YouSaid · the spoken record

Yaron Brook

lines on the record: 267
first: 2021-04-24
most recent: 2021-04-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You cannot have liberty or freedom without a government. Now, not anything like the governments we have today. So I think the idea that you can have liberty or freedom without government is the rejection of the idea of liberty and freedom and the undermining of any effort, any attempt to do it. So in that sense, you know, exactly. On this side, I'm in agreement with Lex, which is unusual. Government is good for freedom.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only way to achieve a better world is through government Michael Woody is the cool. He almost dropped. And I said it on purpose that way. So I can imagine.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. Okay. I'm not naive. I'm actually providing the warning and all these Bitcoiners are saying, no, no, no. Government doesn't function that way”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we should get to that issue at some point here. But, you know, so I think there's a lot of naivete. Speaking of naivety”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Government is not greedy. Government is not greedy for money. Government is greedy for power. Government is greedy for control. Government is much more money's good too. They'll take the money if they can get it. But it's not”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I hope the government just give in and the Fed Tomas says, yeah, let Bitcoin thrive. But I think they'll want to regulate and control and the only way to regulate and control it is to stop it.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they can monitor the sweatshirt being sent to me. That's where they can interfere. And I think that at some point, to the extent Bitcoin is successful, it will be stopped. And that's what will stop it from becoming money. See, money 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 what I so I have more respect and fear for the power of government today.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but that's where the government thrives, right? The government thrives in letting you do stuff in the black market so they can decide when to put you in jail or not, 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't monitor my exchange of Bitcoin to him.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I said, you know, that could be taken away like that. Now, it's true that we could exchange Bitcoin and the government wouldn't 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 have to go into the black market.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My view is let it play out. I think I have more fear of physical the ability of the government to crush these things, and I think many in the community. So, for example, so I gave a talk, Bitcoin, you know, and they were hyping the acceptance now, a lot of vendors are willing to accept Bitcoin, and this is great. And I said, yeah, it's absolutely great. More options is better than few options.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I get that, and I hear that all the time. And I don't quite understand that. And I think Bitcoin has limitations that potentially other cryptocurrencies might not have. My attitude towards something like this is, to a large extent, I don't understand technology”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ayn Rand coin I was in China in 2015 or 14? China I was in China 20 something like that. And this entrepreneur came up to me and she said, she's bought this massive quantity of land in this area in China. It's a little secluded. She's starting what she's calling Galt Gulch. She's serious. And she's issued cryptocurrency based on the land, right, backed by the land called Rand, but Ayn Rand. with a little portrait of the marketing. I don't think it went anywhere.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 technique, it represents 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. So Bitcoin doesn't strike me as optimal and that we should be moving towards something better”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gold is not going to be worth more. Let's say right now gold is about $2,000. It's less than $2,000. Let's say it's $2,000. It's its price in terms of dollars. So you'd have to, it would have to be worth your while to create something of $2,000. How much would you be willing to put into it? At some point, you're right. And at that point, I think gold stops being money. It's useless. Once I can create it like silicon, then once I can make out official gold. So I'm just not, I don't think Bitcoin is the solution. I think I don't know what the solution is. I wish I was that innovative. But I think you need a solution that has more of the characteristics of gold than Bitcoin currently has. And I'm, I guess I'm surprised.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For example, technological shocks can change that dramatically. You could get bouts of dramatic deflation, dramatic price drops that could. Be problematic in terms of planning, the same problem of inflation just reversed that you had before. So again, it's a technical issue. I'm sure there are 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 a technology that would evolve? I was just going to say.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Prices are going down because there's too little gold, right? So the value of gold, in a sense, in dollar terms, so prices 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. So you mine for more gold. So it keeps increasing and it keeps increasing basically very correlated to the rate of increase in productivity. That's the beauty of gold mining because prices are related to gold, gold is the dominant money and it increases at about the same rate as productivity. So 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? The decline at the rate of productivity increases. It's hard to predict what the rate at which productivity increases.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 design jewelry and wore them. So we obviously assume beings value 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 objects generally. So there's something about gold that appeals to human beings. There's some value that gold has beyond its 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 those are two characteristics. One, that it's not finite and second, that it is a value beyond that Bitcoin doesn't have.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The two things that gold has that it doesn't have. One is gold is not finite. Gold supply actually grows over time. Bitcoin at some point is truly finite. At least unless you count the fact that you can split Bitcoins and create coins, 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 Virginia.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I don't think it's money. So 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 more successful”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 it knowing what the value will be in five years. Right now it's an asset. It's not a monetary unit. It's much more functions as an asset. Assets value can go up.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let me take something use. So let me take something you said before, and that contradicts, I think, Bitcoin. You said one of the things about money is that it's stable. I know what it's going to buy tomorrow, right? This is why we're against inflation, because I know what the dollar today I can plan because I don't know what Bitcoin is going to be with tomorrow. So I can't plan with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is way too volatile to serve right now as money. The argument from Bitcoin is. Yes, it's still being adopted. At some point, it'll reach a certain crucial point.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I know you have, but I can sell things, 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 the money.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it doesn't. It functions as a 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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think two things. I think right now, and maybe this won't be true in the future, right now I think crypto is ill suited. It cannot function as money right now. It just can't.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's part of my criticism because I don't think it works. So, yeah, I can imagine a world to see a technology evolve where money is competitive and it's a financial instrument that the government cannot touch.