Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Thank you for joining us today. I'm Scott sh for the Atlas society with TAs senior fellow Rob Tru. Zinsky discussing the gang con problem. And, uh, Rob, thanks for being here today. It's a good title. Uh, you know, I'll love the sound of music. Uh, how do you solve a problem like Angus Kahn?
Speaker 1 00:00:24 <laugh> that, that really has nothing to do with sound of music. All right. So thi this, I, I don't, I don't really know where to go with that, so I'm just gonna ignore that part. But, uh, so this actually came out of our previous clubhouse discussion that we had, excuse me, where somebody said, I was making the case for a morality of self-interest and somebody said, well, if self, if you have morality of self-interest where self-interest is the goal, why wouldn't genus Kahn be your ultimate example of a guy who pursued his self-interest and I gave an answer there, but I thought, you know, this is a really interesting question is there's there's variations of this. We've always had to deal with. I thought it would, it sort of deserved its own full discussion. So why isn't genus con an example of self-interest now I'm gonna make a case for him being, you know, why you would think people might think he is, uh, an example of self-interest and that is that, you know, he, after banding together, the various Mongol tribes and creating an irresistibly powerful military for us, he, he conquered this vast area and he lived an incredible luxury for the rest of his life and, um, uh, enjoying all of the very best that was available to anyone in the, you know, 13th century in Mongolia in central Asia, uh, beautiful women, captive slaves, uh, brought to him as concubines, all of the best food and the best of everything you could possibly have because he was the great con, the genus, the genus K.
Speaker 1 00:02:01 Um, and he was, you know, he was the guy in charge of everything and he could command these thousands of warriors and all the plunder elute from all the various tribes that the other people that they defeated. So why wouldn't he be an example of self-interest he, he lived the best kind of life materially that anyone could possibly have lived at that time and in that place. All right. So there's the general question put forward. And the wider point of this, the reason people bring this up is the idea of why isn't force and exploitation a, an example of self-interest, right. So why wouldn't, you know, the, the modern approval to this would be why not Rob banks, right? Because that's where the money is. So if your go, if your goal is self-interest and self-interest means, you know, requires material means to have all sorts of nice things, why wouldn't you then go become a bank robber and, and get millions of dollars robbing banks, by the way, people who Rob actual Rob banks, don't, don't generally come away with millions of dollars, but that's, we'll talk about that later, but why wouldn't you do that?
Speaker 1 00:03:08 Why wouldn't you bank, bank robber? Why wouldn't you be a con man, a swindler? Why wouldn't you do some way in which you're using force and exploitation, uh, in order to, to, to, uh, ring money and resources and, and value out of other people. So why would that not be an example of self-interest? All right, so this, by the way, then the reason why I bring that, but this up is that this is the radical thing about iron Rand's moral philosophy. So it's radical about is not so much that she advocated self-interest, but what she thought self-interest consisted of. So, you know, her great examples of heroes of self-interest were not Kingus Conn. They were not exploiters. They were not bank robbers. They were not even financial manipulators, uh, with one small exception, uh, the short story she did, but they were generally speaking. They were inventors, they were creators, they were builders.
Speaker 1 00:04:05 They were people who were not exploiting others, but people who were creating things. So, you know, an engineer and inventor, a physicist and an inventor, or her heroes, or an architect is one of her heroes, or, you know, executive who, who runs the railroad and, and not just runs the railroad in the sense of sitting in the boardroom and making financial decisions, but who actually runs the, you know, the operational end of the railroad, the person who makes sure that literally makes sure that the trains run on time, right? So the people that she championed as heroes, those selfs, where people who have go and do things and create things, and in a very clear and obvious way as the way she presents it, they provide enormous value in exchange for, um, you know, for the money that they get paid for the, for the wealth and the money and, and the, the, the values and they gain out of their work.
Speaker 1 00:04:54 Uh, so you know, her, her heroes are traders. People who gain, who, who trade value for value. So that's, what's radical about in a way about her, uh, moral philosophy is not that she advocated self-interest, but that she did not regard genus con the, the person who used forces uses force or exploitation as an example of self-interest. So we have to ask then, so what's wrong with this genus con view? How do we solve this Angus pro con problem? Why would he not be an example of self-interest? Now I would also mention, we're talking about rational. Self-interest here. You know, this is the key part of IRA's philosophy, is it, it's not just, self-interest, it's rational. Self-interest now you could argue rational self-interest is a redundancy because, you know, rational self-interest means itself. That's actually in your self-interest as opposed to something that momentarily appears to be in your self-interest, but is actually bad for you.
