capitalism

TWS 48 | Wealth And Inequality

Wealth And Inequality: Debunking Myths About Socialism With Lawrence Reed

June 18, 2020 Patrick Donohoe Podcast Comments Off on Wealth And Inequality: Debunking Myths About Socialism With Lawrence Reed

TWS 48 | Wealth And Inequality

 

When it comes to wealth and inequality, it can be challenging to have a meaningful debate or conversation, especially with somebody that has an opposing point of view.

On today’s show, Lawrence Reed and Patrick Donohoe tackle these issues and share some insights on how you can take the right approach to inspire, educate, and have a positive influence over anybody.

Lawrence is the author of WAS JESUS A SOCIALIST? Why This Question Is Being Asked Again, And Why The Answer Is Almost Always Wrong, a book that debunks misconceptions about capitalism and the free markets with regards to being a follower of Jesus. He is the former President of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Wealth And Inequality: Debunking Myths About Socialism With Lawrence Reed

Thank you for tuning into the episode. Lawrence Reed is the President of FEE. He’s also written a number of books, but his book that came out is WAS JESUS A SOCIALIST? Why This Question Is Being Asked Again, And Why The Answer Is Almost Always Wrong. He’s my guest. He was on about several months ago and it was an incredible interview. He’s so smart and well-read, but also can articulate his perspective well. I realized that we’re in some challenging times right now and I hope you are thriving. I see so much opportunity all around us to do good, to build our business and to adjust things in our personal lives for the better. Hopefully, you are taking advantage of that.

Make sure you go to the website, TheWealthStandard.com. We have a new resource section that has a lot of the programs, the book recommendations and other free courses and digital material. It’s a resource section of the website. Additionally, there’s a link to Larry’s new book, which is available on Kindle, as well as a paperback format so make sure you check that out. His organization FEE, The Foundation for Economic Education is, FEE.org. I hope you learned something from this relatively short interview compared to our last one but Larry has a perspective that I know that if you had it, you would think differently.

Regardless of the subject matter as well as the context, because it’s religious in nature, don’t overlook this episode because there’s a lot of good principles and values in there regardless of what your faith is. Hopefully, you benefit from it. Thanks for connecting too. Head over to YouTube. The episode is on YouTube as well. Subscribe to the show if this is your first time as well as the YouTube Channel. Also, follow us on social media. We’re posting quite a bit there and connecting with the audience. I would love to have you subscribe. I’m going to cut to my interview with Larry Reed.

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Larry, thanks for joining me. It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost several months since we did the last interview. It seems like yesterday. It was one of the favorites that I had in memory as I think back on some of the meaningful conversations I’ve had. Thank you for joining us. I’m excited about the conversation.

Thank you, Patrick. It’s my pleasure. I remember that program we did in January of 2019 very fondly. It’s on my website as a matter of fact.

I appreciate you helping me get the word out there. Larry, so much has changed since January of 2019. What I thought would be interesting before we get into this semi-controversial subject is to set some context. Right now, I have two teenage daughters in my house. It’s interesting the conversations you have and how much debate exists. Where I’ve gone to is not trying to prove that I’m wrong or put my fist down with authority, but it’s to understand them at a deeper level and where they’re coming from. It’s not assuming that they know what I know, have experienced what I’ve experienced.

It totally changes the dynamic of the conversation. I wanted to pick your brain briefly so we can set some context for the controversial subject of wealth and inequality, and specifically, your new book, WAS JESUS A SOCIALIST? Why This Question Is Being Asked Again, And Why The Answer Is Almost Always Wrong. It’s pretty controversial. What are your thoughts as you’ve experienced not the mainstream stance on economics, on political policy, and economic policy? Where do you stand with having meaningful debate and conversation, especially with somebody that has an opposing point of view?

You’re taking the right approach with your daughters, especially at a young age, young people who always have a little spirit of rebellion in them and a sense of idealism. If you come across as “I’m right, you’re wrong. You take what I give you and make it your opinion.” That almost never works. If you show that you’re open to a different view, but still from on your own and even take a bigger picture approach, also interested in whatever truth may lead you to, you’re in the long run more likely to have a positive influence over anybody, your daughters and anybody else. Sadly, these days, in academia, there’s not an emphasis on critical thinking skills that there was when I was a student. There are so many in academia now who act in the classroom as if they’ve got a monopoly on the proper viewpoints and on things like compassion or caring for other people. Their purpose is to indoctrinate rather than to inspire and to educate and encourage students to think for themselves. That’s very unfortunate. That is not going to serve students well in later life. It never does.

I look at the conversation we’re about to have and how much of that is being had. However, the levels of depths that the conversation gets to it’s very shallow. With the conversations, I get to have with people that, just a couple levels deeper, I believe that there is tremendous wisdom there. The reason why I wanted to start with that and this is for the audience is not to take a stance on we’re right and you’re wrong. If you have a differing opinion, it’s to say, “I recognize, understand that there are all opinions out there.” I take a stance of I may be wrong. I may be stating something that may have a different perspective and information than I have not been privy to.

That’s why I try to bring on experts like Larry so I can understand my own beliefs better and question them so that I can make better decisions. I can live a more meaningful life. I believe that the more wisdom that you have, the better decisions you’re going to make and the better outcomes that you’re going to have. Larry, let’s get into this idea of inequality. I’ve sent you some questions in advance. You take a look at the fact that there is inequality and it’s something that there are some pretty strong positions on both sides. What does inequality mean to you and maybe in the context of the book that you just wrote?

There is a kind of equality that I’m all in favor of. We all should be in favor of and that’s equality before the law. The law should be impartial. It should not render judgments against people for or against, based upon irrelevant criteria, but rather whether or not you did it, whether or not you deserve it or whatever. Economic equality is what’s in the news so much these days. That’s the kind of equality I talk about in the book. There are a lot of people who claim that economic inequality, differences in income and material possessions, material wealth is a bad thing and that it would be better if we equalized or what as far in that direction as we could, the material possessions of individual people. The problem with that is that no two people who have ever lived have been precisely alike.

Why should we expect that what they contribute to the marketplace and how other people’s values that in the marketplace should be the same? We’re different in terms of the talents that we have. If I tried to be a professional basketball player, my income from that will always be drastically lower than, fill in the blank, famous basketball player of now. We’re different in terms of the talents we have, the willingness to work. Some people work long hours hard. They think hard as well as work hard. That sometimes often reflected in the incomes later. We’re different in terms of our savings. If we equalized everybody tonight, materially speaking, we’d have inequality again by noon tomorrow because some people would save it and some people would spend it. It’s illusory to think that people who are not the same or very different in so many ways would somehow create equal incomes in the marketplace.

What do you see as the biggest pushback to that, as far as the conversations you’ve had, especially on very deep and obviously with a religious spin onto it?

Probably the biggest pushback, and it extends from my misunderstanding, would be that the problem is the system is rigged. Some people get unfair advantages. They work the politicians to get special benefits at the expense of other people. I’m the first to say I’m against that too. That’s not freedom and free markets. That looks a lot more like socialism, where you have concentrated power in the hands of politicians, and then they choose to bestow that power on their favorite friends. I’m against that too. That’s a legitimate response, but if you think that the answer is to adopt socialism, you’re only going to compound the problem because that’s the most corrupt system known to man. Lord Acton told us “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Absolute power corrupts. Share on X

The more you concentrate power in the hands of mortals, no matter what the expressed intentions may be, the more mischief and difficulties and impoverishment you’re going to have. That would be probably the number one pushback. Close behind would be there’s a sense out there always has been among human beings that whatever the cause, people should still be equal. One guy shouldn’t have more than another. When you hear that the best response is to raise questions, to ask the person, why should someone who doesn’t utilize his talents fully versus another who does? Why should one person who doesn’t save and invest versus another who does? On down the line of all the differences that define us, why should all those people be precisely the same in terms of what they earn? What about consumers? Don’t they bestow your income by choosing to buy or not to buy based upon what you’ve offered them?

It’s a fascinating question because there are lots of emotions that surround it. I believe the emotion and I haven’t necessarily thought through this well enough, but how do you see the relationship between altruism and self-interest? There’s this draw for those that have to give to the have nots and those that don’t have are the recipients. Somehow that makes their situation better, but there’s also a natural kind of self-interest in everybody. It’s wired within us for self-preservation first and foremost. How do you understand or characterize the relationship between altruism and self-interest?

I thank God every day that we are self-interested. If we were purely altruistic, nobody thought themselves and only thought about others, you would quite frequently leave yourself in a position at which you can’t help others. You’ve ignored number one, you haven’t provided for yourself. You haven’t used your own talents fully. You’re not out there creating wealth as you and your unique abilities are best able to do. If you’re not doing that, how can you help others? Self-interest is by its very nature a constructive motivation. It’s the only one that goes to the point of somebody ignoring the rights of others and takes the form of say theft or deception or fraud. That self-interest goes across the line. It becomes harmful to other people. Otherwise, it’s the most important motivation in explaining the production of this planet.

Think of the guy in Brazil who is growing coffee. He’s not doing that because he’s thinking of you. He’s not thinking, “I must sacrifice and work long hours so that Larry has coffee up there in Newnan, Georgia.” He’s doing it because there’s something in it for him. Along the way, because of that self-interest, I get coffee. I’ve seen it used in different ways. Sometimes it’s meant to mean simply caring for another person and choosing to help them. Other times, it seems to be used in terms of the desire to do harm to yourself because that makes you feel better. In the process of harming yourself, give your possessions to somebody else. Serve someone else and be a doormat in the process. That’s the most destructive form of it.

I never denigrate the personal choice of engaging in charitable activity. It’s a fine motive when it comes to the heart. When it goes awry is when some politician comes along and says, “I’m going to make you give. In fact, I’m going to take it from you and give it on your behalf.” That’s not charity at all. You don’t accomplish much. The person that you’re taking it from in the end is not going to be a better person because of it. Any more than if you take somebody to the church at gunpoint, but that person is going to end up being more religious.

Segueing into the religious topic. I know that that is the framework in which you’ve written your latest book, WAS JESUS A SOCIALIST? Why This Question Is Being Asked Again, And Why The Answer Is Almost Always Wrong. First off, what motivated you to pursue that type of work rapping in the religious context to it? What did you hope to achieve with being able to get the message across?

As I explained in the book, I’ve heard this idea for 50 years that Jesus would be sympathetic to socialism. My understanding of history and Christianity always made me wonder about that. I couldn’t square it. Everywhere I looked around the world, I saw socialist regimes being the most impressive. The ones that utilize force, the ones that impoverished their people and I thought, “How could it be that a man who said even the most important choice you have to make whether or not to accept him is going to be a matter of free will? How could that same man say, ‘When it comes to everything else, we’re going to take it from me and spend it better than you can?’” I couldn’t square that.

TWS 48 | Wealth And Inequality

Wealth And Inequality: There’s a natural kind of self-interest in everybody that is wired within us for self-preservation.

 

When I started reading the New Testament in great detail, which I’ve done multiple times over the decades and then applying what I know as an economist and historian, it screamed at me. This is a myth that needs to be answered, too many people falsely believe it. Every time I looked throughout the New Testament, every word that Jesus uttered, I find an endorsement of things like personal choice, private property, voluntary contracts, even supply and demand. I thought this needs to be rebutted in a way that appeals to a broad lay audience. This is not a book for theologians, although I hope they read it too, it’s for anybody who’s interested in history, the facts and what Jesus said.

What’s the response been? What are the primary takeaways and the things people are learning that may not have an understanding of economics, especially the organization that you’ve done an incredible job running, the Foundation for Economic Education? Without that, what have you seen the response from those types of individuals?

There’s been a hunger out there and the fact that the book is very unique. There’s been a rush for it. Amazon’s already sold out, but that’ll be remedied shortly. I hear a lot of people saying, and I’ve done media interviews, like crazy since the release of the book. I get a lot of this. People say, “I always thought the story of the Good Samaritan was a case for the welfare state.” As I pointed out in the book, what made the Samaritan good was the fact that he chose to help the man in need of his free will and with his own resources. He didn’t tell the man, “Call your social worker,” or “Let’s get a government program for it.” If he did, we’d call him the good for nothing Samaritan.

A lot of people are amazed to learn about the parable of the talents. No socialists could tell this the way Jesus did. Jesus talks about three guys whom a wealthy man trusts a big portion of his wealth with as he leaves for a time. He says, “When I come back out, I’ll ask each of you what you’ve done with it.” When he comes back again, told by Jesus himself, he asked the first man, “What’d you do with what I trusted you with?” The man said, “You’ll be happy with me. I buried it. I have just as much for you as you trust to be with.” In the parable, Jesus criticizes that man, “What? You didn’t magnify it in any way.” He asked the second guy, “What’d you do?” He said, “You’ll love what I did. I doubled or tripled your wealth.” Jesus praises him. He says the third guy, “What’d you do?” The third guy says, “I did even better than that.” He’s the one that Jesus praises the most. In fact, in the parable, he takes the money from the first guy and gives it to the third guy because he knows how to create wealth. I’ve had a lot of surprise audience with that.

How do you associate that with what Jesus was referring to because the talent at that time was money? There was a way in which money was weighed. The word talent is representative, the circumstances we were born in, training, natural abilities, etc. How do you equate that to those who are gifted with something and multiply that versus those who are gifted with something that doesn’t do anything with it?

The same analogy would apply whatever your gifts may be, whatever your talents, in a sense of personal traits and abilities, we are all called to make the best of it. Be the best person you can be to magnify your ability to make other people happy through the wealth that you create, the examples that you said. That’s all perfectly compatible with what Jesus would say. He was approached in the book of Luke by a man who wanted him to redistribute income. The man says to Jesus in Luke 12:13-15. He says, “Master, speak to my brother that he divides the inheritance with me.” In other words, “I didn’t get a fair share. Can you maybe equalize us or give me more?” Jesus did not say as a socialist like, “You didn’t get as much as the other guy to fix that.” Instead, he immediately rebukes the man for his ending. He makes a statement that I wish every politician would make and that is, “Who made me a judge or a divider over you?” That is a powerful rejoinder against envy and covetousness as well as the redistributive apparatus of the compulsory welfare state in my view.

