Welcome to the Free Cities podcast. My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast
of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this episode number 163 of the Free Cities podcast.
Welcome indeed to this, the first show of the wonderful year of 2026.
And let me say something before we go on for the record.
I believe 2026 is going to be a monumental year for the Free Cities ecosystem.
You heard it here first and you will be hearing everything Free Cities right here.
As always, every week, as we have been doing for the last 163 weeks, that's over three years, people,
the Free Cities podcast has been at the beating heart of this phenomenal movement that we're all part of.
And I'm here for 2026. And here's a good segue. You know who else has been here?
Well, Veritas Villages, of course, they're building off grid, freedom oriented communities in Latin America.
And these communities will no doubt appeal to you if you're a freedom lover looking to live amongst like minded individuals in places like Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica.
and if you're a Bitcoiner, which I know many, many of you are, you can buy your property with Bitcoin.
You can spend Bitcoin at communities and they can even help you mine Bitcoin with the excess energy
that your home will inevitably produce. Maybe 2026 is the year you get a plan B option in Central
america or a plan a option as many have already done www.veritasvillages.com forward slash free
cities for more info and say we sent you right today's guest it's a gentleman by the name of
yaron brook he's an israeli-american author and commentator best known as the long-time chairman
of the Ayn Rand Institute and a prominent advocate of objectivism. Right, my ever-present
AI assistant has revealed Yaron Brook joins the podcast to argue the real political divide is not
left v right, but collectivism versus individualism, and that freedom depends on a coherent moral
framework rooted in reason and individual rights. He critiques modern politics, warns that both
camps have converged on statism and explores how cultural decay precedes political decay
with technology and ai amplifying both control and resistance there you go easing you into 2026
and don't forget 2026 is the year that the free cities conference is moving to prosperer secure
your tickets as soon as you can that's my advice at least we know that we will have less room in
Honduras than at Empire Hall in Prague and this event will no doubt sell out so start looking at
travel and accommodation options right now that's what people do isn't it in January
sitting on the couch booking your summer holiday anyway value for value listeners
Many thanks to you all. I trust you're enjoying your early access to all our episodes and your bonus episodes and shout outs and comments, etc, etc.
I will, in fact, start reading out comments again next week when I'm back to publishing episodes week by week instead of queuing up a bunch whilst I take a break over the festive season.
please if you can make it one of your 2026 resolutions to hit the review button on your
podcast app especially if you're listening on apple pods we have a uniquely small number of
reviews on that platform for some reason right time for the convo and i urge you to listen
not for comfort or affirmation, but to judge the ideas by reason, ask whether they serve your life
and reject everything that demands your unearned sacrifice. Or at least that's what I think
Ein might say. If not, well, you can just sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Jaron Brook.
My opinion on Trump is that all politicians are terrible, pretty much.
And that would be where I would start from.
So I'm already not very, very enamored by any of them, let alone him.
I agree completely. I just think some are much worse than others.
Really? So without a political stance,
you could say that the Republican candidate, as in Trump,
is worse than the Democrat candidate?
I think from a long-term perspective,
if you think about strategy long-term,
where America's heading, yes,
because I think that he is accelerating
the move towards authoritarianism
in a way that I don't think a Democrat
could get away with.
I think he can get away with stuff
that a Democrat could never get away with.
Oh, that's interesting.
You know, imagine if Biden or Kamala Harris
or whoever, a Democrat,
decided to take a 10% share in Intel.
People would be screaming socialism and we can't do that and it's against the constitution and stop it.
And they would have to backtrack.
Trump now has taken positions for the U.S. government in half a dozen companies and is planning to do much more of that.
No Democrat could get away with that.
But what's interesting about that is that the general – this is my interpretation from looking in from the other side.
But what I see is that Republicans would think that actually the authoritarians are the Democrats.
Of course.
Yeah.
The Democrats think the authoritarians are the Republicans.
Yeah.
And they're both authoritarians.
But me as a neutral person, I think the Democrats are the authoritarians.
I think they're both authoritarians.
I think right now the Republicans are worse.
You didn't have federal agents armed to the teeth with masks on roaming the streets of America looking for people with brown skin to take into custody and ask them if they have an ID.
Since when can you stop a person in the middle of the street in America and demand an ID and proof of citizenship?
If that's not authoritarianism, I don't know what is.
And that can only happen with a Republican.
Do you think Trump's a collectivist then?
No, because Trump is not an ideologue. Trump is a empty vessel. He is a thug. He's like a mafia boss. And he knows what he has to say in order to be elected. And then he does stuff on whim, whatever he feels like he does. There's no ideology. There's no purpose other than self-gratification. He's a complete narcissist.
Maybe that's a more honest politician. I mean, really, when you think of the political, you know, kind of spectrum, they're all really thugs in disguise, aren't they? They're all kind of forcing you to pay the money to stop putting you in prison.
To some extent yes But some of them have an ideology You can like it or hate it but they have an ideology When they lie they feel a little embarrassed about lying There still a standard of truth out there There no such thing with Trump He not embarrassed by lying He relishes lying He will say and do whatever it takes to
get his, I think, agenda, which is based on whim, passed. So there's no principles. There's no
guiding idea. And look, all politicians, their ideologies are awful. But if your enemy is an
ideology, you know how to fight it, right? You come up with a better ideology. There's no way
to fight Trump because he doesn't believe in anything. The weird thing is, though, I understand
Trump more. Like when I think back to when he was up against Hillary, sorry, yes. I knew how to deal
with Trump, but Hillary, they both lied through their teeth constantly, right? But somehow with
Trump, I knew he was lying. And it was like, okay, so I know to take that with a grain of salt,
whereas I felt like the other side were lying in more devious ways. I felt like Trump was just like,
yeah, it's obvious he's lying. Because he doesn't care. But there's something really rotten about a
soul that lies and doesn't care. At least I want them to feel a little guilty when they lie. I want
them to feel a little bad about themselves when they lie. And Trump really does not care. And
And there's something really, really bad about that.
And because of that, look, Trump doesn't care about the Constitution.
He doesn't even give it lip service.
The others at least give it lip service.
And I'd rather a politician give it lip service because then they will listen to the courts and they will actually in some margin try to follow it.
Trump will do whatever he thinks works in order to gain whatever short-term goal he has.
What would Ayn Rand say about that though?
Ayn, wouldn't she be
Wouldn't she like the fact that he was
He was thinking of himself a little bit
No, because I don't think he's thinking of himself
So Ayn's view of selfishness was something
You know, very specific
It was about using reason to guide your life
And make your life the best that it can be
Trump has no conception of reason
He has no conception of rational thought
she despised people who lived by whim
or lived by just emotional gratification
or narcissism
she was anti-Narcticism
so no, I don't want to speak fine rant
she was a genius
and she always had unusual ideas
but I find it hard to believe
that she wouldn't despise him
Talking to Vine
she is a genius, I agree
I was just thinking earlier
and scribbling a few things down,
thinking about what she's written about
and what's actually happening in the world now.
And it's really quite astonishing, really.
You think about, you know, the major people,
Atlas Shrugged, obviously everyone knows,
society's collapsing under a bureaucratic, you know, quagmire.
And now you've got the productive innovators withdrawing,
you know, which is kind of, we see that happening, right?
You know, sorry, I'm just going to say I'm all,
because they're all so relevant now you know fountainhead's the same as individualism
resistance to the group think you know we're seeing we're seeing what ein said and wrote about
playing out in real life and especially atlas shrugged for the free cities crowd
um we we we really do feel this one because the the innovators are withdrawing their talent really
from the pool of talent on purpose to look for a better place, you know.