Speaker 1 00:05:52 Right? So, um, you know, if you, uh, uh, if you do something pleasurable that is going to be self-destructive, that would be an example of something that you, you you're, you are carried away by the immediate impulse of thinking, oh, I, I would, I would enjoy this, but you're ignoring the bad, long term consequences. So it's something that's not actually in your self-interest, so it's a redundancy, but it's a useful redundancy because it's there to remind us that you actually have to go through a process of thinking a process of calculation and say, what's going to be the long term consequences of this thing. This thing might feel good at the moment that, you know, I, uh, having another, having another drink might feel good at the moment I'm doing it, but then I get behind the wheel of my car and I get in an accident that I get myself killed.
Speaker 1 00:06:40 Right. So, you know, that's something that, that is pleasant at the moment you're doing it, but is, has the destructive consequence or potential destructive consequence, you know, in the next moment or, or in the moment after that. All right. So it's a youth horizon C to say rational self-interest. So why is Geus con not an example of rational self-interest right. So one of the things I did, so I actually did a little looking up a little brief looking up on, on the actual history of, of Geus con as a real person, you know, cuz we could say, oh well Geus Connie. He had it all great. You know, he was the ruler of, of, of like, you know, a quarter of Asia and, and had all the things saw the, the, the, the servant girls and the, the food and the wine and what have you.
Speaker 1 00:07:23 And you can say, he seemed to have a really great life, but you have to look at his life in the whole context. And one of the things that jumped out in looking at his history is the immense insecurity of life in the time that he lived. So, uh, so Tek his actual name, his actual real name was Tek. And then he became the con and then he became the chius K or the genus K, which is like the great con the grand con the, the, the con means roughly king or tribal leader. And the, the great con is the, the tribal leader of who unites this large number of tribes, which is his big achievement was uniting all the different Mongol and Mongol related tribes of central Asia. All right. But before that, this is something he did later in his life. Uh, uh, but before that, in his youth, he had a life of tremendous insecurity.
Speaker 1 00:08:14 Um, I think his father died and his mother was like not cared for, or cast out by the tribe that they were part of. And he lived in incredible poverty and basically on the brink of starvation, uh, during his youth, because, you know, mid, uh, uh, Mongolia central Asia in the middle age just was an extremely rough place. And part of the reason you have to think part of the reason why he had this sort of tyrannical empire, he built is it was precisely in reaction to the, in tremendous insecurity of the society, in which he lived, that he, you know, you had to basically you, you, the, the time, the rule of that time was killer, be killed rule, or be ruled, um, uh, you know, have control and power over other people or else they'll kill you. And that's a lesson he learned very early on in his life, the, the tremendous insecurity and danger, uh, that he lived in.
Speaker 1 00:09:07 And furthermore, there were various people and I don't have his all written down, but there are various people who served as sort of partners and allies and supporters of his that end up, ended up along the way, getting killed, uh, or, and in some cases he <laugh>, he killed them because he, you know, there were friends and allies who became rivals and so he killed them. And so he's sort of like the last guy standing out of a whole group of people who were friends and allies who were part of this project with him, many of whom did not survive. So that's the next thing we're gonna say. So, first of all, the first thing we're gonna say about what's wrong with this as a model of rational self-interest is that it comes out of a context of a society in which achieving your self-interest is very, very hard to do.
Speaker 1 00:09:53 It's extremely violent, insecure, um, dangerous society. And so, you know, the, the idea is that, yes, maybe you'll become the great con and you'll be able to have all the great things. You you'll be the guy killing your enemies and your enemies won't be killing you. But the danger, the, the chances of getting there, the chances are much higher. That you're gonna be one of the guys who's killed by one of the other people, right? So this is as a society, as a way of life, the chances are much greater for you that you are not going to become the great con that you are going to become. One of the guys who ends up as roadkill along the way. Um, and by the way, as roadkill, I mean, I was doing, I was doing my research here. I found things like one guy won a battle and took a bunch of the enemy warriors and had them boil alive in VAs.
Speaker 1 00:10:47 Uh, the other thing was something called a common practice at the time called measuring against the lynchpin. And this is the idea that, uh, the lynchpin is like the central pin, where the axle was, uh, on a large, a very, very high, um, uh, um, cart for, for carrying supplies for the AR for the army. And the idea is when you conquered a rival tribe and you defeated them, you would have all their warriors walk past the wheel, and anyone who was taller than the linchpin would be executed. And this is the idea that, you know, what, you, you don't kill everybody in the defeated tribe. What you do is all the oldest and strongest guys, the biggest and strongest and oldest in which tend tends to correlate to the oldest ones. They all get executed, cuz they're the most dangerous to you and the younger ones who could be sort of absorbed then as, as servants within your tribe, they get to live.
