Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 I'm Scott Schiff with the Atlas. Pleased to introduce Senior Scholar Richman, talking about effective altruism as cover for the FTX scam. Uh, while Richard is giving us his thoughts, uh, feel free to raise your hands with questions. We'll bring you up to the stage to ask when he is done with his opening, and we'd ask you to share the room. Uh, Richard, great topic. I'm really interested in hearing about this, uh, talk about the relation between effective altruism and, and the FTX scam.
Speaker 1 00:00:36 Well, thank you, Scott. Thanks for all of you are joining tonight. Uh, as usual for, uh, my solo runs on clubhouse, I'll, I'll say some stuff for 15 or 20 minutes and then open it to question and comments. Uh, I thought I would talk about, um, the relationship between the ftx. I'm gonna use some acronyms tonight, but I'll, I'll specify them ahead of time. Fdx, which is the recent crypto collapse, uh, under a 30 year old neophyte called Sam Bankman Fried, also known as fbf. I find that people on the left, by the way, love to use acronyms, FDR and AOC and sbf, all their heroes are, um, acronyms. And he is definitely a hero, and you might be interested to know why that would be the case. He just, uh, for all intents and purposes, pulled off a fraud that's in the multi-billions and could go down as one of the biggest financial frauds in US history, uh, uh, akin to what was done with Ponzi, uh, in Charles Ponzi in the early 19 hundreds, and Bernie Madoff, if you know, the Madoff case from the early two thousands.
Speaker 1 00:01:51 But this one really is, uh, it, it's similar in that it's a fraud, but it's, it, it also has similarities in the sense of how the fraud was pulled off, because you have, in this case specifically, but this was true also with Madoff, very sophisticated investors, very sophisticated people involved in giving the guy money. And by, by money I mean billions and billions of dollars. The estimates are still coming in, and the, the, the case has to be, um, prosecuted, of course, but the estimates are that, um, it's in the multi-billions, probably in the order of six to 20 billion that he stole. At one point, his company was allegedly worth, uh, a hundred billion or more. And that dissipated over a weekend. So it tells you that it was a, a house of cards in many ways. So I'm just gonna sketch out quickly, first of all, what FTX is, how it relates to crypto, how it relates to Bitcoin, because it's not all bad news in that space.
Speaker 1 00:02:52 But then I think for this audience, the more interesting aspect of it is how this could have been pulled off and it was pulled off in a particular way, having to do with altruism. And to this audience, altruism is not a virtue, but a vice altruism means other ism. It means a preoccupation with others, that your moral duty in life is to serve others, not yourself, to be selfless. And that is the way the, um, the, the, the thing was coined and explained by its, uh, originator a go comm, c o m t e. Now, the fact that in subsequent, uh, centuries and decades, some people are trying to morph it into mere kindness or generosity, doesn't change the essence of it. It's still true that people can act selflessly. And to the extent that's considered Lee, to the extent that's considered virtuous, you can have people not questioning the underlying motives of the person doing it.
Speaker 1 00:03:46 What, what today is called virtue signaling. Look how moral I am. I'm giving away money to good causes. Uh, we, we forget to ask, well, what virtue, particularly is being signaled well is the idea of I'm, I'm giving away money to, uh, needy causes or socialist causes or progressive causes or anti-capitalist causes, or environmental causes. So the presumption is there is already there that it's a virtue, and we would say it's a vice. Now, FTX was, this was the thing he started fewer than eight years ago. I mean, his thing is fairly new. He's only 30 years old. He went to m i t I'm not sure he graduated, but he has no experience really, whatever in business. His first job actually was in an effective altruism, uh, activist group. And I'll, I'll say what effective altruism is soon. But it is a specific phrase that is a specific approach to philanthropy that has come out of academia in the last couple of decades and is actively practiced by some people in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 And he's an example of that. But just to set aside for a moment that the mechanics and the economics of this, uh, cryptocurrencies are digital monies that have been created mostly by private ENT entities as an alternative to fiat token money. And as an alternative to some of the cumbersome monies associated with gold and the precious metals historically. Now, the most famous one is Bitcoin. And Bitcoin I've, I've talked about before in other sessions, I've talked about it in, uh, my morals and markets, uh, webinar for TAs as well. Bitcoin is a legitimate digital currency that really is an algorithm created, uh, in advance by, um, technicians. Many of them anonymous. And so it's a kind of, uh, autopilot type of currency. It's created a digital currency, but, and it's created under a particular disciplined al algorithm that's not manipulable. And so that is not what, uh, uh, uh, Sam Bankman Friedman was doing.
Speaker 1 00:05:50 Um, uh, so, so the first thing I wanna set aside is the idea that this somehow calls into question Bitcoin itself. Now, cryptocurrencies a broader concept, uh, are, are sometimes currencies that are managed by a team, um, and a company. And that is opens up, obviously, especially the, the whole idea of crypto is the, the back, the back scenes part of it. The fact it's that it's, uh, crypto means hidden in some way, right? It's, uh, it's highly prone to being manipulated by managers, uh, especially if they don't have their financing online, and especially if they're a low moral character. So that's not true of Bitcoin, if you know how Bitcoin works. But some of the cryptocurrencies have that feature, and some of them have failed, uh, in recent years. And that's okay. We should be weeding out the ones that aren't stable. Now, ftx, which went bankrupt, was actually an exchange for cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1 00:06:44 So think of it as the New York Stock Exchange. The New York Stock Exchange is a separate entity from say, Microsoft, you know, who shares trade on the exchange. Well, that's what Bank and Freed, uh, launched with ftx. That's what FTX is. But he had auxiliary companies associated with ftx, and he would move money around between the entities to hide things. And it's not as if there aren't other crypto exchanges. Bin Finance, b i n Finance is a competitor to ftx and a and a as so far as I can tell a decent one, but still, you know, has to be watched closely. So it's the concept itself of creating an exchange to permit cryptocurrency owners to exchange their crypto is perfectly okay. Uh, that, so the essence of the business from my estimation, is not what's at fault here. What's at fault here is the, the way he ran it, the reason he ran it, and, and therefore it's downfall.
