#178 – Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Michael Malice and Yaron Brook. 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 You're 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 Ayn Rand Institute, host of the Yaron Brook Show, and co-author of The Free Market Revolution and Equal is Unfair.

• 0:41Lex Fridman?

  Quick mention of our sponsors: Ground News, Public Goods, Athletic Greens, Brave, and Four Sigmatic. 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 Ayn Rand, 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.

• 1:24Lex Fridman?

  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 talked through, I think, a lot of interesting ideas, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes even in rare cases, saying something humorous, including dark humor, especially in 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 listened, you're a wiser person on the other end of it.

• 2:09Lex Fridman?

  I know I was. Mostly, I really enjoyed this conversation because no matter what Michael and Yaron believe, underneath it all, they're 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 timestamps 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, really interesting one called Ground News,

• 2:51Lex Fridman?

  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, as with my conversation with Max Tegmark, 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 worldviews,

• 3:33Lex Fridman?

  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/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/lex to sign up and show your support. This show is sponsored by Public Goods, the one stop shop for affordable, sustainable, healthy household products.

• 4:14Lex Fridman?

  I use their hand soap, toothpaste and 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. It's a kind of regular act of minimalism and stoicism that I practice. So almost anytime 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.

• 4:55Lex Fridman?

  Anyway, go to publicgoods.com/lex or use code Lex at checkout 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 publicgoods.com/lex or use code Lex at 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 fuels most days for me, Athletic Greens, the all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It replaced the

• 5:36Lex Fridman?

  multivitamin for me and went far beyond that with 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day and I actually have been drinking two 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 pigging 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 whiskey I've been drinking. It's good for the soul, maybe not so good for the

• 6:19Lex Fridman?

  body. That's where Athletic 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/lex. That's athleticgreens.com/lex 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.

• 7:02Lex Fridman?

  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 Nyk, the guy who created JavaScript, created 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.

• 7:42Lex Fridman?

  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/lex. It might become your favorite browser, too. That's brave.com/lex. Check them out, support them. It's good for the internet. It's gonna be good for you. This show is also sponsored by Four Sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee and plant-based protein. By the way, I heard Cal Newport do a read on his podcast called Deep Questions. You should definitely check out for Four Sigmatic. He loves them too. You may be asking, does the coffee taste like mushrooms?

• 8:26Lex Fridman?

  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/lex. That's foursigmatic.com/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. And I rarely have my stuff together. I just take the leap into the madness and love every moment of it.

• 9:09Lex Fridman?

  But when I grow up, I want to be like Hal Newport. Anyway, foursigmatic.com/lex. I don't remember if I said that, but there you go. There it is. This is the Lex Fridman podcast and here is my conversation with Michael Malice and Yaron Ruck.

• 9:43Lex Fridman?

  I've been a huge fan of the two of you for the longest time.

• 9:46Michael Malice?

  Are we recording? Is it starting or are you just talking?

• 9:49Lex Fridman?

  I'm not recording at all.

• 9:50Yaron Brook?

  He's not gonna compliment us if it's not part of the show.

• 9:53Michael Malice?

  He speaks very highly of me. You, I don't know. Maybe he's being charitable.

• 9:56Yaron Brook?

  He only does this to me on the show.

• 9:58Michael Malice?

  Objectivists don't like charities, so don't compliment him. He won't think it's sincere.

• 10:01Yaron Brook?

  There you go.

• 10:02Lex Fridman?

  So it's, it's an incredible honor that both of you would show up here. If we, let me just ask the sort of profound philosophical question. How well do you think we would get along if we were stuck in a desert island together? What would life be like?

• 10:17Yaron Brook?

  I thought the original question you had that you, you, you sent us this question was how long would it take for us to murder one another or something like? There was murder in the question, if I remember.

• 10:25Michael Malice?

  I, I, listen, he sent us homework, right? All these questions.

• 10:29Yaron Brook?

  I ignored it.

• 10:29Michael Malice?

  I, 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, and I say this because I know a lot of people who have been the show survivor. So they, and I know a little bit about the dynamics. So when you have people who are intelligent, who are gonna 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.

• 10:56Lex Fridman?

  What's our goals on a desert island?

• 10:58Michael Malice?

  Food, shelter.

• 10:59Yaron Brook?

  Survival.

• 10:59Michael Malice?

  Survival.

• 11:00Yaron Brook?

  Survival, basically. Survival and getting out of it, right? You don't want to stay on the desert island. So, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think. I think that's true of any three. You know, even semi-rational people who, you know, who basically share the goal that they want to survive, they want to thrive, they want to get off of the island, why would there be conflict?

• 11:20Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Yaron Brook?

  I mean, there would be conflict, but, and there can be conflict, but they'd 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.

• 11:38Michael Malice?

  One of the things that really drives me crazy is how sinister an impact the book Lord of the Flies has had on our culture. I read it 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's 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 going to shut up and go over there and have a, like, stop my feet instead of arguing with your own because we're really trapped in the situation and we need to make it work.

• 12:21Yaron Brook?

  Well, and to the extent that they're bad people, bad people are dealt with, right? So this is true of all of, you know, how did we survive as a species, right? How have we survived as a species? We've been on a desert island in a sense as a species forever. A tribe survived. They survived by cooperation. They survived by dealing with, with the bad people. Civilization is created by people cooperating and working together and, and allowing individuals to thrive within, within the group. And when, when bad people arise, they deal with them, right? They now, sometimes these groups get captured by bad people, right? And, and bad ideas and probably from day one that was going on, right? The whole, the whole tribe is probably a bad idea to begin with, but.

• 13:07Yaron Brook?

  And beneath it all, the fact is that to survive as a species, we need to, we need to think, we need to be rational. And if, if we don't have any respect for reason, then we would all die. We would die off.

• 13:21Lex Fridman?

  So that, that's a hopeful message. But where does that go wrong? So with three people, we might get along. We would focus on the basics of life, we have similar goals.

• 13:30Michael Malice?

  Once women are introduced, they're incessant irrationalism.

• 13:33Yaron Brook?

  No.

• 13:34Michael Malice?

  And also their hormones, or SOL.

• 13:36Yaron Brook?

  Look, three of us on a desert island would be nice, but without women, it wouldn't be fun.

• 13:41Lex Fridman?

  Um, I'm gonna edit out half the things Michael said through this podcast.

• 13:44Yaron Brook?

  As you, as you know, I used to run the Ayn Rand Institute. She, she was a woman last time I looked.

• 13:48Michael Malice?

  Oh, wait a minute. You know, you know exactly what I'm gonna say.

• 13:51Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:52Michael Malice?

  When Ludwig von Mises, or Haslett, I forget who it was, was Mises, was praising Ayn Rand, and some, I think it was Haslett who said it to her. He said Ludwig von Mises said, "You're the smartest man I've ever met." And Ayn Rand said, "Did he say man, right?"

• 14:06Yaron Brook?

  No, she viewed it as a compliment.

• 14:08Michael Malice?

  Oh, right. But she was, she wanted to be clear that he said man. She was excited, yes.

• 14:11Yaron Brook?

  Absolutely.

• 14:12Lex Fridman?

  She was excited about the prospect.

• 14:13Michael Malice?

  I took it as her perceiving him as seeing her as a full equal.

• 14:17Yaron Brook?

  Oh, I, I, I think that's right. I think that's right. Plus, plus, I think the, the, the perception out there, the perception in the culture of men as being rational, you know, was, was a compliment to her, because that was, that was a real, affirm, affirming that he viewed her as a rational.

• 14:32Michael Malice?

  Yeah, because Mises is 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, Margit von Mises. And basically, he made her his secretary to the point where like, if he's typing something, or he had something handwritten, she had to type it out. And if she made a typo, he would tear up the page. She had to start from the beginning. But it's like, that's, 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, um... Misogynist.

• 15:00Yaron Brook?

  So I think we go wrong when people try to understand the world around them and come up with wrong ideas and it's it's 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 for the 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 Rand called it Attila and the witch doctor. You always have a witch doctor, the mystic, the philosopher,

• 15:45Yaron Brook?

  the intellectual, the philosopher, you know, king is a unity of the 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, ninety five, ninety eight percent of human history is when those two are together. And so the 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 that's what needs to be defended.

• 16:24Michael Malice?

  Yeah. Stalin's not personally killing people. Hitler's not personally killing people. Charles Manson's not personally killing people. They need their goons.

• 16:30Yaron Brook?

  They need their goons, but they also they don't 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? They all and Marx needs a particular line of thinkers that come before him that that set him up for these kind of ideas. So so Stalin both needs his goons, even though he's somewhat of a goon, particularly Stalin.

• 16:55Michael Malice?

  Yeah, he was a bank robber, yeah.

• 16:56Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. And then so take Lenin. Lenin, I think, is a better example because Lenin's more intellectual, if you will. But Lenin needs his goons, he needs a Stalin's. But Lenin also needs his Marx. And we don't want to let Marx off the hook because Marx knows. I think implicitly that his ideas have to lead to Lenin and Stalin. His ideas are not neutral.

• 17:16Michael Malice?

  I don't think it's implicit at all. I think Marx very much glorified revolution, blood and terror. This is not implicit in his writers.

• 17:24Yaron Brook?

  No, absolutely. I mean, there are letters between him and Engels 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 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.

• 17:42Michael Malice?

  And Marx also had this concept, which we still see today in, in garbled ways of polylogism, which is if you're a capitalist and I'm bourgeois or I'm a worker, you just, your logic is different than mine. It's literally going to be impossible for us to communicate. And at a certain point, you're going to have to be liquidated and they pretend that doesn't mean murdered, but it means murdered.

• 18:01Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Michael Malice?

  And very quickly, everyone becomes a capitalist or bourgeois. And then you have, you know, the, the hall of the more and things like this.

• 18:07Yaron Brook?

  No, he knows exactly where it's going to lead. And, and this is why, you know, 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 people, history evolves. And they know, they know, the bad guys certainly know the consequence of their ideas. And, and they need to bear the moral responsibility for what, what happens when their ideas are implemented.

• 18:30Michael Malice?

  Here's, wait, can I ask a question?

• 18:31Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Michael Malice?

  Because I, I think I know more about Rand than Yaron does, so let's see.

• 18:35Yaron Brook?

  Okay.

• 18:36Lex Fridman?

  The cart has been thrown down.

• 18:37Michael Malice?

  Who, who did Ayn Rand say is the most evil man who ever lived?

• 18:40Yaron Brook?

  Immanuel Kant.

• 18:41Michael Malice?

  That's right, correct.

• 18:42Yaron Brook?

  No, that I know. I mean, so it's a, it's a big deal that Immanuel Kant is, and, and most people don't understand why. Because if you read Kant, there's certain passages in Kant that sound pretty liberal. They sound pretty, he's, he's for the, 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 his philosophy and what he's trying to defend and what he's trying to undermine.

• 19:04Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Yaron Brook?

  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, are those ideas that make freedom, individualism feasible. He's trying to undermine reason and without reason. We're nothing. We're not. 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 eviscerate. I know you've talked about Hoffman before. So Hoffman is a modern day attempt to

• 19:48Yaron Brook?

  Donald Hoffman.

• 19:49Lex Fridman?

  Donald Hoffman.

• 19:50Yaron Brook?

  Donald Hoffman is the University of California, Irvine neurologist, neuroscientist, something like that. I met him once and we were at one of these conferences where you do a quick intro. You sit and you do a quick introduction was, "I've just written a book that proves that evolution has conditioned us not to see reality."

• 20:12Michael Malice?

  Okay, that is very convenient.

• 20:13Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, and he is basically just presenting pseudoscience to defend Kant's position about epistemology and about metaphysics. And there's nothing, 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."

• 20:33Lex Fridman?

  So Yaron is a little bit frustrated with Donald Hoffman's work.

• 20:38Yaron Brook?

  Not frustrated, I just think it's completely wrong and it is and it's anti-life, anti-mind, anti-evolution. I think he'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.

• 20:54Michael Malice?

  Or that you can't perceive it.

• 20:55Yaron Brook?

  Well, who are you? What do you mean by, what do 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?

• 21:03Lex Fridman?

  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. Sort of, you know, when you speak with the confidence of Ayn Rand and yourself that reason can be like this weapon that cuts through all the bullshit of the world and makes us like have an ethical, moral life and all those kinds of things. You kind of assume that reason is a superpower that has no limits.

• 21:34Michael Malice?

  Wait, hold on.

• 21:36Lex Fridman?

  Hold on a second, okay, but

• 21:37Michael Malice?

  I've got this one.

• 21:41Lex Fridman?

  See, this is already leading to murder by words. Yeah. And we've been only talking for 20 minutes. The two of us wouldn't get together, wouldn't get along together on an island.

• 21:50Michael Malice?

  We just make him our slave. We're all gonna get along, he's just gonna do the work.

• 21:54Lex Fridman?

  But I'm afraid I cannot provide any value as a slave, so this is not gonna end well for me.

• 22:00Michael Malice?

  You can provide value as dinner.

• 22:02Lex Fridman?

  That's the problem I'm trying to get to.

• 22:03Michael Malice?

  That's a solution.

• 22:06Lex Fridman?

  Okay, but Donald Hoffman says that there is, like, he makes an argument that, exactly as you said, that 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.

• 22:41Michael Malice?

  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 superpower 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 incomprehensible. 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 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,

• 23:22Michael Malice?

  we're getting there, is capable of appreciating what the sun means, what heliocentrism means. The fact that we can, you know, 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 could mean a lot of different things. Evolution is what guides, uh, reality is what guides evolution. Evolution works because you are fitted to the reality of the situation around you.

• 24:06Michael Malice?

  It's not that someone is sitting down and says, "Well, I'm gonna add a fin to this animal, and that fin helps it swim, swim, I engineered it, check mark." It's that mutations occur. The vast majority of 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.

• 24:51Michael Malice?

  Now, if he means the consciousness is not in touch with reality, that's another thing that I really hate.

• 24:58Lex Fridman?

  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 actual-

• 25:12Michael Malice?

  Hold on, can I have one more sentence?

• 25:13Yaron Brook?

  Sure, sure.

• 25:14Michael Malice?

  I do not, I despise the idea, I say despise, I'm not using this, I'm not joking, and the 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.

• 25:39Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Michael Malice?

  This is the real reality. That is a different type, a subset, but no one's living there.

• 25:45Yaron Brook?

  Well, and it's a-

• 25:45Michael Malice?

  And humanity is the starting point.

• 25:47Yaron Brook?

  It's a subset that has to integrate with this world. There isn't two worlds, 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, he has this difference. He says, "Evolution..."

• 26:06Yaron Brook?

  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. 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 Kantian. Again, he's accepted Kant's ideas, and everybody pretty much has accepted Kant's ideas for the last 200 years, and they keep it, 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,

• 26:49Yaron Brook?

  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 and lifting the cup. That's not an illusion. That is a real cup.

• 27:10Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 27:19Michael Malice?

  Is this gonna be about love? There's nothing as real as love, right Lex? What is love?

• 27:25Lex Fridman?

  Love is a fundamental part of the quantum mechanics, yes. No.

• 27:29Yaron Brook?

  No.

• 27:30Lex Fridman?

  No, no. Is there some things that have, are, become reality because we humans, in a collective sense, believe it?

• 27:38Michael Malice?

  You can't believe something collectively. Now, and it doesn't become real.

• 27:41Yaron Brook?

  What does it mean to say something's real? That is, you can, so love, for example, love's 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 certainly something you could feel.

• 27:52Michael Malice?

  Well, it's something you can hit.

• 27:55Lex Fridman?

  We love differently.

• 27:57Michael Malice?

  I don't think that's true. I think I'm just so honest about it.

• 27:59Yaron Brook?

  You can't hit 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 existent, but it's not an existent in the same sense as this cup is. So... You know, abstractions are real, but at the end of the day, all abstractions have to be able to be, you know, reduced to actual concrete, so you can either see.

• 28:23Michael Malice?

  I really don't like criticizing someone whose work I haven't read secondhand. So I want to take this away from speaking about him personally, because I'm not familiar with his work.

• 28:33Lex Fridman?

  He's a nice guy.

• 28:34Michael Malice?

  That makes me like him. That makes him like him less. I think.

• 28:38Lex Fridman?

  Now you're back talking about fitness, evolutionary fitness.

• 28:40Michael Malice?

  I think there's 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 wordplay that is trying to force a point that's not accurate, in my opinion.

• 29:03Yaron Brook?

  Well, I think the issue is, and what he's challenging is, and what Kant is challenging is, do we know reality? And I think the answer is, yes, we do. We know reality. We observe it. Now, do we know everything about reality? No, we can't, for example, sense what a bat's bat senses as reality, right? A bat observes reality through, what is it?

• 29:25Michael Malice?

  Sona.

• 29:26Yaron Brook?

  Sound waves, right? Through sona, right? So it has a different sense, but it's the same reality. It's still a table. The bat's spatial relationship to the table is different than ours, but the object is still the same object.

• 29:39Lex Fridman?

  But how do you know that's true? Are you not just hoping that's true?

• 29:42Michael Malice?

  But that's.

• 29:43Lex Fridman?

  Or assuming that's.

• 29:43Michael Malice?

  No, that's what no means. No means I have identified an aspect of reality. That's literally the 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.

• 29:58Yaron Brook?

  Yes.

• 29:58Michael Malice?

  And I know this is going to happen. And if I tell, 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.

• 30:10Lex Fridman?

  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're detached from this.

• 30:19Lex Fridman?

  I mean, there's certain things that happen to your brain to where you're not able to perceive.

• 30:22Yaron Brook?

  So you're not perceiving reality. That's right. So your brain is creating a different reality. It's not real.

• 30:27Lex Fridman?

  How do you know it's not real? How do you know the elves will meet in the?

• 30:30Yaron Brook?

  Because I need to, because partially because I need to take a drug in order, because I need to take a drug in order to do it because I'm asleep. When I'm dreaming, it's not reality. It's that is, that is clearly a creation of our mind. It's not a.

• 30:43Michael Malice?

  Hold on, let's get, let's get to psychedelics.

• 30:45Yaron Brook?

  The drug is real.

• 30:46Michael Malice?

  If you are, I, I, I'm not, I, I, 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 jest, the court jester.

• 30:57Michael Malice?

  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, uh, walking outside in the woods at night, right? And there's a 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 the deer to appear.

• 31:32Yaron Brook?

  You can, you can recreate it not only using night vision goggles, but there, you, you can, you can then use sonar. You can use other mechanisms by which to prove that the deer is there. The thing with psychedelics is that, now, I don't know, because I'm, maybe I'm the least experienced with psychedelics here, probably. Uh, my guess is every time you take the psychedelic, you have exactly the same experience of the deer? No. Second, are there other mechanisms, other scientific mechanisms by which I can find the deer out there? Uh, other than the psychedelics?

• 32:00Lex Fridman?

  We don't know yet. Whoa, we don't know yet.

• 32:02Yaron Brook?

  Well, but, but the, you know, this is, this is Occam's razor, right? The, the simplest explanation here is the most likely. And that is that you're, you, you've taken something that's messing with the chemicals on the brain, something is being, that your brain can project. We 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, your, your, 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.

• 32:35Michael Malice?

  Well, hold on, I, I'm going to disagree with you a little bit because let's take Adderall, for example. No one here disagrees. That could have something much more simpler than, unless, you know, out of this world. Uh, 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 was around you. And as an example, what they talk about is the 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.

• 33:00Yaron Brook?

  So it changes the...

• 33:02Michael Malice?

  Hold on, let me finish.

• 33:03Yaron Brook?

  No, I don't do that. I'm Israeli.

• 33:05Michael Malice?

  You're about to start.

• 33:06Lex Fridman?

  This is back to the desert island murder.

• 33:08Michael Malice?

  We just resolved it within three seconds. There's no honk.

• 33:12Yaron Brook?

  He's trying to get us.

• 33:14Michael Malice?

  Yeah, it's not gonna happen.

• 33:15Lex Fridman?

  I'm trying, exactly. I'm trying to create murder.

• 33:17Michael Malice?

  No one has asthma. It's gonna be fine.

• 33:19Lex Fridman?

  Because if the two of you murder each other, there's more food for me. Just saying.

• 33:23Michael Malice?

  You're all... You're all... You're racy alcohol.

• 33:25Yaron Brook?

  Ratings would go up. Viewership would go up.

• 33:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's good for the ratings, yeah.

• 33:29Michael Malice?

  But if you take, for example, Adderall or 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.

• 33:47Yaron Brook?

  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's out of focus, and maybe in the distance, I can't see something. It's just it's gone, and then I put it on, there it is. That thing was always there. It's just my, the sensitivity I have to it has changed. And it's absolutely, we're 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.

• 34:19Michael Malice?

  Let me give you one great example, one simple example. 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 must have been, it is like a drug experience. Like, 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 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 are extradimensional. No one's arguing they're supernatural. Amoebas are well-studied, paramecia, 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

• 35:01Michael Malice?

  the broader point that they've always been there, and this is the mechanism for perceiving them.

• 35:06Yaron Brook?

  So here's the word I was looking for, it's the word actually Greg, Greg taught me this, so Greg Salamieri. So it's resolution, right?

• 35:13Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Yaron Brook?

  So it's resolution. My resolution changes with the glasses. My resolution gets finer with the Microsoft. Microscope. So there's, there's probably some bacteria here on the table.

• 35:21Michael Malice?

  Hundred percent.

• 35:22Yaron Brook?

  Right? There's no, there's no doubt about it. I can't see them. So I need a microscope 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 microscope. Microscope. Now, there could be even smaller beings that even with a microscope, I won't be able to define. 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 truest assumption.

• 35:57Michael Malice?

  But even the not simplest assumption doesn't contradict the broader point.

• 36:00Yaron Brook?

  No.

• 36:00Michael Malice?

  Which is again.

• 36:01Yaron Brook?

  Reality is what it is. If 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, is not fine enough to observe them. So what? That doesn't change the fact that we evolved to survive in reality as it is.

• 36:20Lex Fridman?

  What do you do with the possibility that our resolution, as it currently stands, is really, really crappy? That basically.

• 36:27Yaron Brook?

  Well, it's not.

• 36:27Lex Fridman?

  No, but, but you don't know that.

• 36:29Yaron Brook?

  No, we know it, we know it completely.

• 36:30Michael Malice?

  Compared to who?

• 36:31Lex Fridman?

  Compared to the future possibilities, like artificial intelligence.

• 36:34Michael Malice?

  It is true.

• 36:34Yaron Brook?

  Oh.

• 36:35Michael Malice?

  It is crappy compared to the future.

• 36:36Yaron Brook?

  Funny, but, but that's not relevant.

• 36:38Lex Fridman?

  Much, much, like orders of magnitude crap here.

• 36:40Yaron Brook?

  Here I'll use the standard that, that Hoffman 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 in, in, in a, in an apartment with air conditioning and, and warm Austin with micro, microphones and it can't, where did all this stuff? We're 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 our ability to deal with reality, to observe to reality, to understand reality and to shape it. Now, in the future, wow, we'll come up with machines that can figure out stuff that we have no clue about today.

• 37:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but so.

• 37:22Yaron Brook?

  That's only because we're so well-suited to reality that can we create those.

• 37:25Michael Malice?

  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 gonna happen.

• 37:30Lex Fridman?

  No, but the thing is, when the creatures from the future look back to the things we're saying now, what Ayn Rand is saying, what you're saying with certainty, do you think they'll laugh at the the level of how much confusion there was, how much inaccuracies?

• 37:42Michael Malice?

  Did you? No, no, no, let me get this one. You know what they're gonna do?

• 37:45Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 37:45Michael Malice?

  They're gonna do what you do when any of us read Aristotle.

• 37:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Michael Malice?

  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 it's 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

• 38:33Michael Malice?

  stuff, or even Plato, or any of these greats, it's like, oh, my, this is an amazing miracle. And not, I wouldn't say literally miracle, I got you, Aaron. 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 what and how they moved us all forward. To this day, we still study Pythagoras.

• 38:52Yaron Brook?

  And and it's not even, it's not even just the sciences and the math. Think about the philosophy. I mean, how much is there to learn from reading Aristotle or Plato or Socrates when you disagree with them? I mean, how many giants have there been in all of human history that have had the minds of Socrates, or Plato, and then Aristotle? A thousand years where 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 Ayn Rand discovered will always be right. I think a lot of what she came up with, will some things be discovered to be wrong? Yeah. You know, that wouldn't shock me. But.