Larry, what’s the best way to get the book? It’s a short read. This isn’t a novel type of book.

Self-interest is, by its very nature, a constructive motivation. Share on X

It’s 160 pages. You can read it in an evening. It’s available on Amazon and also the website of Barnes & Noble. Also, in our organization, The Foundation for Economic Education is FEE.org. It’s available in the bookstore and other places now. There are more and more picking it up all the time. It was just released, but I’m glad to say that it’s going very well.

I am preparing to ask this question so I’m hoping it comes outright. If someone reads this, what’s the best-case scenario? How would our current environment be different if people read this, understood the message and applied it?

If they did that, if they read it and thought about it and acted upon it, they would say, “I need to spend less time lobbying politicians to either get me something or give someone else something and get involved myself in the lives of those who presently are in need. I need to put my money where my mouth is.” Socialists don’t do that. There have been books written about this. Socialists and those who claim Jesus was a socialist, they look to the state to solve problems. All you have to do is look at the federal income tax and you realize a federal budget look at the line for donations. It almost says peanuts. Not even a socialist would think that the government is the best way to solve problems. Not even they will write out a check to the government for more than they’re forced to give. If they give anything, it too is to voluntary private organizations close to home that solve problems so much better than politicians do from Washington.

Right now, there is an interesting spirit of things in our country. There was a tremendous disruption. There were some economic consequences that are being felt. There were some other things from a social standpoint with George Floyd and there are other major issues arising. The idea of inequality is a variable within it all. I see definitely a misclassification and mischaracterization of the idea of inequality. As you look at your book and the experience that you’ve had, what are some of the maybe experiences that you’ve had, where someone is like, “I got it.” They felt one way. They believe one way. They had this high praise for altruism and equality, but then suddenly I started to understand principles, natural laws of the universe and understand the message that you get across in your book. There’s obviously a number of other books that articulate some very similar values and principles.

When you put things back on the individual and when you say, “You’re spending a lot of time expecting politicians to do such and such. Why aren’t you doing that yourself?” These are matters of the heart. It is a personal choice. That’s what determines where you are, not what you say. If they’re introspective enough and they look inward and ask themselves, “Am I doing myself what I want to foist on other people through the political process?” That’s been an a-ha moment. Other times I see them happening when you address particular issues that they’ve been especially misinformed on. I do a talk and have written about the Great Depression. A lot of people think because I’ve been taught this, “The Great Depression, that was the fault of capitalism and free markets. Franklin Roosevelt saves us from it.”

When you walk them through why that’s faulty from the word go, it’s embarrassingly faulty. They are like, “Why didn’t I learn that? How come I didn’t hear that? My teachers never told me there was another side.” The issue by issue sometimes can be a very effective way to produce those a-ha moments. I’m convinced that most people who may lean in the socialist direction don’t lean that way because they’ve thoroughly read to make a case for free markets. They’ve only heard the emotional bumper stickers of the left in most cases. When you present them for the first time with what the other side is arguing real facts, logic, history, and so forth, it’s like an epiphany.

Larry, this has been a great conversation. I love our conversations and you think so deeply, but also you have humility about you that resonates well. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Even though you’re semiretired, you continue to write and share it, so thank you for that. What are the best ways for people to connect with you?

TWS 48 | Wealth And Inequality

Wealth And Inequality: Whatever your gifts, talents, or abilities may be, we are all called to make the best of them.

 

People can go to my public figure Facebook page, where I use my name, Lawrence Reed. They can contact me through FEE.org or they can email me at LReed@FEE.org.

Larry, thank you again. We’ll have to do this. Hopefully, it doesn’t take several months to do it but thank you for the book. Thank you again. This was enjoyable.

Thank you, Patrick.

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About Lawrence Reed

TWS 48 | Wealth And InequalityLawrence W. Reed is the former President of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). He is the former President of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He is the editor of the bestselling book “Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism”, author of the pamphlet “Great Myths of the Great Depression,” and the new book “Was Jesus a Socialist?: Why This Question Is Being Asked Again, and Why the Answer Is Almost Always Wrong.”

 

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TWS 23 | Objectivism

Objectivism And The Success Of An Entrepreneur With Dr. David Kelley

October 17, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:29:52 Comments Off on Objectivism And The Success Of An Entrepreneur With Dr. David Kelley

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TWS 23 | Objectivism

 

Objectivism is the belief that certain things, especially moral truths, exist independently of human knowledge or perception of them. On today’s show, Dr. David Kelley describes the concept of objectivism and its four pillars, as well as the most common, refutes for these tenets. He also discusses the relevance of objectivism as it relates to the success of an entrepreneur. Dr. Kelley is a professional philosopher, teacher, and writer. He is also the Founder of The Atlas Society and the author of numerous works in philosophy, politics, and culture.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Objectivism And The Success Of An Entrepreneur With Dr. David Kelley

We are still talking about entrepreneurship and I had an awesome opportunity to speak with Dr. David Kelley. He is the Founder of The Atlas Society that he founded in 1990. He’s been a huge advocate of objectivism and has written a number of books. He has a lot of accolades. The Atlas Society has a mountain of information on their website. I really liked the way he described the ideas of objectivism. What he sees the involvement of the Atlas Society in regards to younger entrepreneurs and seeing around the world, whether they describe their activities and their philosophy as objectivism or not still understand its basic tenets. That is causing this entrepreneurial type of drive toward improving someone’s life and improving the world in general. I understand that there are some things we talk about that are somewhat controversial depending on what your perspective is. I would encourage you to read the part where I talk about language. How important it is to use the right words and language to describe what the actual meaning is because these days, things are taken out of context and misconstrued and so forth.

Regardless, it was a great conversation. You guys are going to learn a lot. For those of you who have not read Atlas Shrugged yet, I think this is going to be one that inspires you to do so. Maybe for some who haven’t read it in a while, I inspire you to read it again. You guys are going to enjoy it. If you like what you read, go back and read to the previous episodes in this season. Also, get onto YouTube as well. We have all of our episodes and video. You would enjoy that if you’re visual learners. Thanks for all the support. You are amazing. If you have some time and you like what you’ve read, head over to iTunes and give us a good review. It definitely helps, especially as the way in which finding podcasts has been more difficult. High ratings definitely increase the amount of presence that we have and help us increase our audience and also share up with a friend too. We’ll talk to you next time with another amazing guest. His name is Mike Moyer and he wrote the book, Slicing Pie.

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Dr. Kelley, it is such an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking your time.

It’s a pleasure to be here, Patrick. Thank you.

The first thing that I’m so impressed by is how much of your life and your energy has been focused around advancing the philosophy of objectivism with The Atlas Society and other groups. Would you be able to tell the audience what were the events and circumstances that led to your decision to make that dedication?

I read Ayn Rand in high school at a time when I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and what my values were as many people at that age do. It bowled me over that she had developed ideas that speak on to the roads that I began to explore. She had gone much further down those roads. However, what led me to read her in the first place was at what became clear as an emerging interest in philosophy as a branch of knowledge. That’s something I wanted to study. I went to college to study philosophy. You didn’t expect that I would remain as committed to objectivism theoretically as I was when I went to college. Every challenge that from other philosophers, from my professors, I see Ayn Rand had a good answer to. I never saw a reason to change. The reason I stayed with it, my interest I went to grad school, I decided I wanted to teach. I ended up teaching at Vassar College for about ten years and I sent the kids in New York. Afterwards, I continue to write in philosophy and started the organization. I founded The Atlas Society in 1990 as a way to provide information to people who are interested in Ayn Rand’s ideas.

At the time, it already was one major and other minor organizations, but I felt what objectivism needed was a more open and exploratory way of approaching the ideas. The idea that philosophy should grow. Ayn Rand was a genius, but she didn’t discover everything there is to know. We launched The Atlas Society to do research, to do education, to do some advocacy, not at the electoral level, but in terms of political philosophy and finding for capitalism, not just a political but a moral ideal.

Thank you for going through that. Maybe a little further into the topic of objectivism, how would you describe that to the neophyte, the novice that may understand general philosophy, but not objectivism? How would you go about explaining that?

You put a trough of government money out there and the pigs are going to show up. Share on X

I would normally explain it in terms of four pillars. The one that most people are familiar with is that objectivism believes in capitalism. The minimal government, individual rights, free markets, rule of law and government is an empire, but it does not get into the economic game. It protects property rights and contracts but otherwise, it leaves people free to engage in any mutual exchange that both parties want to do. That was the political ideal. That’s pillar number one. Very importantly, this is what I think distinguished Ayn Rand from some other advocates of capitalism, is that she felt it had to be based on a view of the individualism as moral philosophy. That individuals have the moral right, it’s morally proper for them to act on their own judgment and to act for their own benefit, pursuing their rational self-interest. She was an opponent of the ethical doctrine of altruism, which emphasizes sacrifice, helping others, self-sacrifice. She said, “No.” She was very comfortable with the idea of benevolence. In proper cases, helping others when it’s deserved. That is not the core of life. Pillar number three, being a producer, creating value by the use of your own mind in the service of your life.

Not just the monetary rewards, but also what we call the spiritual or emotional rewards of pride in what you’re doing, self-fulfillment and exercising your capacities. She was somewhat distinctive when she talked about this pillar, the idea productiveness as the central value of life. She was somewhat unique and that she thought any production was good. You could be an artist, writer, political leader, businessman, merchant, trader or banker. They were all forms of productive work, all honorable when well done without fraud or dishonesty. She opposed the idea that somehow the arts and other professions are good or honorable and making money is this lowly thing. No, she thought it was a great value. That’s why in her major novel, Atlas Shrugged, the heroes were all people in the business. They ran railroads, they had steel companies and so forth.

The three pillars are capitalism, individualism, including egoism, if you want to call it that, pursuit of self-interest. Third is productiveness, creating value as a core part of a rational life. Finally, the absolutism of reason. She believed that reason was our only guide to knowledge and action, as opposed to faith or emotionalism. That’s why I’ve said rational self-interest. In that respect, she was a secular philosopher, as an advocate of reason exclusively. She did not hold with any form of religious faith or any other faith that was not based on reason.

That’s a great description as far as the pillars are concerned. I would say in what I’ve seen in their research and the reading I’ve done, there are a lot of opponents, those that criticize the idea of capitalism and objectivism. What do you see are the most common refutes for these tenets of objectivism?

Let me start by saying there are many people who object to objectivism or to capitalism in particular on the grounds that it’s selfish. It is. Ayn Rand was an advocate of what you call The Virtue of Selfishness. That was the title of one of her books. What she meant by selfishness is not grasping, exploitative and narcissistic way of living or personalities that are often conceived that people associate the term with. Self-interest means pursuing your best self, your best life by rational standards in which that involves production. It involves treating other people fairly by mutual exchange to mutual benefit, whether we’re talking about economic exchange, but even in friendship and love.

Those relationships are hugely important to us as people, but we need to remain ourselves even in a very close relationship. I think part of the problem here is if people don’t understand what you meant by self-interest. In terms of capitalism, the one objection that I’d worry about a bit is that people say, “This isn’t ideal.” If people were all objectivists committed and acted in accordance with these values, sure the world would be a lot better, but people are not like that. We have crony capitalism. Whenever you get people together and give them any option to cut corners, some people will. My best answer to that question is that we have a mixed economy in which the government has a lot of power over companies and increasingly over our personal lives. In terms of what we eat, what we smoke or whether we smoke and so forth.

Once you have that power in the hands of the government then people are going to try to take advantage of that power to get special privileges because they support a candidate, they get some benefits in return. They clamor, subsidies or regulations that will harm the competition. You know this better than I do. There’s a huge element of cronyism, but that’s largely because the opportunity has been created for that. You put a trough of government money out there and the pigs are going to show up.

The intention behind capitalizing on those opportunities in and of itself revolves around self-interest and selfishness.

TWS 23 | Objectivism

Atlas Shrugged

That is a more conventional type of selfishness. People are looking to build their own nest.

I had an interesting experience. I have two teenage daughters and my wife is Latina and once a year, her friends come over and they have a big party. We’re not allowed at the house that night. I usually take the kids up to Park City because the rates are low and it’s beautiful up there in the fall. My daughter asked me a couple of questions and the first one was fascinating. It relates to this topic because of the misunderstanding of words. She said, “Dad, if somebody has never been able to hear, how do they describe things in their mind? What words do they use?” It was interesting because if somebody who’s never heard words, they probably don’t use words. It’s the understanding of meaning, which is the most important thing. Words are a way of describing it. I agree with you in regards to how individuals have misconstrued the nature of capitalism or objectivism because of a confusion of words and the words’ meaning.

That’s certainly true that people hear the word capitalism and they think that refers to what we have is not pure capitalism. It’s not laissez-faire capitalism. It’s a mixed economy with some large socialist elements like Medicare is a socialist enterprise run by the government. Public education is a social enterprise. We’re not living in a consistently capitalist world. Getting to meanings is hugely important. That’s one of the things that I am particularly interested in because my main interest in philosophy is the theory of knowledge, how we acquire knowledge? How we validate our knowledge? At the core of that is how do we form concepts that we then express in words? How do we form abstractions like the economy, capitalism, good and bad? Your daughter raises a fascinating, psychological question and I don’t know enough about deaf people. I think what I do know is that children tend to learn language rapidly and virtually. Every child who’s ever existed has learned the language and picked it up somehow. With deaf children, they may not be able to hear or speak their language, but there’s sign language if they’re given a chance, they will pick that up.

It was a fascinating dialogue. I wanted to ask you because you’ve had such an extensive career and probably met a lot of people. What are maybe some examples of individuals, groups or someone that may have opposed the ideas of objectivism? Because of an interaction with you or relationship with you or the groups that you’re associated with had that a-ha moment, the epiphany, that awakening.