Speaker 1 00:07:38 Now, here's the main reason he ran it to embezzle money. It is one of the most incredible frauds ever launched, because he launched it in a space which itself is not widely understood on Wall Street, cuz it's cryptocurrency. It's a new kind of digital monies. So in that regard, it was kind of clever. Uh, and he had a lot of, uh, so-called, uh, sophisticated investors giving him money. By the way, also famous people on TV pushing this stuff like Matt Damon, Tom Brady, if you remember the commercials from the Super Bowl, those were FTX commercials. Those were famous people saying, you gotta get into ftx. FTX is great. And, uh, he, you know, he would, he would totally secondhand, he would make sure he'd get famous people up on stage when he was up on stage. So he ha he would have these finance seminars in foro with, you know, bill Clinton was there and Tony Blair was there, and, and then he could be found, uh, this kid who could be found running around Washington, meeting with the head of the S e c Gary Gensler and meeting with the head of the cftc.
Speaker 1 00:08:43 And so he was whining and dining. I don't know that, that's not the word actually, cuz he's a slob. I'm not sure he is whining and dining is, if you took, just take a picture, look him up on the thing. He is, part of his whole shtick was, look, I don't, don't wear a suit and tie, so I can't possibly be a white collar criminal. Um, I'm running this thing outta my garage. Ain't that cool? It's so Silicon Valley, it's so Seattle grunge. He is totally grungy. But the false sense of security that's possible in the financial securities business, uh, comes from having things like the C F T and S E C. And, you know, if they didn't rain down on the guy, everyone's thinking, well, the guy, this enterprise must be legitimate. Now, to their credit, there were very astute business people, um, particularly the head of the, uh, commodities exchanges in Chicago who called him out on this, who was saying months ago, this gets a fraud.
Speaker 1 00:09:35 This kid's a total fraud. If you look into the business, there's no business there, and this thing is gonna collapse. And by the way, that was done with Madoff as well. Madoff was understood and discovered and disclosed not by the S e c, but by competitors, by competitors who looked at Madoff's reporting and results. And they were literally impossible. It was impossible to give a rate of return to, to, uh, uh, clients of the kind Madoff was doing. So the, so the, the exposure of that one was by a competitor who went to the S E C and said, this how I, this is how I think Birdie Madoff was cooking the books and the s e c for years didn't look into it. So the best antidote for this is other competitors looking into it. But this particular fraud, I think also had the patina, uh, it's clear that it had the patina of what's called effective altruism.
Speaker 1 00:10:26 So let me turn to that for a moment and then, and then I'll swing back and finish up with what's, what's happening with F T X. Now, now need to back up a little bit and understand what the heck is effective altruism, because Sam Bankman Friedman is a big fan of it and a big practitioner of it, and that's why he committed his fraud. Okay, what is it? If you say effective altruism, the first thing you have to think of is what's ineffective altruism? What is it about altruism which is ineffective? Well, the originator of this, really, there are two of them, but the main one is a longtime academic ethicist. Uh, I think he's mostly been at Princeton named Peter Singer, s i n g e R. So if you look up Peter Singer, for years, he has been a utilitarian ethicist. And then utilitarians, as you know, have this view that there are no fixed principles.
Speaker 1 00:11:20 Uh, the greatest good for the greatest number. Uh, if it's necessary to sacrifice certain elements of society for the benefit of others, that's okay, as long as the ends are moral. And here moral means, uh, anything that's anti-capitalism, then the, uh, means to that end are justified. And now, if you wanna look at a more recent case of him actually advocating for effective altruism, just look up the logic of effective altruism from the Boston Review 2015. So there's singer explaining what effective altruism is. Here's what it is. The story goes something like this. If you're someone like Mother Teresa and you are poor and you're serving, uh, people in Calcutta, you know, who are poorer than you are, you're not really very effective cuz you're poor, you're not really able to help them much. I mean, you might be able to raise money if you become famous, but how do you become famous?
Speaker 1 00:12:17 The argument here is that giving your money away to, um, moral causes is more effective if you have more money to give away. So effective altruism is the theory and practice that says the following. Go into a profession where you make a lot of money and then give it away to left-wing altruist causes. That's it. So you're kind of like a workhorse or a mill horse for the movement. Now, you, you may be, uh, capable of going into these business, say you go and work on Wall Street, but you, you hate Wall Street. So the whole time you're hating your job. You really don't wanna do your job, but you're not bad at your job and you can make a lot of money. And the reason you're virtuous is you can give a lot of money away and you can give way more money away and have way more influence than if you were, you know, a Wouldbe Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1 00:13:08 So there's more to the story than this, but that is the essence of it. And it implores young students in all fields, the law in el our health to give up their selfish desire to build a career for themselves and rather spend money, uh, spend time, energy, uh, making a lot of money. And then, you know, not just tithing 10%, I mean, giving large chunks of it away to the preferred causes. As I said, the mostly the preferred causes of the so-called progressives, the left and elsewhere environmentalism. You can just a long list you can, ima imagine. And they, and, and if you read their writings, they actually are kind of cute about this cuz cuz their view is, hey, the jokes on them, here we are, we're gonna use capitalism. We're gonna in va our way into these companies and make a fortune and then give it away, and we're gonna undermine capitalism from within.
Speaker 1 00:13:59 You know, so instead of, uh, you know, burning down the factories and, and lynching the capitalist, you know, ala Marx and, and, and, uh, Lennon and, um, angles, uh, we're, this is gonna be like an inside job. Now, the interesting thing about Bankman Free is when he left M i t, his first job was at, uh, an effective altruism unit in San Francisco. So his first job was not in finance. If you look up, if you look up in fact, his profile on, uh, uh, Wikipedia, and it's interesting cuz I've, I've watched this over the last couple of weeks or so, how the profile has been, you know, cuz in Wikipedia it can be changed by people. And, uh, and, and if anything, they're expanding it, uh, in recent, uh, days on this effective altruism part. So there's a whole section on effective altruism in his bio and, um, in his part of his career path.
Speaker 1 00:14:50 So let me just read this thing from the career path in the summer of 2013. Now that's what, nine years ago he was 21. He worked as an intern at Jane Street Capital at Proprietary Trading Firm. But then he left Jane Street and moved to Berkeley. Oh God, all bad things come from Berkeley, where he worked briefly at the Center for Effective Altruism as Director of Development from October to November, 2017. Now, that's a hoot itself. Director of development means fundraiser. So <laugh>, so he was direct at 21 years old. All this experience, you know, director of raising money for this Center for Effective Altruism Center here, E So it's really based in Britain. And, uh, there's more and more on this. And then, and then it shows him gradually going into arbitrage and gradually going into crypto. And, but bringing his, uh, effective altruism, uh, contacts with him.