• 39:35Yaron Brook?

  The genius and the and the and the the truth of of that 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 no reason to be humble. I mean, I I I really think humility is a vice, not a virtue. What's there to be humble about? Look, look at life. This is amazing. We should be.

• 40:00Michael Malice?

  But the word humble has a different meaning.

• 40:02Yaron Brook?

  No, I I know, I know.

• 40:02Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 40:03Yaron Brook?

  I was going to get. I was going to get. I mean, humility in a sense of, you know, humility in a sense of of not appreciating the genius and the ability and the and the success and all the stuff that we as individuals, I think, in our lives, but but as a as a culture, as as a as a movement, if you think about movement 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 we'll know more, sure. But I don't think that's the way. See, I take humility as as the way the Christians use it, which is the other way. And I think it's a real vice.

• 40:47Yaron Brook?

  It's it's don't think of yourself too much just because you can think, you know, that's no big deal or just because you can create this stuff. It is a big deal. Y- 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.

• 41:04Michael Malice?

  Well, hold on, let me be a little pedantic because there's no such thing as real meaning, right? So there's different meanings. Okay, hold on. This is semantics, but here's another real meaning that you're not just going to disagree with.

• 41:13Yaron Brook?

  Sure.

• 41:13Michael Malice?

  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 good. I could take it to the bank. He's gonna 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 exactly where I'm going, Iran, who think they're know it alls. And they think, oh, I have this degree. You're a layman. You've never been formally educated.

• 41:55Michael Malice?

  Therefore, not only you dumb and uneducated, and you're wrong. And it's like, this person might be have, one, a great example of this, and this is an example that Iran 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, 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 to 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.

• 42:36Yaron Brook?

  So I agree, I agree with all of the concrete examples. I just think we should come up with a better word than humility. And I don't have one, because I'm not, I'm not a woodsmith. I'm not, this is not my strength. But humility, humility is a, 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. Right? It's demeaning. It's to put you down. It's to, it's to, it's to, it's to resist pride. And I think pride is a very important thing.

• 43:11Lex Fridman?

  I don't know, Iran.

• 43:12Yaron Brook?

  But again, you have to define your terms properly.

• 43:14Lex Fridman?

  Hating myself has, has been quite useful for me as a.

• 43:18Yaron Brook?

  Well, but that's because you're Russian and Jewish. So, so by.

• 43:21Michael Malice?

  What? This changes everything.

• 43:23Yaron Brook?

  You know, this is, this is what happens, right? We're brought up to, to, you know, to, to feel exactly that way.

• 43:30Michael Malice?

  He's been a good Russian boy. So we got him.

• 43:33Yaron Brook?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:33Michael Malice?

  What is this?

• 43:34Yaron Brook?

  What is this?

• 43:34Michael Malice?

  Gemato again. What is this?

• 43:36Lex Fridman?

  Gemato again?

• 43:37Michael Malice?

  What, is that what it says?

• 43:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Gemato again. I can't, I can't, I'm blind.

• 43:42Michael Malice?

  This is for you.

• 43:42Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, but it, but.

• 43:43Michael Malice?

  As long as you're a good Russian machik, we have candy.

• 43:46Yaron Brook?

  But is it kosher?

• 43:49Yaron Brook?

  Did you check if it's kosher?

• 43:51Lex Fridman?

  This is Ukrainian, my friend.

• 43:54Michael Malice?

  Oh.

• 43:55Yaron Brook?

  Oh, my God. That is a sin.

• 43:56Lex Fridman?

  How dare you?

• 43:57Yaron Brook?

  That is really sinful.

• 43:59Michael Malice?

  You know, me and I were born in the same town.

• 44:00Lex Fridman?

  I'm kidding. My dad's Ukrainian. Don't get mad.

• 44:03Yaron Brook?

  So I don't think I don't think self self. What did you? How did you define it?

• 44:10Lex Fridman?

  Self hate?

• 44:11Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, I think I think self hate is quite destructive.

• 44:16Lex Fridman?

  Speak for yourself, Yaron.

• 44:17Yaron Brook?

  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 a big deal. You are a 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.

• 44:32Lex Fridman?

  That says more about you than me.

• 44:35Michael Malice?

  We're just we're just lonely. We're lonely to pray.

• 44:39Yaron Brook?

  I'm not lonely. That might be desperate.

• 44:43Lex Fridman?

  I'm starting to question your ability to reason with the decisions you're making.

• 44:49Lex Fridman?

  On the on the aspect of, and I should mention that The Idiot by Dostoevsky is one of my favorite novels. And there is a Christian ethic that runs through that.

• 44:57Yaron Brook?

  I mean, because because, yeah, I mean, particularly but I hate to bring this up, but particularly Russians and particularly Russian Jews and particularly Eastern European Jews are incredibly Christian. There is a there's a there's a real Christian theme in in Judaism that's that's about guilt. Guilt is not. There's no guilt in Judaism.

• 45:19Yaron Brook?

  King David doesn't feel any guilt. Solomon does. There's no guilt in the 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 to and and our mothers put us down and 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 because.

• 45:52Lex Fridman?

  I disagree.

• 45:53Michael Malice?

  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 don't go into 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 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 on the shelves that you wonder, how is this a book? That could be you. Yep. 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?

• 46:39Michael Malice?

  Why do you think you're going to be, 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?

• 46:47Yaron Brook?

  The best that you can be.

• 46:48Michael Malice?

  But even that is an amazing accomplishment.

• 46:49Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:50Michael Malice?

  If I don't have to go to an office and I write books that not that many people read, this is a story of my life. At the same time, I do have pride because I made this happen.

• 46:58Yaron Brook?

  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, what, what, what society imagined, not what, not what, it's not about you in their minds. And, and I've, I've seen it. I see, I see it all around me. People putting their kids down, putting themselves down. It's not healthy.

• 47:26Michael Malice?

  I, I've never told the 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, that don't pay well and suck and pay poorly. But it's, it's you and you're 21, you have that, that kind of space. And my grandmother was talking to her brother, you know, talk, he's talking about his kids. She's talking about me, she's, you know, 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 your approval of me. Should be a function of my character, my happiness.

• 48:11Michael Malice?

  Am I and and the fact that you you feel ashamed over how much money I'm making, especially at this point in my life, I thought was very, uh, really misplaced priorities.

• 48:21Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 48:22Lex Fridman?

  I don't know. I don't know what to make make of that. I I think the there's a huge benefit to the humility, terms aside, for believing that others can teach you a lot. Everybody, everybody can teach you a lot.

• 48:35Yaron Brook?

  We all agree.

• 48:35Michael Malice?

  I just mentioned that.

• 48:36Lex Fridman?

  We all, no, you do. Exactly, exactly. The point, but for that, I do believe you have to not constantly sort of, uh, break your ego apart and 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.

• 49:01Yaron Brook?

  It's the other way around. I 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 the broader a context I have, uh, 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 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,

• 49:30Yaron Brook?

  I I don't know how I would live. It it it it would, it would, it would, it would really completely challenge everything, everything about life for me. Where would I even start? You wouldn't 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? What and how much do I know is really crucial to to to living.

• 49:55Michael Malice?

  And I'll tell you something else that furthers my life enormously is when you reach a certain point in your career and 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 reached me 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.

• 50:30Yaron Brook?

  I'm an expert.

• 50:31Michael Malice?

  I, I, or I'm at least knowledgeable enough that I'm comfortable giving you advice.

• 50:34Yaron Brook?

  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, I, I do. And it's fun. It's, 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, and then trying to teach people. It doesn't mean I know everything. Quite the contrary, it 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, 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.

• 51:17Yaron Brook?

  And I think what you're describing is, you're describing is I'm constantly learning. Sometimes I have to re, uh, challenge myself. I have to question what I believed in order to gain new knowledge. That's all good, but that is, that is a, a drive that is driven by pride. You wanna know, there are lots of people out there that don't wanna know. Because they don't have that pride. They don't have that commitment to live, the commitment to achieving something.

• 51:43Michael Malice?

  And I'm gonna say something else that I think is crucial. Humility is extremely important when it comes to politics. Because if you're, feel comfortable telling someone you've never met how to live their life, that is a complete lack of humility.

• 51:58Yaron Brook?

  Well, I, I lack it obviously because I tell people how to live all the time.

• 52:00Michael Malice?

  Not through the force.

• 52:02Yaron Brook?

  Not through force.

• 52:02Michael Malice?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 52:03Yaron Brook?

  Not, and of course not in the concrete. Not, I don't tell them, you know, move to, although I do tell them to move to Austin, but, but I, I don't tell them this is, this is what you do as a profession, but I give them the principles because I think their principles are how to live.

• 52:14Michael Malice?

  They're making the choice. That's my point. 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.

• 52:23Yaron Brook?

  See, but I don't see that's humility. There's nothing.

• 52:25Michael Malice?

  No, it's the lack of humility.

• 52:26Yaron Brook?

  No, but it's not even a lack of humility because it's.

• 52:29Michael Malice?

  Who am I to tell him how to live?

• 52:30Yaron Brook?

  No, of course you're not. No, who are you to tell them how to live is an issue of, it's an issue of force and rights and a bunch of different things. I don't think it's a lack of humility there. I think it's a lack of being a human being.

• 52:45Michael Malice?

  It could be both.

• 52:47Yaron Brook?

  Sure. I think it's who gives you the right to dictate to somebody else how to live their lives?

• 52:52Michael Malice?

  Yeah, but that's a lack of humility if you think you have that right.

• 52:56Yaron Brook?

  Again, we're using humility in a very different way.

• 52:58Michael Malice?

  No, we're using the same way 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 kind of forcing you because I know it's going to be best for you in the long run.

• 53:11Yaron Brook?

  And the answer is you don't know.

• 53:12Michael Malice?

  Right, but that's a lack of humility.

• 53:14Lex Fridman?

  I think in your mind, you're on humility somehow tied to the Christian concept of humility. And so you're kind of allergic to the word.

• 53:20Yaron Brook?

  Well, absolutely, because it's part of if you look at the cardinal virtues, the cardinal sins in Christianity. Pride is a cardinal sin and humility is a cardinal virtue. But they don't mean it in the sense because they're happy to tell you how to live, right? They're happy to be philosopher 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 always use the example of Abraham, right? God comes to Abraham and says, go kill your eldest son, your only son, right?

• 54:02Yaron Brook?

  Your only son, go kill him. It's like, and what does Abraham do? Says, yes, sir. I'll follow. And he's a moral hero for Judaism, Christianity, any Islam. He's a moral hero because he follows orders because he's humble. You know, I would tell God to go to hell. Screw you. I'm not killing my son. You know, there's no way.

• 54:22Michael Malice?

  I mean, he killed his sons. That's only fair.

• 54:24Yaron Brook?

  Well, this is before he killed his sons. I didn't know that, right? 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-

• 54:47Michael Malice?

  That'll never happen.

• 54:48Yaron Brook?

  No, it won't. But elevating Jesus, exactly, elevating Jesus to a superhero 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. Yeah, let him go do it to his own son.

• 55:03Michael Malice?

  But he didn't kill Isaac, he killed the goat.

• 55:05Yaron Brook?

  The stories about Abam, not about God. First of all, God is mean, right, to put Abam through that. But Abam 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 what 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? Because I don't know anything. No, I know a lot and I know a lot about my life. So you stay away from my life because I have pride in my life.

• 55:37Michael Malice?

  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 gonna drink, what am I, gonna not drink dog pee?

• 55:44Yaron Brook?

  Yes.

• 55:44Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 55:45Lex Fridman?

  Let's go back to the island.

• 55:47Yaron Brook?

  We're on island again?

• 55:49Lex Fridman?

  We're back to the island. And let's go to the island, let's-

• 55:53Yaron Brook?

  I live on an island.

• 55:55Lex Fridman?

  Everything is an island in some context. Like Earth is an island, this universe is an island in a multiverse.

• 56:04Yaron Brook?

  There's no multiverses, there's only one universe.

• 56:06Lex Fridman?

  Alright, so, so let's invite Jordan Peterson to this island.

• 56:11Michael Malice?

  You wish. Hold on.

• 56:13Lex Fridman?

  Sub it.

• 56:13Michael Malice?

  Hold on a sec. Hey girl, what you doing? Lex. Lex Fridman? Look him up.

• 56:21Lex Fridman?

  Lex who?

• 56:22Yaron Brook?

  I don't know. Lex has as big of a following almost as Jordan does.

• 56:26Lex Fridman?

  I know Jordan, I know his family actually through Jim Keller, who's his relative, he's an engineer, so. And I just talked to Sam, who-

• 56:39Lex Fridman?

  Is perhaps a little bit aligned in some sense on your perspective on religion and so on. So let me ask, is there some?

• 56:45Yaron Brook?

  Religion, yes, but but.

• 56:46Lex Fridman?

  Other things, no.

• 56:47Michael Malice?

  Sam Harris.

• 56:48Lex Fridman?

  Sam Harris, yeah. Oh, sorry, Sam Harris.

• 56:50Yaron Brook?

  He is on first name relation with these guys.

• 56:52Michael Malice?

  Look at this inside baseball. I just talked to Sam.

• 56:56Lex Fridman?

  I thought.

• 56:56Michael Malice?

  Let's talk about humility. Let's talk about humility, like, my buddy Sam. I was talking to Barack. You might know him.

• 57:03Lex Fridman?

  I I simply.

• 57:04Yaron Brook?

  Humility went out the window.

• 57:06Lex Fridman?

  I'm just a natural language processing model that I assume that once I mention 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. Um, I thought by now you'd be a scholar.

• 57:22Michael Malice?

  Humble. For the sake of the audience.

• 57:26Lex Fridman?

  Humility. Everything can teach you something, even a robot. Okay, so, uh, do you think there is value in religion or broader? Do you think there's value in myth? And as we've been 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?

• 57:53Yaron Brook?

  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 uh, some explanation of what's going on in the world, right? And it's, it's no accident that the early religions had a river god and they had a, a, a sun god and a moon god. Cause they, they, everything they didn't understand, they, they made god, right? So, so they had multiple gods because they didn't understand very much. As human understanding evolved, i- increased, as we knew reality more, right? We, 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.

• 58:38Yaron Brook?

  And then we don't, as we gain new knowledge, we can just take it out of the bucket that's god and, and put it into the bucket of science.

• 58:46Yaron Brook?

  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, our 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 for 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

• 59:29Yaron Brook?

  don't think we need religion anymore. 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 he says, is to revive religion against a tack of reason and the Enlightenment. Now, mythology is 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 her underappreciated masterpieces.

• 1:00:05Michael Malice?

  Oh, I hate it. Okay, that's okay.

• 1:00:08Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. 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 an extent, music, but painting, sculpture, literature does for us. So to the extent that 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 has, again, kind of a conscientious perspective, right?

• 1:00:48Yaron Brook?

  That we have these categorical imperatives and these mythology links up to that. Then I think it's false. It's not helpful 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 needed an 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 it touches is bad for life. Again, mythology depends. Art is essential, very, very crucial to human existence.

• 1:01:31Lex Fridman?

  I mean, I'd love to hear what you think, but you don't see religion and philosophy and mythology as just a continuous spectrum?

• 1:01:38Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, so religion is a primitive form of philosophy. It's pre-philosophical.

• 1:01:42Michael Malice?

  Where I thought Yaron was gonna go, and he didn't go, was that I think, I agree with what he was gonna say. Rand was a mythologizer. In certain, specific contexts, Atlas Shrugged is 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.

• 1:02:27Michael Malice?

  So you have the myth of Reagan, you have the myth of Thatcher, 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 earlier, I had an asteroid 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.

• 1:03:10Michael Malice?

  Cause 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 interview Clayton Anderson. He applied thirteen times, didn't get a call back, applied the fourteenth time. Got a call back, didn't get the job, fifteenth time he get the job, he talks to kids and he goes. Listen, apply thirteen 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 gonna tell people, yeah, you know what, that could be me.

• 1:03:44Yaron Brook?

  You don't think. Absolutely, and, and, and it's not just happiness, it's, it's, it's the fact that virtue works, that integrity. I mean, what, what's the power of the fountainhead? I know you love the fountainhead. Part of the power of the fountainhead is how it works, absolute.

• 1:04:00Yaron Brook?

  Commitment to integrity, he is committed to integrity and he gets, and, and, and he's happy, right? And, and it's very rare in life to see that, to, to actually see a concrete of that. And it's very hard to hold it in your mind. Yes, I, I'm, I'm gonna be stuck in the quarry or I'm gonna be stuck doing this horrible job, but. If I stick to my principles, I'm gonna be how it works. Now I've got that concrete, I know. I can, I can immediately relate to that success. So I think art is essential and I think in a sense what we do to Thatcher and Reagan is art. You have to be careful in true stories. Not to diverge too far from reality, cause then when you discover the reality, you don't want to whitewash it. And particularly when it has political implications and then, then it's really bad.

• 1:04:45Yaron Brook?

  So particularly with Reagan and Thatcher, you have to be careful, cause they want anyone near as good as people try to make them out to be. But that, these, these are powerful, powerful, powerful stories. And, and people are moved by it and the integration of emotion with reason is crucial, right? One of the, 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 I, you know, when I go and see Michelangelo's David, it does the same thing to me, you know? I can stand up to anybody because he did and look, he succeeded and and it makes sense that he could.

• 1:05:22Lex Fridman?

  So there's a really interesting idea of bringing your emotion in line with your thinking, with your reasoning. So Ben Shapiro famously has this saying, how do you like that transition, Michael? Give me props.

• 1:05:35Michael Malice?

  He's not Ben, it's Ben Shapiro.

• 1:05:38Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Michael Malice?

  Someone is not taking your calls.

• 1:05:40Yaron Brook?

  Benny.

• 1:05:41Michael Malice?

  I guess it's the daily, don't take the caller.

• 1:05:45Lex Fridman?

  Back to the island with the murder. I think we know.

• 1:05:48Michael Malice?

  Murder island.

• 1:05:49Lex Fridman?

  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 that you mentioned bringing your emotions in line with your thinking. Like, what do you think about that statement?

• 1:06:13Michael Malice?

  I got this one. What Ben is doing.

• 1:06:16Lex Fridman?

  Ben.

• 1:06:17Michael Malice?

  Ben, what he's doing in a loose way is attacking Kantianism. Because Kant, there's this, it's 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? It's an example. You aspire things, you think life can 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.

• 1:07:00Michael Malice?

  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. Around us, the phenomenal world, but then it's inferior. The real world, the nominal 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 is secondary.

• 1:07:42Yaron Brook?

  And that's Plato, right? And straight out of Plato.

• 1:07:44Michael Malice?

  Right, 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.

• 1:08:07Yaron Brook?

  So it's a great statement. I think he's cribbing it from Ayn Rand in a sense.

• 1:08:11Michael Malice?

  I love it.

• 1:08:12Yaron Brook?

  I mean, there's a sense in which he is. I mean, who popularized that kind of idea? And Ben has read Ayn Rand quite extensively.

• 1:08:19Michael Malice?

  Not enough.

• 1:08:19Yaron Brook?

  Not enough, well. Not enough to reference her. He doesn't wear the yarmulke, so yeah, obviously. He may be read enough, but didn't understand enough.

• 1:08:29Yaron Brook?

  But so. Shot fired. 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 promulgated today on both sides are this kind of detached from reality.

• 1:09:12Yaron Brook?

  We're putting emotions or ideas before reality itself. But I believe that, you know, emotions are responses. The responses to reality conditioned by our existing concepts.

• 1:09:27Michael Malice?

  You're gonna have to talk slowly to talk emotions to Lex, because he doesn't really understand.

• 1:09:30Yaron Brook?

  I don't understand.

• 1:09:32Michael Malice?

  So really, you gotta really.

• 1:09:34Yaron Brook?

  But he's big on love.

• 1:09:35Michael Malice?

  What is love?

• 1:09:36Yaron Brook?

  But he's big on love.

• 1:09:38Michael Malice?

  He's trying to learn.

• 1:09:38Yaron Brook?

  Pretty big on love. I'm all in, uh, 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.

• 1:09:49Michael Malice?

  Oh, terror.

• 1:09:51Michael Malice?

  That's the metaphysical terror.

• 1:09:52Yaron Brook?

  We could easily terrorize you to the point where you felt fear, right? So we could teach him about emotions. But emotions are a response to reality. So some people, for example, you could, you could take five different people and show them exactly the same thing and some of them would feel fear and some of them would actually, you know, feel indifferent and other people might feel love, right? I think Leonard Peggoff 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 pride and love and, you know, awe. The one is, has, 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.

• 1:10:37Yaron Brook?

  So it's, it's conditioned by what you know, what your values are and, 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, you, things might happen in your childhood and, and they probably do, right? Where you, you get a trauma, I don't know, I, I, I, I'm afraid of dogs and, and maybe when I was a five-year-old, some dogs jumped me and I don't even remember it, right?

• 1:11:21Yaron Brook?

  But I came to a conclusion when I was five, dogs bad.

• 1:11:23Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Yaron Brook?

  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, now I understand dogs don't have to be scary. I can work through this, I, and there are 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 your explicit ideas. And that's what I mean by that.

• 1:11:51Michael Malice?

  And let me build on that, talking about your friend Putin. I think I mentioned this before, at least maybe on the show, he was meeting with Angela Merkel. Vladimir, please. Yeah, Vlad, my boy Vlad. He was me 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. It's like 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 it's kind, 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, I remember when I was a kid, I will never forget, there was this dog, Rex, this German Shepherd. I'm five. This dog is gigantic. And I'm sitting on the couch. German Shepherds have been bred for intelligence.

• 1:12:36Michael Malice?

  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. Like, 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 in when you're being irrational to the likelihood of that thing actually happening.

• 1:13:19Yaron Brook?

  No, you could have a dog that does respond to your emotion. Right, but then it's, but then it's not, but then that's part of reality, right? That's a fact of reality that certain dogs respond to certain emotions.

• 1:13:29Lex Fridman?

  But isn't this emotion a part of reality? That's like, okay, let me say a word.

• 1:13:35Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, 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.

• 1:13:42Michael Malice?

  Don't be repressed.

• 1:13:42Yaron Brook?

  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 to be afraid of these dogs?

• 1:13:58Lex Fridman?

  But you're speaking to your own individual trajectory as a human being, as you grow through the world and try to understand reality and connect yourself to reason to reality. What I'm talking about is a term like lived experience. When you, when you observe and analyze the

• 1:14:17Lex Fridman?

  You know, conversations with other people to try to understand how other people see the world. Doesn't emotion fundamentally integrate into that? Like, isn't 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?

• 1:14:36Yaron Brook?

  With their values, with their conclusions, with their ideas, with their experiences, with a million different things. 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.

• 1:14:53Michael Malice?

  That's a lie.

• 1:14:55Yaron Brook?

  Okay, it is Lex. I can sense his emotions. I can sense Michael's emotions, and that's part of the fact of reality, right? So, if Michael responds to something that I view as really, really important, right? If we were standing in front of Michelangelo's David, and Michael responds to Michelangelo's David, and goes, "Nah", and turned his back to it and walked away, that would be really meaningful to me, right? I would respond emotionally to that, and cognitively, I would say, "What is it about Michael that makes him, you know, respond this way?" That is, that gives me a lot of information about him. See, emotions are information laden, right? But they are not primary. They are responses, responses to something.

• 1:15:38Yaron Brook?

  So, 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 they're 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 Michelangelo's David and says, "Nah", and walks away, then I go, "Okay, I'm glad you're a stranger."

• 1:15:58Yaron Brook?

  But it's...

• 1:16:01Yaron Brook?

  Now, I'm not even on Michael's response to Michelangelo's David was, or is, so I'm a little worried about what he's gonna say.

• 1:16:07Michael Malice?

  You got candy too, that was great.

• 1:16:10Yaron Brook?

  Hey. Do I get Ukrainian?

• 1:16:12Michael Malice?

  I don't know. I can't read either. What's this say, Russia? What does that say to him?

• 1:16:15Yaron Brook?

  Is this Ukrainian candy as well?

• 1:16:17Michael Malice?

  I thought it was sent to me.

• 1:16:18Yaron Brook?

  Do you know that Atlas Shrugged was the best selling book in Ukraine in 2015 and 2016?

• 1:16:23Michael Malice?

  Do you know Atlas Shrugged was translated to Russian by someone who's now crypto billionaire? And he made like six copies and I have one of them and I sent it to my great grandma.