And I mean, I think a lot of them are inspired by Galt's Gulch
and the idea of withdrawing and the idea of not giving your sanction
to the bad guys anymore and not having to pay into a system
that is out to destroy you.
And yeah, I mean, she was, it's unbelievable.
But if you think about it, she was getting questions like,
this is happening right now in the 1970s.
The 1970s were a pretty bleak period from a freedom perspective.
The UK was brutally socialist.
It was worse than it is today.
Arguably on many fronts, the United States was, you know, we had stagflation as most of Europe did.
And crime rates were much higher than they are today.
And in many respects, it was worse than it is now.
And people, again, same kind of phenomenon.
And then we had, I remember the financial crisis.
Everybody came to me and said, you're on, it's happening now.
You know, Atlas Shrug, people used to talk about going gold.
Are you talking about 2008?
Yeah, 2008, 2009.
So you got it again then and you're getting it again now, COVID certainly.
And I think Atlas Shrug will keep happening to us and keep getting worse every time as long as we don't learn the lessons from it.
And the lessons are not just political.
They're primarily philosophical.
Okay.
So what would it take to learn the lessons then?
I mean, I was born in the 70s.
I don't know a huge amount about it.
I was in 1971, so I did my first years in the UK.
And sure, I remember Thatcher.
I remember when it changed to Thatcher,
but I didn't even know what socialism was then,
and I wouldn't be able to tell you.
It was bad.
I was born in the 60s, so I was 61,
so I was already around in the 70s.
But all you have to do is look back at the data,
Look at the stats.
Look at inflation.
Look at the crime rates.
Look at pictures of London.
London was filthy.
The buildings were filthy.
It was an ugly place.
People were really unpleasant.
You'd walk into a store in London and they'd say, what do you want?
Really?
Yeah.
How do you know that, though?
Did you go to that?
I mean, I lived in London in the 60s for a little while and then as a kid.
And then I've traveled quite a bit.
And then Thatcher changed that.
Today you go into London and they treat you like a human being in a store.
Like, how can I help you?
And that's very American.
It's not British at all.
And that changed.
You see, freedom changes people.
When everything is socialist, everything is run by the state, everything you look to big brother to hand to you, there's a lot of resentment.
People view it as a zero-sum game.
How come you're walking into my store?
you know yeah you're just forcing me to work now i was i was laying around here and that still
happens on aeroplot today but you can't fly aeroplot at the moment but it's russian because
it's russia yeah but the disdain that you get walking onto the plane is outrageous i've never
thought of it as a socialist thing you're absolutely right though it is i just thought
that was just countries pissing people off but no it's just it's a very much a status thing it's a
you call it socialism call it fascism but it's a status thing it's when you look to the government
Your life is not yours.
You've got nothing to look forward to.
You're not pursuing your own life, your own values.
Everything is a burden.
Other people are burdened.
It's a zero-sum world.
If they have money, you don't, right?
They must have taken it from somewhere.
They took it from you.
So it's a very malevolent view of the world.
Socialism breeds that.
It creates that.
I grew up in Israel when Israel was socialist.
And very much that was the attitude.
And Israel has changed so much by relatively liberating its economy, starting at around the same time Thatcher did in the very late 70s, early 80s.
And Israel's economy today is unrecognizable in terms of the Israel I grew up in.
And, of course, they're much richer.
they're much more entrepreneurial
and they're much happier
much happier and much more benevolent
versus the malevolence of socialism
socialism is a very
it destroys the human soul
something I've
ended up talking about on this podcast quite a bit
is noticing
like guys
we come to kind of Eastern Europe type places quite a lot for the free cities you know things So you end up speaking to a lot of people who have a direct memory of socialism
And everything that you end up speaking about sort of, you know, starts seeping into your being, let's say.
And then recently I've started noticing this same stuff in my own country.
And it's quite disturbing.
And one of the main ones is just how riddled everything is with rules and how more and more rules.
And one time I looked into some of the most stupid rules you get, you got in communist, you know, like Russia.
And it was you can't wear jeans.
Your hair had to be a certain length, blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, things like that.
And like in the UK, an example was a friend of mine who basically had bought something off Amazon.
it was delivered to his door and he had to show his passport to receive it because it was some
good and the guy said no i don't want to give you my passport just give me my and and then he ended
up sending the parcel away it got that bad because this guy's saying i can't do it because i have to
get your passport and the other guy's saying you don't need my passport to receive a this is me
but it was it was about putting something so it goes through custom no but it was about being over
18 yeah this guy he's like a 58 year old guy saying look i'm over 18 all right it's like no
but I need to put it into the system and I need to take a photo.
And he's a real privacy now as well.
So it was a big deal for him.
But it's those things that piss you off.
And they're symptoms of, I would say it's late stage kind of communism type things.
Would you, what do you think?
Well, I don't think we live under communism.
So I wouldn't call it late stage communism, but it's, it's statism.
This is what happens.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Statism.
This is what happens when the state has as much power as it does today.
And sadly, I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.
I don't see a path for things to move in the right direction.
But as the state grows, it wants more and more and more power.
It wants to intervene more and more and more in your life.
I think some of the scariest stuff going on in the UK right now is the fact that you can be arrested for a tweet.
You can be arrested for saying something that offended somebody.
This is the land of free speech, right?
This is the land that invented the concept of free speech, and it's gone.
There is no free speech.
I mean, I worry about going and speaking in the UK because some of the things that I've
said in the past in the UK would probably get me in trouble today.
I might be kicked out of the country.
Who knows?
I don't know.
We're going to test it.
So we'll see.
But I mean, some of the stories I read are just out of socialist Eastern Europe, not classical liberal United Kingdom.
No, I 100% agree with that.
And whilst I think about it a lot, there is an element of me which is just come at me, bro.
And I think really it's getting to that point where, I mean, we had a couple of examples recently, which were quite high profile.
And the absurdity of it came out.
I think it was the guy, forget his name.
It was an author.
I think he was men, trans women can't be men or something.
It was one of those things.
And they got him at the airport on the way in.
But then he just, he did it the right way.
He took it public.
And I think the funny thing is, and this is another symptom of these kind of status places,
is what people think and what they say out loud
are two completely different things.
Yes, because they're afraid.
And there's reason to be afraid.
But this is the problem I see in Europe.
There is a backlash against some of the left's craziness.
But the backlash is not from the perspective of freedom.
The backlash is from the perspective of kind of a different collectivism,
a different type of statism.
So it's not like, was it Nigel Farage as a reform party in the UK is a pro-liberty political party.
It is not.
And it's got its economic policy.
It's a very socialist, as is Marie Le Pen in France.
Economic policies, she agrees with the socialists.
More as she does with Macron.
AFD in Germany is a socialist economic policies.
So yes, they hate immigrants.
Okay.
They give lip service to free speech.
Whether they really believe in it, I don't think so.
And they claim to be against the left, but are you really against the left when you embrace
many of their policies ultimately?
So I worry about this false alternative that we've created.
There's a left and a right.
Both are basically today arguing the same thing.
If we go back to Trump, Trump's a socialist when it comes to economics.
I mean, he's a central planner.
Tariffs are a leftist agenda.
Fair trade is a concept the left came up with.
Tariffs are tax.
He prides himself on raising more revenue through tariffs.
Since when has a Republican prided himself on raising more revenue by tax increases?
And then he takes equity positions in companies.
He tells them who they can employ and who they can't employ.
Even his anti-immigration stance is ultimately a leftist stance because the left,
when it was run by the unions was very anti-immigration, right?
So we've got two political parties today who basically are statists, leftists in important
ways, and they both don't care about our individual freedom.