Many people when they first read one of Ayn Rand’s novels, in particular, have this momentous feeling. The effect is, “This is so right.” Many people say, “She put in words but I’ve believed all along but I didn’t know how to say or was maybe afraid to say because it runs against the beliefs that I was hearing from people around me.” I’ve seen that over and over again with students and with older people. One of the gentlemen who served on our board of trustees at The Atlas Society for many years was already a very successful businessman and then he read Atlas Shrugged. The fact that he read a thousand-page novel in the middle of his busy life and career running a company is pretty amazing. He got in touch with Ayn Rand and then help various projects to help spread the ideas. The point is it’s not for teenagers, which is one of the little snarky things people say about objectivism which is not true. There is something powerful about the way Ayn Rand put ideas. The depth and clarity combined with the emotional power of an ideal. It’s very striking.

I would say, as I’ve earned about marketing, storytelling and business, I read Atlas Shrugged, whether it’s the hero’s journey with John Galt is that the core character and how his journey happens in the different things that he says and other characters and their role. It is fiction, but it paralleled to what society was likely at that point in time but also, it continues to be that way. It’s the understanding of the world that we live in and then that world, but then also the way in which the story is told is fascinating. That’s where for the audience who have not read Atlas Shrugged, it’s quite a large volume of work, but it is profound the impact that it has on your ability to understand life at a more magnified level. Going to where my curiosity lies, there have been cases in which you’ve maybe seen where those that did have influence that was able to read or talk to you or become open to these ideas that have made a difference and has been more influential than someone in college or someone that is a budding entrepreneur reads. Have you seen some significant cases that stand out in your mind?

I know many people. When I founded the organization, part of my job was to get in touch with leaders of other think tanks that at least some overlap with our ideas. I’ve met and talked with many of them over the years. For example, we are having our annual gala in New York City and John Stossel will be there and a number of other people who are maybe not card-carrying objectivists in a sense. They love the ideas and they appreciate the power that those ideas hold and the degree in which they could be effective in moving the country more toward a greater level of freedom.

In terms of whether we’ve had that movement, I don’t know. I like to think that Ayn Rand had some influence. She certainly had some influence over the growth of libertarianism as a political philosophy and that is expounded by Cato Institute and Reason Foundation. The number of other think tanks. We’ve had some degree of deregulation. We have had some change in tax laws that lowered the extent of government expropriation. I think the libertarians who were leading the march on that and Ayn Rand was one of the main inspirations for that movement.

Public education is a social enterprise. We're not living in a consistently capitalist world. Share on X

That’s what I love about your initial comments when you talked about the more openness you had instead of the rigidity of how objectivism was in the very beginning. The flexibility to see how it relates and influences the example you used more libertarian and more economics business movement, which I completely agree with because there’s relevance. It may not be wholeheartedly pure objectivism. At the same time, some of those tenets are going to forward the influence that it has on our overall society.

This is a strategic choice that anyone who’s involved with objectivism has to make. Do you work with, collaborate with the people who share some of your ideas but not all? Do you have to have a complete agreement? I thought in my mind it’s clear that the only way to get ideas out is to be incremental about it. To open the doors to people, to come to take what they can from the philosophy and hope that those seeds will grow into something good in their lives and whatever they go on to do and politically in terms of a greater movement and support for a freer system.

The season that we’re in is entrepreneurship and the nature of that. I look at an understanding of objectivism and ways in which that entrepreneur or entrepreneurial organization could be magnified. What do you usually teach or understand the relevance of objectivism as it relates to the success of an entrepreneur?

There are many ways. One way I like to describe the objective is moral code or ethics. In terms of being an entrepreneur in your own life that is taking the viewpoint that you own your life. It’s yours but you’re also totally responsible. The buck stops at your desk. On the one hand, you’re entitled to everything you earned and you should enjoy it, but you’re also responsible for the risks and the losses. In that respect, I think entrepreneurs at wholeness, especially honored places from an objective standpoint because they are striking out taking a road. No one’s going down before and incurring risks, they hire people, they raise money. They have to inspire confidence, but they have to then succeed. It takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of integrity, rationality and talks about productiveness as a value. Most entrepreneurs I know spend enormous numbers of hours getting off the ground. Atlas Shrugged is a good Bible for entrepreneurs because it taps and it expresses a beautiful language. It expresses the values that most entrepreneurs have and pursue.

I was going to give that second part of this story with my daughter is the next morning after we had that initial interaction, she was paying attention to the hotel that we were at. This is a unique hotel where it’s in Park City, but you have to take this elevator up that go to this top of the Hill. She started noticing and she said, “Dad, how does something like this happen? How is it created?” The brilliance of kids and how their minds are thinking is fascinating to me. It allowed me to have a conversation to talk about the elements and the material for everything has always existed. It had to do with a human being’s mind to figure out ways in which they could provide value to others.

It’s also the infrastructure that protects intellectual property rights and how businesses are transformed. A person has a degree of certainty associated with what they create. Because there’s an investment required, there’s time involved, there’s putting a team together that there’s a certainty that there will be output. There will be something remunerated. Going through that process allowed her to understand government, laws and property rights. I look at where the minds of children are. The jury’s out that typical education is way behind. Being able to access data to understand facts, you don’t have to memorize it. You don’t have to keep your brain filled with that information because it’s at your fingertips. It’s exploring other ways in which to solve problems and create opportunities. It gives me a lot of confidence in kids, teenagers and even those in the Millennial generation to see the world. The things that are going on and actually taking action to provide opportunities for themselves, but also see that it could provide opportunity and value to others. It was a very serendipitous experience I had with my daughter, given the fact that I have you. I’m sure you get to see those examples a lot.

I do. One of the things that are a constant with me, I live in the middle of a city in an apartment building. I look out my window and all around me. I see nothing except manmade streets, cars, buildings. People, of course, they are natural in a certain way, but they are educated by and engaged in activities that are manmade, artificial and invented by someone. I’m looking at an enormous amount of intelligence embodied in that brick building over there, in the automobile passing below, the guys who are repairing the street. In addition to appreciating the property rights contracts and investments that lie behind all that, it’s also worth thinking about the human soul that is out there, the intelligence and the commitment that went into making the world that we all live in.

That’s a great way of saying it. I look at the same thing with emerging markets, whether it’s Africa or even the Middle East, despite its chaos, there’s so much entrepreneurial activity there and also in Asia. It’s interesting to see a generation that’s wanting more for themselves that wants to get out there and take their ideas, take who they are and bring that value to the marketplace. At the same time, there are lots of chaos and turmoil. There’s also so much to celebrate because it’s not the US anymore, but a lot of other emerging markets are following suit to a degree.

TWS 23 | Objectivism

Objectivism: The buck stops at your desk. You own your life. It’s yours, but you’re also totally responsible.

 

That’s all good. I’m happy to see it.

Dr. Kelley, thank you so much for your time. Would you mind telling the audience the best ways to either follow you or support The Atlas Society or learning more about objectivism? What are some ways that they can do that?

The best way is to go to our website, AtlasSociety.org. We have done probably thousands of articles, courses, videos. We have been producing some very short videos that are called Draw My Life videos where we personify something like envy, money or some topic we want to talk about. The videos are very captivating. They usually get a million views at a minimum. That’s a good entry point to learn more. We also have courses you can take and articles you can read. Probably the best thing to do would be to sign up for our newsletter. Once a week, we send out a bulletin on what’s going on. You can opt in and see if you like it.

Our nonprofit organization is supported by donors. We do not accept any government money. We have a very strong board of trustees who themselves are major contributors but also oversee the operations and to preserve the integrity. If you like what you see, I would definitely urge you to even contribute right on the site. There’s a donate button in the corner of every page. Also, get in touch with us. We get letters all the time and we’ll try to answer as many as we can. Sometimes include me. I’m officially retired, but I’m still on the board and I’m still working in various ways. I wish all of your readers all the best and I hope that part of that best will involve checking out Ayn Rand and Objectivism and The Atlas Society.

Dr. Kelley, thank you again. I wish you well. Let’s connect sometime in the future. 

I look forward to it. Thank you.

Take care.

Important Links:

About Dr. David Kelley

TWS 23 | ObjectivismDr. David Kelley founded The Atlas Society in 1990 and served as Executive Director through 2012, before serving as the Chief Intellectual Officer, where he was responsible for overseeing all the content produced by the organization: articles, videos, talks at conferences, etc.

Dr. Kelley is a professional philosopher, teacher, and writer. He is the author of numerous works in philosophy, politics, and culture. After earning a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1975, he joined the philosophy department of Vassar College, where he taught a wide variety of courses at all levels. He has also taught philosophy at Brandeis University and lectured frequently on other campuses.

Kelley’s philosophical writings include original works in ethics, epistemology, and ethics, many of them developing Objectivist ideas in new depth and new directions. He is the author of The Evidence of the Senses, a treatise in epistemology; and The Art of Reasoning, a widely used textbook for introductory logic.

Kelley has lectured and published on a wide range of political and cultural topics. His articles on social issues and public policy have appeared in Harpers, The Sciences, Reason, Harvard Business Review, The Freeman, On Principle, and elsewhere. During the 1980s, he wrote frequently for Barrons Financial and Business Magazine on such issues as egalitarianism, immigration, minimum wage laws, and Social Security.

His book A Life of One’s Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State is a critique of the moral premises of the welfare state and defense of private alternatives that preserve individual autonomy, responsibility, and dignity. His appearance on John Stossel’s ABC/TV special “’Greed’ stirred a national debate on the ethics of capitalism.

An internationally-recognized expert on Objectivism, he has lectured widely on Ayn Rand, her ideas, and her works. He is the author of Contested Legacy: Truth and Toleration in Objectivism, an account of divisions among thinkers influenced by Ayn Rand.

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TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Financial Freedom For Millennials with Daniel Ameduri

September 12, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:23:28 Comments Off on Financial Freedom For Millennials with Daniel Ameduri

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TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

 

The road to financial freedom has always been dictated by financial norms, a lot of which don’t really seem like freedom at all. Editor and the Founder of Future Money Trends, Daniel Ameduri, talks about financial freedom and what it looks like for the Millennials. Walking us through the concepts of his book, Don’t Save for Retirement: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Freedom, Daniel notes that the Baby Boomer generation has inculcated in most Millennials the idea of saving for their retirement and putting their money on retirement funds which has given the younger generation more pressure. Breaking the shackles that are forcing us to commit to that tradition, Dan teaches Millennials how to deviate efficiently from investment and embrace the gifts brought by their time.

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Financial Freedom For Millennials with Daniel Ameduri

On this episode, I have my good friend. He’s become a great friend, but he’s also the Editor and Founder of Future Money Trends, which is a publication business. He has come out with a book, Don’t Save for Retirement: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Freedom. I know he has been working on this for a while. I had him on the show many years ago. Daniel has been front-running the cryptocurrency, the cannabis, the precious metals and other alternative investment world for quite some time on his YouTube channel and very popular website, FutureMoneyTrends.com. You are going to get to love his perspective on life and I think you’re going to get a lot out of reading his book and hearing the story firsthand. Daniel is an amazing writer and entrepreneur. If you’re reading about him for the first time, then it is going to be a treat. Without further ado, welcome, Daniel Ameduri.

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Daniel, thank you for spending the time, it’s awesome having you back on. You were on several months ago. It’s a pleasure and I’m super excited about your book.

Thank you for having me on. I should let the audience know that I have seventeen policies, dividend-paying, cashflowing, gushing, safe. I’m dual compounding them too, but I’m sure we don’t want to go down that rabbit hole but they need to learn from Paradigm Life for that.

There are many things you can do as a Millennial if you embrace all the gifts and the things that the world has given us. Share on X

Daniel, I’ve gotten to know you over the years and you’ve done some incredible work. It was awesome to hear more about your story. I never got into that with you even though we’ve had some discussions over the years. Your book is well-written and I like how it opens up your life. How people come to this opinion or perspective of life, there’s a backstory to it. Without that backstory, sometimes it’s hard to buy into a person’s perspective, especially if it’s different than the status quo. Looking at the title of your book, it’s totally against what most people believe. Telling your story and opening yourself up that way awesome. Would you mind maybe talking through what was the book about? What was the purpose of it? What message do you want to send? Who is it intended for? Maybe start there.

The book is called Don’t Save for Retirement. For your audience, we’ve set up a special page at FutureMoneyTrends.com/save. They can read the intro in the first chapter. If they like it, they can buy it. There’s a link. This book started when I was in an attorney’s office setting up my trust, my will and I turned to my wife like, “We know where the kids are going to go. We know where the money’s going to go. What about teaching the kids? What if they get this bad conventional wisdom conditioned into them without mom and dad there who is a fairly strong presence and force against that stuff.” We started brainstorming what we could do. I was like, “How about we write a book? It will be great for the business. It will be great for other people who can read it.” It started with no initial audience in the sense that it was teaching my children, but also keeping in mind Millennials and other people who might be saving the conventional means of retirement and what they could do with their money.

I wanted to bring in what my wife and I did because I didn’t want people to think that, “This guy has got an economic sense on his shoulders and all this stuff.” The intro starts in a bankruptcy attorney’s office. We were messed up after 2008. I got a job making $10 an hour. My wife was a school teacher. We were about to have a baby. Things were wrecked. That’s where the book starts. It starts off how I dug myself out, what it took not just financially, but a change in my mindset and my change in what is even acceptable. The book, Don’t Save for Retirement, I would say almost is a cross between my personal story and personal finance. That’s an alternative way.

It’s not Robert Kiyosaki where it’s all getting leverage. It’s definitely not Dave Ramsey where it’s like, “No debt.” It’s like, “This was my story. This is how I did it. This is all the things I learned along the way.” One thing that rings true with what I’ve learned from Robert Kiyosaki is the poor and middle-class speculate, they just do, no matter what they’re in. Their retirement vehicles, they’re always speculating. The rich preserve and focus on income, which is one of the reasons why I’m so attracted to your company, Paradigm Life, that preservation and income mindset. The advantage of the rich is they’re already rich. However, I learned that if the middle class apply those same principles, they can also be very wealthy.