Speaker 1 00:11:41 So, you know, this tremendously dangerous, uh, time period and, and, and, uh, tremendously dangerous culture and society he lived in in which you are way, way, way more likely to end up getting, getting killed or to be a slave or to be miserable in some very obvious way, uh, rather than ending up as, you know, one of the guys in power. So that's the next thing I wanna go to is that, you know, the thing about Kaus con is there's only one gang discon, right? There's only one guy who gets to be in that position and 99.9 9 9, 9, 9% of the population is not that guy. Right? So it's, it's self-interest for, for one person. If, if you accept this as a, as an, uh, as a model of self-interest, it would be a model that is unavailable to 99.9 9 9 9 9, 9, 9% of the population in whatever area that is now, let's say, we could say, okay, well, there's an elite in Mongolian society.
Speaker 1 00:12:40 Uh, some of the top guys, although, you know, if you're even wanting throw one of the top guys, if the, if gang con decides, you know, is you need to be tortured to death or killed you, you're in trouble, but let's say, you know, there's an elite, there's a, there's a, there's the 99%. And there's the 1% of Mongolian society who have a pretty good life there in charge. They're the ones giving orders to everybody else. It's still the fact that, you know, as a general rule for how to live most people, aren't this model of self-interest, if it were a model of self-interest would be utterly unavailable to most of the people in that society. So what you couldn't say, oh, well this is a moral role for people to follow because most people would not in fact be able to follow it, they'd end up being, you know, the slaves and, and, and the servants and the, the, uh, the holy PO.
Speaker 1 00:13:32 So I, uh, then I also wanna put out one other thing before I get to the main thing, which is also, if you are genus con and you are able to have everything you want, notice that this implies a very limited view of what is in your, is in your interest and what is pleasurable in life, right? So genus con is able to get the very best life that's available to somebody in the 12 hundreds in central Asia, which is extremely limited, uh, uh, version of the good life compared to everything else that we know is possible. Uh, so, you know, and it's basically, it's a very materialistic, very istic viewpoint, but even, even materially it's limited, right? So you get the very best food and plenty of it, you get beautiful women to ha to, to have as concubines, uh, or if you really like them as wives, you know, if, if, if they're conquered princesses, you might have them as, as one of your many wives and you get a, uh, uh, there's actually a quote about what he promises meant is that the are the finest tents tents that are like palaces.
Speaker 1 00:14:44 So you get a really great, beautiful UT to live in. Okay. So, so you have food and you get a UT to live in and you get women to sleep with. All right. So it's basically it's, but it's this very materialistic sort of view of what self-interest is. It's basically sex food, and, and a soft bed lion. Um, and notice that there's a lot of other things, a lot of other pleasures, a lot even material on a purely material level, a lot of other pleasures that are not available to you. So gang, this kind of looked us up. He lived to be fairly old. He lived to be in his seventies, but again, that's just, you know, we know about gang's comp because he was the lucky guy, right. Because at that time, the, uh, uh, and, and that place, the life expectancy was much, much lower than that.
Speaker 1 00:15:33 It was probably more like in the forties or fifties. Um, probably I I'd probably guess at that time, in the, in that time, in that place, your life expectancy would be like 42 years old, somewhere in there. Right? So the fact that, you know, on a material level, the fact that he lived to be in his seventies is because he was on unusual and exceptional person. And that's part of the reason why we know his name, right? Cause he lived long enough to, to become a king for a long period of time and have all this power, you know, even if he didn't die in battle, the more common thing. And actually one of the speculations is that, uh, of how he died in battle is it was an infection from a wound or how he, how he, we die, excuse me. He did die in battle, but he died after the battle.
Speaker 1 00:16:14 But one of the speculations nobody really knows for sure. Is that based on the accounts of, at the time as that he died from an affection, from a wound, well, he died. In other words, from something that you would not die of today in a modern, advanced society, uh, we would have better medical care. We'd have everything that he had would be, would be better than today than for the average, for, for, even for the average person, even for a poor person today has all sorts of things that are materially better than anything genus that was available, you know, to, uh, even to the, to the great chief in, uh, Mongolia in the, in the, in the, in the 13th century. Now, why is it that we have then now, you know, and that's not even taking you account all the things spiritually that we have that are better.
Speaker 1 00:17:01 I mean, you know, the art we have there's, you have access to more interesting music, greater variety and amount of art and quality of art. There's all sorts of nonmaterial pleasures, uh, spiritual pleasures that are available to you. That, I mean, you know, genus con was almost certainly illiterate. So, uh, you know, he, he didn't sit down and read a good book at the end of the night because he couldn't read, right? So there are all sorts of pleasures that are not purely physical pleasures that were also not available to him. Now, why is it that in a modern society, we have all these physical advance material advancements. We could, we live longer, we live more comfortably. Uh, we live, um, we, we have, you know, enjoy sort of a greater degree of luxury than in a pretty material sense than somebody like Geus com would've lived, but we also have available to us all these, non-material all these spiritual, uh, values that we are capable of enjoying if we pursue them.
