Is your life being wrecked by the “super-rich”?
The super-rich.
Who are they and what are they doing to us?
What are they doing to us?
Whatever it is,
people say just the fact that the rich
have so much is itself immoral.
Immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth
of 1% in this country own almost as much wealth
as the bottom 90%.
 
 
 
 
 
They want to condemn the people
that actually have moved civilization forward.
Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute is annoyed
that today’s “democratic socialists”
say rich people got rich by taking money from others,
In fact they,
Actually improved the standard of living
for everybody on the planet.
How is that possible?
How could it improve everyone’s living standard?
Isn’t there a fixed amount of money in the world
so when rich people grab a lot,
there’s less for everyone else?
No! Because wealth can be created.
We have basically made about $2 a day
for 100,000 years.
In other words we could eat what we farmed
and that was it.
And then something amazing happened
about 250 years ago.
A few countries tried capitalism.
For the first time, people were allowed to
profit from private property.
That changed everything.
Division of labor let people produce more with less,
and then they traded to get even more.
Wealth increased with every innovation.
Cargo transported by ship used to stored in barrels,
in sacks, in wooden crates and offloaded by hand.
Economist Don Boudreaux points out that
enormous wealth was even created
by the invention of the shipping container.
With it came a wave of specialized technology
that dramatically increased productivity in shipping
Workers today are super human compared to
their brethren on yesteryear.
We went from carrying bags on our backs
to lifting the equivalent of two school buses
with mere flicks of our wrists.
Most of this innovation began just 250 years ago.
250 years ago we suddenly discovered
the value of individual freedom.
We suddenly discovered the value of leaving individuals
free to think, to innovate,
to produce without asking for permission,
without getting the state to sign off on it
and we call that the Industrial Revolution.
Industrialists, the people who owned the factories,
employed hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people.
And they made enormous profits
And how does that benefit your fellow man?
And ever since, politicians have complained
about those profits.
In Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged,
state officials demand that industrialists
explain how their getting rich helped others.
I do not owe you an answer
but I could tell you in a hundred ways.
Thousands of jobs, billions in revenue,
fueling our economy despite your efforts.
Hank Rearden was right.
Capitalism created new wealth.
We got much, much, much richer
and it's hard to imagine how much richer we got
of electricity, of running water,
of the things we all take for granted today,
but we didn't have 150 years ago.
And yes, some people complain about inequality,
but everybody got richer.
Even the poor got richer.
In the past several hundred years,
we’ve gone from a society where people
hoped to get jobs that required long hours
of hard manual labor.
To one where almost everyone
has what they need to live
and more people have leisure time
to do things like watch movies.
[music]
You’re a wizard Harry
I mention Harry Potter because
Brook bought lots of Harry Potter books,
but he says he’s not poorer for it.
J. K. Rowling became a billionaire
and I got poorer by thousands of dollars and yet,
nobody really thinks of themselves as poorer
for having read Harry Potter.
It made my kids happy.
How much is that worth?
So I am actually better off
for having spent those many dollars on those books.
Under capitalism, that applies to every transaction,
because capitalism, unlike socialism, is voluntary.
I’d like a pretzel.
We see this every time we buy something
The seller is there for his own self-interest.
And so am I. So why do we both say thank you?
[Thank you, thank you]
Because he wanted the dollar more
than he wanted the pretzel.
I wanted the pretzel more than the dollar.
The transaction doesn’t happen
unless both of us think we win,
and that way, voluntary transactions create wealth.
Thank you. Thank you
Since the Industrial Revolution…
We have more than doubled our life expectancy.
We have dramatically increased the quality of our life
and we are wealthier than anybody could have imagined
Made possible by private property
and capitalism which people hate.
People don't like it. Because, you know, it takes
real responsibility over your own life
to achieve something
and unfortunately our educational system
has taught us that since we don't sacrifice
enough because we're basically too self-interested
to sacrifice enough, the state must now intervene
and force us to sacrifice for our fellow man.
And that belief that sacrificing for others
is more moral is what gives socialism strength.
It’s not so tough to share your stuff.
Every priest, every philosopher,
every mother has taught us
that to be selfless is good.
Selfless is good.
No mother actually means that, right?
No mother actually wants you to be last in line.
They all want you to be first in line,
but they tell you that because they think
that's what nobility is.
But the people who do for others are not more moral
because they're wasting the one life that they have.
Lots of us see morality as helping other people.
If your house burnt down.
Neighbors in America
have always helped their neighbors.
I though you Objectivists didn't approve of that?
Ayn Rand was never against charity.
What she said was that was not the major virtue in life
and that you should voluntarily have a choice
about who you help and who you don't.
The key is that somebody else's need
is not a moral claim against your life.
Your life is yours.
Today’s socialists say self-absorbed Americans won’t
help the poor and the sick.
That’s why government must force everyone to give!
Otherwise the weak and the poor will suffer and die.
But indeed the weak and poor under capitalism
has done better than in any other system.
It's a fantastic system that is fundamentally moral
because it allows individuals
to pursue their own happiness.
Your pursuit of your own well-being
which is a virtue in and of itself
also helps the world be a better world.