• 1:16:30Yaron Brook?

  They're more than six, but yeah.

• 1:16:31Michael Malice?

  Oh, but they were like a very few.

• 1:16:33Yaron Brook?

  Okay. Not I personally, they instituted as a copy.

• 1:16:35Michael Malice?

  I sent it to my great grandma and she said, why is he sending me this? I want to read books about love. And I'm like, you know what?

• 1:16:40Yaron Brook?

  It's about love. That's what you should have said.

• 1:16:43Michael Malice?

  What's that? Is that say?

• 1:16:44Lex Fridman?

  So this says it's, uh, it has vitamins and minerals. It, there's a, there's a bunch of.

• 1:16:51Yaron Brook?

  If it's in Russian, I don't believe it.

• 1:16:53Lex Fridman?

  It just sounds really, it sounds really strange to read like health information in Russian.

• 1:16:59Yaron Brook?

  There you go.

• 1:17:00Lex Fridman?

  I'm already distressed.

• 1:17:01Michael Malice?

  But look, there's a Yorick like you have.

• 1:17:03Yaron Brook?

  Exactly. I mean, I'm, I'm much, I like Kiev much more than I like Moscow.

• 1:17:08Lex Fridman?

  Wow. Strong words, but this is, uh, this is not, it's like hard candy. I don't know.

• 1:17:12Michael Malice?

  I think this, some of my friends sent me that's made with blood to give the kids iron.

• 1:17:17Lex Fridman?

  Who's blood?

• 1:17:17Michael Malice?

  Like cow blood.

• 1:17:18Lex Fridman?

  Oh.

• 1:17:19Michael Malice?

  Like with chocolate.

• 1:17:20Lex Fridman?

  All right.

• 1:17:20Yaron Brook?

  You can keep it.

• 1:17:22Michael Malice?

  That's all you.

• 1:17:23Lex Fridman?

  All right. I'm keeping both of these.

• 1:17:24Michael Malice?

  Can I, can I speak something you're talking about with emotion? Uh, 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. Cause you hear some other story. So they feel their emotion is invalid. 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 have friends who are in 12 step programs. There's an expression there, which I think is very profound.

• 1:18:04Michael Malice?

  Which is if it's hysterical, it's historical, meaning if some minor incident is having an extreme disproportionate 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 completely powerless. And now I'm in the same situation my boss, I'm not that eight year old. In one sense I am, another sense 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. Cause you kind of deprogram all those things that you picked up as a child.

• 1:18:45Yaron Brook?

  But it's also, you know, if you're feeling something wrong, even though you're trying to rationalize 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, so one of the powers emotions give you is they, they send you signals about something that might not be in cognition yet.

• 1:19:06Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Yaron Brook?

  And when you examine their motion, it brings it to cognition.

• 1:19:09Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:10Yaron Brook?

  And now you can act on it. So maybe the boss is abusive.

• 1:19:12Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Yaron Brook?

  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. I'm going to find a better, another job. I'm going to complain to his boss or whatever. I'm going to take action.

• 1:19:24Lex Fridman?

  Why do you think Ayn Rand is such a controversial figure? Last time I spoke with you on this particular podcast, the, the amount of emails I've gotten, positive and negative. And certainly negative, I don't usually get negative emails.

• 1:19:38Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:39Michael Malice?

  Yeah, I can't, I can't relate. I'm sure mine were a positive, overwhelmingly positive.

• 1:19:44Lex Fridman?

  It was mostly women sending pictures for me to forward to you.

• 1:19:48Michael Malice?

  You didn't send me anything.

• 1:19:50Lex Fridman?

  I can't, I, oh, it's the wrong email address. I'm sorry. I kept bouncing while sending it to your.

• 1:19:55Michael Malice?

  Oh, so this is love.

• 1:20:00Lex Fridman?

  Love hurts. Okay.

• 1:20:01Yaron Brook?

  Yes, no, I.

• 1:20:02Lex Fridman?

  But why do you think she's such a divisive figure? Why do you think she provokes such emotion in both the positive and the negative side? I'd love to hear both of your viewpoints on this.

• 1:20:12Yaron Brook?

  Well, I think on the negative side, and both on the positive and negative side. I think it's because she's radical. She's consistently radical. She upends the, the premises, the ideas that are prevalent in the culture that we're brought up on that, that, that are like, you know, uh, they're like milk and, and, and, you know, the basic stuff that we're, we're growing up. You have to be altruistic. You have to live for 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 Joker, right? Before we started, right? You know, I'm gonna upend the world because I don't care about other people. Right?

• 1:20:55Yaron Brook?

  So they're 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. Um, and you know, yeah, most people are neither one of those, but the ethic is right here. It's living for the people. And when you challenge that, they have no way cognitively to go with that. And the only place they can go with that cognitively is to the Joker. It's to the evil guy. It's to somebody who wants to smash everything and destroy. Because they don't have this alternative 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 exploiting other people. They can't conceptualize that. It's not in their framework.

• 1:21:39Yaron Brook?

  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. Uh, it's the fact that she dismisses faith to the extent that she does or to the extent that I do, right? That alienates 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? Um, and I got a lot of positives in that appearance. 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,

• 1:22:22Yaron Brook?

  I read Ayn Rand and it confirmed everything I believed. Now, for me, it didn't. It was the opposite. It turned upside down everything I believed. But there are a lot of people out there that 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 listen to a lot of podcasts because they're trying to get ideas of, what is it? What is it that I'm sensing that's wrong 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. Um, you know, and I read Ayn Rand.

• 1:23:01Yaron Brook?

  It just all made sense. It all clicked and all in it made clear that everything I believed to that point was just wrong. It just didn't it didn't integrate. And I always knew to some extent it didn't integrate, but there was no alternatives. 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 morality all about other people? Why is that? Well, that's just the way it is. Right? 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 are being brought up on, that they've been educated on, that just their whole life revolves around.

• 1:23:44Lex Fridman?

  Michael, you don't bring up Ayn Rand that much in conversation, except as kind of references every once in a while as part of the humor of just the general flow in the music or 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?

• 1:24:10Michael Malice?

  Because I I don't know if everyone's going to agree with or can agree with me. I think for a certain percentage of population, actually, I talked to someone from the Ayn Rand 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 mention Ayn 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 don't 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.

• 1:24:49Michael Malice?

  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 is 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 homeless. And people dying and you're talking about this like what color tie goes with this color shirt? Are you like, and 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 philosophically grounded in certain contexts than he was.

• 1:25:32Michael Malice?

  And there was an essay pamphlet that he published called Roofs 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 going to 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.

• 1:25:56Yaron Brook?

  On a typewriter.

• 1:25:57Michael Malice?

  On a typewriter and being like, how? And you can imagine her with her cigarette holder, apoplectic, being like, how is an organization ostensibly devoted to free enterprise? Discussing these, this Stalinist idea in the most casual of terms. She's like, have I taught you nothing? And what's amazing is so at FEE, they only have her letters because she sent them to read. The Ayn Rand Institute must have Leonard Reed's letters. I was able to, knowing Rand 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 shocking around to some jerk that I don't, I need their approval?

• 1:26:42Michael Malice?

  What are you doing? So it was a very interesting situation, but so that's one issue.

• 1:26:48Yaron Brook?

  Now, remember, this is Ayn Rand when she's young.

• 1:26:50Michael Malice?

  She wasn't that young.

• 1:26:51Yaron Brook?

  Well, I mean, she's relatively young, right? It's before Atlas Shrugged.

• 1:26:54Michael Malice?

  It was before Atlas Shrugged.

• 1:26:54Yaron Brook?

  So it's before she's super famous and before this is, the fund has been published. But, but you know, she's, she's trying to work with others and they're disappointing her left and right.

• 1:27:06Michael Malice?

  Yeah. So, and also when you are a, what she takes away from bad people is you have these kids, right? And you're going to sit down with them and they're going to be like, yeah, I'm going to take your guns. I'm going to lock you in your house. I'm going to take 60% of your income and all this other stuff. And they might, up to reading Rand, they might sit down and have a discussion. And Rand 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. This isn't like, it's not like if I sit down with Iran, I'm like, hey, Iran, here are my plans for your wife. Go to hell.

• 1:27:51Michael Malice?

  This isn't a conversation we're having. Oh, I'm gonna 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. Cause people read Rand 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 Iran's life. And you have one vote and I have one vote and we're gonna, and Lex has a vote and that's how it's gonna be.

• 1:28:24Yaron Brook?

  No, it's Lex.

• 1:28:25Michael Malice?

  And Rand's not having it.

• 1:28:26Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:27Michael Malice?

  Um, 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, one of the things that Rand said consisting of her life is that her philosophy is an integrated whole. Right? So to be an objective is isn't just like, I like Atlas Shrugged. It means I accept objectivism as a totality. Since I do not, I don't, 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 Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand and Rand. Because I don't think Ayn Rand would have liked it if I was talking about Ayn Rand this much.

• 1:29:01Lex Fridman?

  So how do you, how do you deprogram? Cause I, I don't like to bring up Ayn Rand, just because I do see what, uh, like how people roll their eyes essentially. So how do?

• 1:29:10Michael Malice?

  What's the upside, you know?

• 1:29:11Lex Fridman?

  What's the upside exactly? But what is that, can we, can you speak to that programming?

• 1:29:16Yaron Brook?

  I think you're unprogramming people. I mean, look, at the end of the day, if you talk about the ideas and the ideas make sense and people are attracted to the ideas. Then you say, oh, by the way, and this came from Ayn Rand. That's how you deprogram them. Right? If you make the ideas prevalent in the culture, if people start viewing self-interest as something that's kind of, that's interesting and worthwhile and something worth investigating. And they said, oh, that came from Ayn Rand, then I think, I think then, 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 gonna watch your show no matter who you bring on, right? So even though, now you do, if you put Ayn Rand in the title, that immediately reduces the number of people who watch.

• 1:30:00Yaron Brook?

  So in the future, you shouldn't.

• 1:30:02Lex Fridman?

  You put Michael Mouse in the title and then at least the female population too.

• 1:30:05Yaron Brook?

  The female, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:30:07Lex Fridman?

  Just to see.

• 1:30:07Yaron Brook?

  That's right. But 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 are far less. There was a generation who never read Ayn Rand and was like this. Bring out the garlic and the crosses, we don't want to have anything to do with her. Then, and I think today, there are many more people who've read her and might disagree or not disagree, right? And then there were a lot of people who haven't read her, but who are not opposed to it or willing to engage. So I think it's changing already and I think in 20 years it'll be completely different.

• 1:30:45Michael Malice?

  And just two more things that she does that I think, 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, like with lockdowns and things like this. It's like, well, I'm scared and maybe I have a right to be scared.

• 1:31:15Yaron Brook?

  Ah, gotcha.

• 1:31:15Michael Malice?

  Or like, 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, 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.

• 1:31:30Yaron Brook?

  This is the feeling versus fact.

• 1:31:31Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah. So that is one situation.

• 1:31:33Lex Fridman?

  This is like a feeling versus freedom, essentially.

• 1:31:36Michael Malice?

  Yes, 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 Rourke, the hero, we're gonna still say hero, you're supposed to say protagonist, but hero. The hero of the Fountainhead, 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 Howard Rourke, relax. You're not that skilled, you're not that talented. But because the character has to be personification and have certain aspects together. When kids read that, they're gonna, might get the wrong idea, and that's not Rand's fault.

• 1:32:20Yaron Brook?

  And it's more than that. It's, it's so, so, I completely agree with that, but it's, it's even broader than that. So here is, 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.

• 1:32:43Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:43Yaron Brook?

  You might have a sense that it's true, but you don't have the life experience, the learned experience. You don't have the facts, 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, right? Which we all did, or at least I did, when I was 16. And you're obnoxious. You can't prove what you're arguing for.

• 1:33:05Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:06Yaron Brook?

  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, you know, with some connection to reality, but in a sense, on faith, right? At least presented it that way.

• 1:33:29Yaron Brook?

  And you, and, and as a consequence, you come off as a detached from reality, obnoxious, uh, human being. I think a lot of young objectivists 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 can't articulate it. And, and, and I, and it's hard to deal with yourself. What, there's an inside joke?

• 1:33:53Michael Malice?

  No, you said confronted with genius, I pointed us.

• 1:33:55Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm confronted with you guys. I'm, I'm at an age where I know how to deal with geniuses.

• 1:34:01Michael Malice?

  But I'm gonna say, there's something else. This is not why people don't like her, but there's something that The Fountainhead does, which I think is very, and I don't, I don't blame her, but it's, 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 gonna be a pariah, that a lot of people are gonna be against you, and you're gonna, you're basically doomed for a short period of being isolated and alone. And that may have been the case when Fountainhead 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 gonna 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.

• 1:34:46Yaron Brook?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:47Michael Malice?

  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 don't, you're not threatened by them as the antagonists of The Fountainhead are. And that doesn't come through in The Fountainhead?

• 1:35:01Yaron Brook?

  But it depends on your profession, right? I mean, some parts of the world are better than others. If you're, if you're an artist, at least the way I conceive of art, and you, you want to go study art today, you're gonna be poo-pooed and looked down on and so on. So, so, yeah, I agree. I mean, and, and, and my generation, when I read, I meant, you know, there was no internet. There was, and I was in Israel. So, we were isolated and there was nobody else who had shared their ideas. And you did feel that kind of isolation and, and, but Rock gave you, to me, he didn't teach me about, you know, you're gonna be isolated because partially it's because I wasn't,

• 1:35:40Yaron Brook?

  maybe I was, I was humble, right?

• 1:35:44Michael Malice?

  You're Israeli.

• 1:35:45Yaron Brook?

  When, when I, when I read Atlas Shrugged, I identified with Eddie Willis.

• 1:35:49Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 1:35:50Yaron Brook?

  When I read The Fountainhead, I didn't identify with Howard Rock.

• 1:35:53Michael Malice?

  How, how old were you when you read The Fountainhead?

• 1:35:55Yaron Brook?

  So, I read Atlas when I was 16. I probably read Fountainhead when I was 16 and a half, 17, something like that.

• 1:36:01Michael Malice?

  That is an unfathomable crime. You read The Fountainhead after Atlas Shrugged?

• 1:36:04Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:05Michael Malice?

  If anyone listening to this.

• 1:36:06Yaron Brook?

  They should read Fountainhead first.

• 1:36:07Michael Malice?

  If you read Fountainhead after Atlas Shrugged.

• 1:36:10Yaron Brook?

  No.

• 1:36:10Michael Malice?

  That is a war crime.

• 1:36:11Yaron Brook?

  No, for me, for me, reading Atlas Shrugged was much more important.

• 1:36:15Michael Malice?

  It is more important, but, but my point is, I think The Fountainhead in many ways is redundant in certain aspects if you read Atlas Shrugged first. And because The Fountainhead is such a masterful book and such a personal book.

• 1:36:26Yaron Brook?

  I agree, I agree, I agree with that. So, ideally, you would read The Fountainhead.

• 1:36:29Michael Malice?

  That's all I'm saying, yes.

• 1:36:30Yaron Brook?

  But.

• 1:36:31Michael Malice?

  And here's the other thing people don't appreciate, I'm sorry to interrupt you. People think Rand's always about politics, politics, politics, politics. The Fountainhead is not a political book.

• 1:36:38Yaron Brook?

  At all.

• 1:36:38Michael Malice?

  It's about, well, she talks about politics and man's soul, sure. But it's about ethics, how important everyone has to have a moral code. That's the other thing why people find Randolph 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 gonna 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 gonna make a fight about it? These little sacrifices that they make every day.

• 1:37:15Yaron Brook?

  And big ones.

• 1:37:15Michael Malice?

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

• 1:37:34Yaron Brook?

  But this is why so many people say that Ayn Rand is for 14-year-old boys.

• 1:37:39Michael Malice?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:37:40Yaron Brook?

  Right?

• 1:37:41Michael Malice?

  You're brought out of it.

• 1:37:41Yaron Brook?

  And there's a reason why, there's a reason why it appeals to 14, is a little young, but 16, 18.

• 1:37:47Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:47Yaron Brook?

  It's because those are the ages where we're still open to idealism, idealism in a positive sense, right? To beautiful things, to ideals, to seeking perfection, to seeking, to seeking a great life. I think as you grow older, most people become cynical. They give up on their ideals. Why? Because their ideals were wrong and their ideals failed.

• 1:38:06Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:06Yaron Brook?

  Right? My parents were socialist when they were young. Those ideas failed. So where do you go from socialism if your ideals fail?

• 1:38:12Michael Malice?

  Cynicism, yeah.

• 1:38:12Yaron Brook?

  To cynicism.

• 1:38:13Michael Malice?

  Which is horrible.

• 1:38:13Yaron Brook?

  Right? All adults, 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, I was idealistic too. And they don't question the idea, well, they're good ideals and they're bad ideals, they're right ideals and they're wrong ideals. And, and that's why they attribute it to, they attribute it to youth. 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're too invested in the, in the job, in the wife, in the, in the compromises.

• 1:38:48Michael Malice?

  In the comfort.

• 1:38:50Yaron Brook?

  And they're too invested in the comfort, too invested in compromises, too invested in 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, that's why they reject it without even, without too much consideration.

• 1:39:07Michael Malice?

  What, one of the things 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. Uh, my family would be number two friends. They certainly are extremely high values, but you can't have these secondary values without the first value.

• 1:39:26Yaron Brook?

  But in the context of my life, right? Cause your family might not be a value.

• 1:39:28Michael Malice?

  Right, you're right.

• 1:39:29Yaron Brook?

  Right? You might hate your parents.

• 1:39:30Michael Malice?

  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 secondhand. 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 want to argue for objectivism in Rand's views, take her ideas, articulate them in your own way. Cause that's a good way of showing that

• 1:40:15Michael Malice?

  you understand what she thinks. But what they end up doing is just talking like her. It sounds dated and comical, and that's going to be off putting. Cause it's like Rand wouldn't expect someone else to sound like Rand. She's a, you know, a, a person.

• 1:40:28Yaron Brook?

  And she of course wouldn't view Keating as selfish in any sense because it, or even greedy. Greed is a tricky word, but.

• 1:40:34Michael Malice?

  Well, she was selfish in the old school sense.

• 1:40:37Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, he's selfish in the old, but, but even there, he, it's not as if, it's not as if he has some passion and he's going after passion no matter what. I'm getting, you know, light, she'd steal. I'm gonna, he, he doesn't have, his passion is painting, right? And he doesn't pursue his passion. He pursues what his mother wants him to pursue. And he pursues money and he pursues.

• 1:40:56Michael Malice?

  Status. He's a status seeker.

• 1:40:57Yaron Brook?

  He's completely second-handed in the sense that he follows other people's values, not his own.

• 1:41:01Lex Fridman?

  Can we actually just backtrack and can we define some of these ideas that Ayn Rand is known for selfishness? Selfishness, egoism, egotism, greed, I mean, those all, basically, all of those words are seen as negative in society.

• 1:41:15Yaron Brook?

  Yes.

• 1:41:16Lex Fridman?

  And Ayn Rand has been reclaiming in her work those words. So can you speak to what they mean?

• 1:41:22Michael Malice?

  I think she's, 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 very put off. When Ayn Rand was on Donahue in 1979, he asked her explicitly, define to me the virtue of selfishness, which is the title of her collection of essays as well. And she, this is Rand, 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 is thanks to her and her work, my life matters?

• 1:42:07Michael Malice?

  My values matter? I'm not going to apologize for that. That is a lot less off-putting than this caricature of Rand, which is, when people hear 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 selfishness.

• 1:42:28Lex Fridman?

  It goes a mistake to be provocative in this one dimension, to go like, and to stick with it. I mean, she's stuck with this idea of selfishness and so on.

• 1:42:36Michael Malice?

  This term, and it's, I often use terms for provocative effect.

• 1:42:41Lex Fridman?

  Yes, this is true. You're a master, you're a scholar of the trolling arts.

• 1:42:45Michael Malice?

  Thank you, sir. But I think this is one example where the costs outweigh the benefits. And go ahead, you're on.

• 1:42:53Yaron Brook?

  Yes, I'm, I'm, I don't, I'm open to that idea, but I don't, I don't think that's right. When, when you actually dig, you know, deeper into what people object to, they're not but objecting to the word. They're objecting to the ideas. And. She addresses this explicitly in The Virtue of Selfishness in, I think, the introduction.

• 1:43:13Michael Malice?

  Wait, hold on, I gotta, I gotta ask for 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.

• 1:43:21Yaron Brook?

  Well, sure, but, but, but the caricature is a defense mechanism.

• 1:43:23Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 1:43:24Yaron Brook?

  Not to, not to have to deal with the ideas. Right, so, so they create the caricature in order to ignore the ideas, in order to, and, and some of them do it consciously. Like when, when, when people like Krugman and others do this, they know exactly what they're doing.

• 1:43:38Michael Malice?

  Well, Krugman's an, is Elsworth Toohey.

• 1:43:40Yaron Brook?

  Yes, he's, he's the perfect Elsworth Toohey. And, and he, he knows Ayn Rand, he's read Ayn Rand, and he knows she's the enemy in some sense, he knows.

• 1:43:49Lex Fridman?

  Check out our episode with, with Krugman, I think it's number 90, it was a great conversation.

• 1:43:54Michael Malice?

  Didn't get as many views as me, but what are you gonna do?

• 1:43:56Yaron Brook?

  No.

• 1:43:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, he got a Nobel Prize, so, what you got?

• 1:44:00Michael Malice?

  I, I've got a ticket to heaven. Sorry, Paul.

• 1:44:03Yaron Brook?

  Yasser Al-Fadh has an Nobel Prize.

• 1:44:05Lex Fridman?

  And Hitler was Time's Man of the Year for a few times.

• 1:44:09Michael Malice?

  But you, you, that, that really bothers me when people bring that up, are you really?

• 1:44:13Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, Time of the Year, Man of the Year was not good.

• 1:44:15Michael Malice?

  Is it?

• 1:44:17Yaron Brook?

  Man of the Year is not representative of good, it represents the most influential person of that year, and Hitler was.

• 1:44:22Lex Fridman?

  Absolutely. Wait, what were you upset about?

• 1:44:24Michael Malice?

  When people like, well, look at Time Magazine, they call Hitler Man of the Year, they, like, your own say, they won't say this guy's awesome, they say this is the guy who moved on to the world of art. It's not like he was Stalin.

• 1:44:34Yaron Brook?

  I don't, I, I don't go out there.

• 1:44:35Michael Malice?

  Now, that's the people they like. Hitler's terrible, the Stalin guy. Oh, no, no, I'm not even joking.

• 1:44:42Yaron Brook?

  The attitude between, the, the attitude of people between Nazism and fascism and communism is stunning.

• 1:44:48Michael Malice?

  Like, in my upcoming book, I have all the receipts, how like the, 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 for what they did.

• 1:45:00Yaron Brook?

  It's not, it's not even at the time, and I, I, we need to get back to the selfishness stuff, but it's not even at the time. So I'm, I, I was once, I, I think I've told this story, I was at, I was in the green room going on John Stossel's show. And saw a bunch of libertarians, right, in the green room, all hanging out, and this guy walks in, this young guy walks in. And somebody says to me, you know, he's, he's a communist. I said, what do you mean? Said, they said, no, no, he's, he's a card carrying, real member of the communist party, he's a communist. And I said, And that's okay with you guys? And they go, yeah, yeah, nice guy. And I'm like, no, this is not acceptable.

• 1:45:38Michael Malice?

  Hold on, let me quote Rand. Rand said she would rather talk to a philosophical. Right? Did she not say this?

• 1:45:45Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, but this is not a, this is, this is a communist in the context of 21st century. Right? So, so I said.

• 1:45:51Michael Malice?

  But not 20th.

• 1:45:52Yaron Brook?

  Well, well, in, in a sense that we know exactly.

• 1:45:55Michael Malice?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:45:56Yaron Brook?

  We know exactly.

• 1:45:56Michael Malice?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, that's.

• 1:45:57Yaron Brook?

  So I'm, I'm like, this guy has the blood of 100 million people on his hands. I'm, I'm not letting him off the hook. So I get, I engage with this guy and, and, and literally we get into this, you know, I'm, I'm telling him what I, what I think of his ideas and therefore what I think of him. Um, then the people from the wardrobe department come out and their chairs are put aside and, you know, this little gladiator ring. It's like the libertarians are like, uh, sitting there amused because to them it's just, you know, and I don't, you know, I'm not going to name names, but to them it's just like, yeah, he's a communist.