Speaker 1 00:18:00 So why is that? We have all those things, all these things. Well, we have all these things precisely because we live in a more advanced society. That's made possible by people not living like genus Kahn, right? It's because we had a society in which we said, well, look, maybe if we all stopped trying to kill each other, if we didn't enslave people, you know, if we didn't view people purely as, you know, to be conquered and exploited, if we worked together by cooperation and mutual self interest in a society, you know, characterized by production and trade, then we could produce more and we could, uh, have, you know, so much more available to the average person, uh, uh, to, to universally to everyone. We could have so much more available, uh, to us and so much more possible to us, uh, than we would in, in, under previous conditions.
Speaker 1 00:18:50 And we were right about that. That was, you know, that this was the idea adopted sort of slowly, but eventually, especially in the enlightenment, this was the ideal is that we'd have a, a peaceful society of people living together by mutual trade. And that would make us all better off. And it succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the people in the enlightenment. So, and we had the industrial revolution, we had all these huge advances. Um, so we have, we're better. Yeah. You know, not just the, the very, the elite, the top people, the wealthiest people, but practically everyone in our society is better off both materially and spiritually in terms of the pleasures that are available to them to enjoy that are, that are within their reach to enjoy then genus com would've been, and we got that way because of the fact that we adopted a totally different rule rather than force and exploitation.
Speaker 1 00:19:45 We adopted, you know, mutual trade and production as, as our, as the, the, uh, the moral basis of our society. Right? So that leads me to the last, to the final thing to say about the sort of solution to the genus problem con problem, which is it fundamentally misunderstands what kind of society genus con lived in gang con did not live at a society in which self-interest was the ideal. He lived in a society in which tribal tribalism was the ideal in which, uh, service to your family or to your tribe, or to the king, or to, you know, to the con that was the ideal, right? So he lived in a society and, and you could think of his society. He lived in would not work if self-interest was, its openly declared widely adopted, uh, moral philosophy because people would stop sacrificing themselves for the great con, right?
Speaker 1 00:20:43 They, they would not, uh, uh, agree to be, can fodder in his armies. They would not agree to be his slaves. You know, he'd be basically dealing with constant rebellion that people are saying, well, why can't I pursue myself interest too? Right? So the, the societies in which you have a great exploiter, who's able to, you know, uh, use force and conquest to keep everybody else down those societies. If you look at the, you actually look at what those societies consist of, they almost always, they, the univer I'm gonna say not almost always, they always rely on some form of altruism or sacrifice as the basis of their morality because that's what makes the conqueror and the exploiter possible. You know, other people have to be willing to sacrifice themselves in order for him to be the recipient of those sacrifices. If everybody else was out there trying to say, I want to, I think we should all pursue our self-interest.
Speaker 1 00:21:42 They would not, they would not. Um, uh, his rule would become untenable. Let's put it that way. They would not cooperate in, in his, uh, in, in, in the system that he created. All right. So that's, that's my, oh, that's the, I think the final answer to this is that, you know, I said that that Gangu K he's like 0.1, 1.000001% of the population. So, you know, uh, his form, if, if what he represents is self-interest, well, it's not available to most everybody, but more fundamentally is that the kind of society that makes Ganges con possible is one that does not preach self-interest to 99.9, 9% of the population. It preaches sacrifice and, you know, subservient as it's moral ideal to those people, whether it's subservient to the tribes, the family subservient to your master as a slave, et cetera. So fundamentally, uh, so, so that, that gives us something, our deepest answer as to why this is not an example of self-interest because self-interest is not, you know, we're talking about moral philosophy.
Speaker 1 00:22:50 It is a moral philosophy of self-interest and it's something that's universal and applies to everybody. There's no such moral philosophy as I could pursue my interest. And nobody else can, the minute you de declare something to be a, a, a philosophical principle, it applies universally to anyone. There's no, you know, I guess the proper term for it probably be special pleading, right? There's no special pleading and philosophy, no saying, well, this is the rule for me, but it shouldn't apply to anybody else. So the minute you say, uh, if you, if you said exploitation, uh, this exploitative view of self-interest was a moral philosophy, you would be basically saying, well, um, every, you know, therefore, nobody else should accept me as the ruler, as the leader, as the, you know, there's no reason I could give Fred anybody to accept me as the ruler or the leader, and you'd actually unleash what anarchy a war of all against all. All right. So, so this is, if we think about self-interest as a philosophy, right? You cannot have as a philosophy, as a principle self-interest does not lead to this system of exploitation and rule by a great co powerful conqueror in chief team. All right. So, uh, I think I said it enough. I think it's time to open it up for discussion and, uh, questions and comments and, uh, uh, anything else, anyone who wants to say
Speaker 0 00:24:13 Great. Uh, and I, again, I wanna encourage people to raise your hand, if you wanna be part of the discussion. Uh, we have TAs founder, David Kelly. I didn't know if you had a question, uh, before, uh, we open it up to either myself or the audience.