Speaker 1 00:15:44 Uh, here's another section of the bio banquet, free publicly supported ec effective altruism contended that he was pursuing, earning to give as an altruistic career. He's a member of these are all capitalized now, giving what we can. And he claimed that he planned to notate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life. He founded the FTX Future Fund for this purpose, which included <laugh>, which include, which included William McCaskill, one of the founders of the Effective Altruism Movement. Now, I mentioned Peter Singer as one of the founders. The co-founder was a guy named Will McCaskill. And his 2016 book is called Doing Good Better, doing Good, better. So if you just look up McCaskill, I think it's m a c a s k i l l. There are profiles of him. There's a particularly interesting profile in the, in New York magazine about this guy and the real philosophy behind this.
Speaker 1 00:16:42 And you can tell that this clearly moved, um, Bankman freed and others in his orbit, and it, it enabled him to raise money. I mean, he would go to people and he would say, well, there's a business venture here, but you'll also be doing good because all the money I make out of this will go to all the causes. You so love you leftists, you, environmentalists, you anti-capitalist. In November, I'm reading from, uh, Wikipedia now again in November 2nd, 2022. This is pretty recent, right? He stated that the Alate, this is just before the bankruptcy, he stated that the altruistic appearance he and his company displayed was not sincere and was, quote, a dumb game that we woke Westerners play, where we say all the right sholis. And so everyone likes us, unquote. He knew what he was doing, he did it consciously. Um, yes, he tried to run a business, but anyone who hears the stories coming out of what the hell was going down in Bermuda with this company, it really wasn't a business.
Speaker 1 00:17:42 There were no financial controls. Um, the, these were kids basically playing around down there with other people's money. And I don't have any, um, actual sympathy for people who put money into this. I hope those sophisticated investors who are altruists in bleeding hearts, I hope they bleed badly out of their wallets over this. Now, on top of this, by the way, he spent, see, the key here would be where you spend the money, right? Not whether you make the money. In this case, he goes over the line and says, well, I need to fake the money, not make the money. I, if I can do this and go over the line and start faking it. This would be like a modern monetary theory, which, you know, if you know an economics, modern monetary theory is the idea that, hey, we can print money and issue bonds without limit and without any bad effect, you know, without inflation.
Speaker 1 00:18:29 This is like mmt applied to a private enterprise. This is ftx. We can just print money. And they did issue their own crypto, by the way, ftn just out of thin air, kind of like what the Fed does. They just issue the FTN out of thin air and then finance it, and then get people to lend against it, and then turn around and spend it and spend it on these left wing causes. Now, the other thing they spent it on was politicians. Brilliant, brilliant. So in the 2022 midterms, uh, F T X and Bankman free spent 38 million on Democrat races, almost entirely democratic crisis. Second only to George Soros. Now, George Soros has been around for decades. Uh, from what I can tell, he has mostly earned his money. He is a left-leaning businessman. And so he is very destructive. But there isn't, hasn't been any hint that, uh, George Soros stole his money, um, and by, and by the way, he's been compared to Soros.
Speaker 1 00:19:30 Uh, this was before the fraud was exposed. He's been compared on the front of major financial magazines like Fortune and, and Reuters and cn. He's been on C N B C and they just love this guy. Uh, one, one Fortune magazine, uh, cover said, um, what was it? The next JP Morgan, the next Warren Buffet. Um, so they're comparing him to these giants of the past who earn their money in finance. And the, the idea that they would be taken in by this guy who's, you know, was all of 30 years old, but no experience, it is largely due to this patina of effective altruism covering him. So, so there's not only financial fraud going on, there's call it ethical fraud, not in the sense of cooking the books, but the fraud of altruism, the fraud of anyone pretending that this is an ethic, uh, uh, of any, uh, real rational basis.
Speaker 1 00:20:29 It isn't, it's never been rational in the objective is code. But here it's being used. <laugh> used in a very clever way to hood wing people. Um, uh, there's a character in Atlas Shrug, for those of you who know Atlas. There's, you remember the two bankers who were profiled in Atlas Shrug. One of them is Midas Mulligan. And Midas, of course, invoking the spirit of, uh, the Midas touch Gold King, Midas and Mulligan was great, and Mulligan was the rational banker, but his counterpart was, uh, Eugene Lawson, the banker with the heart. That's how, that's how Rand described Eugene Lawson, the banker with the heart. And, and, and he would lend money and people would support him, and he would give financial contributions. And, and Eugene was the good guy, and Midas was the bad guy. Midas was the skin friend who wouldn't lend to just about anybody.
Speaker 1 00:21:19 So, so, uh, Bankman freed is, is Eugene Lawson like magnified 28 times? Uh, final thoughts, uh, he will pro, he's just been arrested. Finally was arrested running around Bahamas for the last month. The, the fraud was, uh, publicized and, and broke out, I think, uh, November 11th, right after the election. So this has been going on for a month now or so, but only yesterday did they finally arrest the guy in Bermuda because he was about to testify before Congress. He had been subpoenaed to appear before Congress. And I believe some of these congressional committees who received financial contributions from him did not want to have themselves exposed, um, in these hearings. So they arrested him instead. And he's in some Bermuda jail somewhere. And I don't know if there's any extradition charges, but this way may well go down as the biggest of financial fraud, uh, in American history.
Speaker 1 00:22:19 That remains to be seen. It's certainly the biggest one in crypto. And, and to recapitulate. I don't actually think this will hurt the legitimate crypto business. And I've noticed that when bitcoin, when this broke, Bitcoin fell a bit, but it's recovered since. So the markets are distinguishing between legitimate, um, cryptocurrencies and the illegitimate of things like this. But, but for those, again, again, for those of you not really all that interested in finance or even financial scandals, uh, from, from a philosoph standpoint, this one's gonna be interesting to the extent it impacts the effective altruism movement. I've already seen essays. This is encouraging. I've already seen essays calling into question effective altruism. But normally the way, the way they're written is instead of objecting it philosophically at root, they're basically saying, you know, beware greedy people who waive the altruist flag. See? So the, the claim still is, there's an underlying greedy person doing this that the problem is not altruism.
Speaker 1 00:23:21 But al altruism misused, altruism misused. Final point. This is a very funny kind of take on the whole thing. His parents are, as you can imagine, uh, in Silicon Verly where grew up, uh, uh, very left wing, very progressive, but also very famous, uh, in those circles. And one of my favorite parts of this story is, uh, his father is Joseph Bankman. And his, his mother is Barbara Fried, hence Bankman Freed Hyphen and Bar. And they're both anti-capitalist. And, and here's what's interesting, Barbara. Barbara Fried, his mommy, mommy wrote an essay back in 2013. They're both Stanford law professors, longtime law one went to Yale, one went to Harvard. So they've both been at Stanford forever. They, I think they just got fired because they're being caught up in this. And they got money from this as well. They got money from their little boy, um, S B F.