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Don’t Save for Retirement: A Millennial’s Guide to Financial Freedom

You use some very strategic words in the book. The one that comes to mind is the idea of control and I thought a lot lately about group psychology, a group narrative. I look at our school system. I look at the workplace. I think it’s programmed into our mind the being told what to do mentality, “You’ve got to do this. I am superior, therefore do what I say.” These days, people are speculating, but they’re not even thinking. They’re doing what everybody else is doing and they’re assuming that whoever’s telling them to do it is going to give them the results that they want, which of course there are many different examples of that not being the case. It was cool as taking control and using your mind to figure out what you want financially is where it starts. Unfortunately, there are these traumatic events, difficult events that cause us to have those paradigm shifts. When you’re writing the book specifically for your kids, if they read the book, what did you want them to get? What was that message? They close the 196-page and it’s like, “What is that next thought?”

That they choose their destiny, that there is no right way or wrong way. Whether they have a job and become great passive income investors or they have a business and they’re investors as well or they’re a stay-at-home-mom or a stay-at-home-dad. I don’t care what they do. I want them to know that they can do whatever they want to do. It is their life and many of us, exactly in line with your question, do what everyone else does and follow the crowd. Everyone else is going to college. Everyone else is saving for retirement. Everyone else is financing their house for a few decades. Everyone else is financing their cars for a few years. Everyone else is buying term because your whole life’s a scheme.

It’s nonstop no critical thinking and I want them to let them know like, “You can do whatever you want and if you want freedom, you have to buy your freedom. It’s not going to be free. It will require sacrifice and it will require good decision-making that will compound. You’re not going to be eighteen and financially-free, but you could be 25 to 40 years old and be financially free as opposed to the alternative plan which is, ‘Give all your money to Wall Street and we promise you in 30 to 40 years, even though you have no idea what your tax withdrawal rate will be or what the funds will even be at, you’ll be able to retire at this magic number that some German politician wanted to win an election.’ He upped the other guy by instead of running on 70, he said 65.” I want people to know that ultimately you choose your destiny and a lot of us have to be woken up and slapped in the face like, “What are you doing? You’re on autopilot.”

I’d love to hear your opinion on what are the events that would cause a person to read this information and not necessarily have it discarded but actually implemented and used. We’re in this period of time where debt is an all-time high, student loan debt, consumer debt. If you look at household income, it’s been stagnant for many decades. You look at people who are not getting ahead and I know that there’s frustration. There are polls. There are headlines that come out all the time about the frustration that exists in America with people not growing, not getting ahead, which essentially is the anti-life because people are naturally compelled to grow. Where do you think the pain threshold is until people snap out of it?

I hope their pain threshold is not bankruptcy or like me, where I was in a bankruptcy attorney’s office with my wife crying. I certainly hope their pain threshold doesn’t go to a point where they get so angry at their job that maybe they do something that gets them fired or damages their resume for the future. Ultimately, that frustration Americans are feeling is because they have subscribed to a middle-class lifestyle that is not sustainable. Much like the national story of what our government is doing, our citizens are doing. I can’t fix the government, but we can all fix ourselves by making some changes in our own lives. In the book, I talk about what my wife and I did. We drastically cut spending.

Did we do it forever? No, but we did it for a year-and-a-half, two years. Even when we weren’t drastically in cutting spending mode, we still live very frugally. I always tell people it took many years. When I achieved that financial independence, net worth millionaire status, not even liquid, but net worth. I was driving a 2003 Nissan Altima. It was a ten-year-old car. I was living in a house, at the time when I purchased it, it was about one time our annual income. By the time I was financially independent, the thing was one-third of our annual income, but I was still doing that and not permanent. Now, I live in a very nice house and I get to enjoy all the luxuries of those sacrifices that I made.

If you want freedom, you have to buy your freedom. It's not going to be free. It will require sacrifice and good decision-making. Share on X

You have to, at some point in time, say stop. For most of us, unfortunately, we’ve subscribed to the unsustainable lifestyle. You might have a car that’s equal to your annual income spread out over a few years. You might have a house that’s ten times your annual income. You might have done a lot of things that have messed you up. That’s where I love the Dave Ramsey personal finance part like, “Start the cutting spending.” Stop doing all this stupid stuff that’s excessive. What I like to do is after I cut the spending is shift the savings of the spending into buying income and training that brain that everything I buy, I want to see a check either quarterly, annually, monthly. I want money coming in from everything I do. One of the things I have in my house in the children’s schoolroom is only to buy assets that cashflow.

We’re all going to get involved with speculation. I’m the worst. I love microcap investing and venture capitalism, especially here in California. Ultimately, 90% of my efforts and my focus is focused on buying income. Anyone who’s frustrated and who is in that lifestyle of trying to keep up with the Joneses realizes that financing everything in your life and spending every last bit of your paycheck, it is not normal. It may be perceived as normal because that’s what everybody else was doing, but it’s not. You have to say no. If you’re reading and that resonates with you, it can be done. It’s going to take a few years to mop this thing up, but you can be financially independent and either quit your job or work part-time or full-time because you love what you do.

These are all amazing points. In the book, what direction are you giving to people? What are the steps that they can take? Starting with whomever that person you were writing to when you were typing out the words of the book and getting them to take that first step then the next step. What are some steps that people can take to go from where they’re at and start to circumvent better or build a bridge over the gap to where they want to be?

The first chapter starts with, “What is wealth?” A lot of people don’t even know what they want. They’re just going through the motions of life. They’re killing time while they’re here on earth, which is very sad. For me, wealth is the ability to be able to do what I want with my time, to wake up when I’m done sleeping, to be free. I think that’s the first step is defining what you want. I always tell people, I learned this from James Altucher. He talked about the three things you want people to say at your funeral. What do you want people to say who you are and then embrace those things? Remind yourself, write it down on a piece of paper and see it every day when you get up. I have daily statements for every single of my kids and my wife and I. I like to remind myself that. Steve Jobs talked about that, ask yourself every day, “Am I happy with what I’m about to do right now?”

The next step is if you decide to become financially free, you need to see what the gap is? What do I need? How much income do I need to pay for my expenses, my monthly lifestyle? Ultimately, becoming financially independent, in my opinion and in the book, is to be able to have multiple sources of income. Instead of having a one or two-household income, think about having how do you get to a 21-household income? Maybe it doesn’t pay all the bills, maybe it just pays the utilities. How good will that feel? It pays all your utilities, maybe it pays the mortgage. However, you want to look at it, how would you like it if every month you went to work and you realize that all your utilities and your mortgage were being paid by passive income?

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Financial Freedom For Millennials: The Millennials may have been conditioned to believe that they want socialism, but they love the efficiency of capitalism.

It starts small. The book talks about the biggest first step is work where you can cut. For a lot of people, that’s moving, that’s one of the biggest expenses. Whether you’re moving to a further area in your county or you’re moving to another state. My wife and I moved to a desert community in California. The next area is retraining their brain. Instead of dumping all this money into a 401(k), start using these whole life policies to dual compound. Start using different investments that pay an actual dividend that bring a check into your life. That’s the biggest thing I can tell people to have that mindset of start buying things that make you money.

It’s interesting and I’ll be somewhat open here because the first thing you said resonated. Most people don’t know what they want. I think it goes back to the mindset that we’ve been programmed or highly influenced to understand, which is being told what we want or being told what to do instead of us recognize. It sounds trivial but us recognizing that we have a choice of what we want. I had one of my business coaches, I had this meltdown. I didn’t even anticipate it, but it was the rocking chair test. They essentially get you into this state where you’re 95 years old, you’re sitting in a rocking chair and you’re describing what life was about. It was powerful for me and I connected with what was important to me. I connected with what I wanted.

It wasn’t necessarily a dollar amount. It was more about my relationships. It was about the people that I loved as opposed to anything material. At the same time, those material things allow a magnification of the experiences with the people that you love. The second piece is interesting too that you talked about, which is the idea of understanding where you are financially and where you want to be. I look at what most people obsessed with, which is weight and money because it’s measurable. At the same time, how people measure money is fascinating because it usually has to do with either their income or their bank account and that’s it. The true measurement of money, which Robert Kiyosaki heavily emphasizes in all of his books, is a financial statement.

He has a whole book at how to create a financial statement, which is ultimately the scorecard for where you’re currently at but can also help you objectively measure what you need to do in order to get to where you want. Ultimately, the wealth side of things is fascinating, Daniel, because in the end, why are financially successful people so miserable end up committing suicide or getting multiple divorces or alienating children? It’s interesting where people have connected wealth with money but yet, in the end, people would trade all of their money for what is truly valuable to them if they opened up and were vulnerable. That’s where I look at where we’re at in our day and age with society and what’s available to us with technology.

Wealth is the ability to be able to do what you want with your time, to wake up when you are done sleeping, and to be free. Share on X

It’s more possible than ever to live that type of life, but yet the comfort that people have with what society has told them is a success is still bought into. Even though people are starting to see that there’s a different way of doing things and there’s a different lifestyle. “Look at this guy, look at this friend,” but yet they’re still programmed to do what’s safe and comfortable. How did you break out of that? Where have you may be talked about in the book how you have written whether it’s your newsletter or your YouTube channel, like getting people to snap out of it and believe in what is possible.

I would say that what you just touched on, the first thing I thought of was the Millennials. The Millennials are trying to apply the Baby Boomer life plan to a totally different economy. They are suffering and complaining about it. I got rid of my car because I Uber everywhere and I go for nice long walks or I jump on a Lime scooter and I go as far as I want. I don’t have to go back to a parking lot. I flip out my phone and five minutes later, I’m back at the house. You can start a website for $10 if you’re a Millennial, a business for $10. You can freelance anything, sell your skills, you’re going to work from home and you can monetize your own job. There are many things you can do as a Millennial if you embrace all these gifts and these things that the world has given us.

I ordered lunch and I wanted to order some Thai food, so I went onto Grubhub. A lot of people are trying to do the same thing with their investments and their investment mind setting. The Baby Boomers had the best bond market, best real estate market and the best stock market. According to Vanguard, the median account for 65 and older is only $58,000. If that experiment didn’t work for them, and by the way for most people, 401(k)s have only been around since the ‘80s. They passed them in the ‘70s but ‘80s for all intents, purposes and implementation. A lot of people think the 401(k) was with Adam and Eve, and they came out and they had their employer match.

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For Millennials

Financial Freedom For Millennials: Trying to keep up with the Joneses financing everything in your life and spending every last bit of your paycheck is not normal.

A lot of this stuff is new. It didn’t work and that’s okay. Some of the intentions were probably good. What does work? What’s been around for hundreds of years, thousands of years when it comes to passive income and the way the rich invest? I look at the frustrations of people that it’s a lot of times it’s because they’re adopting and applying these rituals. I was in Africa and I was with the Maasai. I was asking the guy, “What’s your goal in life?” He was like, “I need more cows.” I was like, “You guys cleaned our rooms and you see the bathrooms and the match them. You don’t want a mattress in your house? The houses are made of cow crap. You don’t want a toilet?” He’s like, “No, the elders say that’s not the Maasai way.” I’m like, “Tradition can kill,” like it’s doing to the Maasai, it’s doing to the Millennials here in America and all around the world because they are in the tradition of something that hasn’t even been around that long, especially when you apply the way conventional finance has been applied to for people.

Here’s what’s fascinating. What you said is that the root of the word capital, like capitalism, comes from cattle. The nature of capitalism isn’t the cattle itself. That’s not capital. The capital comes from the derivative use of cattle, how people figured out to use a cow for not just milk, not just meat, but leather for instance. I look at the world of immense resources and people look at the value in a piece of land or the property. That’s not where the value is. The value is our ability to take our mind and make use of that in a variety of different ways. Look at what we live amongst every single day, whether it’s Grubhub, uh, whether it’s the Lime scooters. These are essentially resources that people figured out how to look at some friction or some frustration and to get a solution to it. That’s all around us, but yet not understanding the fundamentals and subscribing to the status quo doesn’t open your mind up to what those possibilities are. That’s why the Millennials don’t like capitalism. It’s because everybody else is coming up with ideas and they’re not.

They may have been conditioned to believe that they want socialism, but look at every aspect of their life, they love the efficiency of capitalism.

It’s an amazing world we live in and it’s evolving so quickly. It’s awesome that there are more books like this coming out. They are reinforcing not just talking points, but they’re reinforcing principles that have been around for a long time, but also ways in which you can capitalize on the current environment to achieve the outcome that I would assume most people want.

In the book, I provided the links of the different companies I invest with. Obviously, your company is mentioned in there when it comes to my whole life policies. I didn’t hold anything back. I put it out there and the same thing goes with my letter at FutureMoneyTrends.com. If I’m investing in it or writing a check, it’s in there. If not, it’s not in there at all.

Daniel, what are some other ways in which they can follow you, learn about what you’re up to, learn about Future Money Trends, some of the video stuff that you’re doing online. Why don’t you throw those out there?

I would love for them to go to FutureMoneyTrends.com/save. They get the Weekly Wall Digest free. It shares a lot of the different stories and things that my wife and I went through and did to become financially independent as well as some stuff that I teach my children, as well as any investment, passive income or speculative that I’m actively involved in. They get to also read the first chapter of the book.

Daniel, it’s a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Hopefully, we get to do a follow-up soon.

I hope to see you soon.

Thank you.

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About Daniel Ameduri

TWS 18 | Financial Freedom For MillennialsDaniel Ameduri is a self-made multi-millionaire, a full-time skeptic of conventional thought, and a proud father of three. He is the co-founder of FutureMoney-trends.com, which, with nearly 150,000 subscribers, it’s the most widely recognized online authority in investment ideas and economic advice. He’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, on ABC World News Tonight, and on Russia Today TV. Daniel correctly predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Washington Mutual on “Vision Victory,” the YouTube channel he launched in 2007 and which now has had more than thirteen million views.