Speaker 2 00:24:33 Yeah, I, thanks, Rob. That was great. And, uh, I have had a Ken weird fascination, again, just Connor. I've read a couple books, including several by, uh, uh, a guy who is sort of an defender in a way we're trying to make the best case, uh, named Jack Weatherford. Um, more book called gin, K the making of the modern world. I dunno if you've seen that, but, um, anyway, what you're saying is, is absolutely true. I, you know, gin is K con uh, wherever wealthy gained, um, by the standards of this time was, uh, the result of, you know, zero sum transactions or negative sum transactions mainly. Um, he, uh, I mean, he, he killed something somewhere in between 10 and 50 million people. Um, mm-hmm, <affirmative> he, he and his Horts, and that was a significant part of the word population. He devastated, he wiped out the Islamic culture, which at the time was the most advanced civilization, um, on earth.
Speaker 2 00:25:42 He built those cities. He just appropriated technology, um, to use, uh, for war from everyone who the Chinese and others who would develop it on the other hand, um, one of the aftermaths was when the cons rules from, you know, the borders of Europe all the way through China under, um, <inaudible>, the silk road became a safe transit point for trade. This is one of the weird things about, um, history that just kinds of things you wouldn't expect that predator a predator like, uh, again, just con would, um, you know, and the brutality and the, you know, devastation he brought would lead to something that actually was a really at the time, a hugely important, uh, transit for, um, uh, uh, trade opportunity across you could travel to silk road. And, you know, they, the, the bandits, the Raiders were all controlled by the cons. So, um, it's just weird. I think his history is, um, has an awful lot of surprises here. Um, but the, you know, I, I'll just, I'm, I'm not, I don't have so much as the, of a question as a, as a comment, um, that,
Speaker 1 00:27:17 No, I think that's fascinating, David. I, I have something to say about that, but go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:27:21 Okay, well maybe I should stop there cuz that's really all I had to say. Uh, except that the question you're raising, um, the philosophical question, the interest con is really he's the emblem of what's been called the prudent predator issue in libertarian thought, uh, critical objectiveism. And I always have to laugh because <laugh>, most of the people make that argument are, you know, kind of intellectual types, uh, long hair Bricken stocks. They would last about five minutes in edges Times's world.
Speaker 1 00:27:54 And, um, <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:27:56 Well,
Speaker 1 00:27:57 Maybe that's why that's point. Yeah. They wanna use that as an argument. You got self-interest cause like God forbid we should play in a world like that. I would make it. Uh, yeah, but I think the, the, I think my, one of my points though, was that very few people would make it. And again, very few people did actually survive in G K's world was, it was a rough place. Um, but so I wanna talk about this idea of him as a unifier, cuz that is one thing that does happen is that oftentimes to you have a brutal conqueror, but he becomes then a unifier and unifies a great empire. And actually to, I said decreases the amount of warfare. Um, so, uh, it's similar to the stationary banded idea, right? So one of the ideas for how government came to be yeah, there's the, the social contract is how government came to be, but some people pointed out, well actually historically the more common way for the government come into existence is the stationary bandit, right?
Speaker 1 00:28:47 So you have a farm and you create something and then a bandit comes along and seals it and then he goes away, well, you'd be better off with your, if you have your little town and you know, it would mess UPAM, you know, 5,000 years ago, you would be way better off having a stationary bandit, a guy who I'm sure he Sarah to Rob and exploit you, but he stays there and he lives in your city and he has that interest therefore, and making sure you don't get killed too much. And in making sure you don't get, you don't get robbed too often. You know, he'll, he'll take a little cut of everything out of your thing, but it'll be predictable and it'll be, he'll have an interest in having you still be able to flourish and survive. And so the stationary bandit is better than the Mo the band that, that strikes and leaves.
Speaker 1 00:29:31 And so therefore, you know, that this is how government comes into be. So oftentimes you have a, a ruthless exploiter and a murderer mass murderer like this who ends up unifying. So one of the things Angus con did mean the thing that made him genus con the, the, the great con is he was in this, in this, in this area of the world, central Asia, where the general world was, all the tribes were killing each other all the time, all these little tribes of, you know, a couple, a thousand or 2000 people, your tribe would go murder the people in the tribe next to you. And he basically managed to convince a bunch of these tribes and say, well, look, if we stop murdering each other, and we all got together and worked together and we got like 50,000 of us, we could go off and murder other people somewhere else.
