the love of your life kind of thing. How do you balance those things together? Is there anything to say? I'll say one thing because then I'll defer to your own because he's the one who's married here. I don't think it's a balance. I think they compliment each other and feed off each other.

So it's like, how do you balance having shoes and pants? It's like, oh, you want both. You want it all. And having a great partner who thinks you're a badass and then sometimes they're on the stage and you're like, oh, my, I'm married to a badass. That's the goal. Am I wrong? No, absolutely.

It feeds off of each other. It's energetic. It's completely synergetic. The problem that people have, I think, where they get into challenges is when they view them as opposites, right? Work or family? Well, if you don't work the family, you can't fund if finance the family, but more than that Why is your love gonna why is your wife gonna love you? Right? What are the virtues that you're you're bringing if you don't maximize your own potential?

If you don't live the best life that you can live What is it to love and if she doesn't do the same thing, why do you love her? So, so you don't get this conflict between work and, you know, how do I have a balanced life? Of course, you have a balanced life. You balance it based on your values. And it's never going to be the same. The balance is, you know, the, the time you spend a work and with family when you're young or when you have little kids or when they're grown up is all going to be different. It depends on your priorities at the point, but it's all going to feed off of each other. So maybe another word outside of balance is sacrifice. Do you think relationship involved sacrifice for enough? She knows what he's doing. I know. I think he's trolling you. He's trolling. He's a big troll.

Lex is the biggest troll on Twitter. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Never sacrifice. Never sacrifice. I know. I know. I'm going to define it. Yeah.

Sacrifice in my world. What can I say one thing for a good, we get sidebar. Rand, Rand had a good example of where he's talking about balance. So she was married to this guy, Franco Conner. He was not a cerebral. He was not intellectual. That's fine. She was in love with him.

And I met someone who had been friends with Rand. And a lot of times she'd have these conversations with her acolytes to like four in the morning about the most cerebral topics. And I said, and he would always bring them food, he'd stay up and kind of sit there in a corner. And I go, when this was happening, was he sitting there like, oh God, here goes crazy old iron and I just got to be bored. And they go, absolutely not.

He was so proud of her. He was so excited. In fact, when she got a lot of money from, I think, selling Red Pond, which was her screenplay, which they were produced, he told her, you can buy any kind of fur coat as long as it's mink. He would, he's like, you earn this, celebrate it. So that was a good, an that's a good relationship. Absolutely. No sacrifice is the get is the giving of a high of a value and expecting either nothing or something less in return. You don't do that in a love relationship. Your love relationship is a sense, a trait.

You're constantly trading. You're not trading materially, but you're trading spiritually. Imagine if I only gave my wife, if I gave spiritually and materially, only in one direction. I get sick of it, she gets sick of it, it wouldn't ever last. It has to be in give and take constantly,

in different ways, right? Different values, it's not a monetary exchange, but it's constantly you're giving in you, you're receiving in you're giving, right? And it's got to, that's got to be in balance. And I know a lot of relationship where that gets out of giving, right? And it's got to, that's got to be in balance. And I know a lot of relationship where that gets out of bounds, right? And one party feels like they're giving all the time

the sacrificing, they're giving more than they're receiving in a sense, and it's over, right? So, now people use the word sacrifice, like Jordan Peterson. Sometimes he uses it both ways, right? That's the problem. People use it. I don't know him personally, you know? Jordan Peterson, I said I didn't call him Jordan, you say? Yeah, he uses it in his talks as sometimes he uses it as just as I described it. Any supportive of that like the sacrifice Jesus made,

right? And sometimes he uses this as his investment, but it's it's not if you're if you're giving some giving money now expecting a bigger return in the future, that's not a sacrifice. That's an investment. That's why we have two concepts for that. And the same is true. You know, if my wife is ill, and I mean, you know, I've got a whole relationship build around what I'm giving. It's not that I'm not getting anything back when I'm getting back is that she is recovering,

right? Is that she is, she's still alive or whatever it is that I'm keeping, that's the value that I'm getting in return. If I'm not getting that, why am I doing it? Cause I signed a contract a long time ago. So it's not a sacrifice, children are not sacrificed. I don't go to the movies cause I stay with my home

with my kids, it's because I love my kids more than I love going to the movies, right? And if I love going to the movies, more than I my home with my kids, it's because I love my kids more than I love going to the movies. And if I love going to the movies more than I love staying with the kids and get a babysitter, or don't have kids, which is the better approach, because it's a good question. Who did, what book did Ine Ran say is the most evil book in all a serious literature?