 

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TWS 16 | Principles Of Human Progress

The Driving Principles Of Human Progress with Dr. Walter E. Williams

August 22, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast Comments Off on The Driving Principles Of Human Progress with Dr. Walter E. Williams

TWS 16 | Principles Of Human Progress

 

Human progress and societal growth almost always influence each other. The increased pressure and the ability of man to rise to challenges paves the way for more learning and growth. In this episode, Patrick Donohoe interviews Dr. Walter E. Williams, an economist, commentator, and academic, to talk about societal or human progress. Dr. Williams explains that the core driving principles and structure of society is paramount to the idea of capitalism and discusses the environment in which capitalism most thrives.

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

The Driving Principles Of Human Progress with Dr. Walter E. Williams

Thank you so much for reading into this episode of The Wealth Standard. We are still talking entrepreneurship. A couple of episodes left before we move on to our next season. This is an episode I had been looking forward to for quite some time and it’s with an individual named Walter Williams. He is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at the George Mason University. He is also the former chairman of the audit committee, also a best-selling author of Up from the Projects: An Autobiography on race economics. How much can be blamed on discrimination? It’s a question in the subtitle. He also wrote American Contempt for Liberty as well as Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays. Walter also told me that there was a video done based on his biography, which is called Suffer No Fools. All of those links can be found at WalterEWilliams.com.

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I’m going to do some commentary on my interview with Walter Williams. I’m going to do a pre-interview commentary and then some post-interview commentary and give you an idea in the pre of why I am asking the questions I’m asking. In the post, I’ll expand on some of those ideas if you’re interested. The first thing that’s influencing me to think and to make even more sense out of entrepreneurship and what is essentially some of the resources I can provide you as budding, existing or experienced entrepreneurs is first a book that is intrigued me called The Mystery of Capital. The reason why it’s intrigued me is that it’s an individual who definitely leans toward free-market economics, laissez-faire, capitalism. He’s a pro personal liberty. At the same time, he’s talking about some fundamental structure of society that is paramount to the idea of capitalism. It’s caused me to think differently. I’m still in the process of thinking about what he is saying, what it means and how it could improve my understanding of capitalism, of human nature and help me to be more fulfilled and satisfied with what I’m doing in life. This is some of the points that he makes. Pick up that book. He’s a great writer. If you haven’t read it before or if you’re intrigued by some of the themes we’ve had, this is definitely a guy to follow.

The idea of The Mystery of Capital, we’ve used that word so much, but we haven’t gone to the root of that word and where it came from, which the first thing that was intriguing to me. It comes from the root of the same word of cattle. There’s a difference between cow and cattle. Where capitalism came from was the idea that human beings figured out a way to take a piece of property and turn it into so many different things. That’s what de Soto defined as capital. Not necessarily the cow itself, but the human being able to figure out how to create forms of value. Whether it’s the hide turning it into leather, whether it’s meat, whether it’s milk, whether it’s the other parts of the cow, which I think human beings have figured out a way to use every single part of it. That’s the capital, not necessarily the cow itself.

The second is essentially the environment in which capitalism most thrives, which is essentially the physical world full of resources and what goes from simply a resource into what he considers as capital, which is I would say the multiple derivatives of resources. That’s where it’s fascinating to me. Because capital is created there, but there are a structure and an environment in which it thrives better. He goes through and he talks about, I’ll use two examples. The first example is property in general. A property can be defined through intellectual property, an idea. Real estate is obviously physical space. He talks about in the United States, we have a very interesting property system, a legal system, a title system, which he goes to the history in it. The history is pretty fascinating.

It talks about how it’s not a perfect system, but it’s one of the more objective systems that are out there, which shows ownership and that ownership can be legally defended. That is a degree that creates a degree of certainty that allows that human mind to start exercising its tendency to provide those derivatives like a cow. Figure out a way to turn what was essentially a very monotonous routine, just playing into the derivative of it. Turning a property into a golf course. The golf course is the capital, not necessarily the property. Turning a blank lawn at your home into a beautiful landscape. I think that derivative is capital.

The human mind engages once that degree of certainty is there. He goes through a lot of the legal systems of property, real estate specifically in other parts of the world. He talks about the poorest third world countries. There are literally tens of trillions of dollars of capital that’s possible if the legal structure was in place to provide that degree of certainty. Because the human mind is not going to start acting in that way until there is a degree of certainty in which the outcome is more definite than if the property wasn’t able to be verified as that specific person. Therefore, their work to create capital would be for naught. Business is the same way. He talks about the ability to form a business in the US. Of course, there are clunky systems here, but relative to other parts of the world. He uses examples of having his research team go into some South American countries and try to form a business and set up shop. In some instances, it took several months. In some instances, it took over a year and it was extremely expensive to do it. It was full of red tape, full of clunkiness. Therefore, the ability to provide that foundation of certainty prevents and inhibits the human mind from being able to create a legitimate business and improve, innovate and make it even better to provide even more value for people for that. It’s Adam Smith’s invisible hand to be exercised.

It was fascinating and it’s caused me to think about, what is the proper role of government? Is government the best institution to create that system? Maybe, maybe not. It’s created the US property system, but is there a better system? How can governments go from a more loose and subjective system to an even better objective system than what the US has, whether that’s blockchain or otherwise. I think we’re always looking for a more solid foundation, a higher degree of certainty. It’s not conscious, we seek that. It’s caused me to reflect and I asked Dr. Williams a few questions in that regard about the environment and the importance of the environment.

The second thing was I joined the Tony Robbins Platinum Partner Group, which is this membership that you have a couple of separate events that you go to, but you can go to all of his conferences and events. There are typically eight to ten. He does most of them and you get to go to all of those as part of the membership. It’s a huge time commitment, huge financial commitment as well. I pulled the trigger there because I had some experiences that caused me to understand more about myself, what I wanted in life, my relationships and what was holding me back. I decided that I didn’t want it to be an event or an experience that was fleeting. I wanted it to be lasting. That’s why I chose to inundate myself or to immerse myself in that environment for a year.

I’ve been in Amsterdam, Dallas and Las Vegas. I’m going to San Diego and then there are a couple of other events. That immersion is working and it’s allowing me not to drink the Tony Robbins Kool-Aid, but it’s causing me to understand more about myself, more about the importance of psychology and also to value others. Whether it’s those that fit the confirmation bias or those that are a completely different opinion. I think there are so many things that are amazing about Tony Robbins, but it’s not like I believe and in an agreement with 100%. Maybe because of ignorance, it might be because of my experience. Nonetheless, there’s so much value in what he has been able to create as an environment in which people learn and experience that has allowed me to see things.

What’s fascinating about this episode is I did not think he was going to go in the direction that it went. He answered questions from a very interesting standpoint because he’s at a point where he’s not trying to build his career. He’s at a point where I would say people focus more on legacy than they focus on growing and expanding. He’s in his early 80s. He’s isn’t necessarily concerned with an image. I don’t know if he’s ever been concerned with his image. He has taken a stand that is very admirable because it goes against the grain of what the racial norms are as well as with the social norms, the political norms. I think you are going to like this episode. There definitely is so much more that could have asked and expanded upon, but for the sake of time and respect for him, I cut it short and stayed at a very high level. Without further delay, please welcome my guest, Walter Williams.

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Dr. Williams, it is an honor to have you on. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for inviting me.

I have to say I am somewhat intimidated because I have a great deal of respect for you and what you’ve done throughout your career. It took me a long time to come up with some of these questions. The first thing I wanted to ask you is, if you were to boil down your philosophy about society or human progress, what would you say are the core primary driving principles that you would arrive at?

My stepfather told me when I was a teenager that if you ever want to get somewhere in this life, you’ve got to learn to come early and stay late, which means that you have to work hard to get what you want. If you come early and stay late, you’ll eventually succeed at most things that you’re trying. In a sentence or two, that’s my philosophy.

If you are in a society where there is discrimination, you have to be better than others. Share on X

It’s interesting that it seems we’re innovating to work less. That’s the drive. Do you see that and what would you say to that?

I’m in my 84th year of life, I’ve seen a lot of changes. I see that people are forgiven for doing things and saying things that would not have been forgiven many years ago. Forms of behavior are accepted now that would not have been accepted before. I think that we’re the worst for it. There are all these modern ideas that you shouldn’t scold people, you shouldn’t hold them accountable. You should not punish them for doing the wrong things. You don’t do very much for the individual, that’s not very compassionate at all.

What would you say are the unintended consequences of that?

You have a society of people that are less accountable. I remember when I was about twelve years old, I was shining shoes and I’m making a little money for myself. One of my responsibilities with the money that I was making was to save money, pay for my school lunches, which is $0.15 or $0.25. I adopted the habit of spending my money and then going to my mother Wednesday or Thursday and asked her for a loan. I would always pay her back. One time I asked her for a loan and she said, “No, I’m not going to give you any money.” I thought she was the meanest person on the face of the Earth. It must have been very hard for her to see me come home from school and virtually inhale the refrigerator. I was starving. However, it’s the last time that happened. To bring it up to more modern times, I was telling that to my wife. I have a daughter who’s now 44 years old, but when she was young, I was telling her the same thing. My wife thought I was awful and she could never do that to my daughter.

I definitely see that. I have two teenagers and a five-year-old and it seems that the society we’re in, things are so easy to come by. Answers are at our fingertips. Food is plentiful and it’s conditioned people to want the here and now without doing much work. I think failure comes a lot, not necessarily because something was done wrong but because they didn’t have the persistence to carry it through.

What you’re talking about is the downside of affluence. We have so much wealth. We as parents, we try to give our children what our parents could not ever give us, but we wind up not giving our kids what our parents did give us that is discipline, responsibility and respect for authorities.

My wife grew up in Mexico and it was not a very nice neighborhood at all. It’s one of those stereotypical neighborhoods. That is to the tee what I would say she started out as a parent wanting to provide kids everything that she had dreamed about. There are unintended consequences to that because it forms habits that don’t necessarily serve a human being later in life.

TWS 16 | Principles Of Human Progress

Principles Of Human Progress: If you ever want to get somewhere in this life, you got to learn to come early and stay late.

 

We see this with our youngsters expecting things to be given to them on a silver spoon. Kid’s graduating from college not knowing very much, but expect to be a vice president first month at doing the job.

It’s the reality that we live in. I look at how you have championed free markets, personal liberty and limited government. I would say that is definitely not the guiding principle that society is using. Where do you see what we’ve been discussing with the mindset and perspective of the rising generation as it relates to the principles that you have championed for so long?

I’m not very optimistic. I hope I’m wrong about not being very optimistic, but if you ask the question, some people have asked me, “What can we do? Where’s our country headed?” I asked people, “Americans as human beings, are we any way different from the Romans, the Spanish, the French and the British?” These are great empires of the past that went down the tubes. They went down the tubes for generally the same thing that we’re doing now, that is bread and circuses. People are expecting the government to take care of them. As a matter of fact, in 1887 at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, that if someone had said that Great Britain would become a third-rate nation challenged on the high seats by a six-rate nation, Argentina, and almost lose, you would have been put into the insane asylum. It was inconceivable that anything would happen to Great Britain, but however it did. What’s happening in the United States, we’re headed the same way, maybe at a different rate but we’re going down the tubes.

Our basic, big problem that most Americans do not appreciate is that we have a moral problem. The big moral problem that we have as American people is that the average American believes that it’s okay for the United States Congress to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. That means to take your money and my money to give to farmers, to bail out banks, to get the poor people, to give foreign aid. All the thousands of federal programs, the average American thinks that is okay. That’s not a part of our history. It’s nowhere authorizing the United States Constitution for Congress to be in the business of taking the money of one person and giving to another. As a matter of fact, if I did the same thing privately, I would be condemned as a thief and in prison because that is nothing more than legalized theft.

I’m not making the argument about taxes. We all should pay our share of the constitutionally-mandated functions of the federal government, but there’s nothing in the constitution that authorizes Congress taking the earnings of one person and giving it to another. I’m not saying that I’m not for helping our fellow men in need. I think helping one’s fellow men in need by reaching into one’s own pockets to do so is praiseworthy and laudable. Helping one’s fellow men in need by reaching into somebody else’s pockets to do so I think is worthy of condemnation. For the Christians among us, when God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment saying, “Thou shall not steal,” he probably did not mean thou shall not steal unless you’re going a majority vote in the United States Congress.

I read a quote and I was thinking about it, “Beliefs are a poor substitute for experience.” I look at what you said on the surface, it seems like it is a moral good where people are being taken care of. At the same time, you don’t provide and don’t allow for the actual experience of people to take care of others and be charitable.

The emerging people are the most charitable people on the face of the Earth. That is all these welfare programs did not start until the 1950s or 1960s and maybe a few in the 1930s. We went from a poor nation in 1792 until about 1930s and became the richest nation and the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth without all these programs that people say are necessary. For example, Social Security, people say that is necessary. Social Security system started in 1936. What in the world did we do between 1792 and 1936 to take care of old people? Old people died in the homes of their children. There is something to be said in the Biblical admonition to honor thy mother and father. With
Social Security and all these programs for elderly people, they don’t have to honor their mother and father. They can get somebody else to honor their mother and father through tax code. We have some basic moral problems in our society and I don’t see any cure for them.

If anybody wants to promote wealth and liberty, they should also promote free market economic systems. Share on X

On top of what we’ve been talking about, robbing of experiencing charity, taking, giving and contributing to somebody else’s life for their wellbeing. It also comes down to I would say it’s a drive that we have to overcome adversity. Every movie that is popular out there seems to have a similar theme where somebody overcomes adversity, they overcome a challenge. When you essentially are robbing people from saving for their retirement or robbing people from getting a job and experiencing how to navigate those waters and improve their resume. You’re essentially replacing those experiences with a supplement or a Band-Aid to it. It goes to that saying, “Beliefs are a poor excuse for the actual experience.”

The tragedy cannot be avoided. People tend to think that what we see has always been, and that’s not true. For example, you’re talking about people working. The last time I asked my mother for money, other than in loans for lunches, was when I was twelve years old. I had all kinds of jobs after school and that we live in a Richard Allen housing project, which is part of the slums in North Philadelphia. I did afterschool jobs, shining shoes, shoveling snow with my cousin on the Redding railroad platform and caddying golf courses.