• 1:46:25Michael Malice?

  No.

• 1:46:26Yaron Brook?

  And I said, I said at some point, and I said at some point to them, I won't name names because, um, I said at some point to them, if somebody walks into a room and says, I'm a Nazi. Do you just treat him as, okay, let's, let's, let's go hang out and get some drinks?

• 1:46:40Michael Malice?

  I do.

• 1:46:40Yaron Brook?

  I don't.

• 1:46:41Michael Malice?

  I do, because I wrote a book about this, the new right, and I did talk to Nazis and I went to North Korea.

• 1:46:45Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, because you were writing a book.

• 1:46:46Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Yaron Brook?

  Right, but, but you're not, you're not going to hang out with a Nazi or communist, just like the regular person. Right? To me, a Nazi and a communist are the same.

• 1:46:53Michael Malice?

  I, I don't, okay, please explain this because first of all, anytime you have equivocation, I hate that because I don't, I don't like equality. I think it's a bad concept.

• 1:47:00Yaron Brook?

  Sure.

• 1:47:01Michael Malice?

  We're all sitting here as Jewish people, right? We're from the, we're from the Soviet Union.

• 1:47:05Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:05Michael Malice?

  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 under Stalin, but we're still alive.

• 1:47:14Yaron Brook?

  Sure.

• 1:47:15Michael Malice?

  So there's, there's some very big difference.

• 1:47:17Yaron Brook?

  Sure.

• 1:47:17Michael Malice?

  It's, and there's one more thing.

• 1:47:18Yaron Brook?

  So within a context.

• 1:47:19Michael Malice?

  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.

• 1:47:26Yaron Brook?

  It's a brand.

• 1:47:27Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:28Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. So I, so I, I agree. So there's a context in which I would fear Stalin more than Hitler. There's a different context in which I would hate fear Hitler. But as ideologies. They are equally evil.

• 1:47:40Lex Fridman?

  Wait, wait, but.

• 1:47:40Yaron Brook?

  Not, not the same, because the difference between communism and fascism. But as ideologies, they're equally evil. They both view the individual as insignificant, unimportant. And they both basically want to kill any independent minded.

• 1:47:52Lex Fridman?

  Well, you're equating communism and Stalinism. So you're.

• 1:47:55Yaron Brook?

  No, I'm equating communism. I don't know what Stalinism is. I don't care. Stalinism is one version of communism.

• 1:48:01Lex Fridman?

  It's an implementation.

• 1:48:02Yaron Brook?

  Communism is an evil ideology, no matter who practices it.

• 1:48:06Michael Malice?

  I, I don't, I don't think that's, I, I, I think that's too 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 from the United States, she went to Lenin, to his face. Hold on, let me finish. You're already, you're already dismissing what I'm saying.

• 1:48:29Yaron Brook?

  Me?

• 1:48:29Michael Malice?

  Your body language, your emotions, your, listen to.

• 1:48:31Lex Fridman?

  Humility, yeah.

• 1:48:32Michael Malice?

  History doesn't care about your, history doesn't care about 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 bourgeois extravagance? You can't have it during a revolution, too bad. She comes back to the West. Wait, he's right?

• 1:48:49Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Michael Malice?

  Oh, no, you're, yeah, correct, yeah, I understand, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:51Yaron Brook?

  He's more consistent with the idea.

• 1:48:52Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah, he's more consistent.

• 1:48:53Yaron Brook?

  She's a compromise.

• 1:48:53Michael Malice?

  Yeah, you're right. Well, I, she comes back to the West, the big red Emma, the big hero of the left. And she goes, you guys, this is a complete, not, she didn't say bad. She was very randy. She goes, this is pure evil. This is horrifying, what they're doing to the workers, which you supposedly care about, completely oppressing. And one, 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. And so I don't think she, as a communist, is an evil person.

• 1:49:32Yaron Brook?

  I think she is. Because, because if she, if she wasn't evading and, and, you know, with Rand. And I think in reality, the essence of evil is evasion, is ignoring the facts of reality, is 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.

• 1:49:53Michael Malice?

  That could be just she's dumb.

• 1:49:54Yaron Brook?

  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 their implementation, but my ideas." And then I would have said, "Yeah, she'd been mistaken before, and now she's confronted reality." But if she stayed a leftist, if she stayed a leftist to that extent, not just a mild leftist, but a leftist, then I think she's dishonest and therefore immoral, right?

• 1:50:17Michael Malice?

  But you're using three words identically. You're saying dishonest, immoral, and evil.

• 1:50:20Yaron Brook?

  Okay, so evil is more, is an extreme form of your morality, right? So, okay, so she's immoral, the ideology she holds is still evil, because the ideology, she might be delusional.

• 1:50:32Michael Malice?

  But delusional and evil aren't the same.

• 1:50:33Yaron Brook?

  But she can be delusional, she cannot be delusional. See, I'm willing to accept a delusion before she's gone to the Soviet Union and seen it. Once 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.

• 1:50:58Lex Fridman?

  So to play a little bit of 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 are not the consequences we get? Imagine future societies, under different conditions, under different, you know, with the internet, different communication schemes, different set of resources.

• 1:51:20Yaron Brook?

  As long as human beings are what we are. Now, the Borg, you remember the Borg from Star Trek or whatever the series was?

• 1:51:25Michael Malice?

  Okay, nerd.

• 1:51:26Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm a nerd, okay. The Borg.

• 1:51:34Lex Fridman?

  It's the highest of compliments.

• 1:51:35Yaron Brook?

  The Borg in this household.

• 1:51:36Michael Malice?

  The Borg is the highest of lex.

• 1:51:37Yaron Brook?

  The Borg is communist, right? The Borg is a different species, it has a different biology, it has a business, different form of consciousness. Now, whether such a being could survive evolution is a question.

• 1:51:52Michael Malice?

  Well, ants, they don't have to be intelligent.

• 1:51:54Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, but then the question is, can you have free will, cognitive cognition, and be a Borg? I don't think so. But maybe, maybe in another planet, but.

• 1:52:04Michael Malice?

  You gotta take DMT to meet the Borg.

• 1:52:07Yaron Brook?

  See, human beings know 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.

• 1:52:23Michael Malice?

  Do you think you could have predicted that before the 20s?

• 1:52:26Yaron Brook?

  Yes, and plenty of people did. It's not, it's not.

• 1:52:28Michael Malice?

  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 an essay, goes, "What Marx is advocating is insane. This is going to be worse than the czar. You're talking about a 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." Like, he was a hardcore leftist.

• 1:52:53Yaron Brook?

  Look, Marx predicted it, right? We talked about this.

• 1:52:55Michael Malice?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:52:56Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, yeah. Marx, at some point, says, "Certain people cannot be part of the proletarian. 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're either proletarian or you're not. And you're, 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."

• 1:53:30Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:31Yaron Brook?

  "To get to this utopia." And in this utopia, I mean, he's very Christian. I mean, this is the other thing about Marx.

• 1:53:37Michael Malice?

  About the end times.

• 1:53:37Yaron Brook?

  Marx is very Christian in everything, in his morality, in his collectivism, and in the end. 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 a Garden of Eden perception, perspective on human. So he knows what that is going to require. It's going to require this dictatorship of the proletarian to get there. And he never tells you how we get there, right? There's, there's no game plan.

• 1:54:11Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:12Yaron Brook?

  There's a dictatorship, then there's utopia.

• 1:54:14Michael Malice?

  It's like the underpants, no.

• 1:54:15Yaron Brook?

  And nothing.

• 1:54:16Michael Malice?

  Step one dictatorship, step two question marks, step three utopia.

• 1:54:18Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, and the question mark is where the action is, right? Annihilate.

• 1:54:21Michael Malice?

  Yeah, you yada yada the important part.

• 1:54:24Yaron Brook?

  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 proletarian 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.

• 1:54:50Lex Fridman?

  The clarity with which you speak is just not something I I don't think I have that clarity about anything. So I 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 Mein Kampf recently, for example, for the first time.

• 1:55:04Yaron Brook?

  Something to learn from Hitler?

• 1:55:05Lex Fridman?

  Well, there's a lot to learn from Hitler.

• 1:55:07Yaron Brook?

  About the nature of evil, about wrong ideas, not about anything good, not about anything positive.

• 1:55:12Lex Fridman?

  Oh, so, yeah, so that's probably a really bad example.

• 1:55:14Yaron Brook?

  And but to say, but why is Hitler different than Marx?

• 1:55:16Lex Fridman?

  What?

• 1:55:17Yaron Brook?

  That's a very good question. No, I I get that, but in terms of ideas, why is Hitler different than Marx? Why why do we have do I do I have to assume there's something to learn from Marx? But there's nothing but but we acknowledge that there's nothing positive to learn from Hitler.

• 1:55:29Lex Fridman?

  Because, I mean, all right.

• 1:55:30Michael Malice?

  Well, I could tell you something in the sense that like, there's an interesting question is, how did this person get from step A to being able to implement the ideas?

• 1:55:38Yaron Brook?

  I know you, everybody should read, anybody who's interested should read Marx, because it's it's really important. It's important in the history and and a lot of people were influenced by it. How, why was it 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, to a large extent, it 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, the morality, for example. But no, there's not something positive to learn from everybody.

• 1:56:08Lex Fridman?

  In Ayn Rand's view, in your view, who was worse, Stalin or Hitler?

• 1:56:14Michael Malice?

  I think worse is, this is something that I, 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 it is really silly and ridiculous. So it might make sense in like 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.

• 1:56:59Michael Malice?

  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, 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.

• 1:57:42Michael Malice?

  If I move the needle in North Korea, this could have really profound positive consequences. So I set 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

• 1:58:25Michael Malice?

  fools, then you're like, everyone of 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 clown makeup? Yeah, you are. What color? Put on the shoes, whatever you want. So in terms of, people do not appreciate.

• 1:58:41Michael Malice?

  The horrors of Stalinism. I think this is a big fault of the right wing. You can't expect necessarily the 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 then, let's be clear, there are very many people who are Democrats, who are on the left, who are violently opposed, literally violently opposed to the Soviet Union and its horrors. This is not necessarily partisan issue. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna do something about it. So I know that's not really literally your question, but you know, that's kind of information that feeds.

• 1:59:21Lex Fridman?

  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, in how to avoid it? How to, and just general lessons about human nature?

• 1:59:38Yaron Brook?

  Well, I mean, 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, what is, what are the consequences? What do we understand from it? What are we worried about? What are we gonna avoid? So, I'm not worried about Nazism, Quan Nazism, because everybody hates Nazi. I mean, it's uniform that that's out. Even the people, I think, on the far right in America are staying away from the cliches of Nazi, although 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

• 2:00:23Yaron Brook?

  gonna 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 evil of communism. I mean, you brought it up earlier, right? Um, almost nobody understands that communism is an evil ideology, that there's, that there's nothing worthwhile there, that any, any attempt to go in that direction, uh, in any sustainable way is destructive. They, they are, as you mentioned, there are economists out there claiming they are communist. I mean, I find that spicable, uh, that anybody would claim to be a communist, uh, economist or communist, anything, because I think that's, it's, uh, it's a, it's a ideology

• 2:01:06Yaron Brook?

  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, uh, in, in the world around us. I think Nazism is out, but I think, I think fascism is a, is a massive threat out there, because I don't think we've learnt real lessons of, nobody knows what Naz, fascism is. Everybody thinks fascism is Nazism. They don't, they don't recognize that in a sense we are already fascist, and that we're certainly heading in that direction. Uh, 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 Nazism and communism. What does unify them?

• 2:01:50Yaron Brook?

  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, they will dictate how you live. And, you know, so these are philosopher kings, it goes back to Plato's philosophy, but it you really unifies it. Think about communism. Communism is about the sacrifice of the individual to the proletariat. Who is the proletariat? It's this collective group here. Who represents the proletariat? Well, they have, somebody has to, somebody has to tell the proletariat what they believe in, because they don't know, because there

• 2:02:31Yaron Brook?

  is no collective consciousness. So you need a Stalin, 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 replace Voltaireian with Aryan's, 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.

• 2:02:58Lex Fridman?

  So it's impossible to have a communist system or fascist system without a dictator naturally emerging. It's not, it's not possible to have a George.

• 2:03:06Michael Malice?

  It's not naturally, it's ideologically.

• 2:03:07Yaron Brook?

  It's absolutely impossible to have that on, on scale. You can certainly have communes where people behave communistically.

• 2:03:14Lex Fridman?

  Because it's not inside the ideology that that should happen.

• 2:03:17Michael Malice?

  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 what fascism is. Fascists don't know fascism is. So there's a superb book by John Diggins from the early seventies 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.

• 2:03:43Yaron Brook?

  He was an intellectual, which is shocking because he always comes across as a buffoon. But he was actually a thinker.

• 2:03:49Lex Fridman?

  Why did he not resist Hitler at all?

• 2:03:53Michael Malice?

  So, so one of the things with fascism is it comes, it's a direct line from Kant to Mussolini. There's, so basically, there is a philosopher who I adore, who I'm sure you don't, called Schopenhauer. And Schopenhauer, the question became, Rand, 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 illegitimate children, if you catch my meaning, she mean 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

• 2:04:36Michael Malice?

  idea world and the nominal 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 reason is idea and this is. Schopenhauer, who hated Hegel, who constantly attacked him by name and Hegel'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."

• 2:05:03Yaron Brook?

  Yep.

• 2:05:03Michael Malice?

  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 isn't 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 willpower is stronger than reality," and you're like, "Okay, how's this program gonna work?" We can make it happen.

• 2:05:46Michael Malice?

  That was why fascism is not a very coherent ideology. Because explicitly, there's a book from 1936 called "The Philosophy of Fascism," which tried to codify this. 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, 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.

• 2:06:24Yaron Brook?

  Yep.

• 2:06:24Michael Malice?

  Because the 1930s, you had the Great Depression. All the intellectuals said, "This proves capitalism can't work. The Great Depression, obviously," air quotes, "is capitalism's fault." Then you have the alternative, the USSR. "Well, that's not tenable for us." Here comes Mussolini. And Mussolini says, "I'm gonna 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 gonna 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.

• 2:07:04Yaron Brook?

  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, 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 about it, we live today in a much more fascist economic context than anything else. You know, we, we pretend that corporations are private, but when everything they do is regulated, who they can hire, how, you know, how much they pay them, when and how they can fire them, what they can do on their property, you know, it's all control.

• 2:07:48Yaron Brook?

  That's the way fascists, you know, start controlling everything.

• 2:07:53Lex Fridman?

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

• 2:08:08Michael Malice?

  If I don't say emerge, the dictator's the one who makes the fascist system.

• 2:08:11Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, fascism, well, it, it is, it, it could emerge, because for example, I think today in America, we're moving much more towards fascism or socialism. And at some point, that'll manifest itself in some kind of dictator. And the dictator might be different than a Mussolini or Nazis. It might be couched in some kind of constitution, pseudo constitutional American pretense.

• 2:08:34Michael Malice?

  It would be a lot easier for a female to be a fascist dictator in 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.

• 2:08:42Yaron Brook?

  Maybe, I, I think it's gonna be, I've, I've own view, I think it's gonna be a, a nationalist, religionist, environmentalist. I think somebody who can combine those three.

• 2:08:51Michael Malice?

  Hitler did those, yeah.

• 2:08:52Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, exactly. And somebody who can combine those three and articulate the case for it, I think America's ready for it.

• 2:08:57Lex Fridman?

  So you think it's possible for fascism to arise in the world again?

• 2:09:00Michael Malice?

  Oh, of course. It had never went away. They just adopted the name.

• 2:09:04Yaron Brook?

  And because the fundamental ideas, the Kantian ideas, the, the, the ideas that are behind fascism never went away. They're, they're still as popular, if anything, more popular than they were back then. Marx is as popular. I, I, I think these ideas are prevalent, they're out there, and, and absolutely, I think America's ready for them. Again, it won't be quite in the form that we've experienced in the past. It'll be in a, in a uniquely American form, counter to the flag, and of course, it was counter to the flag before. But no, yes, an authoritarian, some form of authoritarianism is necessary because the fundamental principle behind both communism and fascism is the unimportance

• 2:09:44Yaron Brook?

  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, right? So it's necessary, whether it's a committee or whether it's one person, how exactly, somebody has to speak for the collective. Even a committee doesn't function as a committee, right? 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 independent voices

• 2:10:29Yaron Brook?

  because the individual doesn't matter. The individual doesn't count.

• 2:10:31Michael Malice?

  People are naturally hierarchical, so if you have seven people and they ostensibly have the same role, someone is going to emerge as a leader naturally and some people are going to follow.

• 2:10:38Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, it's the same reason you cannot have the Richard Wolff-type socialism of, 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.

• 2:11:11Lex Fridman?

  It's a recent invention.

• 2:11:12Yaron Brook?

  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 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? You had it 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.

• 2:11:45Lex Fridman?

  So I was looking at some statistics that 53% of people in the world live under authoritarian governments, so the majority.

• 2:11:52Yaron Brook?

  Only 53. Oh, because India is democratic, so I guess they don't count India. But yes, it used to be 100.

• 2:12:00Lex Fridman?

  How do we change?

• 2:12:01Michael Malice?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:12:02Lex Fridman?

  How do we change that?

• 2:12:03Yaron Brook?

  And even the authoritarianism in a country like China is a lot less than it used to be under Mao, right? So, so I would, I would, you know, they were better off than they were under Mao. That's a reality. How do we change it? We have to declare, we have to change the ethical views of people. This brings us back to 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 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 the, the, the Jesus on a cross dying for other people's sin is viewed as

• 2:12:46Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:13:01Michael Malice?

  Can I answer your question? I, I think there's something that has to go along with what Yaron was saying, and I know he's going to agree with me, which is technology. Because if it becomes harder technologically for the authoritarian and it more, 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 a, hold on, let me finish. The masses as a rule are not going to be able to think in general anyway. I've, I've, I have a much more elitist view of mankind than Rand does. 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, publish wherever

• 2:13:45Michael Malice?

  you want, whatever, free, free speech. And I say, well, what about books like Mein Kampf? What about, you know, people read this, 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. I'm like, 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 in one second,

• 2:14:25Michael Malice?

  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 this gonna 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.

• 2:15:09Michael Malice?

  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.

• 2:15:19Yaron Brook?

  But for a very different reason, she said that.

• 2:15:21Michael Malice?

  Sure, but it's also a lot easier to persuade people the right idea.

• 2:15:25Yaron Brook?

  So, I kind of agree. Maybe I'm more pessimistic, or maybe I don't get the technology completely.

• 2:15:32Michael Malice?

  That's because you're a boomer.

• 2:15:33Yaron Brook?

  There you go.

• 2:15:35Michael Malice?

  Okay, boomer.

• 2:15:36Yaron Brook?

  I get that insult a lot.

• 2:15:40Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:15:47Yaron Brook?

  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 Revolution is the link between reason and wealth 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, you know, and money is barren. Money is barren. Interest 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...

• 2:16:30Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:16:41Michael Malice?

  I didn't say can't.

• 2:16:41Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:42Michael Malice?

  Okay, I didn't say can't.

• 2:16:43Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, so I don't think.

• 2:16:44Michael Malice?

  At a certain point.

• 2:16:44Yaron Brook?

  Because they can turn off their electricity.

• 2:16:46Michael Malice?

  I'm just saying it becomes more expensive.

• 2:16:47Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:16:59Michael Malice?

  But let me say this, like, it's gonna sound as absurd. If there was technology that we could teleport anywhere on Earth at the speed of light.

• 2:17:05Yaron Brook?

  Well, sure.

• 2:17:05Michael Malice?

  That would certainly go a long way towards hurting authoritarianism.

• 2:17:09Yaron Brook?

  Sure, if there was some way to go.

• 2:17:10Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 2:17:11Yaron Brook?

  And of course, they could teleport too.

• 2:17:12Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 2:17:12Yaron Brook?

  And this is, of course, the danger of they can use the technology too.

• 2:17:16Michael Malice?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 2:17:17Yaron Brook?

  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 before some of this technology.

• 2:17:27Michael Malice?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 2:17:28Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:17:53Michael Malice?

  And North Korea, correct.

• 2:17:53Yaron Brook?

  I don't know about North Korea, how much gets through.

• 2:17:55Michael Malice?

  It's really undermining them, which is wonderful.

• 2:17:57Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, which is great. So, so, yes, and 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 it 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.

• 2:18:35Michael Malice?

  Wow.

• 2:18:35Yaron Brook?

  And faucets. They didn't have fossils for another thousand years, right? Um, a lot of, they couldn't build tall buildings.

• 2:18:42Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:43Yaron Brook?

  Once Rome came down.

• 2:18:44Michael Malice?

  The Great Pyramid of Egypt was the tallest building on earth till like eighteen forty.

• 2:18:48Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:48Michael Malice?

  Crazy.

• 2:18:48Yaron Brook?

  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 nineteenth century. Fifteen hundred 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, because of universities everywhere, institutions. I mean, think about how many engineers there are in the world today. Right, who have basically all different, basically the same level of knowledge and 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, I, I am optimistic in that sense that the fusion of knowledge is so broad today that other, other than wiping out all that exists on the planet, everything electronic on the planet,

• 2:19:34Yaron Brook?

  it's just, it's not going to be possible to control us all.

• 2:19:36Michael Malice?

  And there's also.

• 2:19:37Yaron Brook?

  And in that sense, technology is going to make it possible for us to survive and to stay semi-free. Cause I don't think full freedom, but semi-free. Cause full freedom, you need the ideas. Cause full freedom means you need some political implementation.

• 2:19:49Michael Malice?

  No, full freedom means anarchy, but we know that.

• 2:19:51Yaron Brook?

  Well, well, we, we need to get into that. We can't, we can't leave without pointing out that we fundamentally disagree about that.

• 2:19:58Lex Fridman?

  Oh, that's beautiful to be continued on that one. Uh, let me, let me ask about on the one particular technology that I've been, uh, 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 the Bitcoin, that, uh, setting ideas aside, when you look at practical tools that governments use to manipulate its people is inflation of the monetary, within the monetary system.

• 2:20:28Michael Malice?

  Yes.

• 2:20:29Lex Fridman?

  And so they see Bitcoin.

• 2:20:32Lex Fridman?

  As a way for the for individuals to fight that, to go outside those specific government-controlled systems and thereby sort of decentralizing power. You know, there's a case to be made historically 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 see in the world if they couldn't control the monetary system.

• 2:20:53Michael Malice?

  You couldn't have had the New Deal, and FDR realized this very quickly.

• 2:20:56Yaron Brook?

  Oh, that very confiscated all the gold. Everybody knows FDR is going to come into into to become president and going to confiscate the gold. So one of the 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 was take over the gold and take the United States Federal

• 2:21:39Yaron Brook?

  Reserve off the gold standard so that they can, in a sense, print money and that he could start spending.

• 2:21:44Michael Malice?

  Yeah, what people don't realize, just to clarify what your own said, 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 your own, 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, Weimar 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.

• 2:22:22Yaron Brook?

  No, let me.

• 2:22:23Michael Malice?

  They don't, they don't matter. So now, if I say, Iran 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, wait, wait, wait, three feet is 36 inches. You go, no, no, not anymore. It's 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 on the private level, because if I'm managing outlays... If I'm trying to pay my workers, 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.

• 2:23:06Michael Malice?

  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 poor, the poorest of the poor the most. When we came to this country, my mom told me they would go to 86th Street in Bensonhurst with the fruit stands to buy mekachka, 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 mattered. 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, but if I'm destitute hand to mouth,

• 2:23:47Michael Malice?

  and I've got 5% less, that is really a material consequence in my life. So inflation really is evil, because it hurts the people for who those pennies matter.

• 2:23:58Yaron Brook?

  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 for 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 most, that 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 is, the interest rates are zero, you get nothing on your saving. And 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, to keep the value of your dollars.

• 2:24:37Michael Malice?

  Here's the other.

• 2:24:38Yaron Brook?

  And the government controls, and this has massive perverse effects, because it's not just that prices go up, it's that prices don't reflect reality anymore. So some prices go up, some prices might not.

• 2:24:50Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:50Yaron Brook?

  Investments get distorted, things get produced that shouldn't get produced. And then, people like Richard Wolff 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, by the Federal Reserve. And yet who got blamed for the financial crisis? Who would Richard Wolff 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, that's item number one on the list of the things capitalists want is to get rid of the, of, of, of, of the Fed.