And it was Anna Corinne. It was Anna Corinne. And the reason it was that book, which I haven't read, please correct me if I get the plot wrong, Ran was saying is the plot is a guy who's a big shot, I think. He marries a stupid girl who has nothing of value to offer him for it at all.

And she ends up killing herself, whereas Rand's version, and we could take this out of the romantic context, I am delighted when I could be of use to my friends. It makes me feel wonderful and not in a kind of parasitic way. It's just like that I'm at a certain point where they call me up. They're having a problem and I've helped them with that problem. And a Karenina he gives up the love of life.

Oh, is that what it is? Okay. The amazing girl. He has an affair with the outside of marriage. Tains her is married to the to the stupid, but she gives him the prestige and everything. Oh, that's clearly very anti-ramp. And the smart, the one he loves, she commits suicide in there. Oh, okay, I got it wrong.

So it's about him choosing mediocrity and nothingness over this amazing, over love. So pursuing your values is so crucial. So, don't sacrifice. It doesn't mean that if you want to eat Chinese and she want to eat it, tell you, you don't want to eat it while you eat it, tell you it on that day, right? That's silly, right? That's not a sacrifice, not in the sense in which we're talking about. But, you know, it doesn't mean don't compromise.

It doesn't mean don't compromise on the day to day stuff. It means don't compromise a moral values. Doesn't it? You don't compromise on the big stuff and you never and you never sacrifice. And that way you, you have a relationship that's built as equals. And, and as you admire each other and love at the end of the day, is a response to value.

If you stop undermining your own value, and love at the end of the day is a response to value. If you stop undermining your own value, the person who loves you will stop loving you or love you less. If you love yourself less, you have to, I know, also said, to say, I love you, you have to be able to say the I. Right, you have to be somebody,

you have to know yourself, you have to, you have to be somebody you have to know yourself. You have to have value. And so love is a, love is a profound emotional response to value. So speaking of love and the three of us being on this deserted island for time together, somehow not murdering each other, let me ask you, uh, Yoran, Michael, what is the most beautiful thing you find about the, the other. So let's go. You're on first. What do you think about Michael?

What that you appreciate about him that you think what would you love? What do you love about that? That is going to edit it. See that makes sense. I just programmed him. Press play. It's all just a pre-recorded message. So I've never been a microphone before.

So this is my... That's not true. You have. So I don't remember if I'm meeting a microphone. And you're the very beginning of the new right is me meeting you. I'm in the book. Yes.

All right, well now I have to read this book. Yeah. I mean, my presented positively or negatively. Very. Oh, OK, good. Uh, like... Like, he's not so sure. He's like, I know, I like that he goes, are you, am I presented positively or negatively?

I just go very. And he's like, oh, good. I'm like, listen. Yeah. So he's, Michael Sharp is quick. Um, he's, he's, he's funny, although some of the humor is beyond me. That's nice of you saying he's very intelligent. Yeah, he's very, he's definitely very intelligent.

But also very engaging. I think that's very engaging. I have a sharp dress this one. Oh, he's definitely well-bi-i. And let me compliment him on stuff that's obvious and everybody can see by the video. That's a sexy pie. Let me also just comment one thing you mentioned about you deriving joy from being a value to your friends. People talk to me about you sometimes because you'll do humor about various things and things like maybe you're some kind of crazy person or something like that.

I know you enjoy this aspect of it, but I say that the reason I'm friends with Michael is there's real love there. The kind of kindness you give to your friends, to people that are close to you, to your family is amazing, man. That's one of my favorite things about you. You're into the side, your philosophy's aside, your humor aside. I think there's a lot of love in you.

That's what I really appreciate. But enough about you. I'm actually getting sick of seeing nice things about you. You always get sick. And I take it all back. Can I say one thing? You're joking, but this is something that's very key and there's something in a random context.