All these work opportunities do not exist now for young people. You’ll never see a thirteen, fourteen-year-old caddying on a golf course. You’ll never see a thirteen, fourteen-year-old kid shoveling snow off train platforms. The railroad workers union does not want to see a kid doing that for $20 when their member can get $200 for doing the same thing. They’re able to use the law to block that opportunity. There are many work opportunities that are gone. The tragedy is that the average person thinks that is always this way. That is the regulations and the behaviors that we see now, the average person thinks, “It’s always been that way.”

I look at my great conversation with my thirteen-year-old and she’s one of the more entrepreneurial, loves always to be active and has wanted to work for so long. She didn’t fathom this idea of a paper route. That’s what I had when I was her age. She has this bug inside of her to work. It’s a process and the experience of doing something and getting remunerated for it. There are lots of tendency for leisure, but it seems that the more we’re progressing as a society, the less fulfilled and happy we are. Do you think it’s because of that dynamic, not being able to have these types of experiences?

I think it’s that and many other things that we just accept. For example, if you look at some of my columns, I give references to it, the behavior of students towards teachers. Students curse out teachers, teachers are assaulted. For example, in the City of Baltimore in 2015, on average, four teachers were assaulted each school day of the year. When I was coming up as a kid, one would not dream of even cursing at a teacher, much less assaulting a teacher. I remember holding my hand out in elementary school for the ruler. I did something wrong and the teacher whacked my hand with a ruler. A teacher doing the same thing now would be fired if not carried off to prison or corporal punishment. People now replace what worked with what sounds good. I remember I got my butt spanked a whole lot. The worst time to get a spanking is in the summertime when the windows are open and when your friends outside can hear you copping a plea. You go outside and they start teasing you. My mother, if she was doing the same thing now, somebody would send Child Protective Services to arrest her.

We could probably spend an hour talking about just accountability and the nature of accountability and how that is essential for growth. Something intrigued me and I know who Hernando de Soto is. I’ve been going through one of his books, The Mystery of Capital. It talks about the infrastructure as an essential piece of establishing capital and having the human mind engage and create the capital, and then exchange with it. I think it’s a byproduct oftentimes of a free market society or laissez-faire capitalistic society. It caused me to think about how the US, the flaws we often give it that there’s such an incredible infrastructure here. It’s made me think through what is the proper role of a government? What is the proper role of establishing these types of fundamental foundational systems of law? Why is it that some countries like the US established that and others don’t?

I think that one of the things that go unappreciated about capitalism is that throughout mankind’s history, the way that people accumulated a vast amount of wealth was through plundering, looting and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible for people to accumulate great wealth by pleasing or serving their fellow man. Finding out what their fellow man wants or needs, and getting the resources to produce it in the most efficient manner. If you look at wealthy men through history, how did Henry Ford become so wealthy? He produced things that satisfied his fellow men. Bill Gates, how did he become so wealthy? He didn’t rob anybody. He just produced Windows programs that satisfied his fellow men.

TWS 16 | Principles Of Human Progress

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

If you look around at the world, and if you were to rank societies according to whether they’re at the free market and of the economic spectrum or the communism of the political-economic spectrum, rank countries according to personal liberties. You rank countries in terms of capital income, you’d find something that’s not strange at all that the countries that are closest to the free market end of the economic spectrum not only have higher income, but they have greater protection of their liberty. The countries that are towards the communists end of the economic spectrum, those are the people who are the poorest in the world and tend to have the fewest freedoms. If anybody wants to promote wealth and liberty, they should also at the same time promote free-market economic systems.

As we end some of your concluding thoughts, where were you most influenced to believe the way that you believe, think the way that you think? What are some of those pivotal experiences that you had, whether it’s reading a book or meeting somebody or a person of influence that caused you to think in a different way?

Being 84 years old, I’m very happy that I got most of my education before it became fashionable for white people to like black people. What I mean by that is that when I got an A grade in a class, it was an honest to God A. When I got a C, it was honest to God C. Nobody is feeling sorry for me. They held me to high standards. They weren’t giving me any breaks because they say, “This is legacy of slavery or discrimination, etc.” They held me up to very high standards. I received my Doctorate in Economics from UCLA and I had some very tenacious professors that didn’t cut me any slack.

When I took the PhD exam, there were sixteen students who took the exam and thirteen flunked. The professors came to me and they say, “Williams, your exam was among the worst, but we think that you can do better.” They gave me reading lists. They gave me this and gave me that. The next time I took the PhD micro exam, I passed it. If I had gone to Harvard or Berkeley, they might have taken into account slavery, discrimination, etc. and given me a break and just pass me anyway. As a result of having gone to UCLA, Harvard or somewhere of these liberal departments, I’m a better economist as a result.

Would you say that there is a correlation between the extremity of the experience and the actual growth? Let’s say as it pertains to an individual. Because of the increased pressure and your ability to rise to that challenge enabled you to learn more, think more, be challenged more and subsequently grow more.

If you look at any sport, football, boxing, basketball. What the coaches talk to these young people playing, they don’t give them any break. They’re not treating them with kid gloves. They’re trying to get the best out of them and that works when people say, “We’re not going to accept any less than the best that you can do.” Fortunately, I had that experience.

Were you born or identify with a level of confidence at an early age, or was it instilled by your parents? Where did that confidence come from, because most people would cave to that and quit, but what allowed you to rise up?

A hard environment allows an individual to dig deep and understand what is possible for themselves. Share on X

My father deserted us when I was three and my sister was two. My mother raised us. She would always tell us, “If you’re number two, you’ve got to do better. You’re in a society where there’s discrimination, you have to be better.” She wasn’t telling us the message that somebody should feel sorry, somebody should give you a break. It was very high expectations. One time when my mother was told how I was misbehaving in school, she took away all of my privileges until the next report card came out and I had improved my grades. That’s tough. She is very important in my life and she’s responsible for setting me up for success.

As a final question, how have you used that, whether it’s with your daughter or your students over the years? How have you created the environment in order for them to grow the most in your presence?

I owe my students up to high expectations. They have to cut the mustard and nothing less is exempted. My daughter is a little bit different because fathers are a little bit weaker with their daughters as opposed to their sons. I was not as pressing with my daughter. Nonetheless, she turned out to be a very good and very successful person.

Dr. Williams, it’s been incredible. Thank you so much for what you’ve written about, what you stood for so many years. What are the ways in which readers can learn more about you and also purchase some of the books that you’ve written or read some of the articles that you’ve published?

There’s a lot of material that I’ve done and it’s on my website, it’s WalterEWilliams.com. Also, there’s a video made based on my autobiography that I wrote and it’s called Suffer No Fools. That’s a one-hour video and that’s available at my website as well.

Dr. Williams, thank you so much and I appreciate the time. This has been a great conversation.

Thank you for inviting me.

TWS 16 | Principles Of Human Progress

Principles Of Human Progress: Having an environment in which you’re able to be persistent should be an opportunity to celebrate as opposed to be afraid of.

 

Take care.

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I’m going to get into expanding on a few of the things I talked about pre-interview. I hope you liked Walter Williams. If you haven’t heard him speak, he’s one of those guys where you listened to him, you experience him and you immediately know there is a lot of wisdom and experiences over the years that have caused him to reflect and solidify his view of the world. It’s because of the environment he was in, in which he was able to be nurtured and grow. I found it interesting the first response to the question I proposed, which is, “How would you describe your primary driving principles?” If you boiled everything down to all of the things that he’s experienced, read, teaching students, human progress. It was hard work.

I’m not sure if it’s hard work, meaning the time. I think it’s more of the intensity around the work and the persistence, that dynamic as it relates to work. The reason why I say that I’ve talked about the notion of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is the idea of entropy. Where when something dies without an environment, it stays the same. With the environment, it determines what it becomes. That goes to the First Law of Thermodynamics, which in large part is that energy can’t be created or destroyed, it essentially transforms. I found it interesting where the environment, the example I used that I heard from Blair Singer was if a tree falls in the forest, it dies. If it stays in the forest, it essentially becomes part of the forest. It decomposes and it becomes food for the other trees and plants.

If a tree falls in a different environment, like when it falls in the swamp, there’s way more pressure than if it fell in the forest. That pressure turns it into something different. The higher degree of pressure in that environment allows for it to become coal and then eventually a diamond. You have one outcome based on an input. Here’s the input of a dead tree. This is the outcome. The environment is what determines that. I think it was interesting because when there’s an environment of pressure, I believe human beings will often rise to the challenge or quit, but if they do rise to the challenge, what they become in the process is incredible.

Having an environment in which you’re able to be persistent, especially as it pertains to an entrepreneur, looking at how difficult something is should be an opportunity to celebrate as opposed to being afraid of. That goes to what I’ve been learning a lot about psychology. Not from a formalized standpoint, but psychology in Tony Robbins’ definition. That psychology is defined as the way in which we create meaning of something. I think psychology as it relates to who we are, in large part, has to do with the environment that we’re either in or have been in.

I think in those environments are often not chosen. That’s where I’m going to speak to. How can you choose your environments and that dynamic versus not choosing an environment and ultimately have it chosen for you? You look at one of the episodes with Andy Tanner talking about this idea of free speech in a difficult environment, which students want to be protected from emotional harm. I think that protection about emotional harm is the greatest harm itself because it enables this crowd effect. Essentially the psychology and perspective are determined by the group and the crowd, not necessarily by the individual. A hard environment allows an individual to dig deep and understand what is possible for themselves.

I believe that as you choose your environments and the higher the pressure is, the more you’re going to grow and the more you’re going to become. This is where it comes down to, why won’t a person choose those difficult environments? I think it boils down to the principle of fear. I look at fear and it’s interesting because what people are afraid of all boils down to the very same thing, which is a feeling of being discarded, a feeling of being worthless, insignificant, not smart, not loved. That fear is often a defense mechanism. It initiates by being judged. I heard a cool definition of judgment that has caused me to reflect on that. The quote is that, “Judgment is a mask that comes from the fear of being vulnerable.” The fear of being vulnerable is that people will see your weaknesses and then not value you, discard, discount you and ultimately not like you, love you or appreciate you. People have this fear of that, which is incredible.

People today replace what works with what sounds good. Share on X

In the end, if you understand those fundamentals, you’re going to realize that it isn’t your problem that someone’s judging you. It’s the person who’s judging’s problem. It’s their fears that are causing them to act that way. The more you understand about yourself and who you are and the meaning that comes from the circumstances of your life, the better you’re going to be able to put yourself in challenging environments in order to grow the most. That’s what I’ve been thinking a lot of and it helped me because I look at how much noise that’s out there in our world. It’s difficult to concentrate and to focus. I believe that within that noise, our chords, there’s this harmonious formula in which we have a better experience of life, but also become successful, which is a part of that fulfilling experience of life.

I’m not sure what each note is of those chords because we all know what noise sounds like. My kids play instruments but going to elementary school orchestra concerts, that’s noise. You’d probably rather listen to something else. I look at then going to a symphony or an orchestra that’s very well-trained professionals. It’s one of the most gratifying experiences. The same instruments, same music but completely different experience because of all of that noise come together in a harmonious way. I think there’s a formula in essence for success, a formula for growth, a formula for fulfillment. I don’t 100% understand it, but that’s what I’m thinking about and seeking. Not just for me, but also for you because I believe human beings are after very similar things. They are after the way something feels. They’re after whatever environment, dynamic or thing gives that sense, emotion and that feeling. I believe that we make it hard to do, which is also funny.

I enjoyed Walter Williams. It caused me to reflect because here’s a guy that has nothing to lose. He’s already made his legacy. He’s written some incredible books. He’s also taught thousands of students and made a difference. He’s at the latter part of his life, and for him to answer the way that he answered the first question was interesting and fascinating. I can see how it led to the success that he had in his industry. I think facing the environment that he was in. He’s an African-American and he is basically cutting against the grain of the liberal agenda, which is often the stereotype of that racial segment of society.

I also look at his views on economics and politics, which is also extremely against the grain. It’s free markets for capitalism. That puts him in a very interesting environment in which he’s probably thought deeply about the important things of life. This is the way in which he decided to answer those questions, which I think should tell us something. I hope you guys learned something from this episode. I’ve got a couple of cool episodes coming down the pipe before we wrap up the season. I hope you’re getting a lot from the show and it’s helping you to be even more successful than you already are. I’ll talk to you next time.

Important Links:

About Dr. Walter E. Williams

TWS 16 | Principles Of Human ProgressBorn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.

Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.

Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader’s Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored ten books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary “Good Intentions,” All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People’s Economist Speaks, More Liberty Means Less Government, Liberty vs. the Tyranny of Socialism, Up From The Projects: An Autobiography, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination? and American Contempt for Liberty.

He has made scores of radio and television appearances which include “Nightline,” “Firing Line,” “Face the Nation,” Milton Friedman’s “Free To Choose,” “Crossfire,” “MacNeil/Lehrer,” “Wall Street Week” and was a regular commentator for “Nightly Business Report.” He is also occasional substitute host for the “Rush Limbaugh” show. In addition Dr. Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites. His most recent documentary is “Suffer No Fools,” shown on PBS stations Fall/Spring 2014/2015, based on Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.

Dr. Williams serves as Emeritus Trustee at Grove City College and the Reason Foundation. He serves as Director for the Chase Foundation and Americans for Prosperity. He also serves on numerous advisory boards including Cato Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and Heritage Foundation. Dr. Williams serves as Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: the 2017 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foudation, the Fund for American Studies David Jones Lifetime Achievement Award, Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, Hoover Institution National Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, Adam Smith Award, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year, and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.

Dr. Williams has participated in numerous debates, conferences and lectures in the United States and abroad. He has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and the American Economic Association.