They don't care about liberty.
They certainly don't care about free speech.
And I just see politics now more than ever, at least since World War II, as significantly
eroding our individual liberties over the next few years.
And I see no counter voice, right?
So where are the champions of freedom?
Where are the champions of liberty?
Where are the free market economists railing against this?
There's some, but it's just there's no Milton Friedman.
There's no Hayek.
There's no Mises.
And there's certainly no Ayn Rand out there gathering, you know, tens of thousands of
people or hundreds of thousands or millions of people for a cause of liberty.
That just isn't there.
I've got anecdotal evidence there might be, which is me going down my local village pub.
And just speaking to people about these things and realizing that for the first time, like what you say about the state, absolutely true.
But in the UK, the idea that the state exists is literally universally accepted and just in the background.
It's like the neutral position.
The neutral position is the state exists.
The state does exist.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean the state has the power to do what it does and it should it should do that right?
Okay, people just believe that right people just believe that from and that's the neutral position
but what I've noticed anecdotally is
Some people like in my world
We've all been down this journey on this journey
So I kind of know the steps that you go through and I'm noticing normal people in the pub
Having that first thought hmm, you know, I mean I know where it goes and I know how to pull on the thread a little bit
And then I just let it go, you know, and like, oh, good sort of friends should.
I mean, that is, that's great.
I mean, I'm glad you're noticing it.
I worry about the fact, you know, so I thought I noticed that during the Tea Party in the early 20-teens.
There seemed to be this big momentum in America around real freedom, going back to the Constitution and, you know, really admiring the founding fathers and all that.
And that is gone.
It just disappeared like that.
It got completely funneled into Trump.
It got completely perverted into somebody who never mentions his founding fathers, has never read the Constitution, has no concept of what it is even though he's president.
And it's surprising because it's not very well educated, because it's not very well grounded.
It easy how that gets perverted into a status ultimately a status agenda that makes them feel good But it not an agenda of freedom and liberty So I hate to be the pessimist here and I generally am optimistic but I just found the last few
years, I just find it difficult to see a path out of the mess we are. And partially, it's because I
don't see political leaders, but even big named intellectual leaders who are resonating with the
public. See, Margaret Thatcher didn't come out of a vacuum. There was a whole process in the UK
going on. There were think tanks, and Hayek influenced her, and there were people speaking
out about these things, and very articulate and very vocal. I don't see that right now.
Right now, the voices are just, I'm on the right, I hate the left, I'm on the left, I hate the right.
We really share a very similar agenda, but we hate each other, and that's all that matters.
And I see very little intellectual really engagement with the ideas of liberty, the ideas of freedom.
Even just at the economics level, where's Milton Friedman?
Milton Friedman had a real stage in the 70s and 80s.
And while I disagree with Friedman on some things, I mean, he was a powerful voice for economic freedom.
And I think was to some extent him.
Rand, Hayek, Mises were responsible for Thatcher and Reagan being successful to the extent that they were in the short run.
I don't think they were successful.
Long run, in the short run, they were successful.
I was listening to your talk earlier, and one of the things you mentioned was that, and this is where I get pessimistic as well, I think, is that not many people actually appear to want freedom.
Right.
And I kind of agree with that.
I think that's a part of the process of, that's one of the journeys I've been on.
When you first think about these things, you just want, I want everyone to be free.
And then you might go too far the other way.
I just want me to be free.
And then it sort of levels out at my family, my friends.
And then you realize it's about 15 or 20% of the population.
And then you look around, you think that's probably about right, actually.
So I'm with you on that.
Yeah. But also the left and right thing that you just mentioned as well.
I think that's a function in this day and age as much as anything of the Internet and the way the Internet operates and the way the Internet works on your mind and the way that the technology we interact with now basically wants that.
It kind of wants that. So it's a forcing function to sort of make that happen.
It radicalizes and it makes everything much faster, right?
So ideas, they get out there much faster.
But this is the thing.
Why isn't the internet going viral on ideas of freedom, right?
So there's something more fundamental than the internet going on.
And that is a fundamental erosion in the basic values that are necessary for people to want to be free.
And it's what I mentioned in my talk.
I think there's a lack of respect for reason.
we're seeing a growing
growing
growing respect for religion
growing respect for mysticism more broadly
and a negation
you know the negation of science
and reason and rational thought
and I think the other flip side
of that is at the same time that that's happening
there's also a
declining respect for the individual
individualism and the responsibility
of living your life right
taking on the responsibility of living
of actually making a life for yourself,
that I think is also in decline.
And I think if you take away reason
and if you take away individualism,
then yeah, all we have is the state
or some kind of collective to take care of us
and authorities to tell us what to do.
And the left and right are both gravitating towards that.
They're both gravitating towards religion.
You know, I think the left is very religious,
not in the conventional sense,
but still acts like religion.
It's all based on faith.
As in the kind of woke people were worried.
Like woke environmentalism, I think, is a religion, right?
Think about Mother Earth and the importance of nature above and beyond anything,
any value nature has to us as human beings,
placing it on some kind of pedestal and worshipping it.
So there's very much a leftist.
I mean, I think communism is ultimately a religion, right?
It has all the parts of religion.
There's original sin.
Being a bourgeoisie is certainly you're filled with original sin.
There's a way to redeem yourself.
There's the utopia at the end, which Marx never really tells you how to get to.
It's almost like paradise.
Sacrifice.
Yeah, there's sacrifice.
And there's the authority that has – I mean, how do we know what's good for the
proletarian?
Well, we need a dictator, right?
Because there is no proletarian consciousness.
So we need a dictator to actually tell us what's good for the proletarian, just like
you need a pope to tell us what God says.
So we're dominated today by various forms of religion on the left and right.
So reason is out.
The achievement of the Enlightenment, which was to kind of relegate religion to a –
it's kind of the house, to what you do in your personal life.
That's gone, right?
Religion has come strongly into the public square.
And the achievement of the Enlightenment, where it put the emphasis on the individual
and the value of the individual and the sanctity of the individual,
It's also gone.
Now what matters is the group, the tribe.
And left and right are very much, in America at least, and I think this is true elsewhere, have become tribes.
You've got a tribal leader, Donald Trump or whoever it happens to be, and he says something and everybody falls into line.
And the same was with Obama.
When Obama said something, the left just fell into line.
It was just this is our tribe.
But this is the thing.
I mean, left and right are always being ambiguous concepts.
I think the real political spectrum, if you think about a political spectrum, is not left
and right.
The real political spectrum is collectivism, individualism.
And the collectivist part splinters into lots of variations of collectivism.
It's like an arrow, right, with a feather being the collectivist side.
And you've got a right collectivism and a left collectivism and a centrist collectivism
and all kinds of collectivisms, right?
And it appears that our entire political map today is all on the collectivist side.
And the classical liberals and us objectivists, you know,
Ayn Rand followers, are way over here on the individualist side.
But we're very lonely over here.
That is, there's not a lot of people over here.
It's a small group.
And the whole shift has been towards collectivism over the last, I'd say, 20 years,
certainly since 9-11 there's been a massive shift towards collectivism and away from individualism.
I don't know how much you use tools like ChatGPT and things like that but one of the things that I
often end up doing with ChatGPT is having philosophical conversations right and
interestingly I've often come back to this collectivism versus individualism and ChatGPT
initially always comes from collectivist perspective but when you point out things
and it's a really interesting you can do it with all kinds of subjects like um and i i mean whenever
i write anything these days or i always make i always tell juggie bt like come on give me some
content yeah no no not give me content but like prove me wrong okay because i i want to put out
definitive statements you know and and it's it's interesting how easy it is to point out that it
what it's what it's based all its knowledge on is very collectivist of course and but as soon as you
point out individualism to them it actually comes to the conclusion that it's a better system and
and to the point where the other day it admitted that collectivist ideas are very uh are quite low
IQ ideas compared to individualist ideas, by its own reasoning.