Speaker 1 00:30:15 <laugh> yeah. And, and be irresistible because nobody else has, you know, nobody else has these enormous numbers that we have. And that's basically how we, how he achieved his conquest. One of the things by the way he did is he, he would, when he defeated a tribe, he would not kill everybody in the tribe. He would absorb them. And then so therefore his army became bigger. Uh, and so he basically said, you we're gonna unify altogether. And then we could go kill more other people. But in that role of GIGU, con's UNFI. One of the things I wanna point out though, is the contrast between that and another great example of that, which is the Roman empire, right? I wouldn't you say the Roman empire, but the Roman Republic, right. Even before they became an empire, what made Rome great. The rise of Rome as a Republic was the fact that they forged relationships with, uh, all of it.
Speaker 1 00:31:02 And they unified Italy. They forged relationships with all the other different tribes in Italy, and, uh, were able to sort of put together this, this large area that they controlled, where they all worked together and they had this big irresistible army, and they were able to defeat the IANS and defeat this people and those people. But they did it on the basis of far more benevolent rules than, than genus K had. And also they did it while then being able to create more material advancement and more cultural advancement. You know, one of the things that fascinates me about, about, about Geus con in the Mongols is there's a, there's a number of different people like this in the ancient world where you, you hear about them. And we have some archeological evidence of them and they ruled and conquered off in very large areas. But after that, they disappear, right?
Speaker 1 00:31:55 They, they leave, no, they essentially leave no trace. Uh, they leave no trace culturally because they were able to conquer a rural large area, but they weren't able to, they didn't create art distinctive arch. They didn't create distinctive literature. Now, in some cases, maybe it's just, they did, and they didn't survive. But in, in, in the case of the Mongs, we know pretty much they didn't create anything. They didn't create anything that had a major impact. And so oftentimes what happens is, uh, these conquerors then themselves sort of get cultured, get conquered culturally. So for example, the, the, um, uh, in India, the, uh, the, uh, successors of the cons were of the, of the Mongols were the mogul empire. And the mogul empire basically becomes religiously and culturally Indian, right? So it gets absorbed into the native culture that they conquered because they had no distinctive cultural achievements or creations of their own.
Speaker 1 00:32:53 And that's a very common thing that comes from this. So I would say that, you know, the much more interesting example of there are people who unified a society and made trade across large distances possible, uh, such as in the Roman empire, but they did it under rules that made a much greater degree of flourishing possible that made a great deal of more cultural advance possible. Now, the Romans were no angels. They had, you know, they, they had, they had, you know, they had slavery practice in a very large scale. Um, although I would point out gang GU Conis, from my knowledge, you might know Martha thought, David, uh, David might know more about this, but gang GU Conis. I understood the Mongols didn't really take slaves. They came in and they killed everybody. And they took, they took, they took the stuff, right. They didn't take the people, they took the stuff. And that's why they had such a high body count in terms of how many people they killed us. They, they were not interested in taking slaves and managing slaves. It's a real headache. So they would go in and they, for the most part, they would gust go and take stuff. And so, because they were so purely materially focused, they that's part of the reasons why they left this great swath of destruction, but to really leave any cultural impact. Correct.
Speaker 2 00:34:05 No, that's true. Uh, China under COCOM maybe in the partial exception, but, you know, I think you're right. And, uh, but I love the idea. I hadn't heard that concept of the stationary bandit before. Great. And kind of an early form of supply side economics.
Speaker 0 00:34:22 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:34:22 Um, the less you tax, the more you get <laugh>. Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, uh, uh, I'll I'll, uh, leave it there. Thank you, Rob.
Speaker 0 00:34:33 Great. Thanks. Thanks again. If any, uh, if anyone wants to join us, please raise your hand. We'll bring you up to the stage. Um, you know, I I've studied him a little bit as well. I'm a huge fan of his general SubT tie. And, um, I think, um, he, uh, you know, is an example of kind of blind unchecked ambition because he went from just, you know, having nothing to just, you know, just continuing to conquer as much as he could and that, you know, attitude exists out there. I mean, when you start to get into, you know, the age of exploration or, you know, you've got where these people are saying that, you know, what we saw as exploration they see is as just like being gang as con
Speaker 1 00:35:21 Yeah. Well, I think that's an interesting question is the real getting this problem con problem, actually, when you think about it is you see this as a, as a, a stage of development, most societies have to go through is coming up with some way in which you could have winners and losers without it being winner take. All right. So that's, that's not as articulate a formulation as I would like, but so there's, for example, one of the things that you tended to see in the Greek city states of ancient in ancient Greece with the Greek city states, one of the things you tended to see was that they were constantly battling against it. They were constantly at war with each other. And one of the reasons was, is that anytime one of them became strong, their approach basically would be to dominate and exploit and attack and, and, and kill their neighbors.