Speaker 1 00:24:11 But she wrote an article in the same Boston Review that carried effective altruism by Singer back in, uh, 2015. Couple years prior to that, she wrote an essay. And she's known for this, by the way, beyond Blame, beyond Blame subtitle, the philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy. It's time to move past blame. So Mommy of the Mini Madoff, mommy doesn't believe in personal responsibility. <laugh>, she's out there, she's been out there for years advocating the idea that we really should not be blaming people for crimes. They couldn't help themselves. After all, they were married. They were the, uh, they were the sons of, uh, Barbara Fried. So if you wanna look up that, you'll get a laugh. Barbara Fried Beyond Blame Boston Review, uh, they're gonna be part of these proceedings. They're showing up in court with their son, and, um, they don't think he should be blamed.
Speaker 1 00:25:07 Her famous book, by the way, prior to this, was the Progressive Assault on Lase Fair. So I read that book years ago. So when her name came up in this, I said, I've heard that name before. Who is that? Yeah. Uh, a history of how the Progressives assault of Lae Fair in 1880 to 1920. She is, she was at the time, I think that was about 15, 20 years ago, the preeminent scholar of that period, loving the fact that capitalism was assaulted, uh, by progressives, uh, in that period. Okay, I'll leave it at that. Questions and comments.
Speaker 0 00:25:39 Welcome. Um, thank you. I wanna encourage people to raise your hands. I, I've got, uh, a couple myself. Um, you know, is it possible that he just got caught up in the Bitcoin hype, and even though he was spending, he just really believed that everything would catch up in the end and he'd be able to pay back Paul, or what he robbed from Peter.
Speaker 1 00:26:05 I can't see that in this, Scott. I, I think what's most interesting about this is the Enron case, the Madoff case, even the Ponzi case, Charles Ponzi, they were all, in a way, if you wanna call it classic, um, chain letter phenomenon where, or pyramid scheme, phenomenon, however you wanna call it, where the initial business seems legit. Even Enron, of course, was legitimate. They were just trading energy. Uh, it's different. In this case, in those cases, it was a legitimate business. And now, uh, oh, we lost money. Oh, now we have to cover up the money. Oh, we promised investors a return, and now I'm gonna start borrowing from this account and moving it over. So, so what starts as a legitimate business, um, you know, morphs into, because of the, uh, dishonesty morphs into a situation where you're juggling balls, and eventually all the balls fall.
Speaker 1 00:27:04 Now, I did say that ftx that the concept of having an exchange for, for crypto was a legitimate, is a legitimate business, and was a legitimate business. But, but from what I can tell from the early reports of the history of this company, which is very brief, it almost from the beginning was intended to generate income to give it away. It wasn't let's make money for 30 years and become Warren Buffet and then hold, you know, set up a foundation and give it away. Uh, it was, I mean, the truly the quick rich get quick, get rich quick scheme fly by night. I mean, it could be not more be fly by night. It has a very short history. He's a very young kid. And, uh, it didn't last very long, so I don't, it may come out eventually that it's of the kind, you're talking about the classic pyramid scheme, but I don't think that's what it looks like, which makes it more interesting. It's different from the other ones. This was by his motive intended from the beginning. Of course, he wanted it to last longer if he could, but I, I don't think there was any fundamental business that they had, uh, that FTX itself had, uh, that would carry the day that would be legitimate.
Speaker 0 00:28:16 Okay, that's fair. Uh, Catherine, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 00:28:21 Hello. Thank you for inviting. I actually don't have much questions about this FedEx scam, but it's curious, interesting to me, why would person who advocates for Bitcoin would like Hamilton? Because as far as I'm con, as far as I know, he, he, he was, he, he was participating in the creation of Central Bank. So this is really interesting.
Speaker 1 00:28:45 Uh, well, for those of who don't know, I think Catherine's referring to the fact that I have long been a proponent of an, a fan of advocate, of a explainer of Alexander Hamilton as one of the great, uh, uh, after Washington, I think the greatest founding father. And, uh, without going in and all the detail of that, uh, relating it to what I think Catherine's worried about, it's best to, just to go to my essay called, um, America at Her Best is Hamiltonian, uh, which is, I think 2017, the objective standard. And for those of you who are Jefferson fans, or Madison Fann and John Adams fans, that essay, it's fairly lengthy in a lot of footnotes, does include in the footnotes some cri critiques of the other founders, and why they're, they were not as, uh, pro-American as Hamilton. Now, I disagree with you. Hamilton was not an advocate of central banking.
Speaker 1 00:29:37 Central banking, as we have it today, is the government with a monopoly power issuing invertible, uh, paper tokens. So, just to repeat, central banking is the government with a monopoly power to issue incon convertible, meaning they can just create 'em out of thin air, uh, what I call tokens. I wouldn't even call them money tokens, uh, in convertible pieces of paper or digital that are not convertible into anything that that is, that is so far away from what Hamilton advised that Hamilton was a genius because the finances of the United States, the money and the banking system and the national debt was in complete disarray after the war, after the Revolutionary War. And by the way, largely in disarray, because the Jeffersonians would not finance the war, they, they declared, um, uh, independence from Britain and wanted to start a war against Britain, but repeatedly voted against financing the war.
Speaker 1 00:30:34 Hence, there was a resort to issuing paper money, the Continentals. So there was a hyperinflation in the us Anyway, long story short and a lot of borrowing cuz there was no taxing. So, long story short, by the time the US government was being formed under Hamilton and Washington and Hamilton was in charge of the finances, it was, to him, it was his task to fix those things, get the debt being paid again, get the dollar on the gold and silver standard. And he did all those things. The, the Bank of the United States originally was not a monopoly bank, it was a bank created to fix the currency and fix the debt situation. And there were many other banks that rose up. And so there was no monopoly and there was no paper money issuance. Um, Hamilton, uh, I do not see as a status or an advocate of central banking as is commonly believed both in the libertarian and in the objectives community. So a, a real reassessment of Hamilton is necessary within the Liberty movement, I think.
Speaker 0 00:31:34 Well, that's very good.
Speaker 1 00:31:36 I'll do another session on Hamilton, uh, in, uh, a couple of them. Actually I have planned in 2023, cuz I know this isn't a short answer. Like that's not gonna be enough for, for decades of pro Jefferson and anti Hamilton stuff in the movement. So I do have a plan to address these a couple of times at least next year.