It is very disturbing, and this is not by accident. How in our culture it is poo-pooed to show kindness, earnestness, appreciation, to tell someone I, you see this on Twitter, where someone's like, you know what, I read your book, it's made my life a lot better. Okay, Simp. And there is a real, and this very much comes out of urban like media circles. There's this real disdain for showing appreciation,

for showing happiness, for showing kindness. And you don't know, now that I've called it out, you'll notice it, but when you see how common it is and how people can't take compliments, it's the effects of that are extreme and extremely negative. I gotta say about Texas, one of the most particular. So Austin, especially, I mean, I don't really fully know Texas, Texas, but Austin, the friendliness, there's a reason I've been, I've gotten fatter and been drinking a lot is for all the friendliness

from random people who are not no longer random. They're just friends. I've made more friends in one week than I have in my entire stay in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. One and a half. One and a half.

I've never counted up that high. So this is what happens when people are free. No. When people are free and individualistic, it's exact opposite of what people believe. The more collectivist we are, the less free we are, the nastier we are to one another. Individualists who are pursuing their own happiness

are incredibly kind, friendly, and supportive people. Okay, and now your task with... Talk about... Talk about Bad Juju. To practice what you preach, uh, is there in your soul that you can find one beautiful thing to say about your own. Now that you guys met for the first, second or third time or at least in performance. So that's easy one. So what I like about your own is that I think he is taking one of the problems with maybe more old school

Objectivism is that they would just use Rans arguments in Rans way and it's like you're a parent You're not adding anything and you're not gonna be better than her So you give this talk about I think you compare compare um was it Bill Gates to who was the one? Trasim to no, who's the one who went to jail. Oh, Bernie made off. So Bernie made off. And you make the point, you're like, does anyone here really think Bernie made off was happy? Like, yeah, he's successful and he's wealthy.

But does he go to bed being like, hey, I'm a great guy. No, and his son killed himself at all this tragedy that goes with him. So I think anyone who takes an ideology or worldview that I think is of value and adds to it and makes it and articulates it in a new way, I think is a great accomplishment. I like how uncompromising you are in your views of putting her views forward. And I like how you illustrate how silly it is to argue against anarchism. So I don't really have to do any of the work. As for you, and this I've thought this before many times,

you are the first person I met who I come at literally at first, other than my friend who went to Yashiva with as a kid, who I come at us, there was a line on friends where Ross and Racial were thinking of dating, right? And they go, if we start dating, it would be like the third date because they knew each other well. And then she's like, yeah, but it'd be like that. So it's like a plus and a minus.

Like, yeah, you're fast forwarding to seriousness, but it's also the fact that you and I have the same background. Like I can sit with your own or any of my other friends and try to explain it. The fact that intuitively you and I grew up the same. And I know that we have that background in common does create a bond because I feel even if I haven't told you certain things, you are going to understand me a lot better than many of my friends who've known me for a long time. I also really like how I feel, this is a very new age term, but I'm going to use it. I feel very seen when I talk to you.

I think you see me for who I am. You appreciate me for who I am. And I also really like how, and this is increasing the common as my platform increases. So I'm very flattered by this. You understand what I'm trying to do and you don't try to get in the way even though it's your show. You're like, okay, this guy's a performer, he's doing his thing,

people appreciate it, I appreciate it, I'm not gonna try to drive the car and I think some people who are bad and I'm not in count of this because I would shoot it down, but I think a lot of times people have a tendency when they're hosts to try to drive the car. And it's like these things work when we come in here, none of us prepare. You prepare by me, none of us talk beforehand and it like make it spontaneous. And the audience really enjoys that more because they know it's real earnest and dynamic. Yeah, I enjoy having you drive the car even though I believe you don't have a license.

I think you don't have a license. I don't have a... And you think we're gonna crash. No, I think he's extraordinary to view it because of all those things. He makes you feel visible. And he does. But he also comes across as really honest. The questions are really... Questions that you seem really interested in.

That you really want answers to. It doesn't come across as canned or I prepared my three book, book project. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. I was pretty sure that on a desert island, this would end in murder, but now I believe it may. Well, given his comments on Anarchy, it might still. It might still.

It might still. It might it might still might still the day is still young the night is young this is a huge honor i've been a fan of both of you separately for a long time i really appreciate wasting all this time with me today i love you michael i love you you're on we love you too thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Malis and Yaron Brook. And thank you to Ground News, Public Goods, Athletic Greens, Brave, and For SZGM. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Malis and Yaron Brook. And thank you to Ground News, Public Goods, Athletic Greens, Brave, and For

SZGM. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now let me leave you with some words from Karl Marx. Surround yourself with people who make you happy. People who make you laugh. Who help you when you're in need People who genuinely care They are the ones worth keeping in your life Everyone else is just passing through

Thank you.