Speaker 1 00:36:14 Right? And so they had no way they could band together and cooperate. And that's why they're always at war with each other, cuz there was no concept of winning, except I'm now the guy who gets to, who gets to kill and loot with abandoned, uh there's, there's no concept of winning except total domination. And so one of the advances that you had to have culturally was the idea of how can we create a society in which the strongest guy, you know, the, the guy who emerges as the strongest doesn't immediately then, uh, destroy everybody else. How do we create a system in which people can actually cooperate together and work together? And as a result of cooperating and working together are able to do much more and create much more than they than they were than they would otherwise. So I think the real ness pro problem is how do you go beyond that primitive concept of self-interest where it's purely material and it's done by conquest and domination of your neighbors to with dare I say an enlightened concept of self-interest.
Speaker 1 00:37:16 I mean this, the original formulation for a morality of self-interest was enlightened self-interest or self-interest probably understood, but I like enlightened self-interest cuz you know, it ties into the whole themes and the enlightenment, but the idea that there is a, a, a more elevated, deeper, more valid concept of self-interest that's not the primitive brutal one of Geus con, but there's one that says, look, we can all pursue ourself interest, working together cooperatively by having the society where we have individual rights and where, you know, uh, uh, our dispute are adjudicated by, um, a, by a, a neutral, uh, unbiased, uh, uh, uh, government. And we have ways of controlling the government to make sure it doesn't abuse its power. And you, you have it, it, you, of course it takes thousands of years to do this, to, to go start to start this process and go through it.
Speaker 1 00:38:09 Um, and, and I'm, you know, the whole discussion of, of, I mean, take hours to discuss exactly what the stages were, but basically stage by stage taking little baby steps at a time, we got to the point of developing this idea of a kindness society in which you can have competition and you can have ambition and you can have people wanting to make something of themselves and become rich and, and, and, and, uh, uh, and, and have the, the beautiful women and the, and the, uh, <laugh> and the nice houses and the palaces and all that, and do it without everybody killing each other. And actually with people competing for how much they're gonna create and how much they're gonna produce. Right. This is the real solution to the problem is you have to have that concept of how a society can work and it, and it took thousands of years for us to develop it.
Speaker 0 00:39:01 Yeah. I was gonna say, uh, you know, how much could he have been expected to understand?
Speaker 1 00:39:08 Oh, I, I'm not. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, you know, genus con was a man of his time. Let's put it there. He was a, he was a smarter, tougher guy than anybody else around him. Right. Cause he was able to unite all the tribes and put down the various palace intrigues and revolts. Um, so, uh, uh, you know, he, he was, he was a smarter and more resourceful fellow, uh, than, than everybody else around him. So he, but he was totally man of his time. And the, the point is to appreciate how brutal and primitive that time was and how much worse we would be off. You know, even if you're one of the guys in this happen system, how much worse you would be off, how much worse off you would be, excuse me, uh, living under that kind of society. And under that kind of way of life, then you are living under enlightened self interest, which is essentially the system we have now, even though nobody wants to, uh, nobody wants to embrace it and defend it as such.
Speaker 0 00:40:05 Yeah. Uh, you talk about the, um, you know, why be a con man in the same way? I, the, when I heard that I was thinking, well, does that calculation change for people at all when they witness blatant public corruption?
Speaker 1 00:40:20 <laugh> <laugh> well, yeah. Cause you know, most of the time we're the victims of the con the comments are in Washington DC and we're the, we're the marks, right? Uh, uh, yeah. And, and that's the thing is, you know, the, the arrogance of that is always that, well, actually, you know, I think about in the con modern concept of this is why not be a bank robber? Well, the thing is that if you lived in a society characterized by, you know, the, the bank robber has to always hope that he's the tiny exception in a society, right? So he always has to hope that no, all the rest of you, people will go out and you'll work and you'll, you'll be the suckers who will work nine to five and you'll have your day jobs and you'll, you'll make your money. You'll, you'll, you'll make money and you'll produce stuff and you'll put it into the bank to keep it safe so that I could be waiting there for me to take.
Speaker 1 00:41:07 And then once I take it, I can live in a society that's orderly enough that it won't immediately be taken from me by somebody else. Right. So the, the bank robber, the, the, the, the criminal always has to view always implicitly has to rely on himself being a, a tiny, you know, fractional, uh, exception, amid the general rule of people, not robbing banks and not, uh, uh, uh, killing each other and not, not, not robbing each other and not, uh, not shooting each other, et cetera. So he, he, reli nobody relies, uh, he, or how do I put this? The bank robber relies on law and order as much as anybody else, right. Because to, for the peaceful enjoyment of his, of his, uh, hard one loot
Speaker 0 00:41:58 To, uh, yeah, for the money to be collected there. And for them not to be too rough, even if he gets caught, I guess,
Speaker 1 00:42:05 Well, and yeah, and, and basically for, for the money to be there in the first place, and for him not to immediately get, uh, uh, get, uh, robbed and killed by somebody who's stronger than
Speaker 0 00:42:16 While they're, um, you know, accusing us of being the gang con or, or the con man or the bank robber. In fact, uh, I read recently that Stalin, uh, robed, uh, bank in pre-revolution Russia <laugh> to, uh, you know, just, that was his way of taking from the system and, uh, destroying it. But that's, that's what that philosophy leads to.