Speaker 0 00:31:53 Good. All right,
Speaker 1 00:31:56 Thanks Catherine.
Speaker 0 00:31:57 Thank you. We'll look forward to that. Um, you know, some of the way you were describing effective altruism is at least going out there and, you know, doing something to then be a philanthropist. I mean, you know, is is, I mean, you see that even in people like Rockefeller, but I'm just wondering, I isn't that message at least better than the sit on the couch and, and complain about oppression, kind of altruism?
Speaker 1 00:32:24 Well, the second one, um, parasitic as it is, isn't, uh, you know, fueling the anti-capitalist trend we're seeing today. And effective altruism goes out of its way to do that. So I thought what you were gonna say, Scott, was, well, isn't this better than having the government, you know, mandate, uh, all these bad ideas. But of course, the, the effect of ultraism people give their money to that as well. I mean, if they give their money to Democrats, largely not, they're not the only party that does this. But the Democrats are the singularly anti-capitalist party today that Republicans are just bad defenders of capitalism, but the Democrats are overtly anti-capitalist. So, no, I I I, I think there's two angles of it, Scott, that I would say makes it worse than someone just sitting, uh, on, on their couch and doing nothing. The first worst part actually, I think is, and they definitely target young students for this, uh, you know, who are going to be very successful in business or elsewhere, that it's anti their self-interest and happiness.
Speaker 1 00:33:27 Uh, it, in other words, instead of saying, uh, in fact, if you look at the stories behind these, if you dig into these effective altruism stories and books and, and, and ad advice, it amounts to, you may want to, you know, go into this profession, but you shouldn't, you shouldn't go into the profession you really love. You should go into this other one where you really don't love it and in fact might even hate the people around you because it's a high money-making thing. Wall Street being an avi example, but, but consulting being another. And, and so the first immoral thing is that these students are taught to basically deny their interests as a career, and then worse, even if they make money, not the pride of keeping the money, but no, you're duty bound to give it away. So if you don't, you feel guilty for having not given it away. The, the, the next obviously bad aspect of it, what is it actually spent on then it's, if it's actually spent on anti-capitalist causes, that's destructive as well. I mean, all, all told, if effective altruism never arose, we'd be a lot better off.
Speaker 1 00:34:32 It's something that's really fueling bad ideas and bad policies. It's in many ways a brilliant idea on the part of the altruist who woke up one day and said, what is the point of us, uh, you know, having vows of, of poverty and we can't affect everything, anything, we can run the government and try to have them redistribute wealth, but, uh, now they're basically asking people to go and serve and sacrifice and make a bunch of money and work your ass off and say, and get all this money, but then give it away. Um, so I think that's worse morally.
Speaker 0 00:35:07 That's fair. Uh, better an ineffective altruist, I guess, um, <laugh>. But, um, let me, let me ask you this. Uh, is it a conspiracy theory to wonder if some of the people he was giving money to wanted a big failure in crypto to justify more regulation?
Speaker 1 00:35:28 I don't know. I don't know if there's enough there. I mean, that may have come out eventually. He himself was lobbying to get regulation that was favorable to him. Um, but even he didn't really know what he was talking about. So, um, but no, I think one of the, uh, if this is what you're getting to, if there were people looking to get it regulated and therefore, you know, burn the place down, so it would get regulated that I don't, I don't know if anyone's smarter than, well, not so much burn it down, but just,
Speaker 0 00:35:58 You know, uh, funnel all of the money to our campaigns. <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:36:03 Well, it definitely went to political campaigns, but I'm sure they wanted this thing to continue rather than to collapse now that it has collapsed, of course, what will happen is, and this happened in oh eight, instead of concluding, uh, you know, that the problem here is effective altruism, or the problem here is getting cover by, you know, hobnobbing with the head of the s e c or with Maxine Waters, you know, on the banking committee and stuff. And, and, and he was very visible about that and running around C N V C and, and, and basically saying, well, this guy, look, he's hobnobbing with the regulators. He must be legit. You know, what if the, if he's, if the s SEC's dealing with this guy, he can't, he's probably legit. So this is the mo this is the kind of the blind, uh, second handedness that goes with this territory.
Speaker 1 00:36:52 And, and from what I could tell, Bankman Fried probably taught well by his, uh, law parent was he was, was good at it. That's what he was good at. He was, wasn't good at running a company, wasn't running good at running ftx or foreseeing trends, but he was very good at weaving this kind of tail of, uh, look who I know and look what, look what sexy part of the field I'm in, and, and look at the kind of money I'm, I'm raising and look at the kind of money my company, they say my company's worth. And, you know, all those who are, are altruists at heart are just loving this, especially when he gives money to Democrats. But one result of this, as I said in oh eight, will be more regulation, not less regulation. It's really sad cuz the conclusion for this is not that there was insufficient regulation.
Speaker 1 00:37:38 One of the reasons crypto is growing, one of the reasons decades ago Silicon Valley grew is that it was unregulated. That it was unregulated, not regulated. And if anything, if you go in a field today and say, you know, it's really kind of the frontier. It's kind of like the wild, wild west. It's new, it's unregulated. You should be more alert to frauds. You should be more, uh, investigated, more skeptical about whether this new phenom is really real or not. Whether this new company is really real or not. I mean, that's just standard stuff. Caveat mTOR, right? Buyer beware. And, um, and I think Bankman Fried was in, in a way, very dastardly, clever at, at saying, well, I am cuz look at all these, uh, famous Walsh, Washington people I know and, and not just that these famous Silicon Valley investors that I know and that my parents know, and then I went to m i t and my parents are from Stanford. You see, it's all this kind of second handedness where someone said, well, these people can't possibly be frauds. They're associated with these institutions which have a high credibility.
Speaker 0 00:38:47 Right? Um, I mean, is the lesson that those claiming to have altruistic motives should be suspect at, at least, uh, subject to further, uh, investigation?
Speaker 1 00:39:01 I think that's a very good conclusion. Yes. Yes. There's some passages in Atlas Shrug where or, uh, uh, other I divine ran essays where she says something to that effect, namely that, um, that there's someone who comes to you and says, I have no self-interest, whatever in the following proposition I'm gonna give you. I'm only doing it for you dear, dear recipient. And, and on top of that, you don't even know them. Yes, you should just be suspicious of that, you know, and be suspicious of someone who's saying, I have no self-interest in something. Uh, really well, that means there's no upside or downside. What, what are you doing to me? Or what are you trying to take advantage of me? You know? And unfortunately, we have this inversion where people think it's the other way around. If someone comes and says, I have a proposition.