• 2:25:34Yaron Brook?

  And then grant you guys your wish. Have competition for currency and let's see if Bitcoin wins. I'm skeptical, but let, but I don't care. My point is under freedom, I don't care who wins. I just want free choices and, and let the best currency win. I doubt that becomes Bitcoin, but it doesn't really matter. If I'm wrong, great.

• 2:25:54Michael Malice?

  Let me add to this and, and I think people appreciate, and this is a leftist, leftist in its best, that the government and the banks are in bed with each other. This, I don't think is particularly controversial statement.

• 2:26:03Yaron Brook?

  Well, I, I don't like that statement. Let me just say why I don't like it and then I don't like it because it assumes that they're equal partners or that this causality goes in both directions. From day one, and this is really from day one of the, 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 financial, of finance. So from the beginning, banks have been controlled by the state. Now, over time, if, if I'm, 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?

• 2:26:44Lex Fridman?

  I should explain to you how things work when you get to bed in bed and it's not always equal.

• 2:26:49Yaron Brook?

  Well, okay, so.

• 2:26:50Michael Malice?

  Okay. So the bank, so let's talk about safe words, which is a very randy and topic. She doesn't like those. You read, read the, I had to read that scene three times in the Fountainhead as I couldn't believe what I was reading. I was like, yeah, no, because I'm like, I looked at the back cover. I'm like, a woman wrote this book in 1943. I must be misunderstanding the scene. Yeah.

• 2:27:07Lex Fridman?

  She, she sure had a lot of shades of gray.

• 2:27:10Michael Malice?

  Yeah. So, no, she hated that. Only black and white. No, but, um, 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, uh, 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, the middle guy. Let me just finish my point because I see you champing at the bit.

• 2:27:39Michael Malice?

  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, organization, uh, 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.

• 2:28:05Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, so, so I agree with that description of Bitcoin, my problems with Bitcoin elsewhere. Let me just say about the financial crisis. It's, 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, uh, Drexel Burnham because they didn't like Michael Malkin. They are vindictive.

• 2:28:28Michael Malice?

  Yes.

• 2:28:29Yaron Brook?

  Uh, it's not an accident that, that, that the Treasury Secretary at the time was an ex-chairman of Goldman Sachs, not Lehman Brothers.

• 2:28:36Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:37Yaron Brook?

  And Goldman hates Lehman and, you know, and the next day they bail out AIG. What I, what I got out of financial crisis more than anything, and, 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.

• 2:28:52Michael Malice?

  Sure, okay.

• 2:28:52Yaron Brook?

  And indeed, I know several bankers, including big banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, and a friend of mine, John Allison of BBT, 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'll shut you down," basically, right, the equivalent of that. And so, they, they, A, wanted a virtue signal, so there's a big virtue signal. "We're, we're taking care of things. Don't worry. We're, you know, we've got everything under control," even though they were completely panicking and they had no clue what they were doing. Uh, one of, one of the things that the financial crisis really illustrated was how...

• 2:29:31Yaron Brook?

  Pathetic, ignorant and incompetent, the people at the top are, and they knew it. And they, you know, Supleson goes to Congress, 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, 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.

• 2:29:54Yaron Brook?

  They bailed out everybody they could, everybody under the, you know, within their periphery. Uh, when they thought it was appropriate, they were vindictive about some people like Lehman. It was complete arbitrary use of power. It's, it, it, the bankers didn't benefit from this. Indeed, many bankers that 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 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.

• 2:30:37Michael Malice?

  Right, but the point, sorry, where we, we agree. The, the focus will always be on bailing out elites.

• 2:30:43Yaron Brook?

  It's almost. But, but little banks got money too.

• 2:30:45Michael Malice?

  No, I was saying that last year, there's no talk of saving ICE and VICE, saving Century 21, saving all these other, uh, industries.

• 2:30:53Yaron Brook?

  But sure they were, if you look, it's, it's just, sure there was. If you look at the, if you look at what the Fed did, the, the Fed was bailing out third, fourth class businesses in all kinds of areas that you wouldn't consider elitist areas. Uh, the, the whole PPP.

• 2:31:09Michael Malice?

  You're talking 2008?

• 2:31:10Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, no, I'm talking about now. I'm talking about COVID last year. Um, 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. Um, PPP, the, the Payable Protection Program was targeted at everybody, everybody got PPP.

• 2:31:27Yaron Brook?

  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, 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, I don't, I didn't see elitism in the bailouts of last year.

• 2:31:55Michael Malice?

  I, I agree. I agree, it wasn't last year. I'm saying that's one distinction between 2008 and 2020. 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.

• 2:32:08Yaron Brook?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:09Michael Malice?

  Yeah, that's, that's not.

• 2:32:10Yaron Brook?

  Depending on how we define it.

• 2:32:11Michael Malice?

  Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:32:12Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:13Lex Fridman?

  You mentioned there's some criticism towards Bitcoin. There's a lot of excitement about the technology of Bitcoin for the, the resistance against this kind of central state pursuit of power.

• 2:32:27Yaron Brook?

  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 where money is competitive and it's, it's, it's a financial instrument that the government cannot touch.

• 2:32:44Lex Fridman?

  You think the state is too powerful?

• 2:32:46Yaron Brook?

  I think two things. I think, 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.

• 2:32:56Michael Malice?

  But it does.

• 2:32:57Yaron Brook?

  No, it doesn't. It, it functions as a mechanism, 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, it doesn't, it doesn't function because, and it can't because it's too volatile.

• 2:33:11Michael Malice?

  Wait, wait, I've sold things with Bitcoin.

• 2:33:13Yaron Brook?

  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 them money.

• 2:33:22Michael Malice?

  If you're using something as money.

• 2:33:23Yaron Brook?

  So let me take something you, no. So let me take something you said before and it 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? 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 going to be worth tomorrow. So I can't plan with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is way too volatile to serve right now as money. Now, the, the argument from Bitcoiners is. Yes, it's still being adopted. At some point, it reaches a crucial mass. High perfect monetization, yeah. Yes, and then it will become money because at that point it can be used as money because then it'll have a stable value.

• 2:34:01Yaron Brook?

  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. Oh, I agree. It's functioning much more as an asset than as money. That's not in dispute. I agree that completely. So I don't think it's money. But, so I think it's still, 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.

• 2:34:35Lex Fridman?

  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, you know, physical resources. And so they say that's a very natural replacement of gold, so it doesn't need to be connected to gold.

• 2:34:55Yaron Brook?

  So there are 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.

• 2:35:06Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 2:35:06Yaron Brook?

  At least unless you count the fact that you can split Bitcoins and create coins, but that's a whole other question, right?

• 2:35:14Yaron Brook?

  So that's one. The second is that gold has value beyond its use as a currency, beyond its use as money.

• 2:35:24Lex Fridman?

  For jewelry and stuff.

• 2:35:25Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, but you minimize that. But jewelry and stuff has been important for the human race for a hundred thousand years. You can find jewelry in caves. For the cavemen, designed jewelry and wore them. So we obviously as human 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, shiny gold in particular, shiny object generally. So there's something about gold that appeals to human being. There's some value that gold has beyond its being a currency. It doesn't, it's not, 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.

• 2:36:08Michael Malice?

  Don't you think the finiteness could be framed as a feature? The scarcity of Bitcoin?

• 2:36:12Yaron Brook?

  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 too little gold, right? So the value of gold in a sense, in dollar terms, the 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 increasing productivity.

• 2:36:55Yaron Brook?

  That's the beauty of gold mining because it's because prices are related to gold. Gold is the dominant money and it increases at about the same rate as productivity. So it keeps these, 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's ends. Now prices will only decline. What rate will they decline at? They'll decline at the rate of productivity increases. It's hard to predict what the rate through which productivity increases. For example, technological shocks can change that dramatically. You could get bouts of dramatic deflation, dramatic price drops that could be problematic

• 2:37:36Yaron Brook?

  in terms of planning, the same problem of inflation just reversed that you had before. So, you know, again, that 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 might evolve?

• 2:37:56Michael Malice?

  I was just gonna say, 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 can make gold. They figured out how to do it. It's not cheap and it's a whole big process. 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 Lawrence is talking about.

• 2:38:25Lex Fridman?

  That's kind of the category of security that Bitcoin is talking about, that it's very difficult to do that with Bitcoin. But I would argue that it's exceptionally difficult to do that with gold.

• 2:38:34Michael Malice?

  It is now, but the thing is, there isn't that huge incentive. If gold is the basis, and if gold is worth that much.

• 2:38:39Yaron Brook?

  But gold isn't worth that much. Gold is worth, let's say it's-

• 2:38:42Michael Malice?

  I'm saying in this world that we're talking about.

• 2:38:44Lex Fridman?

  In the future, yeah.

• 2:38:45Yaron Brook?

  Gold is not going to be worth more. Let's say right now, gold is about 2,000 bucks. It's less than 2,000. Let's say it's 2,000 bucks. That's, that's its price in terms of dollars. So you'd have to, it would have to be worthwhile to create something of 2,000 dollars. How much would we be willing to put into it? At some point, you're right. And it's, and at that point, I think gold stops being money.

• 2:39:03Michael Malice?

  Right.

• 2:39:03Yaron Brook?

  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, 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, I guess, I'm surprised at a lot of the technologists who view Bitcoin as the end game, where it strikes me as it's a, it's the birth of a new tech, 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

• 2:39:47Yaron Brook?

  now, that, so Bitcoin doesn't strike me as optimal, and that, that we should be moving towards something better.

• 2:39:54Michael Malice?

  Can you please stop shilling Rand coin for five minutes?

• 2:39:58Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. You know where there was Rand coin? There was Rand.

• 2:40:02Michael Malice?

  South Africa.

• 2:40:03Yaron Brook?

  No, I was in-

• 2:40:04Michael Malice?

  Their currency is the Rand, yeah.

• 2:40:06Yaron Brook?

  No, I mean-

• 2:40:06Michael Malice?

  Ayn Rand is the South African 1 dollar, yeah.

• 2:40:09Yaron Brook?

  The Ayn Rand coin was, I was in China in 20, I think it was 2015 or 14. What's that?

• 2:40:15Michael Malice?

  China.

• 2:40:16Yaron Brook?

  China. I was in China 20, something like that. And this entrepreneur came up to me, she said she's, 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 Gold Gulch. She's serious. And she's issuing, and she issued- Cryptocurrency based on the land, right backed by the land called Rand, but Ayn Rand, with a little portrait of Ayn, you know, a little portrait in the, in the, in the marketing. I don't, I don't think it went anywhere.

• 2:40:48Michael Malice?

  You're not gonna be a janitor?

• 2:40:49Yaron Brook?

  A janitor in China. Gold, gold, yeah.

• 2:40:52Michael Malice?

  By the, by the way, I do want to point out something I do enjoy about Objectivists. I constantly talk about Ayn Rand and her vampire novels. And I, that's the joke, you're on, thank you. Uh, and inevitably, someone feels the need to point out that she did not write vampire novels and her name is actually Ayn. So thank you, thank you, Aaron. We've been talking for two hours. I own her copy of The Fountainhead. Somehow I thought her name was Ayn. Thank you, thank you. Ayn is an anthem.

• 2:41:19Lex Fridman?

  So, uh, this is really interesting way of phrasing it, which is.

• 2:41:23Yaron Brook?

  I was kidding with the Ayn. I know you knew you, how to pronounce it.

• 2:41:27Lex Fridman?

  I know, you know, you know.

• 2:41:28Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, it just got confusing.

• 2:41:30Lex Fridman?

  I think we all know, and we all know there were jokers.

• 2:41:33Michael Malice?

  We're all one.

• 2:41:33Lex Fridman?

  There's no Batman in this conversation. So it's, that's an interesting way to frame it, is Bitcoin the end or the beginning of 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 like gold is the end. And everything is built, like the monetary systems, like cash and all that is built on top of gold.

• 2:42:15Lex Fridman?

  Bitcoin is the end in that other technologies are built on top of Bitcoin. That's, that's their argument and.

• 2:42:21Yaron Brook?

  I get that and I hear that all the time and I, I just, I, I don't quite understand that. And I, and I think Bitcoin has limitations that potentially other cryptocurrencies might not have. I, you know, my attitude towards something like this is, to a large extent, I don't understand the technology. Uh, my view is let it play out. I, I think I have more fear.

• 2:42:44Yaron Brook?

  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 of Bitcoin, you know, and they were hyping the acceptance now, a lot of, a lot of vendors that will accept Bitcoin and this is great. And I said, yeah, it's absolutely great. More options is better than few 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 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

• 2:43:28Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:43:36Michael Malice?

  So But that isn't able to sell it. Just they just sell it in the black market.

• 2:43:39Yaron Brook?

  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 you in jail or not, right? So, 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.

• 2:43:54Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:55Yaron Brook?

  But they can monitor the sweatshirt being sent to me, right? That's where they can interfere. And, and I think that at some point, to the extent Bitcoin is successful, it will be stopped. That is, and that's what will 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, I think that the government is going to step in and stop people from doing that. And that's, that's what I, I saw, I have more respect and fear for the, for the power of, of, of government today.

• 2:44:40Michael Malice?

  I don't see that at all. However, I could be wrong and I'm sure Yaron hopes he's wrong.

• 2:44:45Yaron Brook?

  Absolutely. I hope the government just give in and the Fed tomorrow says, yeah, let Bitcoin thrive. But I think they'll want to regulate and control it. The only way to regulate and control it is to stop it.

• 2:44:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's a bunch of people who argue that Bitcoin is too compelling to government, that they'll actually embrace it.

• 2:45:03Yaron Brook?

  But that assumes government has positive goals and wants to do good things. You can ask.

• 2:45:09Lex Fridman?

  No, no, it's greedy. They say government is greedy because they, well Bitcoiners have this whole lingo. They say number go up.

• 2:45:17Yaron Brook?

  Government is not greedy. Government is not greedy for money. Government is greedy for power. Government is greedy for control. Government is much more, now, money's 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 a view of politicians and the people in government today.

• 2:45:44Lex Fridman?

  By the way, I'm a line with this.

• 2:45:45Yaron Brook?

  And I know why he's laughing. I think I know why he's laughing.

• 2:45:47Michael Malice?

  You know exactly why I'm laughing.

• 2:45:48Yaron Brook?

  And we should get to that issue at some point here. But, you know, so I think there's a lot of naïve.

• 2:45:57Michael Malice?

  Yeah, there's a lot. A lot of it, Yaron.

• 2:46:00Yaron Brook?

  No, I'm not naïve. I'm actually providing the warning and all these Bitcoiners are saying, no, no, no, government doesn't function that way.

• 2:46:09Michael Malice?

  No, no one says I'm naïve. Naïve people think they're not naïve.

• 2:46:13Lex Fridman?

  So let's put this on the table, speaking of naïve. 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.

• 2:46:24Michael Malice?

  I got it. I'm not trying to be pedantic. What do you mean work?

• 2:46:28Michael Malice?

  Government can achieve goals. That is not in dispute.

• 2:46:30Lex Fridman?

  Can achieve goals effectively to build a better world, a functioning society.

• 2:46:38Yaron Brook?

  So I'm going to take it one step further than you.

• 2:46:40Lex Fridman?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:46:42Yaron Brook?

  The only way to achieve a better world is through government.

• 2:46:48Lex Fridman?

  Michael, what do you think about that?

• 2:46:49Yaron Brook?

  He almost dropped, and I said it on purpose that way.

• 2:46:51Michael Malice?

  I'm glad that the mask is dropping.

• 2:46:54Yaron Brook?

  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 or 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 agree.

• 2:47:17Michael Malice?

  He's sitting right here, right?

• 2:47:18Yaron Brook?

  Lex, I know, exactly. On this side, I'm in agreement with Lex. Which is unusual.

• 2:47:22Michael Malice?

  That government is good for freedom. You're agreeing with the guy who's reading Mein Kampf. That's not a surprise.

• 2:47:26Yaron Brook?

  Who's dressed in black.

• 2:47:27Michael Malice?

  Yeah, that's the bad guys.

• 2:47:29Yaron Brook?

  No, the fascism, I mean, the road to fascism is anarchy. It's not.

• 2:47:36Michael Malice?

  What the hell are you talking about? Can you give me one example where anarchy led to fascism?

• 2:47:41Yaron Brook?

  Well, every example of a stateless society leads to authoritarianism. Every single one in all of human history. It has to, because.

• 2:47:50Michael Malice?

  Wait, you're saying Weimar Germany was anarchy?

• 2:47:53Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 2:48:10Michael Malice?

  Anarchism isn't a location. Anarchism is a relationship. The three of us are in an anarchist relationship. Every country is, 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, when, going back to Emma Goldman, who I love. In 1901, William McKinley, President McKinley, was shot by this guy Leon Saulgas. And it was very funny, because he was a crazy person. And they arrested 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. So now she's on the lam. She had nothing to do with this guy. She's trying to flee.

• 2:48:55Michael Malice?

  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 I have to say anything.

• 2:49:24Lex Fridman?

  Well, okay, for people who are not familiar, if you're, I don't know why you would not be familiar, but

• 2:49:31Lex Fridman?

  Michael Malice talks quite a bit about the evils of the state and government and espouses ideas that anarchism is actually, what is it? The most moral system, the most effective system for human relationships.

• 2:49:45Michael Malice?

  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.

• 2:50:00Yaron Brook?

  There is one judge and one authority.

• 2:50:04Michael Malice?

  Yeah. And that's what everyone, hold on. And that's what everyone, and that's what everyone has voluntarily moved there and agreed to be under.

• 2:50:10Lex Fridman?

  It's a very small community, right?

• 2:50:12Yaron Brook?

  That is right. So I have no problem with competing governments.

• 2:50:16Michael Malice?

  That's the definition of anarchism.

• 2:50:18Yaron Brook?

  What's that?

• 2:50:18Michael Malice?

  That's the definition of anarchism. Case closed. Okay, end the show. End the show. I got him. I got him over.

• 2:50:23Yaron Brook?

  Not definition, not definition of anarchy at all. I'm all for competing governments.

• 2:50:29Michael Malice?

  Good job. He did it. He did it. Yay, Iran. You brought him over.

• 2:50:33Yaron Brook?

  More Lithuanian.

• 2:50:36Michael Malice?

  What is this?

• 2:50:37Yaron Brook?

  Lithuanian. That's my people.

• 2:50:40Lex Fridman?

  Tulski, Jasneapalyana, miedam, honey.

• 2:50:43Michael Malice?

  Oh, it's honey.

• 2:50:44Lex Fridman?

  No claims of health.

• 2:50:47Yaron Brook?

  The other one claimed health. This one no claims. No, I'm all for competing governments on different geographic areas. Uh, that's, that's fine.

• 2:50:56Michael Malice?

  Why does it have to be over two? Okay, let me.

• 2:50:57Yaron Brook?

  It's, it's really crucial that, that it's on different. So you don't have two, uh, judges in Gold's Gulch. You have one. And, and there's a reason one. There's one authority. There's one system of laws in Gold's Gulch. It, that, that is, that all the people under the Gulch abide by. There's one.

• 2:51:14Michael Malice?

  There's two, because they're, they're in America.

• 2:51:17Yaron Brook?

  No, they're not. The whole point is they're not, right?

• 2:51:19Michael Malice?

  They're not in America. They're in Colorado.

• 2:51:20Yaron Brook?

  I know, but, but the whole point of the novel is they've left America.

• 2:51:23Michael Malice?

  They haven't left America.

• 2:51:24Yaron Brook?

  They've, they've hid themselves. So they're not under the authority of the American.

• 2:51:27Michael Malice?

  But they are. Don't you get it?

• 2:51:29Yaron Brook?

  But they're hidden. They're supposed to be. The whole point is that they're hidden, so they're not under the.

• 2:51:32Michael Malice?

  No, no, no. If you, if the three of us hide, we're still under the authority of Washington.

• 2:51:38Yaron Brook?

  No, but not if they don't know. But this is, but 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. You know, i- i- i- i- an example of, of, of really the way we form societies. It is a, a private club that is hidden away from everybody else.

• 2:51:56Michael Malice?

  Fine. I'm fine with that. What happens if an American kills a Canadian in Mexico?

• 2:52:01Yaron Brook?

  What happens in American? It, it depends. Depends on the nature of the governments of the three places.

• 2:52:05Michael Malice?

  So.

• 2:52:06Yaron Brook?

  Right? But usually what happens in most of human history is that America will launch a war either against Mexico or Canada.

• 2:52:13Michael Malice?

  Okay, just, first of all.

• 2:52:15Yaron Brook?

  So, so usually violence results in much more violence. Anarchy is just a system that legalizes violence. That's all it does. And in international affairs, that's the reality. The reality is that the way you resolve disputes, that a major dispute is through violence.

• 2:52:29Michael Malice?

  Ayn Rand said, "The definition of a government is an agency that has a monopoly of force in a geographical area."

• 2:52:36Yaron Brook?

  That's right.

• 2:52:36Michael Malice?

  So you can't complain that anarchism is legalizing violence when the definition of government, according to Rand, is legalized violence.

• 2:52:45Yaron Brook?

  No, but because you're taking the definition of violence, the way she defines it, right? In this context, A, she talks about retaliatory force only.

• 2:52:53Michael Malice?

  Has that ever happened?

• 2:52:55Yaron Brook?

  That's not the point.

• 2:52:56Michael Malice?

  That is the point.

• 2:52:57Yaron Brook?

  Before there was Aristotle, was there 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, we're young, human race is a young race. The ideas of freedom are very young. The ideas of the Enlightenment are just 250 years old. The idea that you can't create the kind of government Ayn Rand talked about, I talk about, that it's never been before means it'll never happen again. That's a silly argument.

• 2:53:26Michael Malice?

  It's not a silly argument. It's you're being a Platonist.

• 2:53:28Yaron Brook?

  No, not at all.

• 2:53:29Michael Malice?

  I'll explain to you how you're being exactly a Platonist.

• 2:53:32Yaron Brook?

  So if I was sitting in 1750 arguing with Thomas Jefferson, he was telling me what kind of state he was gonna create, and I said, has a state like this ever been created? And he said, no, was I being a Platonist? Of course not.

• 2:53:42Michael Malice?

  No, you're being a-

• 2:53:43Yaron Brook?

  You know, things change.

• 2:53:44Michael Malice?

  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 Ayn Rand and 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.

• 2:54:02Yaron Brook?

  No, not, yeah, but-

• 2:54:03Michael Malice?

  What's that painting? I forget what it is.

• 2:54:05Yaron Brook?

  It's a school of Athens.

• 2:54:06Michael Malice?

  School of Athens, thank you.

• 2:54:07Yaron Brook?

  It's the-

• 2:54:07Michael Malice?

  So Plato's pointing toward the heavens while they're talking, and Aristotle's pointing to the earth.

• 2:54:14Yaron Brook?

  Reality.

• 2:54:14Michael Malice?

  Reality.

• 2:54:15Yaron Brook?

  Absolutely.

• 2:54:16Michael Malice?

  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 the 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. You know, 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, it's hard for me to grasp, is one's concept of order-

• 2:54:53Michael Malice?

  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.

• 2:55:13Yaron Brook?

  That's right.

• 2:55:14Michael Malice?

  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, the government you're positing can't work, you would have been correct.

• 2:55:46Yaron Brook?

  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, whether such a thing can exist. But to say it hasn't existed in the past is not an argument about whether it consists in the future. But that's the argument you made.

• 2:56:05Michael Malice?

  No, no, you're talking about history and now you're dancing around it.

• 2:56:08Yaron Brook?

  No, I'm not.

• 2:56:08Michael Malice?

  Yes, you are.

• 2:56:09Yaron Brook?

  I'm saying, 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?

• 2:56:18Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 2:56:18Yaron Brook?

  But something different happened.

• 2:56:19Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 2:56:20Yaron Brook?

  And you could have sat 20 years before and said, well, that's never happened before, so it can't happen in the future. That is a, that is a bad argument. It's not a good argument. Irrelevant.

• 2:56:30Michael Malice?

  No, but you're making the argument that just because something hasn't happened before, that's certainly not a point to say it's likely to happen or possible.

• 2:56:37Yaron Brook?

  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, I think anarchists completely evade that point. I think you guys live in a world of mythology, of abstraction, of Descartes. To imagine the kind of anarchy that David Friedman or Rothbard described, it's complete fiction. And it's complete.

• 2:57:05Michael Malice?