 

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TWS 14 | Dynamics Of Capitalism

A Conversation Around Politics, Entrepreneurship, And The Dynamics Of Capitalism with Peter Wehner

August 8, 2019 Patrick Donohoe Podcast 00:45:54 Comments Off on A Conversation Around Politics, Entrepreneurship, And The Dynamics Of Capitalism with Peter Wehner

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TWS 14 | Dynamics Of Capitalism

 

Capitalism is the greatest economic system in human history because it’s lifted more people out of poverty than any system in human history and allowed for the conditions for great human flourishing and great technological advancements. This is according to Peter Wehner, a New York Times contributing Op-Ed writer covering American politics and conservative thought and a popular media commentator on politics. Wehner is also a veteran of three White House administrations and author of the books Wealth and Justice, The Morality of Democratic Capitalism, and The Death of Politics. In this episode, he dives into the aspects and dynamics of capitalism.

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A Conversation Around Politics, Entrepreneurship, And The Dynamics Of Capitalism with Peter Wehner

My guest is incredible. Probably the best top three interviews I’ve had. We are talking about entrepreneurship, but we also weave in capitalism. We talk about a lot of what the theme was in 2018, life, liberty and property. It was awesome to talk to this individual. He is super intelligent and very distinguished. Peter Wehner is my guest and he is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He also is a contributing editor at the Atlantic Magazine. He is also a contributing columnist for the New York Times. He is the former Director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush. He has authored a few books, Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism and The Death of Politics. Welcome, Peter. It is amazing to have you on. I’m excited about this conversation and to talk to you about your book as well as some of the things that you’ve been preaching.

Thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

I talked to you a little bit about what we’ve been doing, which is focusing on the topics that include life, liberty, property from some of John Locke’s writings. As well as what capitalism is, entrepreneurship, and the framework where most people want to be a part of. Not necessarily just in the US but around the world. I look at what you’ve written about and understood it for quite some time studying and looking at where our society is and what has made us successful versus other nations perhaps. How have you come to understand capitalism in general and the aspects and dynamics of capitalism?

My belief is that capitalism is the greatest economic system in human history because it has lifted more people out of poverty than any system in human history and allowed for the conditions for great human flourishing and great technological advancements. Capitalism unmitigated and unrestrained has some problems. Part of what democracies and free societies have to do is to soften some of the rougher edges of that. That’s a prudential judgment. What does that mean? What programs have to be done to do that? You have to weigh the costs and benefits in terms of the effects on economic growth and all the rest.

It’s my belief that capitalism works because it’s most consistent with human nature. I’m a big believer in the idea that you have to confirm your economic and political systems to certain realities about human nature. I think capitalism accords to that and aligns with that. It understands as Adam Smith talked about what selfishness rightly understood is. You have to take into account what drives and motivates people that you can’t believe simply altruism, even though altruism is a part of human life and human experience. People act in ways that advance their self-interest rightly understood. You have to create certain incentives that will lead human beings to act in the ways that are both expected of them but also advances the common good.

I think the American understanding of capitalism, by and large, is the right one. Limited government entrepreneurship, free markets, skepticism about the ability of the centralized government to dictate decisions and believe that it has the capacity to anticipate and direct all aspects of human life. It has improved and right. There’s an epistemological modesty that capitalism understands, which is that you can’t get a small group of very bright people who can run economies. The way that economies work best is letting people by and large to be free to act in ways that want to act.

Let me go into two things that you had said because I find this interesting. It sounds like there’s this altruistic pull of human beings to be charitable to help others, to contribute, give back. There’s also this invisible hand, maybe more self-interested. It seems like those two things are pulling against each other. Are they mutually exclusive or is it may be a mischaracterization of those two concepts?

I don’t think of them as mutually exclusive. I think that they can be complementary. They’re distinct and they’re part of human nature. Think about your own life, the lives of your friends and your family, you probably see both of those elements in them. There are times in which you see altruism, self-sacrifice, selflessness, acts of charity, sympathy and compassion. Those things are real and they exist. They should be encouraged where they can. On the other hand, all of us act in our self-interest as well. That’s the way we’re designed. That’s the way that we operate. Most of life is acting in our self-interest provided that it doesn’t run over the rights of other people, and none of us are completely selfless, self-giving, completely compassionate and completely sympathetic. You have to take that into account.

The way that economies work best is by letting people be free to act in ways that they want to act. Share on X

That’s not a bad thing as long as it’s channeled in the right way. The trick here is to try and take those human realities and direct them in a way that advances the common good. The founders understood this. Their view of human nature was correct, which is that people are capable of virtue and nobility but also acts of recklessness, irresponsibility and evil. You have to take both of those things into account. My own sense, I’m a person of the Christian faith. The Christian understanding of human nature is essentially correct. It’s that too, which is the advice and virtue are intermingled in people’s lives and in people’s hearts. It’s a complicated mix. People in different seasons in life lean in more of one direction than another. The challenge in individual lives, as well as a society, is to try and emphasize, give force and power to the higher things and to mitigate the lower things.

I do want to hit on a few of the things you said. Go to this idea of central powers dictating what people should do or taking care of them is the banner sometimes in which central governances is looked to as a virtue. What is it about that structure that people don’t end up liking? The ideal side of things that they push through or talk about sometimes is intriguing. I see why they would appeal to people, but when it comes down to it, why do people kick against that? Why does that impede human progress or does it?

Let’s take facts and circumstances. Sometimes when the centralized government, the national government who’s acted is advanced, great good, and sometimes, often it’s done the opposite. I’m somebody who believes in limited government and is wary of centralized government. I’m a lifelong conservative. That’s what’s shaped my beliefs in part because the way I understand conservatism is that it’s based very much on the human experience. It’s a negation of ideology, Russell Kirk and others have said. You have to take into account what works for the human condition. I’d say that there are several reasons for it in terms of why one is skeptical with centralized power. One is simply on the efficacy standpoint. Peter Schuck wrote a book about why government fails. He refers to himself in the book as a militant moderate.

He’s not an ideological person, but he’s an empirical look at what it is about a large government that doesn’t work very often, that fails where the efficiency is not what it ought to be. Anybody who’s worked there, if they’re honest, would concede that fact. How often these grand promises and hopes that are sincere and don’t translate into reality. I think you could look at much of the great society and see that. Even programs which have done some good but have also are themselves extremely inefficient like Medicare and Medicaid. I wouldn’t argue that no good comes out of them. I don’t think that’s sustainable, but those programs are not nearly as efficient as they could be.

TWS 14 | Dynamics Of Capitalism

Dynamics Of Capitalism: Most of life is acting in our self-interest provided that it doesn’t run over the rights of other people.

 

I’d say the inefficiency and lack of efficacy for centralized government is something that we need to be alert to. There’s the concern that the founders themselves had and many others who had, which is when you centralize power, there’s the danger of authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. That as the old maximum goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. We’ve seen time after time that when people get a tremendous amount of power, when it’s unchecked and it’s on challenged, that can lead to some very bad conditions and situations. That was the worry of the founders. That’s the reason that they set up our system of government of checks, balances, and separation of powers because what they wanted was not an efficient government. They wanted a government that protected against tyranny.

I think that’s a second reason that people need to be wary about centralized government. The third reason is that if you go back and you read Adam Smith in a certain way and probably more specifically this idea about which is that there’s this mythology among Progressives, which is that if you get a group of wise men, wise women, they can oversee, conduct, and determine how human society can act and all realms that simply isn’t possible. They can’t do it. There are so many imponderables in lives, so many contingencies in life that the idea that a centralized state or a group of individuals would be able to make those judgments. I just don’t think works.

The fourth thing I’d say is George Will, a marvelous book that he wrote called The Conservative Sensibility writes about the American founding. He says, “That’s essentially what conservative’s need to conserve.” which is the idea of inalienable rights. Natural rights, rights that precede government. His argument and I think it’s a valid point that government, if it gets too large, too centralized, can undermine those natural rights. He makes the case in a pretty persuasive way that the belief in natural rights would tend to lead one toward a more limited government.

Let’s go to your book because you look at the idea of capitalism and just the word itself formulates a specific reaction in people as far as my experience is concerned. It’s not necessarily based on logic and thought through education debate where a person comes to an understanding. It’s more based on what has been heard. What society believes about that word? Talk about your best-selling book, Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism and weave that into the conversation. Talking about how that can essentially be a message that will hit on the principles that make capitalism good for society as opposed to what most people react to, which is that it exploits people and takes advantage of people. It’s all about the wealthy and them getting their own.

People are capable of virtue and nobility, but also acts of recklessness, irresponsibility, and evil. Share on X

I coauthor it. It’s a monograph of the American Enterprise Institute with Arthur Brooks, who was for many years President of an American Enterprise Institute. He left to take a professorship at Harvard. Arthur is very good in a very sober and thoughtful voice on this thing. We wrote this book and the situation is more acute than it was when we wrote it. One of our concerns was Americans in general and particularly young Americans were losing faith in capitalism as a system. We see that in polls, and you’re probably more familiar with them than I am. The support for socialism is higher than at any time in my lifetime, probably higher than at any point since the early part of the twentieth century.

You see this in contemporary politics with the Democratic Party who are two of the hottest political figures in democratic politics, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They’re both self-proclaimed democratic socialists. If you watch the democratic debates, you see Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren essentially taking an anti-private enterprise stance. There’s almost a reflexive hostility to anything having to do with capitalism or corporations. It doesn’t mean that those certain corporations don’t deserve criticism, but it’s a reflex. You’ve seen this rise in respect and to some of the enthusiasm for socialism and the decline in competence and capitalism. That’s a problem. Some of that is undoubtedly a result of the great in 2008. I think that the income gap between the most wealthy and the rest of the society probably had more of an effect on the general public than a lot of people on the right thought that it would.

It seems to have permeated society and the belief that the very rich are making out like bandits, the rest of us are not and so much of the gains in wealth, money from the market, that has happened. We’ve had wage stagnation from pretty much the entire part of the 21st century. Wages had been much flatter and it’s a complicated set of reasons for why that’s happened. I wouldn’t blame that on any single president. Certain deep trends are in play here, which I’m guessing you’ve covered. There seems to be a lack of faith in capitalism. That’s given rise to populism, which I’m wary about as a conservative. I think populism can often be antithetical to capitalism and it can be antithetical to reason itself.

I think it first goes to reason because I would say there’s less reason. It may be the delusion of information that’s all around us and individuals who can’t fit anything else into their head. Therefore they take the efficient approach and leverage the belief system of someone they feel is like them. It’s interesting to see how society has been wired to think a certain way and it’s not necessarily the beliefs associated with reason, debate and personal individual understanding. Its group thinking dictated by very persuasive people like your AOC and Bernie Sanders.

TWS 14 | Dynamics Of Capitalism

Dynamics Of Capitalism: It’s important for the defenders of capitalism and free-market to make those arguments and not to be dismissive toward the critics.

 

I think that’s right. There’s a rage at the system, the establishment of healing. It’s almost a quasi-nihilism. You see this toward capitalism and the politics in general, which is this idea that we have to burn down the village to save it. Things couldn’t be worse. Let’s just toss the whole thing aside. That’s what explains in part of the rise of Donald Trump. I’ve been a very strong and persistent critic of Donald Trump in large part on conservative grounds. What he tapped into is a sense that people wanted a wrecking ball to come in and shatter things. That’s deeply anti-conservative impulse, but he tapped into it effectively.

I’ve told friends of mine who were pro-capitalism and pro-free-market as I am. It is important to do a study or set of studies to understand what happened. What explains the loss of faith in capitalism, the rise in affinity for socialism. Both attitudes and specific episodes and incidents that explain it to understand in a thoughtful way what is driving it. What are the attitudes? What is associated with free-market and capitalism and to think through how do we tell the story? What’s the narrative? What’s the tale we have to tell to remind people why capitalism is a system that has brought so much human flourishing and then so much to encourage human dignity?

I think it was Orwell who said that the first duty of a responsible man is a restatement of the obvious. Sometimes you have to restate what’s obvious or what you thought was obvious. I’ve noticed this in life, in politics, and in economics and all sorts of realms, which is sometimes people forget to make the arguments in some fundamental way. Why is it that we believe what we believe? That’s understandable. You think that certain victories are one, that arguments are settled and you just act on that assumption. Sometimes without quite realizing it, the floor breaks and all of a sudden, that confidence that people had or that understanding those shared assumptions are gone.

I think when it comes to capitalism, it’s quite important for people who are defenders of capitalism and free-market to make those arguments. Not to be dismissive toward the critics, not to laugh at them, not to say these ideas are stupid. Therefore, it shouldn’t be repudiated. Don’t even engage in name-calling, just say socialist and hope that is enough. We have to do more fundamental work to make the case again, and in a sense to win the hearts of ordinary Americans. To explain to them why capitalism is an economic system worthy of their loyalty.

No matter how strong your argument is, it's never as strong as you think it is. Share on X

Let me use some way to abstract of an example as you may use to. There is a documentary that I saw called Behind The Curve. It was essentially about this millions of people that came together stating that the world is flat. That documentary was done by a non-flat-earther. It was interesting because he took this approach and it’s a very irrational thought, but yet millions of people were gravitating toward this. It was all driven by this emotional desire that they have to fit in within a group. Usually, a group of people that don’t believe what everybody else believes. What’s fascinating to the point you just made is the individual who was doing the documentary, they interviewed astrophysicists. They were saying, “Do you know that there’s this group out there, millions of people that believe the earth is flat?”

It’s fascinating because it takes you through this psychological urge of what I think you’re speaking to because the astrophysicists in the end said that, “These people don’t know what we know, so we can’t assume that they do and make an argument from that standpoint.” You have to meet them where they’re at and why they’ve come to that conclusion. If you start to make them wrong or make them feel stupid, it’s just going to strengthen their argument. That fits within the confines of what you’ve been talking about.

That’s a very interesting observation. I’m intrigued. I like to see that documentary. That whole area does fascinate me, I must say. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the work of Jonathan Haidt, who is a marvelous moral psychologist. He used to be at the University of Virginia. He’s now at NYU. He wrote a book called The Righteous Mind. He spends a lot of time with a group called Heterodoxy, which is an effort to defend free speech on campuses against speech codes and so forth. Jonathan himself has been on an interesting journey and interesting pilgrimage. He started out as a traditional person who laughed at Progressive and is much more of a centrist. In part because of what his research has taught him. I’ve learned a lot. He’s a very intelligent, thoughtful guy and a very good guy as well.