Speaker 1 00:39:44 And, and someone will say, well, what's, what's the, what's the hitch like? What's the, what's the deal? Well, there should be a hitch in the sense of, well, what do you get out of it? Uh, I, I see I'm gonna get something out of it, but now tell me what you're gonna get out of it. And if you could say, we're both gonna get something out of it, great. Proceed. Uh, but yeah, I think people should be skeptical of this, but they're bedazzled by the idea that this is noble. You get that part right. And they might even, they might even say, looking at the books, they might even say, Hey, this FTX thing that seems kind of sketchy. I'm not, I'm not sure that can really work. I, I think there's many people who actually were skeptical that that was a legitimate business and didn't care and, and said to themselves, yeah, but he's giving 30 million to the Democrats and they're not gonna give the money back when the thing collapses. They've been asked to, and none of them are. And Maxine Waters was asked, were you gonna give back the campaign contributions now that FTX has failed? No, it's brilliant in a way, yes, twist, twisted, but twisted, but brilliant.
Speaker 0 00:40:49 You know, they had him on C N B C, he must have financial credibility. Um, but I, I wanna switch gears to something else you said. And I, I don't wanna necessarily monopolize the conversation, but, uh, we wanna encourage people to, uh, raise your hand if you've got questions. But, um, something you said about, um, tithing versus giving too much, and I was hoping you could maybe, uh, just, you know, I'm in development at the Atla Society, we actually help fundraise. So I just wanna help understand the distinction between, um, you know, a a little bit of, I guess, altruism and benevolence when it comes to, uh, what is healthy.
Speaker 1 00:41:33 Oh, I see, um, ti thing I just referred to as the typical biblical 10%, I think that's from the Bible. There's passages saying, you know, that that charity, uh, now's quite apart from who's a recipient and why, but that, you know, the 10% is like a fair giveaway. Well, I, I mean, under altruism, if the nobility of the act is the test, well, you gotta give till it hurts and 10% may not hurt. And why not 20%? Why not 50%? Why not 70%? And there are elements within the effective ultraism movement, which interestingly enough say that they'll say 10% isn't enough. So they not, they not only want you to go into work that you don't really love and want you to work your ass off and make a lot of money. They don't want you to just give 10% after that. They want you to really give a lot, uh, in proportion, uh, to what you earned and what you have, you know.
Speaker 1 00:42:27 And of course, by their logic, the person would have to say, you're right. You're right. Unless I'm giving away a large proportion, if I'm left with an after tax, after philanthropy income that still le you know, leaves me high in the hog, I'm still feeling guilty. I I could give more. Now, um, Scott, if you're looking for, I think the, to put a positive note on this, there is a rational basis for philanthropy. Uh, so I don't want to, uh, equate philanthropy with charity, char charity. I would leave excuse exclusively for giving away with no selfish, uh, concern, whatever, for the reason you're giving it away, or on the idea that because you have more than others do, you're obligated to, you know, quote unquote give something back cuz you supposedly took something. I reject all that, but I'm, I'm conscious of the idea, and I like the idea that philanthropy, philo means love and philanthropy means, uh, humans, so love of humanity.
Speaker 1 00:43:23 And, but there should be a rational basis for philanthropy where we're giving our excess wealth not to the point where it hurts us. Uh, so not give to what hurts, but giving amounts that, uh, that the recipients are of value to us. The groups like Atlas, the Society are of value to us. They're promoting our values. There's a, there's a division of labor in this world, you know, and people who are good at making money aren't necessarily good at making ideas and creating ideas or teaching students or, or, uh, generating intellectual material or video material like we do. And so, you know, there's a value there. And if, you know, the broader Philosoph context of, you know, I can't enjoy my life in a capitalist culture unless I contribute to, uh, preserving that capitalist culture in some way. There's a real argument for philanthropy, uh, for college, philant, philanthropy for liberty, uh, philanthropy, for Americanism, philanthropy, for capitalism, uh, the, the what I call the financial capitalists who may not necessarily be ideological capitalists.
Speaker 1 00:44:25 They really should be taught and urged to give to causes that are pro capitalist. And, uh, that case can be made, and you're still appealing to the givers and the donor's self-interest. You definitely have to do that. I think the mo I think the main thing for, from our side to tell them is part of property rights is bequeathing. It isn't just you have the right to earn money and then invest it or save it, and as you wish, but also to bequeath it. And, and if you have heirs that you value, you bequeath it to them. But you know, not all people have heirs that they value. There's, there's no guarantee that your kids will, will be worthy, uh, of your, and so give it to other causes, uh, that are valuable to you. There's a real rational case to be made, so you're not guilting them into the give, you're, you're telling them you are totally, uh, within your rights to give this to whoever you want. You earned it. But, but let us convince you that, um, to the extent you were free, you earned it. And we're for freedom. We're, we're the groups that are advocate, freedom, help us.
Speaker 0 00:45:29 Excellent distinction. Thank you. Well, uh, speaking of benevolence, we have, uh, Atlas Society founder David Kelly joining stage. David, thank you for joining us. Are you able to unmute? You may need to leave and come back. Um, but, uh, yes, I, I do think, uh, there is something about investing in, uh, the values that, uh, got us here in the first place, reinvesting. Um, David again, if you're able to, uh, leave and come back, or if you're able to unmute, we'll take a question. Um, in the meantime, Richard, you did, uh, I've been following, uh, Bitcoin's price as well. Uh, I know you have an, you know, an economics, uh, background. Any, uh, thoughts on Bitcoin over the short, medium or, or long term?
Speaker 1 00:46:30 Yeah, I think long term it's gonna be a survivor. And, uh, as, as I said before, it has this built-in algorithm where the quantity of Bitcoin that's issued is strictly regulated, is strictly restricted <laugh>, uh, by transactions demand. And, uh, that makes it a very interesting phenomenon that, uh, it's kind of a, uh, it's on a, kind of an autopilot in the sense of how much money can be issued. So it, it's not limited. It is capped over time. And I, I believe over time, this will contribute to the stabilization of its value. Now it peaked at 70,000, and I think it's at 17 now, but, uh, and it was maybe 19 when this FTX broke. So, uh, Bitcoin came down and the fact that it has stabilized, uh, and come up a bit, maybe 15 or 20% upward since the bottom is very significant because, uh, uh, you know, in in past cases when, for example, housing prices crashed, well then all housing prices crashed.