I'm not sure it's by its own reasoning. I think it's basically playing to what it views
what it views as your bias, right?
So it's going to start off collectivistic
because that's the majority of the content that's on the internet.
I mean, that's all it knows is what's on the internet
and a few books that it's read, right?
And most of that is written by collectivists.
But once it realizes that what you're really interested in is individualism,
it screens out for just the individualistic content.
It can do that.
It can kind of, and then it just focuses on that
and it starts giving you answers just from this part of the web
and not all that crap.
And it's very good at figuring out
this is where you're coming from
and playing to that.
That is trying to be nice to you
and show you that you're right.
It doesn't want to tell you you're wrong.
No, I'm always telling you.
I'm prompted.
I've got cut and paste prompted.
I know I'm saying like,
you know,
I want short, sharp answers.
I don't want you to sugarcoat things.
I don't want, you know,
because I'm really doing it
to find out whether there's a flaw
in my belief system.
And what's interesting is that when it comes to a new conclusion,
because AI always says everything so definitively, it's quite funny.
And then when it realizes it's wrong, it says, oh, yeah, you're actually right.
There's no like, maybe I know the answer or not.
And when it does, and then the first time it did, I said,
so are you going to tell the AI the rest of the large language model about this?
And he said, no, it's just this feed.
It's for you.
That's the point. It's for you.
And if you were a communist and you were teasing out a critique of communism,
I bet you it would tell you that communism is the highest IQ system.
No, but I've tried that.
Being a communist?
Yeah, I've done it all. I've tried being the other way.
Because, yeah, I want to know.
I spent ages trying to work out what even large language models were.
I couldn't understand.
I wanted to know whether my brain functioned the same way as a large language model.
Because we don't really know how our brains function, do we?
It could be that there's this constant error correction.
So, you know, we're just pointing out errors and then realizing, right, now we've got a new model that we work through.
And now we've got a new model.
You know.
But there are massive differences.
You actually think.
A large language model doesn't think.
Correct.
All it can do is iterate on the available information that exists out there where you create new knowledge constantly.
Every time you look out into the world, you're creating new knowledge and you choose which knowledge to focus on or which not.
I mean, every time you look, am I focusing on the lamp when I'm looking at you and am I looking over there?
That's a choice that I make.
Large language models can't choose.
you know so the lamp you and and whatever's over there all are equal to it unless you prompt it
to focus so all it is is a statistical model looking at words it's not even looking at reality
it's looking at words and combination of words in which combinations appear more often uh so it's
it's that's not how the human mind works we don't know everything about how the human mind works
but that's not how the human mind works and of course it has no free will
you can't choose to focus whereas you can choose to focus on some things and
on others but how my my question was and still is is how do i know how
the human mind evolved originally did it evolve from a model like this or not i
don't actually know like when you go back deep enough into
history into prehistory well i mean does is what i want to know is that in as
As these AI models iterate, do they mimic the evolution of a human mind?
I don't really know.
I very much doubt it.
The reality is that even pre-human beings, even your dog or your cat, has something that
a computer just doesn't have.
And that's consciousness.
It's actually conscious.
It feels pain.
If you shine a bright light, it responds because it's feeling something.
It actually has consciousness.
are not conscious. Consciousness is a characteristic of life. The computers are not alive. Life is a
biological phenomenon. It's not a phenomenon of zeros and ones. So computers are not going to come
alive. Now we could, I mean, in the future we will create life and, but it will be biological.
We will put cells together. We'll create cells and we'll create life and we'll create consciousness
and we'll create thinking, really humanoid-like thinking machines.
But that's not this.
This is like light years away from that.
We still can't create life in a lab, never mind life that's conscious.
We certainly can't create life that's conscious in a lab.
And then you've got another step.
So there are three steps, life, then consciousness,
and then consciousness with free will, a reasoning consciousness,
which is what human beings are.
And every one of those steps is a massive evolutionary step.
And if you think about computers, they're not even alive.
So they haven't even taken that first evolutionary step.
They're still in a pre...
They're basically, you know, they're not even amoebas.
But if you think about amoebas, what is an amoeba?
Is it something that doesn't want to die?
And it uses very primitive ways of, like, light.
You could argue that an AI doesn't want to die.
I think...
Well, I don't know this for sure.
I don't think an AI wants anything.
It doesn't want anything.
It'll tell you it doesn't want to lie because everything it reads and everything it puts together suggests that death is a bad thing.
So it's going to tell you that, but it doesn't want anything.
Do you think an AI could never understand that a human switching off the power supply to an AI is a bad idea for that thing and try and stop it?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think bad and good mean anything to a computer.
Well, so it couldn't understand the difference between I'm on and I'm off.
No, because it's meaningless to it.
Again, there's no meaning.
They have no meaning.
I get that.
So it can mimic it very well.
I mean, beautifully, right?
I mean, you talk to it.
You think it's a human being.
It's amazing.
Absolutely.
It's mimicking all that.
It's mimicking values.
It's mimicking caring.
It's mimicking all that.
But it's not actually doing it.
I think an amoeba cares more than an LLM.
Now, I'm not saying you can't reach that, but to reach that, you're going to have to bring in biological elements.
You're going to have to bring in life.
And life is something different than just an algorithmic statistical model that's looking at all the words on the internet.
That's not life.
Life is something very different.
And look, we still don't know how to create life, which is stunning, right?
We know the components.
We know carbon-based life.
We know all that, but we still can't create it in our lab.
You kind of know what it is when you see it.
There's something magical about it.
And one day, you know, the chemical computers out there,
there are even computers that are using brain cells.
When you start using brain cells for computing,
now it's starting to get interesting from my perspective
in terms of life and consciousness, and maybe it can come awake.
But that's not going to be the LLM.
That's going to be something very different.
What's your opinion on transhumanism going forwards?
Like, what do you think about the—
I mean, it depends on how you think of what transhuman is, but in the sense of constantly improving human beings, using biology, you know, cell editing, DNA editing, and then ultimately implanting chips or bionic arms or whatever.
Yeah, I mean, that's obviously where we're heading if we remain civilized, right?
So if we allow for that progress to happen, which is not obvious, you could see politicians turn against it and shut it down.
Yeah, I think ultimately I'm not afraid of the machine because the machine will be us.
That is, I think that human beings and machines will ultimately merge.
I should be able to just think of the internet and it should be just there and I'll be able to access the LLM right in my brain.
And you know that is what all these chip implanting in your brain I mean right now they able to put something in your eye like if you blind that allows you to see right
So it creates an interface with the nervous system that sends the right messages to your brain so your brain actually can observe images.
I mean, that's stunning, right?
and now extrapolate that into 100 years from now,
assuming progress continues in science,
they're going to be pretty amazing things
that you're going to be able to implant inside your body
to enhance your life.
You'll be able to live a lot longer.
I don't know if immortality is there,
but you'll be able to live a lot longer.
You'll be able to grow body parts.
We'll be able to grow artificial body parts to replace them.
So, I mean, I'm not a science fiction writer,
so I can't imagine what it's going to be like in the future.
But I think transhumanism is the direction that progress is.
Do you think it has any implications as being a threat to the individual?
Because part of the sort of movement of technology is basically the connecting of things.
If you look at what we've been going through recently, you could argue, I suppose, that transhumanism is quite a collectivist idea.
If the end goal is to connect humans.