  It's just name calling.

• 2:57:05Yaron Brook?

  Mysticism.

• 2:57:06Lex Fridman?

  Okay, let me ask you just a few dumb questions. So, so first of all, what do we do with violence in terms of just natural emergence of violence in human societies?

• 2:57:17Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 2:57:19Lex Fridman?

  The idea that anarchism 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.

• 2:57:52Michael Malice?

  I'm just laughing.

• 2:57:53Lex Fridman?

  I'm using bad words.

• 2:57:54Michael Malice?

  No, your definition is accurate, but the point is that being the definition of the state versus how states act in reality is just absurd. Yeah.

• 2:58:02Lex Fridman?

  So, and then the idea that anarchism would be is that it's more kind of a market of defenses against violence. So you, you have like security companies and then you hire different ones that are more competent.

• 2:58:16Michael Malice?

  You have, 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. What's, every, objectivists understand, and they don't deny this, this is something they talk about constantly, is anytime 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, you know, 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.

• 2:59:00Lex Fridman?

  So can I just, as a thought experiment? Say it was very easy to immigrate to another country, like where you could just move about from government to government.

• 2:59:08Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 2:59:09Lex Fridman?

  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?

• 2:59:18Michael Malice?

  Ask him. Yeah.

• 2:59:19Lex Fridman?

  So like, what is, 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, it seems to be what government.

• 2:59:32Michael Malice?

  You're equating two terms.

• 2:59:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:34Michael Malice?

  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. If you want to really be kind of silly about it, you could say he's the governor. It's, but it's, it's really nonsensical to say that. If you go to Macy's, right? If you want to return your sweater, Macy's rules are right up there. You have seven days. If you don't have a receipt, you're going to get store credit. If you do have a receipt, you get a refund. So every organization, every bar, every nightclub, your house, has rules of governance. This is, it's often they're unspoken, this is unavoidable. No one in America, uh, by law, has to pay a tip, but it's just customary.

• 3:00:19Michael Malice?

  You go at the waiter, you give him 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? Cause it's a monopoly, cause it has no accountability. And look at the rioting last year, right? If you have one agency, pretend it's not the government, pretend it's Apple. And Apple has the, in charge of security in this town, people lied, rioting, people looting, and Apple says, yeah, we're not going to send people into work.

• 3:01:02Michael Malice?

  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.

• 3:01:10Lex Fridman?

  So, okay. But, don't you, cause you said no accountability. Don't you mean to say poor accountability?

• 3:01:17Michael Malice?

  I mean to say no accountability.

• 3:01:18Lex Fridman?

  I mean, but isn't that the idea of democracies?

• 3:01:21Michael Malice?

  I'm not for democracy.

• 3:01:22Lex Fridman?

  No, not for democracy, but like the, the system of, of governments that we have, there is a monopoly on violence, but there is a, I mean, at least in the ideal, but I think in practice as well, there's an accountability.

• 3:01:35Michael Malice?

  I do not think.

• 3:01:36Lex Fridman?

  Like, I know you're a critic of the police force and all those kinds of things, but the military is accountable to the people.

• 3:01:41Michael Malice?

  I do not agree.

• 3:01:42Lex Fridman?

  The police force is accountable to the people.

• 3:01:44Michael Malice?

  Perhaps imperfectly. I do not. But 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 pensions. But there's a lot of amazing police officers, or no? You, I mean, no, there are not. So you're saying by nature, police is like a fundamentally flawed system? No, by nature, government monopoly in police is a fundamentally irredeemable system. Let's 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 going to 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?

• 3:02:29Yaron Brook?

  So, 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 other 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 laws applies. And we know that the particular system of laws applies. So the problem is when you have.

• 3:02:50Michael Malice?

  There are many laws that we're not going to be enforced, that we're not.

• 3:02:53Yaron Brook?

  Sure, we know that.

• 3:02:54Michael Malice?

  Violence related?

• 3:02:55Yaron Brook?

  No, there are lots of laws that are not going to be enforced. Right. And, and, and that doesn't make this anarchy because there are the laws out there. They could be enforced, which makes, which makes it an anarchy. But look, there's, there's a number of issues here. There's an issue of the role of force in, in, in.

• 3:03:12Michael Malice?

  I, I gotta clarify thing 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.

• 3:03:23Yaron Brook?

  But, but that is a, that's a bad use of the word anarchy.

• 3:03:26Michael Malice?

  No, that's the correct use of the word anarch.

• 3:03:28Yaron Brook?

  It makes it meaningless. It makes it, every time any people get together, they have an anarchistic relationship.

• 3:03:33Michael Malice?

  Yes.

• 3:03:33Yaron Brook?

  No, we have a voluntary relationship.

• 3:03:35Michael Malice?

  That's what anarchism means, voluntary terrorism.

• 3:03:37Yaron Brook?

  No, it doesn't. It's, it's, it's a political system.

• 3:03:39Michael Malice?

  You want to get a dictionary out?

• 3:03:40Yaron Brook?

  You're taking a word and it's accepted usage. And then you, you're saying, oh, no.

• 3:03:45Michael Malice?

  You mean selfishness?

• 3:03:46Yaron Brook?

  Maybe, and we never finished that discussion. You're taking a word, we're taking a word that you're defining as and replacing it with voluntary.

• 3:03:54Michael Malice?

  Okay, fine, I'm not for anarchists or voluntarism.

• 3:03:57Yaron Brook?

  But let's understand what voluntary means, right? So we, for example, going to stores and there's a certain relationship that we have with the store that we engage in certain voluntary transactions with that 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 might want to go into their store. There's a certain system of laws that regulates the relationship and that defines the property rights and then provides protection for the property rights. Now, you would like all that privatized.

• 3:04:40Yaron Brook?

  That is, the store would have its police force and that would be privatized. Now, I don't believe that force can be privatized. And there are many reasons.

• 3:04:49Michael Malice?

  It shouldn't.

• 3:04:50Yaron Brook?

  I don't think it can, and I don't think, I think it's a...

• 3:04:54Lex Fridman?

  That's an interesting distinction.

• 3:04:56Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 3:05:09Michael Malice?

  That's not true.

• 3:05:09Yaron Brook?

  And becomes authoritarian.

• 3:05:11Michael Malice?

  Look at Iran and Iraq, excuse me. We had the bigger guns, we didn't win. Look at Afghanistan.

• 3:05:17Yaron Brook?

  We didn't, we didn't win partially because none of that is an example of anarchy.

• 3:05:23Michael Malice?

  No, but you just said the guy with the biggest gun's gonna win.

• 3:05:25Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, the guy with the biggest gun.

• 3:05:26Michael Malice?

  We didn't win in Vietnam. We had the bigger guns.

• 3:05:29Yaron Brook?

  But again, you're taking it outside of a context. That was a context in which, that was a context in which countries are fighting, not a context in which there is no country.

• 3:05:38Michael Malice?

  Okay, let's suppose you, Iran, have a rocket launcher.

• 3:05:40Yaron Brook?

  Yes.

• 3:05:40Michael Malice?

  And there's 100 people with handguns. How are you gonna win? You have the biggest gun.

• 3:05:45Yaron Brook?

  Oh, believe me, I could win.

• 3:05:47Michael Malice?

  With one rocket launcher against 100 people?

• 3:05:49Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, it's just, well, it depends how many rockets I have in the rocket launcher and whether I'm willing to use them. But that's, but so now it's democracy because there are more of them that they win. Look, any one of these scenarios, all it does, so let's go back to the store, so...

• 3:06:04Lex Fridman?

  This is fascinating, by the way. I'm really enjoying this. I just want to say that. This is great.

• 3:06:10Yaron Brook?

  Because I am enjoying the pain.

• 3:06:13Michael Malice?

  And I'm also enjoying the comments that are gonna happen.

• 3:06:16Yaron Brook?

  Oh, the comments, the comments that could be overwhelmingly on your side. I don't think so.

• 3:06:20Michael Malice?

  Because people like honesty.

• 3:06:21Yaron Brook?

  No, I think the anarchist position is completely dishonest.

• 3:06:23Michael Malice?

  I'm a modern day, what's his name? What's the guy who was defending communism?

• 3:06:27Yaron Brook?

  Oh, Richard Wolff.

• 3:06:28Michael Malice?

  I'm a modern day Richard Wolff.

• 3:06:31Yaron Brook?

  There's a sense in which I think anarchists are evading reality in the same sense. You know, so, so we've got this.

• 3:06:38Michael Malice?

  Do you think I'm dishonest or delusional?

• 3:06:41Michael Malice?

  Calling someone dishonest is a really, uh, uh, specific.

• 3:06:44Yaron Brook?

  I think, I, I, I think you're delusional. I think you're delusional and I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt of being delusional.

• 3:06:49Michael Malice?

  Okay, good.

• 3:06:51Yaron Brook?

  And we all love each other. And as I said, and, 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 divorce, being divorced from reality that is hard for people who are actually connected to reality.

• 3:07:09Michael Malice?

  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 divorced from reality if somebody's dumb.

• 3:07:24Yaron Brook?

  They can deal in it, they don't have to deal with it with the concretes that actually happen.

• 3:07:29Yaron Brook?

  This is an example I gave debating another anarchist, so.

• 3:07:33Michael Malice?

  Who was it? They must have sucked.

• 3:07:37Yaron Brook?

  They were Hoppet, Hoppet fans.

• 3:07:39Michael Malice?

  Oh, okay, Hoppet, okay.

• 3:07:40Yaron Brook?

  Hoppet fans, not one of my least like, the people I like the least in the world out there.

• 3:07:46Michael Malice?

  You don't, you like them better than the communists, don't you?

• 3:07:50Yaron Brook?

  Barely.

• 3:07:51Michael Malice?

  Oh, come on, seriously?

• 3:07:52Yaron Brook?

  Yes, because I think it leads to the same place, I really do, I think it leads to gulags.

• 3:07:55Michael Malice?

  Fine.

• 3:07:56Yaron Brook?

  I think anarchy leads to gulags and I think Hoppet's view of anarchy definitely leads to gulags.

• 3:08:00Michael Malice?

  I'll, I'll grant you just for the sake of argument that it leads to gulags. However, surely you concede that they are against gulags, whereas the commies have no problem with it. And that's a big.

• 3:08:09Yaron Brook?

  I think some do, I'm not sure, I'm not sure people like Hoppet do, because if you, if you read, if you read some of his stuff, one wonders, right? Uh, you know, but once monarchies and he wants, uh, wants.

• 3:08:20Michael Malice?

  No, he said monarchies are preferable to democracy, which is true.

• 3:08:22Yaron Brook?

  No, it's not. I mean, one of the problems with anarchists is

• 3:08:26Michael Malice?

  One judge. That's the monarch.

• 3:08:28Yaron Brook?

  One of the problems, yeah. One judge, one authority. This is why I think, that's why I think

• 3:08:35Michael Malice?

  So you're a hopian. I'm an anarchist authoritarian. Yaron Brooks is a hopian.

• 3:08:38Yaron Brook?

  No, I'm not a hopian. I don't want one judge. I don't want an arbitrary judge. I want an objective judge.

• 3:08:44Michael Malice?

  There's an essay by John Hasnas, I think is his name, I'm gonna bungle it. It's gonna 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.

• 3:08:57Yaron Brook?

  Well, yeah, I mean, that's why we disagree so much.

• 3:08:59Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:59Yaron Brook?

  Because, because I think objective law is the only coherent system.

• 3:09:02Michael Malice?

  Do you disagree that we, in effect, have competing systems of law under America? Meaning, there's different ideologies. You have the Sotomayor 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.

• 3:09:23Yaron Brook?

  Yes, and in theory, 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. It's nice to meet you. Syria, wasn't talking to you. Technology. Capitalism. Say, 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 how 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 rule in theory of a legislature. And the legislature would be nice if it was, if it was composed of people who

• 3:10:07Yaron Brook?

  had some idea of legal philosophy.

• 3:10:10Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 3:10:10Yaron Brook?

  And, and it gets codified. And when, because these things are complex. And, and at some point, it goes through all the arguments. And then a certain truth emerges, or certain truth 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, they're multiple governments or multiple systems of 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,

• 3:10:53Yaron Brook?

  competing police forces, completing militaries, however we want to define it. And now there's no mechanism to resolve that. Now, yes, we could negotiate and there's goodwill and so on, right?

• 3:11:05Michael Malice?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 3:11:06Yaron Brook?

  No, but 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 e- evil and wrong.

• 3:11:27Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 3:11:28Yaron Brook?

  Right? And, you know, this, something has happened, right, between the two, right? How do you resolve that conflict? There is no resolution. You know, if this adult wants to have sex with this child, this legal system thinks it's okay. That's the system thinks it. The only way to resolve that system is through one system imposing 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 different legal interpretations of how, was war.

• 3:12:01Michael Malice?

  No, it wasn't.

• 3:12:01Yaron Brook?

  Yes, it was.

• 3:12:02Michael Malice?

  It was marriage. A lot of times people would marry a princess from another country.

• 3:12:05Yaron Brook?

  Sure, forced marriages, which was not very pleasant.

• 3:12:08Michael Malice?

  I'd rather sacrifice one princess than a army.

• 3:12:10Yaron Brook?

  No, I don't want to sacrifice anybody. And in addition, I don't want to sacrifice anybody.

• 3:12:14Michael Malice?

  I want to sacrifice the royals.

• 3:12:15Yaron Brook?

  And in addition, I don't want royals.

• 3:12:17Michael Malice?

  Well, that's what sacrificing means.

• 3:12:18Yaron Brook?

  I think royals are pretty disgusting.

• 3:12:19Michael Malice?

  Agreed.

• 3:12:19Yaron Brook?

  And then on top, 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, far less freedom than we have today in terms of individual freedom.

• 3:12:32Michael Malice?

  You're comparing this to 20th century?

• 3:12:35Yaron Brook?

  Y- yes, I'm comparing a monarchy, right? You, you, you cho, you said that's preferable to democracy.

• 3:12:41Michael Malice?

  Yes, I do.

• 3:12:42Yaron Brook?

  Right? I, yeah, I'm comparing little.

• 3:12:44Michael Malice?

  I'm saying Hoppa said that. I'm not saying I'm saying that.

• 3:12:45Yaron Brook?

  Oh, I thought you, I thought you would agree with it.

• 3:12:47Michael Malice?

  To some extent, but I'm not going to die in that hell.

• 3:12:48Yaron Brook?

  Hoppa said that, and I think it's ridiculous. The, these kings and queens were fighting constantly. I, I mean, the wars back then were violent in a way.

• 3:12:57Michael Malice?

  Unlike now?

• 3:12:58Yaron Brook?

  No, much more violent than now. If you look at the actual percentage of people killed in war.

• 3:13:01Michael Malice?

  Yeah, the Steven Pinker book. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:13:02Yaron Brook?

  If you look at the percentage of people, and not just that, you can, you can look at the other stats. The, the percentage of people killed in war back then were far greater than the percentage of people even during World War II and World War I. So anarchy and, and you know, David Friedman loves to quote the sagas of, of Iceland about how wonderful the anarchy and, I mean, it's funny because a lot of people read David Friedman, never read the sagas. It's worth reading. Uh, the sagas of, the sagas of the Iceland are filled with violence. Constant violence, constantly people killing each other over, I, you know, I stole your chickens and you slept with my wife and all. The only way to resolve disputes, the only way to resolve disputes was violence. There was no authority.

• 3:13:42Yaron Brook?

  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

• 3:14:03Yaron Brook?

  up, you know, uh, for a while and up until people stop that constraint by, you know, arrangements between the, uh, security organizations. But the security organizations have us by the balls, to put it, to put it figuratively, right? They really do.

• 3:14:19Michael Malice?

  Sure. Unlike the state?

• 3:14:20Yaron Brook?

  Oh, the state today has it, but I would much rather live in this state, much rather live in this state, much rather live in many more authoritarian states than this, than a place where there's constant violence.

• 3:14:32Michael Malice?

  I have a bunch of questions, but I'm enjoying this. Just by everything he said is wrong. Okay, yes. First of all, the idea of competing legal systems is inevitable. Because, uh, what Rand talked about is what she wanted was, and this is really kind of Eric out of 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 used 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. I take it as a compliment. You, you are welcome.

• 3:15:10Michael Malice?

  I think that, given otherwise, her correct view that ideology, that causing the ideology is just a slur for someone's philosophy, that someone, especially someone as erudite, educated and informed as a judge, has to, and in fact, should bring their ideology to their work, is in one sense a little contradiction in her view, 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 the decree, unilaterally, that if you shoplift for less than, I forget, $200, we're not prosecuting.

• 3:15:51Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, I know.

• 3:15:52Michael Malice?

  You know this game, right, right, right. So, now, you and I, certain, and Lex, I'm sure probably, agree that his ideology is abhorrent, 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.

• 3:16:16Yaron Brook?

  Can I ask you just a quick question?

• 3:16:18Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 3:16:19Yaron Brook?

  Why couldn't a security force, in a particular, in a particular context, say, "Yeah, if you, if you take, if you take stuff from that store, we're not gonna, we're not gonna have any problem with that."

• 3:16:28Michael Malice?

  I agree with you, that's very fair, that's, 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 gonna 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 you were saying earlier that we need to have one kind of umbrella mechanism. There are already more cases than you can count where there's private arbitration. Now, the argument is that private arbitration only works because they have recourse to the

• 3:17:13Michael Malice?

  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.

• 3:17:36Yaron Brook?

  Look, we can't use the state. Right, I mean, I'm as critical of the state as it is right now, maybe not as critical as yours, not as critical as yours, but I'm quite critical of the state as it is right now. But let's say, let's say we got into a traffic accident and you have a Rolls Royce and I destroyed your Rolls Royce and my insurance company now owes your insurance company a lot of money. And let's imagine it's a lot of money just for the sake of it.

• 3:18:01Michael Malice?

  And that you're clearly guilty.

• 3:18:02Yaron Brook?

  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. And you know what? I've got bigger guns than his insurance company. And I'm just going to take over their insurance company. And hostile takeover takes on a whole new meaning when I can muster guns on my behalf than in a hostile takeover in a capitalist context. That to me is what happens, that to me is inevitable, Lee, what happens. And it's, and I think this is where the delusion comes in. The idea that everything, that when big money is involved and big and power is involved, remember, again, the same kind of politicians who today get into politics are likely to

• 3:18:44Yaron Brook?

  want to run some of these security agencies because they'll have a lot of power over people. So same kind of, maybe sociopaths would be there.

• 3:18:52Michael Malice?

  I don't think it's same skill set, but that's a separate issue.

• 3:18:54Yaron Brook?

  I think it very much is.

• 3:18:56Michael Malice?

  You think people, the people in Washington, the same, the CEOs psychologically and skillset wise?

• 3:19:01Yaron Brook?

  Well, today's CEOs, yes. Yes.

• 3:19:03Michael Malice?

  You might be right.

• 3:19:04Yaron Brook?

  Because I think that's what's rewarded for CEO is somebody who could get along with government.

• 3:19:09Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 3:19:10Yaron Brook?

  And I think, and I think the kind of CEO who is going to run 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. Negotiate, you know, diplomacy. Then negate, and we should get back to objective law because I think it's essential to this whole argument.

• 3:19:28Michael Malice?

  Something.

• 3:19:28Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 3:19:39Michael Malice?

  I got excited for a second.

• 3:19:40Yaron Brook?

  By the biggest gun.

• 3:19:41Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:41Yaron Brook?

  The party that has the more physical force, however, that is mustered either by numbers.

• 3:19:47Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 3:19:47Yaron Brook?

  Or by weapons is going to dominate.

• 3:19:49Michael Malice?

  Can I?

• 3:19:49Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 3:20:07Michael Malice?

  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's paying whatever, I'm just gonna use force and not pay them. We have that right now. It's called lobbying.

• 3:20:21Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:22Michael Malice?

  So instead, 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 code with the mafia.

• 3:20:33Yaron Brook?

  I agree.

• 3:20:33Michael Malice?

  Yeah, go out and take them out.

• 3:20:35Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:35Michael Malice?

  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 asset forfeiture is, people don't even understand this. This is something crazy, which you, which Iran 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.

• 3:21:01Yaron Brook?

  Usually in a car.

• 3:21:02Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, no, 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 audience, through the new process and SOL. That combined, for people who don't know, is more than the total amount of burglaries in America. It's a huge incentive, and what happens is the police department, which seizes your car, auctions it, seizes your house, auctions it, it's a great way to line their pockets. This is a huge incentive, this is horrible.

• 3:21:46Michael Malice?

  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 pimp. Let me just take all his stuff and it's gonna go to the community.

• 3:21:58Yaron Brook?

  Well, and the rationale originally was, if I try him, in the meantime, he'll take that money and, you know, funnel it somewhere else and hide it, and I'll never be able to get access to it. And it was, it was passed in the 1970s under, the original seized laws were kind of Rico acts.

• 3:22:15Michael Malice?

  Sure, yeah.

• 3:22:15Yaron Brook?

  Going after the mafia. And one of the reasons I despise 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.

• 3:22:27Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 3:22:27Yaron Brook?

  And so it wasn't even a drug dealer. It was you accused of a financial fraud. Not, not, you weren't shown to be guilty.

• 3:22:35Michael Malice?

  Accused.

• 3:22:36Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. All your assets basically were forfeited.

• 3:22:39Michael Malice?

  In a sentence of proven guilty, went out the window.

• 3:22:41Yaron Brook?

  If you were managing money, you were done, you were finished.

• 3:22:44Lex Fridman?

  So you're saying this kind of stuff naturally emerges with the states?

• 3:22:47Michael Malice?

  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 wanna 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.

• 3:23:08Yaron Brook?

  See, but. So what I'm describing is the inevitable evolution of anarchy into a government. I just think that the.

• 3:23:14Michael Malice?

  Markets don't consolidate into monopoly, that's a leftist propaganda myth.

• 3:23:18Yaron Brook?

  Not, 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 a, so this is my fundamental issue about turning, competing police forces. Force is not a product. Force is not a service. It's not a service and it's not a product.

• 3:23:36Michael Malice?

  Security is not a service?

• 3:23:37Yaron Brook?

  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. Um, science is not a product or service. It's a different type of human institution. There are different types of human institutions. Some are marketable, you can create markets in, some you cannot. Law is not a marketable, uh, system.

• 3:24:04Michael Malice?

  Can I ask a question quickly? Is there any other field other than law that you think you can't create markets?

• 3:24:09Yaron Brook?

  Well, science, science is not marketable. The, the, the science itself is not marketable. Well, science is true and the same ethic is in law. Law is not marketable. Law is the system that allows markets to happen. Right? You need a system of law, whether it's private law in a, in a, in a particular narrow context or whether it's broader law. Law is the, is the, 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 a private agency or private, the government doesn't matter, but there's a certain contract that is protectable, right?

• 3:24:44Michael Malice?

  Theoretically.

• 3:24:45Yaron Brook?

  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.

• 3:25:04Lex Fridman?

  So hold on a second, yeah, hold on. So you think that law could be a market?

• 3:25:08Michael Malice?

  And it already is a market. And we see it, for example, eBay. If I am buying something from Yaron, 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, 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.

• 3:25:49Michael Malice?

  So the issue with having any kind of government anything, and Yaron's not going to disagree with this, is at the very least, it's going to be expensive, inefficient, and cause conflict.

• 3:26:00Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, but I think what it allows is exactly-

• 3:26:02Michael Malice?

  We don't even know what the Supreme Court's gonna judge.

• 3:26:06Yaron Brook?

  Again, you're moving us to today's environment, which I, which I, time against, right?

• 3:26:10Michael Malice?

  I'm moving us to reality.

• 3:26:10Yaron Brook?

  No, but reality, reality doesn't have to be what it is. I mean-

• 3:26:14Michael Malice?

  That's the most anti-Ran quote-

• 3:26:15Yaron Brook?

  No, in a sense, in a sense, in a sense of, of the politics, the political reality.

• 3:26:20Michael Malice?

  I know, but the quote by itself is great.

• 3:26:21Yaron Brook?

  I know, I know. You'd love to-

• 3:26:22Lex Fridman?

  He agrees with Donald Hoffman, as would say.

• 3:26:24Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, it turns out I agree with Hoffman.

• 3:26:26Michael Malice?

  He's an elf.

• 3:26:27Yaron Brook?

  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, or what a contract, what contract law is, and eBay has a bunch of stuff that you sign, whether you read it or not.

• 3:27:01Michael Malice?