Speaker 1 00:47:31 You know, or when mortgage backed securities began to buckle, all of them did. The fact that Bitcoin would, uh, separate it out itself amidst all this turmoil associated with FTX is very good sign and confirmation of the fact that Bitcoin's, uh, a legitimate enterprise. And again, it's not run by a small team of managers, that's just not what the Bitcoin model is. But for more, I don't wanna get into too gruesome detail on this for more on this, there are, uh, in, on the t s website, uh, in past events, uh, me covering this with a, with a student of mine actually from Duke, uh, Jack Creel long sessions on Bitcoin. What is Bitcoin, uh, how's it put together? How does it differ from, uh, fiat token coins? How does it differ from the gold standard? There's also, Michael Sailor was our honoree at the, um, gala this past fall, and there are panel discussions of him and others talking about crypto, which, uh, uh, our chairman Jag and others put together, which are well worth, uh, fine, you can get those on the internet or on Tass, uh, YouTube as well, so to get more on the case for Bitcoin.
Speaker 1 00:48:37 So, um, yeah, I don't wanna give a price forecast on Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is not like a fraud or a ponzis scheme waiting to collapse, that's for sure.
Speaker 4 00:48:48 Uh, Scott, can you hear me now, David?
Speaker 0 00:48:51 Yes, now we can hear you. David, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4 00:48:54 Okay, of course. Yeah, I had to jump out and back in, uh, one of a few glitches in Clubhouse. But anyway, uh, Richard, thank you so much. Uh, you know, I've been reading about, uh, FTX in the, uh, wall Street Journal, and my eyes plays over about, round about paragraph five, and I can go into the next thing. Yeah. But, um, anyway, so thank you for such an informative, uh,
Speaker 1 00:49:20 Oh, thanks David.
Speaker 4 00:49:21 Uh, account of it and of effective altruism. So I have two questions. Um, one is just a follow up on Scott. Um, you know, as someone who was trying to raise money for the, uh, Atlas Society over 30 years, and, uh, JAG you know, can, can jump in or not, but, um, I increasingly, I, I mean all the time counter people say, I'll give to you, but what are you doing? What are you doing? I want to be effective. I want my contribution to be effective. Yeah. I don't think that's altruism. Yeah. It's not Peter Singer's so thing, right. So there is, so one question is how you would distinguish, um, effective altruism, which I, singers and, um, McCaskill's approaches, you know, typical corrupt, uh, ethical Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:50:19 <laugh> physiology. Yeah. But, um, it's, it can be a fine distinction, uh, or not, actually, it's not fine at all, all, um, it, but drawing the distinction clearly, um, I'm not sure every, every donor, um, has a clear concept of it. The o the other question, I just want to get on your agenda at some point. Um, if, if you, if the spirit moves is that, um, over the years, uh, there's, I mean, over centuries there's been this, uh, altruist, uh, spirit in American culture, despite our greater economic freedom. And so that donors like, um, Carnegie and Commoner Vanderbilt created vast, you know, huge amounts of philanthropy, but often as in the case of, uh, Carnegie said famously in the gospel of wealth that he wrote in the, I think it was the 1890s something. Yeah. Yeah. He, uh, he said, it's, you know, I'm giving back. That's not the word we put today. He didn't use those words. But yeah, the point is, it's, it's the wealth I've earned is a, the wealth I've, I have is, uh, social crust. But, but, but he, here's the question. He earned it. Yeah, earned it. There were scandals back in the day. Of course. Yeah. But, uh, from Enron to Ftx and, you know,
Speaker 1 00:51:51 Madoff,
Speaker 4 00:51:52 Beckman Fried Madoff, and there's also mixed in this element of fraud. We publish an essay 20 years ago about, uh, Enron called the First Post-Modern Organ, uh, corporation, because I wrote Roger Donway. It was a great essay. And it, uh, so the question is, is there a cultural change that explains, goes beyond altruism into falsification and, you know, just complete completely vaporous irrational, uh, irrationalism that, uh, is, uh, it seems to me another layer on top of the Altruist Foundation. So I'll leave it there,
Speaker 1 00:52:44 David, I know what you're saying, and I think that's true. I haven't quite put my hand pinpointed what it is, but I am aware of the late 18 hundreds kind of philanthropy practiced by Carnegie and the wealthy. Uh, notice though, uh, a couple things I'd noticed, one, uh, the Carnegie Mellons and others, uh, had long careers making money and earning it, and then would devote their retirement years to giving the wealth away. Uh, but, and okay, 0.1, 0.2, and they were very tangible things like Carnegie Hall or, or libraries, or it wasn't, you know, it wasn't dissipation. It was almost like the gratitude of, I am so glad I ended up in this country and I feel so grateful that I've been able to amass this fortune. And maybe there was this improper premise of him thinking, I have to give something back, you know, because the Marxists are screaming that you stole it.
Speaker 1 00:53:47 But even if that's not part of it, that, that to me was a very clean kind of giving, cuz there was no sacrifice involved on the part of Carnegie himself, and he didn't mix up his existing career. Now, bill Gates is a, we weird example of, he, he, uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't accuse him of fraud, but Bill Gates is an interesting case of someone who quit early and started becoming a philanthropist. So, unlike Carnegie, he didn't, he didn't spend his entire career doing what he really loved. He, he clearly loved doing what he was doing, but the antitrust case, I think just, uh, wore him down. And so he shifts notice, he shifts into philanthropy and then is loved for it, right? So he is the demonn when he is making Microsoft, and he becomes the saint when he gives the money away. And, and so he's not quite, I don't think he's not quite as clean as Carnegie.
Speaker 1 00:54:39 And now when you look at people like Madoff, Madoff was an older man, but he had that fraud going for a long time. And, and now we get to Bankman Freed and it's almost like the, here here's like a 30 year old no experience, billions and billions. And the thing is a fraud almost from the beginning, and it's laced with effective altruism. It is, you know what I mean? It's so far away from what Carnegie did. And, and the fact that the major financial magazines even called this guy, you know, the next JP Morgan or the next Warren Buffett is just so crazy because, because even JP Morgan and Warren Buffett, as we know, spent decades building and creating wealth. So, uh, I, I see what you're saying. I I, I would put it this way, uh, you, you're the ethicist, you're stronger on this issue than I, if, if, put it this way, David, if altruism means basically I could do whatever the hell I want, as long as I give it away, I've whitewashed the way I got to this, then it does lower the standards over time, right?