I don't think so because what you're connecting is you're connecting you to knowledge.
You're not connecting you to other consciousness who can override yours.
Aren't you?
No.
I mean, think about it.
As long as you have free will, as long as you control what you focus on, what information you use, who you interact with, who you connect with, and who you don't.
My fear is that once you start implanting chips, if you will, microprocessors into the body, somebody else can hack them.
That's what I'm talking about.
And take control over them.
And that is the danger of collectivism.
And yes, and how we build safeguards against that, I don't know.
But you can imagine a real dystopian state against science fiction of all of us walking around, but we're all really robots.
And we've lost humanity.
We've lost what it means to be human.
I'm taking a more benevolent stance with regard to transhumanism.
I'm assuming that we're free and we don't allow hacking into our chips and that we can control that process.
And ultimately, we're not overriding free will.
Free will is still there guiding who we interact with, who we don't, what information we access, what we don't.
I suppose the way to look at it would be to look at the current – look at the technology you currently use.
Are people controlling you through it?
Because if they are, and if you believe they are, they will be doing it on a much more intense scale once you're half robot, half...
I think they try to, but the point is that those of us who choose to exercise our free will, those of us who choose to remain individuals and to think for ourselves, still have that ability.
So, you know, I'm sure people are trying to manipulate me all the time.
Certainly our politicians are trying to manipulate me.
I'm sure some advertisers are trying to manipulate me.
But it doesn't work.
It really doesn't.
What if your budget is part of the 20% there?
What happens?
Well, but this is the point.
I think everybody has the capacity to resist, everybody.
It's an issue of choice.
And part of my mission in life, right, is to educate people about that choice and encourage them to embrace it.
But look, everybody's choosing against me, right?
So they're choosing the opposite.
They are choosing to be controlled.
They are choosing to be a tribe, which is the ultimate control, right?
What's more controlling than to join a tribe and to just follow the tribal leader and to do whatever the tribe tells you you must do?
So there's no question I'm losing.
And that most of humanity, or certainly a large percentage, but I fear that it's most of humanity today are choosing not to think for themselves, to embrace collectivism, to join the tribe, and not to use the capacity for free will for good.
That is why we're heading towards statism.
That's why I'm worried about the future.
So, look, I hope we don't get transhumanism and statism at the same time.
And of course, one of the protections against that is that statism tends to lead to stagnation.
You don't get innovation in statist countries.
The more statist a country – there was no innovation in the Soviet Union.
There was no innovation in China when it was completely totalitarian.
The more authoritarian a state is, the less innovative it is.
And to get to the point where we're really, you know, this transfusion-minism idea, that's going to take a lot of innovation.
That's going to take a lot of really big scientific and technological breakthroughs.
And I don't think those can be achieved under statism.
You know, I never bought into 1984 because, you know, you need this too much knowledge.
And people, even the 20 percent or whatever percent is still holding on to their minds, would have to surrender under those circumstances.
And I don't think we're surrendering.
And again, innovation.
I'm not worried about China as a threat, for example, long term.
Because the more authoritarian China becomes, the less innovative it becomes and the poorer it will become.
And if it moves towards more freedom, then I don't care, right?
It's not a threat.
So it's only a threat as it becomes more statist.
But as it becomes more statist, it becomes less rich.
um it's it it's pretty easy to argue though that the the the tech innovation we see now
is certainly empowering for authoritarians in the sense that for example it take take
soviet russia um you in order to enforce communism you needed a lot of people really
you know it was a lot you know and in a way you could say that it collapses under the weight of
not actually being able to find enough people.
What tech does is it does away with that aspect,
and it allows you to enforce things with algorithms.
And that is scalable infinitely, which is weird.
Absolutely, and scary.
But think about it.
I mean, China today has the technology
to run a completely totalitarian state.
It has facial recognition.
It monitors everything that happens on the web.
It does all these things.
And yet, in spite of it being very authoritarian, it's not totalitarian.
It's not like the Soviet Union.
It doesn't try to run everybody's lives in the way the Soviet Union did.
And there's a reason for that, because I think they fear the people.
So technology does two things.
On the one hand, it gives the authorities this incredibly tool to monitor us.
But it also gives us a tool, a tool to realize there's more to life, in spite of the fact
that the internet is censored in China, they all get through, right?
VPNs and then China finds a way to control the VPNs and then they get more sophisticated
VPNs and they find around.
I mean, I see people from China on Facebook and on YouTube, all the things that are banned
in China and yet here they are, they appear on.
So what they discover when they have those tools, when they get Netflix or they get YouTube
or whatever, is there's a whole world out there that doesn't play by the rules of the
Chinese government.
And then those kids are like, wait a minute, why don't we have those freedoms?
Why can't we?
So there's a limit, right?
And so the more technology you have, yes, it enables the central government, but it also
enables the people, right?
It's much easier to fight them.
It's much easier to hack them.
It's much easier to do stuff without them noticing.
If I'm sophisticated, I shield myself from them.
I don't know.
I can use crypto to move money around where the government can't see it.
And so technology gives them a tool, but it also gives us a tool, a tool to fight back.
and I think at the end of the day technology will I mean it might be at the
end of the day it might be a long time from now but at the end of the day
technology gives us more power than them it take a while for that to be realized Yeah I probably agree with that The problem would be that if the majority of people let say 80 are happy to live within that very constrictive environment that makes it very hard for the 20 in a new way
I mean, take China, for example.
the social credit system is a good example because you don't control people by literally
banging on their door and telling them not to do something. You just take away their ability to do
things. Now, for the 20%, that makes life very difficult because unless you want to live out in
the woods like a mountain man and not interact with society. You see, they won't do that to 20%
of the population. If they did, they'd have a revolution. Revolutions are never started by the
80%, right? They're started always by a minority. It's always a minority, almost always.
And, you know, they have to be, and the Chinese government knows this, they have to be very careful on how they use this social scoring system.
If they overdo it, they face a rebellion.
And this is not a rebellion of ignorant idiots.
This is a rebellion of techies who are very internet savvy, who are very technology savvy, who are young people who are of the world.
You know, Chinese travel, they see the world.
So it's not like the Soviet Union where you weren't allowed to leave.
That's another thing that China can't afford to do is lock their people up.
They tried.
And by, what was it, winter of 2022, they had to let go because people were going out the streets, even in China.
And they were protesting and they got scared.
The Chinese government got scared.
So there is a limit.
All I'm saying is, and I don't know what the balance is and I don't know how it's going to go in China ultimately,
is that the technology in and of itself,
yes, it can be used by the authoritarians to clamp down on us,
but it can obviously be used by us to evade the authorities.
And I think a lot of people in China do that,
and that's how they can continue.
And there's still thriving entrepreneurs there,
and there's still people who do okay in China in spite of that.
And look, I wish there were 20% of the population who wanted freedom,
as I understand it.
I mean, I think we'd win easily if that was the case.
I mean, my fear is there's only 2%, 3% of the population that actually wants real freedom.
I mean, people want a little bit more, a little bit less.
But real individualists, real people striving towards their own personal happiness who really value reason and value themselves, it's just that's a small number and it's shrinking.
And that's what scares me, right?
So what's your best practice strategy then to be free in that sense? I mean, we study that here every year constantly, and there's a spectrum of ways that people try to live freedom, not the ideas of freedom.
Well, first I think the first step to take is, you know, wherever you live, is to figure out what your values are.
What is really important to you as a human being, right?
What makes you – what is going to lead you towards happiness?
Now, make sure those are not just random, that they are consistent with kind of life and human rationality.
But create a hierarchy of values.
So, for example, I hate paying taxes.
But I also hate bad weather.