  Of course.

• 3:27:02Yaron Brook?

  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 a different definition of property rights, eBay might be living under a 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 of law.

• 3:27:34Michael Malice?

  There is a, we already, 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 America, American, in Brazil?

• 3:27:44Yaron Brook?

  Again, in, in, in, in a smaller community, what happens is lots of violence.

• 3:27:49Michael Malice?

  No, but I'm talking, right now, if a Chinese person has-

• 3:27:52Yaron Brook?

  Right now, the only reason that, 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 want to go to war. But- If you have, if you have small, i- i- i- in a state where the states were small, like in, in those little state, there was war all the time for exactly those reasons. Because the cost was lower, because, uh, because it was more personal. Because I knew maybe the person who was killed over there. And I, and I went to my king and encouraged him to go to war.

• 3:28:23Michael Malice?

  You know why there was war?

• 3:28:24Yaron Brook?

  Violence is constant.

• 3:28:25Michael Malice?

  You know why there was war? Because there had been no, no Ayn Rand.

• 3:28:28Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:29Michael Malice?

  And good ideas lead to good societies, which leads to good people, which leads to good behavior, good into relationships. So now that we have Ayn Rand.

• 3:28:38Yaron Brook?

  Yes.

• 3:28:38Michael Malice?

  All this stuff in the past is irrelevant because if they studied her works, we would be, Rand was on Donna Hugh again. You could watch the clip. And he asks 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.

• 3:29:00Yaron Brook?

  Well, if we were all selfish, there wouldn't be any Hitlers, right?

• 3:29:03Michael Malice?

  But who do you regard as the overweening authority? If I am buying a product from you as someone in England via eBay? Who's the governing authority?

• 3:29:14Yaron Brook?

  The governing authority is other, other legal systems in England and the United States, which have to be synchronized pretty well.

• 3:29:21Michael Malice?

  Right, but what I'm saying is.

• 3:29:22Yaron Brook?

  It's why eBay, why eBay doesn't function in certain countries because there is no legal system.

• 3:29:27Michael Malice?

  My point is, why do those legal systems have to be a function specifically of geography? As opposed to why can't I, sitting here, I could sit here, you're not, let me finish my point. 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?

• 3:29:59Yaron Brook?

  If it's England and the United States, it's probably not gonna 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.

• 3:30:11Michael Malice?

  Oh, I agree.

• 3:30:11Yaron Brook?

  Massive difference. And the fact is that, and Ayn Rand, I think, would be the first to acknowledge this, and this is why she was so opposed to anarchy. It's not-

• 3:30:20Michael Malice?

  That's not why.

• 3:30:21Yaron Brook?

  It is why.

• 3:30:22Michael Malice?

  It's because of Rothbard.

• 3:30:23Yaron Brook?

  No, it has nothing to do with-

• 3:30:24Michael Malice?

  Nothing?

• 3:30:25Yaron Brook?

  It has nothing to do with Rothbard. Nothing.

• 3:30:27Michael Malice?

  How do you know?

• 3:30:27Yaron Brook?

  Nothing.

• 3:30:28Michael Malice?

  How would you know?

• 3:30:28Yaron Brook?

  Because her argument against anarchy is an intellectual one, not a personality-based one.

• 3:30:34Lex Fridman?

  Anyway, but back to it, back to Iran, back to Iran.

• 3:30:38Yaron Brook?

  No, it has nothing to do with Rothbard.

• 3:30:40Michael Malice?

  You don't know that. You're not a psychic, or a necromancer.

• 3:30:42Yaron Brook?

  The only way we're gonna resolve this is arm wrestling, right? It's through violence.

• 3:30:47Michael Malice?

  Arm wrestling's not violence.

• 3:30:49Lex Fridman?

  Words are violence.

• 3:30:50Michael Malice?

  Words are violence, Yaron.

• 3:30:52Yaron Brook?

  Words are violence, emotions are violence.

• 3:30:55Lex Fridman?

  So, wait.

• 3:30:56Yaron Brook?

  He throws me off with this stuff. That's the problem.

• 3:30:58Michael Malice?

  If it's facts and truth?

• 3:30:59Yaron Brook?

  He's very, very good. No, not facts and truths.

• 3:31:01Lex Fridman?

  I mean, there's-

• 3:31:02Yaron Brook?

  Distortions and arbitrary statements, because your statement about Rothbard is an arbitrary statement that has no cognitive standing. And therefore, I can dismiss it. So I'm not doing like this because I want to dismiss it. It has no cognitive status. The fact that she disliked Rothbard doesn't mean that everything he said she was gonna dismiss because she disliked it.

• 3:31:20Michael Malice?

  I agree with you. What I'm saying is, it would not be impossible-

• 3:31:23Yaron Brook?

  But there's no evidence.

• 3:31:24Michael Malice?

  I'll give you, I'll talk. I'll give you some evidence. It's human psychology. It is not impossible that if you hate some, what's his name? What's that guy's name?

• 3:31:33Lex Fridman?

  Richard Wolff.

• 3:31:33Michael Malice?

  Right. It's not impossible that if Richard Wolff said something that you would otherwise agree with, you, hold on, let me finish. You'd be dismissive or less likely to give him credit for it, being a human being. That's all I'm saying.

• 3:31:45Yaron Brook?

  It's as silly as to say Rothbard came up with this theory of anarchy because he was pissed off at Ayn Rand and wanted to write something.

• 3:31:53Lex Fridman?

  I don't know. Bring it down, because, bring it down so that he can speak too, and let's keep it, because I-

• 3:32:00Michael Malice?

  I don't think we're getting agitated.

• 3:32:01Lex Fridman?

  No, you guys aren't. No, no, no.

• 3:32:03Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:32:04Lex Fridman?

  No, bring it down, not in terms of, in terms of give more pauses-

• 3:32:09Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 3:32:10Lex Fridman?

  So, Michael can insert himself. That's what I mean.

• 3:32:13Michael Malice?

  See, private governance.

• 3:32:14Yaron Brook?

  What's the point of that?

• 3:32:15Michael Malice?

  Private governance. Look, he's, look, it's private governance.

• 3:32:18Yaron Brook?

  It's, it's.

• 3:32:18Michael Malice?

  I'm all for private governance.

• 3:32:19Lex Fridman?

  I'm trying to establish the geographic law of the land.

• 3:32:22Yaron Brook?

  That's not the point.

• 3:32:23Lex Fridman?

  I, I do think that Michael's, I mean, that's interesting that you disagree with this. I, I do believe that psychology has an impact on ideas and Ayn Rand. You don't think Ayn Rand had grudges that impacted the way she saw the world? I, I, we would like to think that.

• 3:32:41Yaron Brook?

  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 Ayn Rand gave, and if you, to, to, to the role of government, to the existence of government, to the need for government.

• 3:32:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:56Yaron Brook?

  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 to anarchy is because of, I, I think is just, just an arbitrary statement.

• 3:33:10Michael Malice?

  I didn't say because of.

• 3:33:11Yaron Brook?

  And not, and not. And not, and not, and, and I don't see why psychology would enter it. Now, maybe the tone in which she responded to, to answer might have been motivated by that or something like. But given the amount of thought 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, that the right, you needed the right hierarchy, I, you know, I think, I think that, I think that we could say that it, give it at least the respect that she, this was, she might have been wrong, right? But she, she had a particular theory that, that rejected anarchy and that thought anarchy was wrong.

• 3:33:49Michael Malice?

  Okay, hold on, I, 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 a 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.

• 3:34:09Yaron Brook?

  Sure.

• 3:34:09Michael Malice?

  And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that.

• 3:34:12Yaron Brook?

  Don't think she would change her philosophical position about something because she disliked somebody.

• 3:34:15Michael Malice?

  I agree, but what I'm saying.

• 3:34:17Yaron Brook?

  Given the amount of thought she gave to that philosophical.

• 3:34:19Michael Malice?

  Fair, 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.

• 3:34:34Yaron Brook?

  Sure.

• 3:34:35Michael Malice?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 3:34:36Yaron Brook?

  Sure. And I think, I think other people, other people confronted her with ideas of Anokia. I don't think Rothbard was the only one.

• 3:34:41Michael Malice?

  Correct. Roy Charles as well, yeah.

• 3:34:42Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, Roy Charles certainly did. And she rejected them. And she rejected them because she had, and, 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.

• 3:34:59Michael Malice?

  But it's just really interesting because this is the one time, in my view, and please correct me if I'm 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, you don't want it like it is now, but like your version of the, 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 gonna 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 with this?

• 3:35:33Yaron Brook?

  Why would I care?

• 3:35:34Michael Malice?

  Well, you would care because if you're saying the government has a monopoly on force between these two oceans.

• 3:35:39Yaron Brook?

  So you can, you can do that as long as you don't violate somebody else's rights.

• 3:35:42Michael Malice?

  Sure. But what I'm saying is we just declare ourselves sovereign. We're not going to pay any income taxes. We're going to be peaceful people. We're going to contribute. And, and when Lex and I have disputes, we're going to call Joe. That's Joe Rogan. You're never going to get to meet him, but he's a good guy.

• 3:35:56Yaron Brook?

  I know.

• 3:35:58Michael Malice?

  We're gonna call Joe and Joe's gonna resolve it between us.

• 3:36:00Yaron Brook?

  He's so good at, at like, you know, needling and, and getting you off topic that way. It's really, he's really effective at it. He's Muhammad Ali and you're Joe Fisher. I, I always say, when I debate, when I debate communists, I always say to them.

• 3:36:14Michael Malice?

  You mean Lex?

• 3:36:15Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, maybe Lex, maybe I should. Tom Rad, I love you. That, that if they really believe. Burgundy, not red. If they really believe in what they think, then they should be advocates of capitalism. Because under capitalism, under my system of government, capitalist government, right? They could go and start a commune. They can live in copiness, they can live to each according to, for each, to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability. All they want and, and live their pathetic miserable lives that way. And, and the government would never intervene because the whole view of capitalism is freedom, is we live the way alone. Right? As long as you're not violating my rights, as long as you're not taking my property, as long as you're not engaging with. So, so in that sense, yeah, you and Lex can form your own thing. I don't believe in compulsory taxes anyway.

• 3:37:00Yaron Brook?

  So you and Lex can do your own thing, never pay taxes.

• 3:37:04Yaron Brook?

  Do your thing, as long as you're not violating the laws, and the laws are very limited, right? Because they're only there to protect individual rights. So as long as you're not violating somebody else's property rights or, or inflicting force on anybody else, you're peaceful. You can do what you want, you know, don't have, yeah. Great, case in place. Don't, don't have sex with kids, right? I will stop immediately. Good. The rest of us are just playing checkers and he's playing chess. Yeah, I mean, I mean, 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 our point, right? Then we're in complete agreement. The, the, the only thing you can do is,

• 3:37:42Yaron Brook?

  you know, try to enforce arbitrary laws that you come up with on me. Of course, absolutely. Okay, great.

• 3:37:49Yaron Brook?

  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we lived in a world where rights protecting laws are superfluous? But the reality is usually that somebody violates them, whether by accident or, 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.

• 3:38:15Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 3:38:15Lex Fridman?

  So can I ask you a question? Under anarchism,

• 3:38:18Michael Malice?

  I always do.

• 3:38:19Lex Fridman?

  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?

• 3:38:28Michael Malice?

  Let me answer this. This is a great question. I know what you're going with this. This is often presented as a criticism of anarchism. And this is actually something I think Yaron 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 was one of Mises's 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. And every year, and there's no shortage of clothes.

• 3:39:13Michael Malice?

  In fact, we make so many clothes that we send them in landfill sizes to overseas poor countries. And you have people in these destitute countries wearing Adidas shirts. They can't even read English, but because we don't know what to do with all these clothes. That's how the glory of free enterprise is. The problem is you, problem is this loosely. Everything comes cheap and over abundant. The food, you know? Well, it doesn't actually come over abundant. But it's done properly. Sure. It's the. That's fair. Supply meets demand. Sure, 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. Obesity. Then the kids are too fat. It's just going to be like, I have four who are dead in the crib. I wish, I mean, what kind of fantasy, what kind of paradise is this?

• 3:39:56Michael Malice?

  So what you would have, we have this right now in certain senses. You have the Hasidim, you have Sharia, you have different, you have,

• 3:40:05Michael Malice?

  I'm sure in the medical system, they have their own kind of private courts and court marshals is another example of this, although obviously that's through the state. So you would have innovation in law, under markets, just the same ways you'd have it. And we have this already. Maybe it's not, Yaron doesn't like it 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 changing.

• 3:40:40Yaron Brook?

  So what's interesting, what's interesting relating to this is that one of the ways Ayn Rand proposed raising revenue for the government because she was against. Was let's say we have a contract. We could just have it arbitrated 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 there's definitely a, a, a, a value to having this innovation and the public space. But I don't believe that is the case with murder. I don't believe that is the case with violent crime. And, and it's funny you bring up Sharia because David Friedman, when he gives, when he gives.

• 3:41:20Michael Malice?

  Wait, I gotta ask you to clarify. I'm not trying to interrupt you. You were talking about with murder. I mean, you would agree, I think, just to clarify for the audience. That there is room for innovation in murder because there's things like manslaughter, there's murder one, murder two.

• 3:41:32Yaron Brook?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it happens at, at, at a market level. I don't think there's a market innovation for murder. Somebody has to figure out what those standards are and they will evolve as we gain more knowledge.

• 3:41:42Michael Malice?

  But we're all agreement that the, the word murder means very different things.

• 3:41:45Yaron Brook?

  Oh, absolutely. And, and circumstances matter and, and, and what do you, standards of proof, standards of evidence. All of that, there has to be a standard.

• 3:41:53Michael Malice?

  And consequences too, yes.

• 3:41:54Yaron Brook?

  All of that, there has to be a standard and that's, that's what the, that's what I think a proper government provides.

• 3:42:01Yaron Brook?

  But so David Friedman uses in, in some of his talks about private law, he uses. He, he uses Sharia law in Somalia as an example. Look, legal, legal systems evolve privately, independent. Yeah, authoritarian ones, ones that, that don't respect the rights of women at all. Are you married?

• 3:42:19Lex Fridman?

  Uh, no, no, but we all want to have sex with our mother, as Freud would say.

• 3:42:24Yaron Brook?

  Oh my God, can we make that a clip?

• 3:42:26Lex Fridman?

  Yep.

• 3:42:27Yaron Brook?

  Where the hell did that come from?

• 3:42:29Michael Malice?

  That's much better than what I was just saying about the kids.

• 3:42:32Lex Fridman?

  I appreciate that. Okay, so we went in a voluntary way, although sometimes for Yaron and sometimes for Michael it felt involuntary. But I, we all got the big guns. So how do we land this? Clearly, there's a disagreement about anarchism here.

• 3:42:51Michael Malice?

  I think we're in a, I think there's a big agreement. Because if Yaron 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.

• 3:43:05Yaron Brook?

  So, so if you take, if you take the example of Sharia law, which was mentioned earlier. So if you impose, if you have a little community within this, within my world, right? That, that imposes Sharia law.

• 3:43:19Yaron Brook?

  If, if it starts mutilating little girls.

• 3:43:21Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 3:43:22Yaron Brook?

  Then that, then you impose your law on it, right? You impose the, the law on it because it's an issue of 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, and, and allow her, you know, prevent them from using force against her. And that's it, right?

• 3:43:46Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 3:43:47Yaron Brook?

  Now, I, I think it's more complicated than that, right? Because I think there are complex issue property rights often, where it's not going to be easy for you guys to resolve. And particularly if you interact with people outside of your community.

• 3:43:58Michael Malice?

  Sure.

• 3:43:59Yaron Brook?

  But, but, uh, but yeah, I, you know, that's, my view is government is there to protect individual rights. That's it, to otherwise leave you alone.

• 3:44:08Lex Fridman?

  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, uh, the, still called The White Pill?

• 3:44:19Michael Malice?

  The White Pill, yeah. And the first line of The White Pill is, Ayn Rand did not laugh. I'm not joking. That's literally the first line. I believe you. Because it opens up with her, who knows what the book's gonna look like when it's done. But as of now, that's the beginning. Because it opens up with her testimony at the House Un-American Activities Committee, where she's trying to explain to these congresspeople 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 in the fountainhead, spoiler alert, is Howard Rourke laughed. Yep. So this is a little inversion of that. It says, "Einrand did not laugh." Because she had this, Einrand was a huge fan of America, as am I.

• 3:45:02Michael Malice?

  She took our political system very seriously. She had enormous reverence for institutions. One example of this is one of the villains of 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. Given 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. Uh oh.

• 3:45:47Michael Malice?

  I don't know, no. The point being, which sets up the broader point of the 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 pens have a race. They're sure they're mistakes. And they really made a point to downplay, really gratuitously, some of the unimaginable atrocities of the communism. And just one more sentence. And going through the work and learning about what they actually did is so jaw dropping.

• 3:46:34Michael Malice?

  That it's and if I didn't know about it and many people I'm friends with who are historians who entered 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 come to America. We, American exceptionalism has a positive context, but also have a negative context where you think we're invincible. All these horrible things that happens in other countries, it can't possibly happen here where America was special. And it's completely an absurdity.

• 3:47:16Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen the movie, Mr. Jones?

• 3:47:19Michael Malice?

  My friend wrote it. No, I haven't. But Walter Duranty and his quotes, I have a thread on Twitter. Walter Duranty, for those who don't know, he won a Pulitzer 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 of doubt, an accidental genocide, it's still mind boggling. And also, you know, Anne Applebaum,

• 3:48:01Michael Malice?

  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. So they come back at night, take your hand, put in the door jamb, keep slamming the door, ransack your house. They didn't have to find the food, burn down your house, take all your clothes, goodbye, good luck. I don't recall saying good luck. Yeah. So it's

• 3:48:37Yaron Brook?

  So I highly recommend the movie because it's very well done.

• 3:48:40Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 3:48:41Yaron Brook?

  It's very well directed. It's beautifully made. It's stunningly. Effective.

• 3:48:46Michael Malice?

  Okay.

• 3:48:46Yaron Brook?

  And illustrating exactly that. The scenes in Ukraine during the famine, oh, your heart, I mean, it's crushing. And it shifts to black and white. It's very, very well made aesthetically. So highly recommend.

• 3:48:59Michael Malice?

  And it's written by Andriy Shalupa. She's a Ukrainian friend of mine. She introduced me, Yanmi Park, who's a big North Korean defector. And it's, this is, 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 of their big complaints about, you know, against people who are Jewish is like, oh, we hear all about the Holocaust. How come you don't talk about the Holocaust more? I'm like, I'm trying to do my part. I agree with you. That we need to be talking more about the Holocaust more.

• 3:49:28Yaron Brook?

  Absolutely. And it's, it's sad that not more movies that are anti Soviet, which tells you a lot about the view of the intelligentsia. 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, exactly. It was implemented exactly how it has to be implemented. There's no alternative.

• 3:49:47Lex Fridman?

  Can we talk about The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? And which character do you find most fascinating, ones that kind of you meet in your own mind, that you almost have conversations with, or has an influence on you and your life in general?

• 3:50:03Michael Malice?

  You know what character I like? Because I know no one.

• 3:50:05Lex Fridman?

  Good or bad? Sorry.

• 3:50:06Michael Malice?

  No one, no one ever 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'd think they're just, but there's something about the resonates with you. I can't even explain this. But I love the character in Atlas Shrugged of Lilian Reardon, who's Hank Reardon's wife. And what I, what is amazing about her, she's, she's his wife, he's this big industrialist innovator, and she's this like former beauty in that, but she's so cold.

• 3:50:36Michael Malice?

  And soulless that there's, I mean, I joke about, you know, Anne Rand'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 Riordan invents Riordan 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 Riordan metal. This is his life goal. This is like Prometheus bringing fire. And she's like, what the fuck is this?

• 3:51:07Yaron Brook?

  It would block me diamonds.

• 3:51:08Michael Malice?

  Yeah, you could probably die. What is this shit? And Dagny, who's another industrialist, she's a heroine, very strong female character in Atlas Shrugged is at a party. And she goes, I got diamonds, let's trade. And Lillian's like, you want this? And she's like, yes, because that's the concretization, the human mind. These are rocks. And Lillian's like, okay, whatever. And that character is someone who has a lot of resonance in our culture. This kind of soulless, it's easy to write a soulless male figure, like Peter Keating, in some ways a soulless. But that, for some reason, when it's like a soulless female, it seems that much more chilling and effective. Do you not agree though, that Lillian Riordan is amazingly, very powerful figure?

• 3:51:53Yaron Brook?

  Powerful figure. And I think, I think Riordan is too. And what I love about Riordan 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 you take Riordan 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 Dagny, of course, he gives a speech, but the speech is.

• 3:52:39Yaron Brook?

  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

• 3:52:55Michael Malice?

  And this is not the one.

• 3:52:56Yaron Brook?

  And he can't, yeah, and he can't connect the two. He can't connect the sex with the love. He can't connect the sex with adoration and with the values. So her characters are anything I think but cardboard characters because I think they, Dagny 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 taking the first train ride across the John Gold Bridge. And she's, they're in the engine room and it's traveling through. And the way she's describing Dagny and it's almost like Dagny's having sex with the machine, right?

• 3:53:38Yaron Brook?

  With the, 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, 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.

• 3:54:00Michael Malice?

  What's really great about that scene, just in terms of constructing a novel, I'm not going to spoil anything. So the Atlas Shrugged has three acts, like three act structure is not uncommon. And the first act is about Hank Riordan, you know, 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,

• 3:54:43Michael Malice?

  oh, you think things are going great, he's overcome? Hold on a minute. And then the rest of it, she's just rea- and your sense of injustice is triggered as a reader to such an nth degree because you saw what he went through to get to this point. And now you're seeing it taking away people's 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 unconscionable. And I'll just quote and say, my favorite criticism of Ayn Rand 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 than she has in her book.

• 3:55:26Yaron Brook?

  And not just politicians, you find intellectuals today.

• 3:55:28Michael Malice?

  Oh, of course. So, yeah, yeah.

• 3:55:29Yaron Brook?

  Way, way over the ti- you know, even whenever that Edelstruck that was go- and nobody really talks like this. No, they do.

• 3:55:36Michael Malice?

  Let me give you, let me give you one example. There was a story she wrote, which she never published. They published her journals, the Ayn Rand Institute. And there was one character, and this is a prototype of Ellsworth 2. He was the villain of, one of the villains of the Fountainhead. And basically, the kid had like deformed legs or broke his legs or something 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 deformity. Accept your fate. And you're reading this, I'm like, what dad is not going to give his kid leg braces? It's 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.

• 3:56:19Michael Malice?

  And you're sitting there, and whether you agree with this or not, this is very close to what she was saying. And when I read what she was saying, I'm like, okay, crazy Ayn Rand. This is not a thing. And it's like, oh, like, it's, yeah, the craziness is that it's not braces, it's hearing.

• 3:56:32Yaron Brook?

  It's, it's, yeah, and what evil to deny your kid hearing. I mean, God, so.

• 3:56:37Michael Malice?

  Here's the other thing, if you want deaf culture, which I would believe is a thing, sign language, whatever, they could turn it off.

• 3:56:42Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:43Michael Malice?

  Yeah, if you want, you give them the choice.

• 3:56:44Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:45Michael Malice?

  Let them, to, to, tonight, I'm sorry, one more thing. To, you know, Rand used the word evil frequently. And I think maybe I can make the argument she uses too loosely. If you are denying a child the gift of music, I will say that's evil.

• 3:56:59Yaron Brook?

  I agree completely.

• 3:57:00Michael Malice?

  Unambiguously.

• 3:57:01Yaron Brook?

  Yep.

• 3:57:02Michael Malice?

  Go online and listen, watch videos of people getting hearing aids and being able to hear for the first time.

• 3:57:10Yaron Brook?

  And seeing what happens to faces.

• 3:57:10Michael Malice?

  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 and a half-year-old who can't even talk. And then you see their reaction when they hear mom's voice. It's so beautiful and moving.

• 3:57:30Yaron Brook?

  Absolutely.

• 3:57:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's a few things that's moving. It is, it's like, it's one of the, one of the ways to rethink technology perhaps.

• 3:57:37Michael Malice?

  And there's this, this, it's really funny because sometimes it'll be this tough dude, right? And he's been deaf all his life and then they put hearing in, the girlfriend's like, can you hear me? And he's trying to be tough for three seconds.