Speaker 1 00:55:39 Carnegie wouldn't even imagine doing what Bankman Fried did, and it's, oh my God, it's almost like, it's almost like the giving away and the vir, the fact that we even have the phrase virtue signaling, the fact that that is so dominant today kind of suggests that it's the signaling that matters more than how you got your wealth. And they, and, and, and to the point where you might have even got your mouth fr mouth, uh, wealth fraudulently. Okay, well, whatever <laugh>, you know, it, there's a real, uh, and, and even the Barbara free approach, you know, beyond blame, who can be blamed, even if when you hear bankman free, he'll say things like, guys just doing the woke stuff, everyone falls with that woke stuff. Um, but even he would say, oh, whatever. I mean, he was being interviewed by the New York Times and he said, well, you know, I guess I had a bad month.
Speaker 1 00:56:27 That, that, that is, there's a kind of cavalier attitude toward how the wealth was got. And it seems to be it's all, well, it's because the real thing is giving it away. And the, and the whole thing is become giving it away no matter how you get it. That that's my best guess. As to your earlier point though, by the way, I think yes, it's really important to distinguish if a donor says to us, well, I wanna make sure my funds are effectively, um, used, that's not the same as effective altruism. The cuz first of all, we're in, we're inviting them to give because it's in their self-interest. So first of all, we're not appealing to the altruism but, but it's absolutely important, yes. That once that's the case, you show them the money is being well spent, you know, that it's not all say on administrative that, but there are measures of this.
Speaker 1 00:57:17 All the, all the philanthropies, uh, all the, uh, recipients of donations will, will issue reports saying, how much do we spend on the actual mission versus how much do we spend on administrative, you know, versus how much do we spend on the fundraising itself? And so I think the donors are, are every, every much in their rights to say, prove to me that the money I'm giving to you is well used. And I think that is a good thing. And I think, actually, I think the Atlas Society has a great story there. I I do re recall, there is something called the Charity Navigator, I think it was called that it might still be out there where using public documents, it is using public documents. You can go on Charity Navigator, put in any charity you wish, and they'll give you details, pie charts and things exactly on this.
Speaker 1 00:58:03 How much money was raised, how was it allocated, what was it used for in effect, how effective is it? And you know, how much is senior management paid and, and stuff like that. And, uh, transparency of reporting. Uh, so I think Charity navigator's a good site for that. But I'm, I'm all for the effectiveness, making the case with the effectiveness to the donors. But see, David, I said we're doing it out of self-interest. We're saying it's in the, we're, we're conceding. It's in the self-interest of the donors to have us make that case. They shouldn't give to us blindly, you know, on faith, you know, trust us, we'll do it right. Um, but we can do that.
Speaker 4 00:58:40 Yeah. It's, I we've always thought of it as a trait. We are, we are, we we have special, uh, abilities. Yeah. And they have, they have money to support those and get done the job they want to get done. That's a trade, not, we're not asking for
Speaker 1 00:58:56 S trade. Exactly. A trade exactly right. With the, yeah.
Speaker 4 00:59:00 So I just want to, I'll just add one more thing, is that slide, because one of the things that really impressed me about your presentation was that the idea of that people are being urged to go into work they hate and, uh, yeah, yeah. Uh, just to make money.
Speaker 1 00:59:18 Great.
Speaker 4 00:59:19 There was a guy I knew in college, uh, that I used to, um, talk with a bit. He was in pre-med, and I, I asked him at one point, um, you love medicine? He said, no, but my family's a medi medical doctor and I want to do good. And I thought, yeah, iron Rand was so right. Yep. He's sacrificing his, his what he loves or if he loves anything, but he's sacrificing whatever that might be to a feeling of obligation to help people. And I thought, okay, that, I wish, I've always remembered that because it said Rand was right about altruism. It means sacrifice. Yeah. It really does. And people believe it mean it. So, anyway, uh, and, and, and you brought that back to me. Uh,
Speaker 1 01:00:10 Yeah, that's interest. That's interesting. David. There's many cases of that in the effect of altruism movement. And by the way, in, uh, my Duke seminars, I, I have a special section, especially for this, this is for the seniors. I don't do it as freshmen and on effective altruism and almost without, uh, exception, they all think it's a great idea. It's really sad. Oh my God. Yeah, they sad. And if they go the root of, um, but I'm not gonna do that. I see the point, but I that's a really good point, but I'm not gonna do it. They still feel guilty. They still, they still feel guilty of not doing the effectives and stuff. And, uh, you know, I do try to push back. Um, but uh, the next time I teach it, I'm gonna have this as a case study. You, you said you're absolutely right. By the way, you said you get bored, uh, easily. I would too. I do too, actually, if I read just about the mechanics and the technics of Ftx <laugh>, but the, the, the really funny stuff to read and interesting stuff from our standpoint is if you just search by FTX and effective altruism, there are dozens now there are dozens of articles just about how effective altruism plays in this story.
Speaker 4 01:01:22 Oh my gosh. So
Speaker 1 01:01:23 Gosh. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So they, so I think what's most interesting about this, and, and I may revisit that, is these, it's not like two literatures coming together because Ft Xs not, it's not literature, you know what I mean? But it's like a practical application of effective altruism. And it's just so much against, it's so much obviously against effective altruism, but people are noticing this because he was so overt about it that people are noticing it. Even if they're altruists, they're noticing, oh, I, I've seen articles that amount to, oh, I hope this doesn't, I hope this doesn't hurt the effective altruism movement. <laugh>,
Speaker 4 01:01:57 I hope Peter Singer is cringing.
Speaker 1 01:01:59 Yes, exactly. Yes, it's right. <laugh>.
Speaker 0 01:02:01 Well, uh, this
Speaker 1 01:02:02 Thanks David.
Speaker 0 01:02:03 This has been a great, um, subject matter. Uh, you gentlemen have given me a good segue to say that the Atlas Society is raising revenue for next year to cover expanded events, including a first, uh, student conference. Um, it's gonna be a nail biter down to the final days, but, uh, for donations made this year, our board agreed to match for all brand new donors, you know, a full match. So every $5 means $10 for our student initiatives. Um, all laps donors, if you haven't donated since 2019 or longer than your gift, will also be fully matched. Even current donors, anything you give over your 2021 giving will also be matched. So, uh, we hope you consider us as you evaluate your year end, uh, giving and investing in your values. And, um, appreciate Rand, I I could make a case that it's, uh, in your self-interest. So, uh, in that spirit, I thank everyone, Richard, thanks for the great, uh, information and, uh, thanks Scott. We hope you do other aspects of it. Great. Thank you all.