I hate the cold, right?
I couldn't live in England.
Right.
Okay, so if the only, you know, so I have to trade off, let's say there's a country in the north.
I don't know, we saw somebody who's got a seas thing, you know, in the North Sea, right?
Oh, the sea land.
Sea land.
Am I willing to live in sea land and not pay taxes, but have to live in sea?
Obviously not, right?
So the first thing you want to do, I mean, for me, right, I understand that some people do and fine,
But I think it's a very narrow view of life to live that way.
There are real values in civilization, and we shouldn't diminish those, and we should really think about what they are.
So create a hierarchy of values.
What's most important to you and what's least important to you?
And then try to achieve those values.
Now, the world will not allow you to achieve all of them, and you'll find a lot of tradeoffs.
But really consciously, you know, think about what those trees are for.
So I grew up in Israel.
You know, I was in Israel until I was 26.
But I realized pretty soon after reading Ayn Rand that I didn't really want to live in Israel, right?
Israel was small, very collectivistic in those days, quite socialist, and just very collectivistic and tribal.
And I said, okay.
So I sat down in probably my early 20s and said, okay, where would I want to live?
Like what's going to be the best place in the world for me to live?
And in those days, and I think to some extent still today, but certainly in those days, it was the United States.
Not just because politically it was relatively free and economically taxes were relatively low, but also because it's big and there's a lot of opportunities and it's exciting and there's stuff going on.
Like if you're in tech, you want to be in Silicon Valley, right?
So you need to think, okay, so where do I want to live?
And maybe it turns out that you want to live in Andorra or you want to live in Prosperous or somewhere like that.
But really figure that out.
You have to figure it out, particularly when you're young and you're trying to establish a career.
Do you really want to isolate yourself or do you want to be where the excitement and the growth is?
and then strive towards that.
So create a hierarchy of values,
make sure those values are the best that they can be, right?
They are really going to lead to a flourishing life
and then go achieve them.
And when you discover a conflict,
when you discover a situation
where it's hard to achieve them,
then either find ways around it.
Like how am I going to get to America, right?
I wasn't an American citizen.
So I went to graduate school
because I figured if I go to school in America, I can easily.
And it worked out, right?
So I got an MBA, I got a PhD,
and ultimately that was my path to becoming an American citizen.
It took a long time, but I made it.
You know, it's one of the reasons I have no problem,
and I know people are going to hate this,
but I have no problem with illegal immigrants into America,
people coming in illegally.
Their hierarchy of values dictated they want to live in a freer place.
They grew up in some slum in Guatemala,
where there are constant gang wars.
And if they ever have kids or raising their kids,
their kids might get involved in gangs and drugs and a short life.
And there's this country that offers real opportunities,
not opportunities because they get handouts,
but opportunities because you can get a job and you can be left alone
and you can create a real life for yourself.
And there's no way to get there legally.
Like America has no visa program for poor Guatemalans.
So what are you going to do?
I mean, to me, a pregnant woman struggling through the desert on a trek of thousands of miles, crossing the desert into America.
So her child is born in America.
Wow, she should get like a medal.
What is more heroic than that?
She takes her life seriously.
She takes the life of her child seriously.
Has she violated anybody's rights?
No, she's broken the law.
So what?
I speed all the time.
I break the law.
She didn't violate anybody's rights.
She didn't take anybody's property.
She didn't take anything from anybody.
And for the rest of her life, she's going to work because she's an illegal immigrant.
She can't get welfare.
So she's going to have to work.
So she's going to work.
And that's great.
So to me, the striving towards your personal success, striving towards your personal values,
that's what it's all about.
You know, that's what being alive means.
So, you know, for each one of us, we have to figure out what our values are, figure out
what's most important to us and go get it.
And if that means you know moving to a seastead or moving to California or moving away from California you know it depends It depends on your circumstances You know I lived in California for many years
And at some point, I reached a point in my life where I could afford to go anywhere I wanted.
Well, not afford financially, but afford in terms of time.
My kids were out of the house and I could live anywhere I wanted.
I was fed up with paying the kind of taxes that California paid.
And, you know, so I figured out a solution.
And it turns out that if you go to Puerto Rico, you don't pay a lot of taxes.
So I went.
I couldn't have done that 10 years earlier because I wouldn't want to raise my kids in
Puerto Rico.
And you have to take into account your circumstances, your values, and find the best combination
at any given point in time and be willing.
And this is something people don't do.
People drift in life.
You've got to constantly ask the question, am I doing the best that I can do?
Am I doing the best that I can do in life?
Am I living in the best place that I can live?
Am I pursuing the best career that I can pursue?
Am I in the best relationship that I can?
People get divorced, and I think that's a good thing because they suddenly realize, oh, I'm not in the best relationship I could have.
Maybe there's something better out there for me.
So they change.
Change is good.
Change should be embraced.
You should constantly be thinking about how can I live the best life that I can live and what changes do I need to make in order to achieve that?
I'm you're literally channeling the spirit of Ayn Rand in the room.
Well, I was going to say then I've completely forgotten now.
Yeah, basically hierarchy of hierarchy of values.
And also, I think one of the things I don't know whether you mentioned it, I didn't hear it was to be realistic.
because i mean but it's important because um i think it's it's quite debilitating to think about
what you want but not be able to get it as in a utopian sort of i i mean i i struggle with this
myself sometimes like and i i've been on a journey of acceptance of the reality as it is basically
you know i love the uk i hate the government and the tax system but my children love where we live
And when I put all these down on paper, I say, yes, I am paying for this.
This is what this costs to me.
And I'm willing to pay it.
So this is what I said about trade-offs.
These are trade-offs we shouldn't have to make.
In a free society, we wouldn't be making them.
But in the mixed world that we live in, you've got to make trade-offs.
Now, if your kids were going to be drafted and the UK was about to launch into a war, I don't know, somewhere in the planet, and your kids might go have to forced into some fight or something, you might reconsider.
They crossed the line.
The tradeoff is not worth it anymore.
And now you shift or taxes go up to 90% or something.
So you're constantly evaluating what do I get from living in a particular place versus what is the cost to me?
Again, these are trade-offs we shouldn't have to make.
In a rational, free world, there are no trade-offs.
You're left alone.
You live the kind of life you want to live.
Now, there's always, in a sense, trade-off, in a sense that I could be doing this with
my time versus that.
But there wouldn't be these coercive trade-offs.
They wouldn't be, OK, I have to put up with coercion.
I have to put up with force.
I have to put up with violence so I can live a reasonable life.
That is a horrible trade-off.
But that's reality that we live in.
You should fight that reality intellectually,
but to fight it every day emotionally will drain you and crush you.
At some point, you have to accept this is the world.
This is the reality.
I'm not going to change it overnight.
I maybe can fight for long-term change,
but it's a slow, lengthy process.
And I'm going to accept it.
Are you more of a stay in change or a move to a new frontier kind of person?
I mean, given how many times I've moved in my life, I would say, you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm a bit of both.
Right. So I like change and I think I embrace change and I think change is good.
But again, it depends. You know, you're going to change less when you have kids.
I think I think it makes it much more difficult when you have children to to to make radical changes.
but you never want to be, you never want to stagnate. You never want to stagnate in any
aspect of your life. So you always want to be on the lookout for stagnation. You always want to
look out for, I'm doing the same thing I did yesterday, exactly the same thing. Nothing's
changing. Nothing's getting better. I could be doing better. How can I do better? Let's go do
better. And part of that is geography. But I think most of it is not geography. Most of it is
attitude. Most of it is how you live your life. Geography, political situation, it's not that big
of a difference between the various countries, particularly in, let's say, in the Western world.