• 3:57:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, he just loses.

• 3:57:49Michael Malice?

  And you just sit there, it's just this.

• 3:57:51Yaron Brook?

  No, absolutely, and that's true of any sense. I mean.

• 3:57:53Lex Fridman?

  Like colorblind people seeing color for the first time, that kind of thing. I think there's a few.

• 3:57:57Yaron Brook?

  It's not quite the same, but, but, but it's somewhat, but if you're blind and suddenly can see.

• 3:58:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:58:02Yaron Brook?

  I mean, it's just, it's just stunning, right? I mean, and, and how do we form our concepts? How do we think? We have to, we get information from reality, right? We, we, 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.

• 3:58:20Lex Fridman?

  There's a potential with that, with the Neuralink too, so further developments there. So.

• 3:58:24Yaron Brook?

  Yes.

• 3:58:25Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 3:58:31Michael Malice?

  Yeah, don't spoil the book.

• 3:58:32Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 3:58:32Yaron Brook?

  Well, but you can say, you can say.

• 3:58:34Lex Fridman?

  What, what's the importance of this character? What's the importance of this question?

• 3:58:37Yaron Brook?

  I mean, without, the importance of, so I want to give a talk on who is John Galt? And who is 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 in pursuit of their rational values and pursue their happiness fully uncompromisingly with no, with no, you know, compromise and, and, you know, sticking to their integrity. Anybody can be John Galt in that sense.

• 3:59:04Michael Malice?

  I, I, I think one of the. Mottos I live by is all we are tasked to maybe this is a little bit religious, but I think your own is going to 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 of not at the expense of other people, you can go to your grave and patting yourself on the back.

• 3:59:29Yaron Brook?

  I mean, I mean, to me, the the leaving the world a better place. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's not what drives me. What drives me is, I mean, what 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 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.

• 3:59:58Michael Malice?

  But they didn't leave the world a better place.

• 3:59:59Yaron Brook?

  They left the world a better place, but they didn't, they didn't, they didn't live their potential. They didn't, or they or they died feeling guilty about it, or they they 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 are never happy, never happy in their own in their own souls, in their own in their own life. And to me, that's what counts. And if you're going to be happy, you'll leave the better world a better place.

• 4:00:27Michael Malice?

  And that's what John Galt symbolizes.

• 4:00:29Yaron Brook?

  To me, it's, it's living your life by your standards, by your values, and and and pursuing, pursuing that that happiness.

• 4:00:39Michael Malice?

  Well, I take, I'm sorry, 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 what you're going to accomplish. And you think to yourself, well, if I 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.

• 4:01:04Yaron Brook?

  Successes should not be relative.

• 4:01:05Michael Malice?

  Yes.

• 4:01:06Yaron Brook?

  So that goes back to second handedness.

• 4:01:07Michael Malice?

  Yes.

• 4:01:08Yaron Brook?

  Success is not being better than other people's. Success is not being the best. Success is maximizing your potential, whatever that is. And and look, you know, I know people. You know, I have a son who's who could be a really good engineer, really good mathematician, really good scientist, but he he decided he wants to write comedy, right? So he might have been a better mathematician than he 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 materially in every other sense. But that's that's what you pursue.

• 4:01:43Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:43Yaron Brook?

  You know, so it's it's really being true to yourself in a deep sense. And and if you are true to yourself, yeah, you'll leave the world a better place. But that's not the essence. The essence is you. No, focus on 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.

• 4:02:04Michael Malice?

  But yeah.

• 4:02:05Yaron Brook?

  You'll impact people.

• 4:02:06Michael Malice?

  We're looking at the same thing in different ways.

• 4:02:08Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 4:02:09Lex Fridman?

  It's at least in my little corner of the world. It was disappointing how rare that that is. So one of the reasons I'm here in Austin and one of the reasons I my work gravitated towards Elon Musk is because he represents that person for me in the world of technology, in the world of CEO, in the world of business. It was very surprising to me, the more I've learned about the world of tech, how few people live unapologetically, fully to their potential. I'm sure people others do that, maybe music and art. I'm not sure. I don't know about those worlds. I do know about the technology world.

• 4:02:53Lex Fridman?

  And it was disappointing to me how many people compromise their integrity in subtle ways at first, but then it becomes a slippery slope.

• 4:03:01Michael Malice?

  There's this, can I say this? There's this great quote, and I always forget if it's Steinbeck or 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. You know, 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.

• 4:03:28Yaron Brook?

  People say there are no slippery slopes. They are, and they're big and they're very slippery and people slide.

• 4:03:33Michael Malice?

  This is the biggest one.

• 4:03:34Yaron Brook?

  And and people violate the integrity even without stealing just little things about how they treat other people, how they treat themselves. The values they pursue, they don't go after the profession they really wanted to. They compromise with in ways that they shouldn't with their spouse or with their mothers or whatever.

• 4:03:49Michael Malice?

  They look the other way when they see justice.

• 4:03:51Yaron Brook?

  Forty.

• 4:03:51Michael Malice?

  Yep, yep.

• 4:03:52Yaron Brook?

  And this is, this is why people go through a middle age, midlife crisis. Midlife crisis is a crisis where you suddenly realize I didn't do it. I 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 how can you? It would require to be a hero and very few of them are. 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 Mike was making. You don't have to be the best.

• 4:04:32Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 4:04:33Yaron Brook?

  You know, you don't have to be a CEO to to live to 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 that created for them. So I I think there are more good people out there, but but yes, I I the, one of the saddest things of growing up is is noted. Or even when you're, when you're a teenager and looking at adults and noticing how few of them actually live. I mean, are really alive.

• 4:05:11Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:05:11Yaron Brook?

  In a sense of 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.

• 4:05:20Michael Malice?

  Yes, and the the other thing is they don't have to. That's what people don't appreciate.

• 4:05:24Yaron Brook?

  Particularly not in the world that we live in today, that's so wealthy and so many, we all have so many opportunities.

• 4:05:30Lex Fridman?

  So what, 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?

• 4:05:53Michael Malice?

  Can I say, I don't think, I 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 Rourke is a lot better character for a young person. Or Witten. Yeah, but Rourke is all, the entirety of Fountainhead is Rourke. So, and Witten's the one of several. We barely know John Galt. Yeah, so, but Rourke is someone where you could be like, okay. And what Rourke also gives young people is

• 4:06:25Lex Fridman?

  That's in The Fountainhead.

• 4:06:26Michael Malice?

  The Fountainhead, 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, I'm falling between the cracks, I'm going to accomplish that, I'm going to be a failure. And he gives them the courage. There's even a scene in The Fountainhead, which is this amazing scene, I, 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, you're on, please correct me. And he's like, who built this? And Rourke said, I did. And the line is, you know, Rourke didn't realize it, but he just gave that kid the courage to face the lifetime.

• 4:07:09Michael Malice?

  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 Rourke and he's not a real person, but there's aspects of him that you can applaud in 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 this story several times, I would have Thanksgiving dinner with her. I was working second shift for to mid- And we were 24 seven help desk and I got the schedule for the next week and I I told my grandma I'm gonna have lunch with her on Thanksgiving.

• 4:07:50Michael Malice?

  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 off, second shift, I'm like, this Thanksgiving, I I promised 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 hundred percent, not even a question. If I asked my grandmother, can we have dinner instead, she 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.

• 4:08:32Michael Malice?

  And they did fire me and I'm and I have no regrets. And because if they, if I, 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 I like to use humor because humor is a great way to shortcut the brain and get the truth to them directly. I say, if you know someone is in town, so with it's their birthday and they're not doing anything.

• 4:09:13Michael Malice?

  Take them out. And I say, I do this for Rand reasons. 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 in these terms. What's it gonna cost you? Thirty dollars? But for the rest of their life or a few years, that person will remember you. It'd be like, you know what? This person did right by me. And 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 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.

• 4:09:55Michael Malice?

  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, Egon Hubris, which is $250 on eBay now and it moves at that, not not too shabby. The point being. You know what? Someone had a movie made about him. Someone is 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 via 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.

• 4:10:34Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, I mean, I agree with all of that. And I like the line, Ayn Rand's line about man is a 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 even somebody like Sam Harris, when you keep telling people they don't have free will, then you don't have a self-made soul. 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 of their own lives. And make the kind of choices that are necessary to create the kind of model character that is necessary for them to be successful.

• 4:11:15Yaron Brook?

  So I'd encourage people to go read Founthead and Atlas Shrugged because put aside the politics, put aside even aspects of the philosophy. Focus on these models. These are, you know, How to Work is a great model for 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.

• 4:11:40Yaron Brook?

  And then spend the time, and this is, I, you know, 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, how can I make a living at this? How can I do this and live through this? And then, you know, 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.

• 4:12:13Yaron Brook?

  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 wanna be around artsy people, maybe you should go to Hollywood, maybe you should go to New York. You know, I don't know, but, but figure out what kind of life you wanna live, what kind of people you wanna hang out, what, what kind of woman you wanna spend your life with, what kind of, what kind of romantic relationship you wanna have. Figure that out and go and do it. Don't sit around. Life is not.

• 4:12:41Michael Malice?

  Or try and fail. It's okay.

• 4:12:42Yaron Brook?

  Oh, failure, failure, absolutely. And, and learn from that failure. And, and that's the other thing. Think about what you're doing, why you're succeeding, why you're failing, and, and keep improving, keep working on it, because it's not just gonna happen like this. Nobody, nobody, nobody is Francisco to take a character out of Atlas Shrugged who succeeds at everything first try, right? We, we all need to fail a few times, we all need to, but what have you got to lose? Every second is never gonna be back. I mean, these are all cliches, but they're all true cliches. So, think, make a, figure out what your values are, and, and try to apply your, your reason, your, your rational thought on getting those values. And try to, we talked about early on in the show, in the interview, we talked about

• 4:13:27Yaron Brook?

  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, to, to cheer on when good things happen, and, and to, to, to be negative emotions when, when it's justified that they're negative. So, work on integrating your soul. Work, so creating your own soul, that's, that's the real challenge.

• 4:13:53Michael Malice?

  And I'll give one piece of meta advice. When you're young, you're gonna be clueless, because you're gonna be ignorant, you don't have the data. Don't ask your dopey friends for advice, because they wanna be helpful.

• 4:14:04Yaron Brook?

  Or your parents.

• 4:14:04Michael Malice?

  But the friends wanna be helpful. They're as dopey as you, they're uninformed as you, so they're just gonna give you platitudes, and you're gonna be worse off, because now you're gonna be confused. Especially with social media, reach out to people who are older than you, who are accomplished. You'd be surprised how often you gotta send them 20 bucks, buy them dinner, buy their book, whatever it takes. You are getting free, world-class advice for very cheap. And, and that is really a mechanism for success.

• 4:14:32Yaron Brook?

  And here's something very unpopular and not sexy. This is why people probably unfollow me.

• 4:14:38Michael Malice?

  That's not why.

• 4:14:38Yaron Brook?

  Read. Well, you'll tell me, you'll tell me why after. Read, read, read. Because you're not always gonna have access to those experts. And I'm not just 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. You know, read Dostoevsky, right? Read, read Hugo, 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.

• 4:15:24Lex Fridman?

  What, maybe you could speak to love and relationship in your own life, but in general, if we look at Alice Shrugged, 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 Auroch, Reardon-type character and do it? Live your life to the fullest in, in, 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?

• 4:16:09Lex Fridman?

  Is there any, anything to say?

• 4:16:12Michael Malice?

  I'll say one thing, because then I'll defer to your own, because he's the one who's married here. I, I don't think it's a balance. I think they complement each other and feed off each other. So it's like, how do you balance having shoes and pants? It's like, no, you want both.

• 4:16:23Yaron Brook?

  You, you want it all.

• 4:16:24Michael Malice?

  And, 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, that's the goal. Am I wrong?

• 4:16:33Yaron Brook?

  No, absolutely. It feeds off of each other. It's, it's synergistic. It's completely synergistic. The, the problem that people have, I think. Where they get into challenges is when they view them as opposites, right?

• 4:16:44Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 4:16:44Yaron Brook?

  Work or family? Well, if you don't work, the family, you can't 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 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 gonna be the same. The balance is, you know, the, the time you spend at work and with family when you're young or when you have little kids or when they're grown up is all gonna be different. It's gonna depend on your priorities at the point, but it's all gonna feed off of each other.

• 4:17:29Lex Fridman?

  So maybe another word outside of balance is sacrifice. Do you think relationship involves sacrifice or no?

• 4:17:35Yaron Brook?

  Does he know what he's doing?

• 4:17:36Michael Malice?

  I know, I think he's trolling you.

• 4:17:38Yaron Brook?

  Is he trolling you?

• 4:17:39Michael Malice?

  He's a big troll.

• 4:17:39Yaron Brook?

  Is he trolling?

• 4:17:40Michael Malice?

  Lex is the biggest troll on Twitter.

• 4:17:41Yaron Brook?

  Ever.

• 4:17:42Lex Fridman?

  Well, sunglasses.

• 4:17:43Yaron Brook?

  Ever sacrifice.

• 4:17:46Lex Fridman?

  Never sacrifice.

• 4:17:47Michael Malice?

  But see, he means sacrifice in the context.

• 4:17:48Yaron Brook?

  I know, I know, so I'm gonna define.

• 4:17:49Michael Malice?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 4:17:50Yaron Brook?

  Sacrifice in my world.

• 4:17:52Michael Malice?

  Can I say one thing before we go, we get sidebar? Rand, Rand had a good example of we're talking about balance. So she was married to this guy Frank O'Connor. 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 till 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 I and I just gotta 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 Pawn, which was her screenplay which never produced, he told her, you can buy any kind of fur coat as long as it's mink. He wouldn't, he's like, you earned this? Celebrate it.

• 4:18:37Michael Malice?

  So that was a good example.

• 4:18:38Yaron Brook?

  And that's a good relationship, absolutely. No, sacrifice is the, is the giving of a, 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, a trade. You're constantly trading. You're not trading materially, but you're trading spiritually. You, you 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 would never last. It has to be in give and take constantly, in different ways, right? Different values. It's not, it's not a monetary exchange. But it's constantly you're giving and you're, you're receiving and you're giving, right?

• 4:19:21Yaron Brook?

  And it's, it's, it's gotta, that's gotta be in balance. And, 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, they're 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, like Jordan Peterson, sometimes he, he uses it both ways, right? That's the problem.

• 4:19:42Michael Malice?

  You know Jordan?

• 4:19:43Yaron Brook?

  I don't know him personally, no. Jordan Peterson, I said, I didn't call him Jordan, you see?

• 4:19:47Michael Malice?

  Just wanted to be clear.

• 4:19:47Yaron Brook?

  Yeah. Uh, he uses it in his talks as, sometimes he uses it as just as I described it. Uh, and he's supportive of that, like the sacrifice Jesus made, right? And sometimes he uses it 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'm in, uh, you know, I've got a whole relationship built around what I'm giving. It's not that I'm not getting anything back. What I'm getting back is that she is recovering, right? Is that she is, she's still alive or whatever it is that, 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?

• 4:20:31Yaron Brook?

  Cause I signed a contract a long time ago. Um, so it's, uh, it's, it's not a sacrifice. Children are not a sacrifice. If 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 love staying with the kids, then get a babysitter or don't have kids, which is the better, better approach.

• 4:20:53Michael Malice?

  Here's another tricky question.

• 4:20:54Yaron Brook?

  Yeah.

• 4:20:54Michael Malice?

  Who did, what book did Ayn Rand say is the most evil book in all of serious literature?

• 4:20:58Yaron Brook?

  Tolstoy?

• 4:20:59Michael Malice?

  It was Anna Karenina.

• 4:21:00Yaron Brook?

  Tolstoy, yeah, Anna Karenina.

• 4:21:00Michael Malice?

  And the reason it was that book, which I haven't read, please correct me if I get the plot wrong. Rand 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, at all. And she ends up killing herself. Whereas Rand's version, and we can take this out of the romantic context. It, I am delighted when I could be of use to my friends. It is, 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.

• 4:21:29Yaron Brook?

  Anna Karenina, he gives up.

• 4:21:32Yaron Brook?

  The love of his life.

• 4:21:33Michael Malice?

  Oh, is that what it is?

• 4:21:34Yaron Brook?

  The amazing girl. He has an affair with her outside of marriage, taints her. Is married to the stupid, but she gives him the prestige and everything.

• 4:21:44Michael Malice?

  Oh, that's clearly very anti-rank.

• 4:21:46Yaron Brook?

  And the, and the, the, the, the, the, the smart, real, the one he, he loves, she commits suicide in there.

• 4:21:53Michael Malice?

  Okay, I got it wrong.

• 4:21:53Yaron Brook?

  So it's, it's, it's, um, it's, it's about him choosing mediocrity and nothingness over this amazing, over love. So, so pursuing your values is so crucial. So, so don't sacrifice. That doesn't mean that if you want to eat Chinese and she want to eat Italian, you don't once in a while eat Italian on that day, right?

• 4:22:13Michael Malice?

  Just noodles.

• 4:22:14Yaron Brook?

  That's, that's.

• 4:22:15Michael Malice?

  Just get noodles.

• 4:22:16Yaron Brook?

  That's silly, right? That's not a sacrifice, not in the sense in which we're talking about. That's, you know, it doesn't mean don't compromise. It doesn't mean don't compromise on, on the day-to-day stuff. It means don't compromise on moral values, doesn't, you don't compromise on the big stuff. And you never, and, 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, the person who loves you will stop, or, or will stop loving you or love you less. If you love yourself less, they, you know, you have to, Jay, I also said, in order to say I love you, you have to be able to say the I. Right?

• 4:23:01Yaron Brook?

  You have to, you have to be somebody, you have to know yourself, you have to have value. And, and so love is a, love is a profound emotional response to value.

• 4:23:12Lex Fridman?

  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, Yaron, Michael, what is the most beautiful thing you find about the, the other? So, let's go Yaron first. What do you think about Michael? What, that you appreciate about him?

• 4:23:33Yaron Brook?

  Where'd he get these questions?

• 4:23:34Lex Fridman?

  That you think, what, what do you love? What do you love about Michael?

• 4:23:38Michael Malice?

  Then he's gonna edit it.

• 4:23:41Yaron Brook?

  See, that makes sense.

• 4:23:42Michael Malice?

  I just programmed him.

• 4:23:43Lex Fridman?

  Press play. It's all just a pre-recorded message.

• 4:23:46Yaron Brook?

  So I've never met Michael before, so this is my.

• 4:23:48Michael Malice?

  That's not true. You have, and you're.

• 4:23:50Yaron Brook?

  So I don't remember ever meeting Michael before.

• 4:23:51Michael Malice?

  And you're the, you're the, you're the very beginning of the new right, is me meeting you, is the.

• 4:23:56Yaron Brook?

  I'm in the book?

• 4:23:57Michael Malice?

  Yes.

• 4:23:57Yaron Brook?

  All right. Well, now I have to read his book, because I mean, it's.

• 4:24:00Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:00Yaron Brook?

  I, am I presented positively or negatively?

• 4:24:02Michael Malice?

  Very.

• 4:24:03Yaron Brook?

  Oh, okay, good.

• 4:24:06Yaron Brook?

  Lex is not so sure. He's like.

• 4:24:07Michael Malice?

  No, I left it. He goes, are you, have I presented positively or negatively? I just go, very.

• 4:24:11Yaron Brook?

  Very.

• 4:24:13Michael Malice?

  And he's like, oh, good. I'm like, is it?

• 4:24:17Yaron Brook?

  So he's, Michael Sharp is quick. Um, he's, uh, he's, he's funny, although some of the humor is beyond me.

• 4:24:25Lex Fridman?

  That's a nice way of saying he's very intelligent.

• 4:24:28Yaron Brook?

  Yeah, he's very, he's definitely very intelligent and, um, but, but also very engaging. I think that's very engaging.

• 4:24:36Lex Fridman?

  And a sharp dresser.

• 4:24:38Yaron Brook?

  Oh, he's definitely, well, yeah, I, I'm gonna compliment him on stuff that's obvious and everybody can see by the video.

• 4:24:43Lex Fridman?

  The sex appeal. Let me also just comment one thing you mentioned about you deriving joy from being of value to your friends.

• 4:24:52Michael Malice?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:52Lex Fridman?

  You know, people talk to me about you sometimes, like, because you'll do humor about various things and things like, maybe you're some kind of, uh, crazy person or something like that. Yeah, I know. You enjoy this aspect of it, but, uh, you know, I say that the reason I'm friends with Michael is there's like real love there. And like the kind of kindness you give to your friends, to people like that are close to you, to your family, uh, is, uh, is amazing, man. So that, that's one of my favorite things about you. Your intellect aside, your philosophies 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 saying nice things about you.

• 4:25:34Yaron Brook?

  You always get it.

• 4:25:36Lex Fridman?

  You know, I take it all back. Um.

• 4:25:39Michael Malice?

  Can I say one thing? I, I, this, you're, you're joking, but this is something that's very key. And this is something in a Rand in 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, 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, it, it is 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

• 4:26:24Michael Malice?

  that are extreme and extremely negative.

• 4:26:27Lex Fridman?

  I gotta say about Texas, one of the, 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.

• 4:26:55Michael Malice?

  You know what the number two means?

• 4:26:56Lex Fridman?

  I've never counted up that high.

• 4:26:58Yaron Brook?

  So this is what happens when people are free?

• 4:27:02Lex Fridman?

  No.

• 4:27:03Yaron Brook?

  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, and supportive people.

• 4:27:18Lex Fridman?

  Okay, and now your task with, uh, doing-

• 4:27:21Yaron Brook?

  Talk about, talk about Bad Juju.

• 4:27:22Lex Fridman?

  To, to-

• 4:27:23Michael Malice?

  Juju.

• 4:27:24Lex Fridman?

  To practice, to practice what you preach, uh, is there in your soul that you can find one beautiful thing to say about Yaron now that you guys met for the first, second, or third time, or at least in book format?

• 4:27:37Michael Malice?

  So that's the easy one. So what I like about Yaron is that I think he is taking, one of the problems with maybe more old school objectivism is that they would just use Rand's arguments in Rand's way. And it's like, you're a parrot, you're not adding anything, and you're not going to be better than her. So you give this talk about, I think you can compare, was it Bill Gates to, uh, who was the one? No, no, who was the one who went to jail?

• 4:28:04Yaron Brook?

  Oh, Budgie Madoff.

• 4:28:05Michael Malice?

  To Dorian Madoff. And you make the point, you're like- Does anyone here really think Bernie Madoff 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 kills himself and 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.

• 4:28:50Michael Malice?

  You are the first person I met who I come at, literally the first of my friend who went to yeshiva with as a kid, who I come at us, there was a line on Friends where Ross and Rachel were thinking of dating, right? And they go, if we start dating, it would be like the third date. Cause they knew each other well. And then she's like, yeah, but it'd be like, 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,

• 4:29:32Michael Malice?

  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 increasingly 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 going to try to drive their car.

• 4:30:15Michael Malice?

  And I think some people who are, who are bad, and I have not encountered 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're prepared, but I mean, none of us talk beforehand and like make it spontaneous and the audience really enjoys that more because they know it's real, earnest and dynamic.

• 4:30:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I enjoy having you drive the car even though I believe you don't have a license.

• 4:30:45Yaron Brook?

  And you think we're gonna crash. No, I think he's an extraordinary interviewer because of all those things. He makes you feel visible.

• 4:30:53Yaron Brook?

  And, and he does, but he also comes across as really earnest. The, the questions are really, questions that you seem really interested in, that you, that you really want answers to. It doesn't come across as canned or I prepared my three book, book project.

• 4:31:12Lex Fridman?

  Thank you, Aron. Thank you, Michael. I was pretty sure that on a desert island, this would end in murder, but now I believe it may.

• 4:31:20Yaron Brook?

  Well, given his comments on Anarchy, it might still.

• 4:31:23Lex Fridman?

  It might still.

• 4:31:24Yaron Brook?

  It might still.

• 4:31:25Lex Fridman?

  Might still. The day is young, the night is young.

• 4:31:28Yaron Brook?

  Just beginning.

• 4:31:29Lex Fridman?

  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, Aron.

• 4:31:39Yaron Brook?

  We love you too.

• 4:31:41Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Michael Malice and Yaron Brook. And thank you to Ground News, Public Goods, Athletic Greens, Brave and 4Sigmatic. 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 for listening and hope to see you next time.