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I'm talking about now. I'm talking about COVID last year. What the Fed did was unbelievable. The kind of bonds that they were buying even 2008, even after 2008, I couldn't believe what they did last year. PPP, the payroll protection program, was targeted 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 bow base is Wall Street, then they'll bail out Wall Street. They believe securing their power base is writing checks to restaurant owners all over the country. They'll write checks to 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 elitism in the bailouts of last year.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But sure they were. If you look, sure there was. 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. The whole PPP, the way that...”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ignorant, and incompetent the people at the top are. And they knew it. And so Paulson goes to Congress and says, give me $700 billion. Don't tell me how to use it because I have no clue. Just give it to me and give me authoritarian power to do it 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 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 bankers didn't benefit from this. Indeed, many bankers who took their money lost from it. Bank stocks got crushed after the bailout. Before the bailout, bank stocks were doing okay. And right after top was announced, bank stocks crushed because this was bad for banks. It wasn't good for banks. This is just central.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 the things that the financial crisis really illustrated was how...”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 JPMorgan and West Fargo and a friend of mine, John Allison of BBT, who told him explicitly, we don't want your money. We don't need your money. 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? The equivalent of that.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I agree with that description of Bitcoin. My problems with Bitcoin are elsewhere. Let me just say about the financial crisis. I don't like it phrased that way again. They let Lehman go under and destroyed Lehman Brothers. In the past, they destroyed Drexel Burnham because they didn't like Michael Malkin. They are vindictive. It's not an accident that the Treasury Secretary at the time was an ex-chairman of Goldman Sachs, not Lehman Brothers and Goldman Hates-Lehman. And the next day they'd be a lot of AIG.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't like that statement. Let me just say why I don't like it. I don't like it because it assumes that they're equal partners or that there's 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 primarily Jefferson and others founders distrust of finance. So from the beginning, banks are being controlled by the state. Now, over time, if I'm controlling you, you want to have influence over me because I get to, so yes, they get into bed over time. 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?”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we could get into that if you wanted, but that's probably a three hour show just that. It was caused by the Federal Reserve. And yet who got blamed for the financial crisis? Who would Richard Wolfe is going to jump up and down? This is a crisis of capitalism. This was caused by capitalism. But capitalism is the negation of the Fed. Capitalism says there should be no Fed. That's item number one on the list of the things capitalists 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. If I'm wrong, great.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 anymore. So some prices go up. Some prices might not. Investments get distorted. Things get produced that shouldn't get produced. And then people like Richard Wolfe 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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the ways the government gets around that is because they get smart to that, right? Is they index everything? So they index your social security, they index welfare, they try to make sure, but that only makes you more dependent on them. And the people in the modern context that saving hurts, the inflation hurts the most are savers, people trying to save money. And Fed policy right now is just horrific if you're a saver, right? Because the Fed interest rates are zero. You get nothing on your saving. Cost of living is going up maybe not at a huge level, but is going up. And yet you can't even save to keep up, to keep the value of your dollars.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We confiscated all the gold. Everybody knows FDR is going to come to become president and confiscate the gold. So one of the mythologies, the myths about the Great Depression is that there were all these bank runs that, well, bank runs happened because everybody was afraid that FDR 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 gold 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 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 and that he could start spending.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is so broad today that other than wiping out all electricity on the planet, everything electronic on the planet, 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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 there are in the world today. 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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 7 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 the Byzantine. Some of them the Byzantines had and ultimately landed up with 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. That running water. Fawcets. They didn't have faucets for another thousand years, right? They couldn't build tall buildings. Once Rome came down”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. A lot gets through in the Iranian, at least with Iran. I don't know. I don't know about North Korea. How much gets through?”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, sure Sure, if there was some way to go. And of course, they could teleport too. Sure. And this is, of course, the danger of they can use the technology too. Sure, absolutely. And look at what the Chinese are doing with social scores and with monitoring people and cameras everywhere. So there's a sense in which you probably had more privacy.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It becomes more expensive. It becomes more expensive, no question. It becomes more expensive. We're still beings that live in a physical reality. Therefore, they can still harm us in this physical reality.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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'm not convinced that they can't.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was not obvious before the Industrial Revolution, and that, you know, 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. It 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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I get that in so a lot. 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.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And even the authoritarianism in a country like China is a lot less than it used to be under Mao, right? So they were better off than they were under Mao. That's a reality. How do we change it? We have to change the ethical views of people. This brings us back to selfishness because as long as the standard of morality is the group others, as long as the standard of value is what other people want, 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 Jesus on a cross dying for other people's sin is viewed as this noble, wonderful act instead of one of the most unjust things they ever happen to anybody, as long as the common good and the public interest are the standards by which we evaluate things, we will always drift.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a recent invention. It happens in little pockets throughout history. You know, we had a little bit of this democracy stuff partial. Only a few, 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? You had in a few Greek cities. We maybe had a version of it in Venice. We had a version of it in city-states around the world. But then it was invented by the founding fathers in this country. 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. Authoritarianism is common.”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's the same reason you cannot have the Richard Wolfe type socialism. And this is the more, if you will, innocent part of his ideas. Oh, why can't we have corporations all be worker owned and everybody votes on everything and we vote on who should be CEO? 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,”
2021-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source