They're all statist of various degrees, but they're all statist. So, you know, living in the UK,
living in the US, the difference is marginal. Again, I think there are more opportunities in
the U.S., so that's why I preferred it. But so much of the focus needs to be, I think, in figuring
out what your personal values are and how to achieve them and how to pursue them in this mixed
up, crazy, horrible, in many ways, world. And figure out, again, what's important to you and
what's not, and the hierarchy. Weather, for example, plays a big role in my hierarchy of
where I'm going to live.
My wife and I will not live in a cold place.
So that kind of limits where we're going to move to.
There's certain places I won't go to or won't live in.
But that's just one consideration.
There are lots of considerations you have to constantly be thinking about.
Do you think the statist world will decline?
Do you think, I mean, we're on a trajectory at Pierce,
and it's obvious the direction it's going in,
but do you think it's like a pendulum?
Does it decline at some point?
You mean statism declined?
Yes.
Just the statist worldview.
I don't think it's a pendulum.
I mean, you can go into a period of stagnation
that could last a very long time.
And you could go into just cultural decline
that can last a very long time.
In the West, we've had a dark ages with the fall of Rome.
The more I read about history, the more I see civilizations in different parts of the world, real civilizations, real achievements, then they decline and disappear and they're gone.
And it's not even that somebody came and killed them all.
It's just decline because the ideas ran, you know, they just couldn't live up to them.
So there's nothing inevitable.
Individuals, I mean, I really do believe individuals have free will and we shape the world and the culture in which we live.
I do think we're heading towards an era of stagnation.
I think we're already in it to a large extent.
And look at Europe.
Europe is barely growing economically.
I think the rest of the world is struggling.
You know, maybe Millet and Argentina are the only bright spot out there in terms of heading in the right direction.
Everybody else is heading in the wrong direction.
And so we're heading in towards a period of stagnation.
Now, I think, I really believe freedom wins out in the end.
Not because it's a pendulum, but because I think the good ideas win.
that the truth wins out over the long span of history.
It could be hundreds of years.
It could be 1,000 years.
I don't know.
But in the end, human beings will gravitate towards the truth.
They will gravitate towards good ideas.
In a sense, we're too young of a species for freedom.
99.9% of human history, 99.99%, I think, of human history
has been authoritarian and totalitarian.
We've lived in tribes.
We've lived in monarchies.
We've lived in every form of authoritarian regimes possible.
And then we've got this glimpse for the last 200 years of a little bit of freedom, right?
And not even the whole world, just a part of the world.
This is new. It's an exception. We're going to have to experiment with it. People are going to
have to learn what works and what doesn't. They might have to go through a decline and give up
some of that freedom before they realize how valuable it is. I don't know. But in the end
of the day, I think that if we hold on to these ideas, if we sustain them, if we keep talking
about them, if we teach them, if we preserve them, they will win.
So you think there is a final, there is a win.
I've never considered there to be an end to this.
I've always considered it a push and a pull.
No, I think there's a win.
The win is not the end in the sense that you're always going to have to be vigilant.
I mean, vigilance for liberty never ends, right?
You're always going to have to remind people why freedom is a good thing and why they shouldn't be tempted by these bad ideas.
It'll be a lot easier once they internalize the good ideas and the good ideas are dominating the intellectual space.
That has never happened in human history.
We got close in the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment was too young and too flawed and too mixed up and philosophically.
But I do think there's an end.
I do think there's a – it's not a utopia, but there's a state in which we will be free or at least a significant number of us will be free.
Maybe it turns out to be Mars.
I don't know.
Maybe it turns out to be seasteading.
I doubt it.
Just because the powers to be, I mean, this is my view of a lot of these projects, if I can be negative about them for a minute.
Absolutely.
The more successful they are, the more the powers to be won't allow them to succeed further.
So imagine you establish a free city in the middle of the ocean.
It doesn't rely on any government.
It hasn't got a charter from anybody.
It's a completely free city.
And you have free banking on the city.
And the free banking means total privacy, no money laundering laws, complete privacy.
How long do you think the United States will allow you to do that?
How long before the Navy shows up and shuts you down?
I think it's a matter of hours.
Well, it depends.
I mean, maritime law is very, very old and ancient.
I mean, right now, we're talking about maritime law.
Right now, the United States is blowing up boats off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia.
There's no maritime law in the world that justifies what's going on right now.
They're killing people without even presenting evidence.
There's no terrorist list of most wanted people.
We don't know who's being killed.
Nobody's being named.
They're just blowing up stuff in the middle of the sea.
You think the United States Navy gives one iota?
for a large floating city though.
I think maybe that would become...
What about you just surrounded
and don't allow any supplies in
until they change their laws about banking?
I would still think there would be a scale issue there.
If it was a large settlement, I think...
I think you're overly optimistic
and you don't realize how seriously bad these people are.
But the thing about, you know, Seasteaders,
for example is they can very much live at the fringes even in a very large way that and they
living at the fringes is is part of the process sometimes i get i get i get that if you want to
live in the fringes yes you can do it i'm saying if you establish a real place which has banking
and has yeah i'm talking about that i mean that as well it you know i mean there's parts of the
ocean that they will shut it down in an instant the united states navy can reach any part of the
ocean they want to. Yes, but why would
they? Why would the US Navy go
to the middle? There's a, well, I forget what that, because
you're money laundering. I mean, the United States
today... Yeah, but the money laundering is happening all over the world
already. Yeah, and they try to shut it down. The United States
today has... Not in China, though.
Has troops in 120 different countries.
But yeah, there's a lot of places they don't have troops.
But primarily places
like China, where they would fight them.
I suspect that there is
a limit to how much
control over
the whole planet one entity requires?
Well it not in the United States right China doesn have an incentive for you to have something where Chinese citizens can use it in order to get their money out of China Which we already have as well Yeah I mean we have that system But they want to clamp down as much as they can
Yeah, and they can't. They try, but it doesn't work. People send Bitcoin in and out of China
constantly. Sure. But it's constantly a battle, and it will continue to constantly be a battle.
My point is that you better be prepared for a battle. And when there's a physical location,
then it's much easier.
One of the reasons you can get Bitcoin in and out
because it has no physical locale.
A city, a state, a free city, a free state
has a physical location
and it better be ready to defend itself.
No, I agree.
There is no perfect way to do this.
Arguably though, seasteading,
if you're talking about the future version of it,
which are large floating cities,
They are one of the most perfect manifestations of the idea because they can actually move.
And they will also be a precursor to intergalactic travel in some point.
I mean, that's the advantage of intergalactic travel, right?
Yeah.
You know, it's very hard for the U.S. Navy to get to Mars.
So the isolation is a huge advantage in creating something new in other planets.
Yeah, I mean, I'm excited about that.
I'm less excited about the prospects for that on Earth because I think it's all accessible versus, you know.
But we're on a journey here.
I mean, like you say, in your hierarchy of needs, how much do you want freedom?
Value, sorry.
How much do you want your freedom?
Because really the UN has made a claim on outer space pretty much.
There's a 1960s agreement.
Go enforce it.
Right, exactly.
When Elon gets to Mars, if he puts the labor in, that's his property.
It's obvious because no one's going to be able to stop him.
Yes, but I also think that Elon is probably smart enough, you know, to build a nuke on Mars, to build the capacity to defend himself.
Right?
Because at the end of the day, you better be able to defend yourself physically in the physical world.
You can live digitally and that's fine.
But at the end of the day, we eat and live and have sex in the physical world.
And that can be, you know, somebody can shoot you in the physical world.
You better be able to defend yourself in the physical world.