His work on confirmation bias and motivated reasoning is outstanding. I’ve learned a lot from it and it goes to the point that you’re making. I think a lot of us believe that the positions others hold and that we hold are derived through some disinterested analysis of the facts, reasoning, and that reasoning has brought us to what we believe, free of emotion and all the rest. What we know about brain science and human nature, the more we’re looking into these things. It is so much of what we believe is a product of transrational or subrational forces. We have dispositions, tropisms, and predilections were products of our families of origin, our life experience, the people we’re around, and the communities we’re a part of.

TWS 14 | Dynamics Of Capitalism

Dynamics Of Capitalism: There is a chance to get some deeper understanding when people feel safe and when they feel heard.

 

That sense of fitting in with communities is extremely strong. We know from brain science that when you get information that confirms what you already believe, it’s a dopamine effect or rush. On the flip side, when there’s information that challenges certain basic assumptions, your brain puts up often a shield to block those things out. It’s genuinely uncomfortable for people to hear information that challenges them. I’d say in my own life, politics and just human relationships, that’s one area where I’ve changed. In the past when I would have differences with people, I would often write long emails, fact base, point-by-point. People who know me would think I was built to respond to some of these issues in terms of debating. Empirical evidence, premise facts to support it, conclusion.

What I’ve discovered is no matter how strong your argument is and it’s never as strong as you think it is. Let’s just assume for the sake of argument. You and I were having a debate. The case I presented against you was overwhelming by any objective standard. The odds are not only that, you wouldn’t change your position if I overwhelmed your case. You would probably, as you were indicating, dig your heels and more. It’s quite rare to shift people. I’ve seen this in theology, in the world of Christianity, in the world of politics and all sorts of world. Where there is a chance to get some deeper understanding is when people feel safe, when they feel heard. When they believe that you know their arguments and at least can state them and understand them even if you disagree with them. If there are a human connection and a human relationship, if you have in a sense standing in somebody else’s life and that will allow them to let you in and to make their case, and vice versa.

Alan Jacobs, who is a professor at Baylor used to be at Wheaton, wrote a book called How to Think. He refers to a foundation that when they conduct debates, the first thing that they require is that the people are debating. Person A states the position of person B in such a fair-minded way that person B believes that it is a fair restatement of their views and vice versa. That is the precondition before the debate goes on. If that thing happened more often, we’d get a lot further along. We know this from the social science evidence. We are as polarized as we have been since reconstruction. It’s a deeply polarized society and when that happens, people tend to go into their own camps and they shut off people who have alternative views. I think that’s happening in all realms, including in the realm that we’re talking about free-market and capitalism. That goes to the larger discussions we’re having, which is how do you make the case in a way that the people who could conceivably be open to an alternative case are.

You’re hitting on everything that has been going through my mind. What you said was brilliant. That’s where I look at just my experience and what I was trying to get to with the whole idea of central governance. People don’t like to be told what to do. There’s this fighting response to it that I think goes into what you were referring to as our unconscious or what’s built into our wiring. That right there includes a lot of when we had to survive where we don’t necessarily have to survive anymore, but yet those instincts are still there. When a person feels attacked, I would assume that it’s very similar to being attacked by the sabertooth tiger or some animal.

Human life and experience is about learning things and recalibrating new facts and conditions that arise and trying to adjust accordingly. Share on X

That’s where I look at AOC and I look at Donald Trump in a way, especially where in a sense they understand psychology. They’re using what people will respond to as talking points and statements. People fall prey to it all the time. I look at the psychology side of things and going to where economics is and usually, the argument for capitalism tends to be rational thinking. I look at how human beings are wired. The majority of it’s emotional. That’s where I look at the values and principles approach has something that intrigues me as opposed to labels like capitalism, Democrats, Progressives or Liberals. It’s looking at principle as opposed to labels because the labels immediately there put you in that camp or excludes you. If you’re in the camp, you’re going to believe what the camp believes and if you’re excluded, you’re not going to believe it.

Labels exist for a reason because they label something. They identify world views, but I think that the labels by and large are probably counterproductive. Once the labels are cast out, then you’re putting people in categories, they’re putting you in categories. It becomes awfully neat, tidy and untrue. It doesn’t allow for flexibility and nuance, which is what human life and experience are about. You learn things, you refine your thinking, you recalibrate, new facts, new conditions arise and you try and adjust accordingly. If you’re in these ideological boxes, it’s very hard.

I’ve had these conversations with Trump supporters because I’m a lifelong conservative and I worked in three Republican administrations and in a Republican White House. I have a lot of friends who are Republicans. I’ve been so critical of Trump. They’re puzzled or upset by it. I’ve had a lot of conversations, many of them good. Sometimes it takes an effort to make sure that the relations don’t fray. It’s been helpful for me because I’ve been able to hear their perspective and understand where they’re coming from. I must say that there are times in which one makes an empirical claim as it relates to Donald Trump that is a criticism of him. Let’s say something about that he has lied and there’s demonstrable evidence that it’s a lie. It’s been fascinating to me how it just doesn’t breakthrough.

It is as if they think that that’s the thread and the whole thing can come apart. If they can see one thing that the whole project comes apart. I’ve experienced this throughout my life in politics, particularly when you’re in the White House. Many of the issues that you confront are complicated issues. They’re very intelligent people arguing different policies and different points of view. Often the decisions are 60/40 or 65/35. It’s not 100% arguments on one side and 0% on the other. That’s part of what discretion, judgment, prudence and wisdom is in governing. It’s the ability to hear these arguments which sound potentially equally persuasive thinking through we choose the one that is most appropriate given the circumstances we’re in. What are the contingencies that we have to anticipate but are unknowable? If you’re deciding a set of policies that you want to roll out, what’s achievable politically and not? What’s the composition of Congress? You might want to push some elements of privatization of Social Security, which you could believe is the right thing to do, but maybe it’s not achievable.

TWS 14 | Dynamics Of Capitalism

The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump

Maybe you have to do something ahead of that. These are all very complicated issues to take into account. Often they are choosing one set of policies over and against another one or 60/40, but then when you get into the actual discussion, those differences disappear and that weighing of pros and cons disappears. It’s as if all the arguments are on one side and not on the other. Once you settled on a position, there seems to be some reflex that we have that says, “I can’t concede a single point to the other side because if I do it, I weaken my case and I can’t possibly weaken my case.” You have people shouting, talking points at each other, talking past each other, and refusing to engage each other and saying, “That’s a valid point. I think you’re right. I just think that the other arguments on my side outweigh the good point that you’re making.” It’s all very complicated and very challenging stuff, but I think in part explains why our politics is as broken as it is.

For the readers, I love having these conversations. Hopefully, this is valuable to you. Some of the things you’re saying, it comes down to this relation to human connection. I think all people want to connect. They want to have a relationship. At the same time, there’s this instinctive protection that they have where they want to look bad. They don’t want to be wrong because what that does is it invalidates their identity to an extent, but when you break down those walls, it’s amazing what can happen. People, either value is a value or a principle is a principle or it’s not. Most people would concede to capitalistic principles if it wasn’t labeled capitalistic principles. These are principles of life in a sense. I’ll end with this and I’ll let you have the final word. There’s something I’ve thought about, which was interesting to me.

I have little kids, two teenagers and a five-year-old. We went to the Disney Aulani Resort on Oahu. When I was there, there’s this central pool section. There were these two guys that had these big earrings, big guys with these tattoos on their arms, hardcore guys. I was able to have a conversation with them. They were there with their kids. We were in this environment in which the walls were broken down and you can have that connection, yet if I went to their neighborhood and was walking down the street at night, the environment changes, walls are up and the outcome is not going to be the same. Human beings are wired in a certain way and we want certain things. They’re very similar yet because of these walls that come up and are reinforced, it’s difficult to have the connection that’s needed in order to make even more progress.

That’s a very interesting story and I think it touches on these deeper truths that we’re talking about. An awful lot of this is what you described, which is a sense of identity. That’s basic to human beings, feeling of belonging, and feeling of community. It’s pretty rare to find people who will take stands that will put them at odds with the community that’s most important to them. That explains a lot of the political tribalism, but we’ve got to find a way to try and break down these walls you’re describing. There’s some lovely verse in the New Testament about breaking down the dividing walls that exist between people. When those walls are up, it usually means that life is going to be harsher, less sympathy, more anger, more antipathy. People begin to view other folks not as individuals that you disagree with, but as enemies at the state, enemies of your cause.

We need other people with other experiences to help us see and to understand. Share on X

What can quickly kick in is the dehumanization, which is if you see things differently than I am. It’s not because you’ve analyzed things wrongly and you made an intellectual error, but you’re morally defective. There must be something wrong with you. If you don’t see things the same way I do, then you don’t value the same things that I do. In fact, you’re a threat to them. We see that in contemporary politics. We know from the data that the attitudes that Republicans, Democrats, Progressives and Conservatives have toward each other. It’s much more personal than ever before. There’s a feeling that these are not just differences of policy, but they are character flaws and faults. If you feel like you’re being attacked on that fundamental level, you’re an alien, a malicious force, a malignant force, that you want to hurt me and you want to hurt everything that I know and love. When that happens, a lot of bad stuff kicks in and we’ve got to break through that. We have to deepen the understanding and sympathy that we have for one another.

In the book that I wrote, The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump. I tell a story in one of the chapters about CS Lewis and Owen Barfield. CS Lewis was a great medievalist and scholar in England. He was probably the most important Christian apologist of the twentieth century. He started a literary group in England in the 1930s. He and JRR Tolkien were the mainstays of that, but there was a person named Owen Barfield who was a British philosopher and poet and somebody that Lewis knew for many years. Lewis in his book Surprised by Joy describes what he refers to as first friends and second friends. For him, it was a person named Arthur Greeves, somebody who knew since his childhood. He said, “First friends are the individuals that when you start the sentence, they’re able to complete it. They’re your alter ego. They see the world largely the same way that you do process it the same way.” We all need that. That’s part of what human community, human attachment, human relationships bring to us. Lewis described what he referred to as a second friend and that was on Barfield. He said, “The second friend is the person who’s not your alter ego, but your anti-self.”

That’s the person who describes who reads all the same books you do and draws all the wrong conclusions from those books. He has a section where he talks about these debates that he had with Barfield and they were pretty intense. They were esoteric debates, but they were about the role of imagination and reason. Lewis says that he and Barfield would go at it hammer and tong late into the night learning the power of each other’s punches almost unconsciously beginning to absorb what the other person was saying. Out of this dog fight, a community of affection grew. The punch line was that Lewis and Barfield both treasured their relationship precisely because they took all the world somewhat differently than the other. They felt that their aperture of understanding was grayer because they had each other in their life.

Barfield later said that, “When Lewis and I debated, we didn’t debate for victory, we debated for truth.” That’s just an entirely different way of approaching dialogue and conversation, which is, “Do you have something to say where I can learn?” “Can I come out of this conversation knowing something that I didn’t before? Knowing something about you, something about the nature of the world, something about the experience that helps me see things better than I would have?” That goes back to what we were talking about, which is epistemological modesty. Even if in some abstract sense you or I were 100% correct in our understanding of a particular issue, there’s still no way that we could know the full truth and reality of things on any number of issues. That’s not within our capacity. That’s why we need other people with other experiences to help us see and to understand. If we were able to take that to heart and to incorporate it in our lives and embrace it, a lot of things in life would be better than they are.

I’ll say something to that. There’s a concept and idea that I love to use, which is three sides of a coin. Most people look at coins with two sides. There’s the edge, which is the third side. The concept is heads is one opinion, tales is another opinion, but then your opinion should sit on the edge where you should evaluate. Where are the arguments? Where the perspectives are coming from and then rationally come up with your own. I tried to look at that because you’re hitting the nail on the head with a lot of stuff we’ve talked about when it comes to perspective, what truth is, how people come to truths, and then how people change and essentially go from one side of the spectrum to another. Everything you’re hitting on is fascinating. I’d love for our audience to learn about you. Would you mind talking about your book and where they can pick that up? Also, how they can follow you. I know you are contributing to The Atlantic as well as The New York Times. Maybe talk about those outlets so that the audience can follow you.

The book that I just wrote, which was published by Harper Collins is called The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump. It’s an account of my life in politics. What I’ve learned, why I believe politics is important. I think it’s a low moment and a dangerous moment, but I make the case that we need to do something about it because justice matters, and politics, it’s about a lot of things. It’s got its dark undersides as all professions do. It’s finally and fundamentally about justice. The book I wrote in less than a year, but it’s the product of a lifetime in politics. People can get that on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or any of the other outlets. I’m a contributing editor for The Atlantic Magazine. I’m a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. I’m a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. People can follow my work there. I’m on Twitter @Peter_Wehner. I write about all sorts of issues. I’ve written about capitalism, politics, faith and friendship, and then from time-to-time, I interview people for The Atlantic. I did a couple of interviews with David Brooks on his book, The Second Mountain, and then with George Will and his book, The Conservative Sensibility. For me, it’s a lovely way to earn a living, which is for me to write, think, talk to intelligent people, and try and learn along the way.

Peter, it’s been such a joy to speak with you. This has been an awesome conversation for me and I’m hoping readers got as much out of it. Thank you again for your time. Thank you for the good that you’re doing. We’ll have to connect in the future sometime.

I’d like to do it. I enjoyed the conversation a lot. Thanks. Take care.

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About Peter Wehner

TWS 14 | Dynamics Of CapitalismPeter Wehner is the author of The Death of Politics. He is a New York Times contributing Op-Ed writer covering American politics and conservative thought and a popular media commentator on politics.

Wehner is also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and veteran of three White House administrations.

 

 

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Patrick Donohoe

Patrick Donohoe

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Patrick is the President and CEO and started Paradigm Life in 2007 after learning from his mentor Kim Butler about financial strategies outside of Wall Street.

With a background in economics and marketing, Patrick immediately realized the opportunity to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families on a large scale using modern digital media and communication technology. Since 2007 Paradigm Life has worked with thousands of individuals in all 50 states.