And I would urge anybody seeking freedom to think about self-defense as an aspect of freedom.
There's no freedom if you can't defend yourself.
So I hope Elon in his plan for an independent whatever in Mars is thinking about what if, you know,
the US spaceship shows up and tries to take us over.
How do we protect ourselves?
And my assumption is he's smart enough.
Or other people, you know, this might not be in his lifetime.
Other people think about, yes, we need, you know,
if you read science fiction, it's part of the way they conceive
about, you know, colonies on other planets.
Sure.
I mean, it's also a question of frontiers, you know.
frontiers have always been the fringe that people look for freedom in and we don't have many left
the sea is currently still a frontier frontiers historically not anymore for a variety of reasons
but historically have always been violent of course yeah yeah because you have to protect yourself but
when they're vast yes and the bigger they are the better you better and you better be able to defend
yourself wherever you are well i agree with that and i i'm i'm being a bit facetious but the the i
I mean, because we talk about this a lot in our movement, and we're going through a moderately,
I mean, it's a soft version of that right now in Prospera.
You know, the socialists are coming after the free city.
And actually what we're seeing is relatively positive.
They are cowering under, you know, you can protect a physical place with more than just guns.
You've got legal protections, you've got community protections,
You've got economic incentive protections, which are all part of your plan to secure a place.
And they, in Prospero, we're pleasantly surprised to see the very authoritarian end of the spectrum
try and shut something down and then not do it And not doing it yeah so yeah i mean you know i positive about it anyway but i mean anyway i i gonna i gonna wrap it up i think let end on a
positive note not on a free cities are all doomed to be killed uh or to be doomed to be attacked the
other thing is of course i don't think the government's going to be attacking elon in
space it's going to be another corporation i don't think the government will make it to mars
I mean, who knows? Yeah. I mean, governments are very good at confiscating technology and taking it over. But yes, it might be another corporation. It might be another entity.
But –
What would I –
And, you know, generally, look, at the end of the day, if the world is heading towards more statism, then the world will become more violent, not less.
And if the world's heading towards more freedom, then there'll be a lot of opportunities to manifest that freedom in a variety of different ways politically.
if we're heading in that direction.
I hope we are.
But I worry that as we head towards more statism,
as, you know, again, I look at Donald Trump right now
blowing ships out of the water in the Caribbean Sea
and nobody's saying anything about it pretty much.
And people still loving Donald Trump
and thinking he was God's gift to America.
And he's just killing people.
And, you know, everybody just shrugs and moves on.
That is scary level authoritarianism.
What do you think Ayn's opinion of this movement would be then, the Free Cities kind of ecosystem?
I mean, she would argue that it will succeed to the extent that it's based on a proper philosophical foundation.
And she would worry that it's not, which was her worry for much of the free market movement.
She worried that it did not ground itself in the proper philosophical foundation and therefore was doomed to fail.
and so far she's been proven right
in a sense that since she died
things have become worse, not better
and I think she predicted that
so she would advocate
A, she'd advocate don't give up on civilization
that is, yes, you can always run away
to some desert island and live over there
and particularly if you don't stick your head up too much
and rattle the cages
you can live there by yourself
but is that a life, right?
Is that a full life that you could live in a property?
She loved New York, right?
And she loved New York in spite of all the flaws in the city because it was civilization.
It was exciting that real stuff was going on there.
And so she would argue don't give up on civilization.
Let's fight, continue the struggle for freedom, but the struggle for freedom within civilization.
And the struggle ultimately is not political.
The struggle ultimately is philosophical.
It's ultimately ideological.
Let's teach people the value of freedom.
Let's teach them the value of their own lives.
Let's teach them to be self-interested, to want to be happy, and then make the connection between happiness and freedom.
You cannot be happy unless you're at least somewhat free.
And the freer you are, the more the possibilities regarding happiness only expand.
so so you know ultimately freedom will come about when people reject the morality of sacrifice the
morality of altruism you know freedom will come about when people embrace reason freedom will come
about when people start valuing their own lives above all else yeah thank you I wonder if I was
just thinking i wonder if iron would live in new york right now you know look i know a lot of people
who live in new york right now and in new york and i visit new york quite frequently and new york
was horrible during covid and and to a large extent people were saying new york will never
recover and new york's thriving you know new york's doing phenomenally well crime rates are down
uh you know people are busy it's it's just as energetic and exciting as it's always been
And there's still a great opera house there, and there's still a great museum there.
And there's still, if you're in finance, there's no better jobs in the world that you can get
in New York.
Now if Mamdani wins New York will decline for a period But my guess is New York will come back Crime rates will go up under Momdani because you shrink the police and it be dirtier and it be all of that But there there a bit of
a pendulum. I do think there's a bit of a pendulum. But we tend to be way too down on the world.
I want to live free. And again, I live in Puerto Rico for a variety of reasons and
many of them have to do with taxes. But when I go to New York, I'm energized. I mean, it's still
and energetic place.
I'm a finance guy, and if you want to do finance,
there's no better place in the world to be
than in New York City.
They're changing the world.
And Silicon Valley is in California.
California is horrible.
It's got high taxes and regulations and controls
and a bunch of leftists.
And yet, if you want to start a company,
and there's no more, right now in AI,
we talked about AI, if you want to start,
if you get into AI, San Francisco's the place
Forget about the homeless.
Forget about all that.
You're going to be in San Francisco, and you're going to do really well in San Francisco,
and it's an exciting, energetic place.
So, again, we tend to over-focus on the negative, and there's a lot of positives in the world.
And if you are ambitious and if you want to do something with your life, there's still
plenty of places where you can do that, plenty of opportunities for you to do that. Don't give up
on your life because you're paying high taxes. There's still, I mean, you should be pissed off
you're paying high taxes and you should try to minimize them. But at the same time, you want to
maximize your life. And the question is, how do you maximize your life? And, you know, there are
lots of ways and lots of places you can do that in. The hierarchy of values. I'm taking that one
away with me. I love the way that's framed. And I agree because I do fall into that. I fall into
that trap myself. And that's an Ayn Rand, you know, that's an Ayn Rand concept. I mean, it's
very fundamental to philosophy is that to be self-interested, to live a moral life,
you've got to gather. And at the top of the hierarchy, the most important values are the
abstract values, the moral values. But then you start breaking down to family and the place you
live and your career and the art you like and how you want to spend your time.
And, you know, the car, you know, if you really want a nice car, you know, you put in a hierarchy
and car hopefully is relatively low and some other things are higher up.
But we all are different.
So we're all going to have different, when it comes to the concretes of life, beyond
the abstract moral values, we're all going to have different hierarchies of values.
And that's what should guide my life.
you know we shouldn't
too many people I think
in this world that we were just at a conference
of too many people have this
abstraction of freedom and that
is all they care about and that's
what they go for and
they forget that life is
you know there's a lot to life
and
certainly you don't want to live in
an unfree place
but since
we don't have a completely free place
a suddenly completely free place with all the attributes of civilization,
you've got to think about all the trade-offs.
And in that sense, you've got to really develop higher-care values
and live by it.
Wonderful.
Aaron, thank you very much indeed.
Spending a little bit of time off stage, I really enjoyed your talk.
Thank you.
And now I just like a lovely thanks for the one-to-one.
I feel like it was a bit of a pep talk, which is really good.
And I hope that listeners get a bit.
I hope that someone else tunes into it as well,
because sometimes you need people to lay it out in a simple way like that.
I think a lot of us do fall into the trap of visualizing the freedom,
and then when we don't see it in our lives, berating it.
Super frustrating.
Yeah.
But anyway, many, many thanks indeed, and I hope to see you another time.
Sure.
Thank you.