Speaker 1 00:42:40 Well, actually, I think that's a really interesting point, cause let me just take a few minutes to expand on that, which is that the genus ING is usually brought up as an objection to self-interest as a moral philosophy. But when we see altruism instituted on a large scale, as a moral philosophy, as the philosophy behind a whole society, what we invariably see is a genus Kalike guy ends up at the top of the system, right? <laugh>. And so that goes back to my point about how genus con had to rely on people on everybody else, not having a concept of rational self-interest he had to rely on everybody else, not thinking, well, we have rights that you have to respect. He had to rely on sacrifice for the sake of the family or the tribe, uh, sacrifice for the sake of glory and battle or whatever.
Speaker 1 00:43:27 He had to rely on all that as being the actual, uh, as being the operational rule that people lived on and not on self-interest. And so the flip side of that is when you have society, it's very clearly organized around self around self-sacrifice the sacrifice of the individual for the collective greater good, inevitably they end up into going not going to the has not of some, you know, uh, Saint of, of self, of, of, of self-sacrifice, but they end up going into the hands of the exploiter because what do you have? You have a whole group of people willing to sacrifice their own interests. And a guy like SA comes along and says, great. They could all be my slaves. And that's essentially mean, you know, saloon was a brute. He, he was not, uh, I mean, you can always, this, this question I think was always very interesting of like, was he idealistic actually ideally committed to communism?
Speaker 1 00:44:22 Or was he just a BRT or did he find some synthesis of that? And I think there was, I think he found some synthesis of that, but he was in his, in his, in his soul. He was again, discon. And so he shows what actually happens. And when you have a society that self-consciously deliberately built, you know, very carefully built around a very self-conscious extremely consistent altruist philosophy, cuz you know, the communism was altruism distilled to its essence. You are nothing, you know, the, the collective good is everything. When you do that, you actually end up enabling and empowering and putting into power, the gang discounts.
Speaker 0 00:45:04 Yeah. That, uh, that makes sense. Um, you know, we do hear people say as one of their, uh, criticisms of, of capitalism going back to the ambition thing, it, it, you know, how much is too much, uh, I think that implies the, the false, you know, the fixed pie fallacy, but
Speaker 1 00:45:23 Yeah. And it applies, um, exactly it that's. I think the thing, one of the, the themes I like to talk about and sort of putting people's heads is how hard it is for these basic assumptions to die. That, you know, people get these assumptions drilled into them so deeply they're so widely accepted that people, you know, it's, it's been probably 500 years since people should have figured this out, but people still have these concepts rattling around to their heads. And one of those is this idea spent, I think it's, it's definitely 200 years since people should have figured out the fixed pie fallacy. The idea that if I get wealthy, it doesn't come by taking something from an doesn't. It doesn't have to come from, uh, taking something from somebody else. It could be that we all get we're all better off. And I'm, you know, may you know, because I started the right business, I'm better more be.
Speaker 1 00:46:19 I, I, I, I benefited way more than other people, but we have a system where everybody got better off because we had more stuff that was produced, but it has some, you know, you have to have the idea that stuff is produced, right? That, and now that itself is produced that, but that more stuff is produced that you can make progress that you can come up with. Oh, I came up with a new, a new widget, a new gadget, a new tool, and now we can produce more stuff than we could before. And so that idea that the, you know, the pie can, the technological advances can happen and the total production of wealth can increase that the pie can be growing. So that the guy who's super ambitious at creating a new business and creating new ideas and producing new things is not gaining that at the expense of somebody else.
Speaker 1 00:47:04 He's creating that by producing so much more value that other people benefit, but he benefits more. Right? So, but that growth mentality is the, one of the big things that we are missing today. I've got a little quick little you time for me to do a two minute rant on an odd example of that. Something I've been thinking about. I wanna do a little more research and write about this. But one thing that I was thinking about is, you know, in this politically correct age and the age of wokeness, we have all these battles about what's going on in the elite universities, what's going on at Harvard and what's going on at Yale. And a lot of this stuff is about this intense competition for, you know, positions and status at these elite universities. Now, part of the reason that we obsess over these, you know, status battles of elite universities is who populates the elite media.
Speaker 1 00:47:56 Well, a bunch of them on the elite and the elite of politics. Well, a bunch of them are guys who graduated from these elite universities. So, you know, what are Harvard's admission policies like looms large in their, in their brains, cuz that was them 20 years earlier, right. Trying to get into Harvard so they could, so they could become one of these elites. Uh, so partly it's just sort of weird in inside baseball, parochialism of that. But the other reason for it is this, somebody pointed this out to me a while back and I, I, I don't know where I read it, but I, I kind of didn't think about it that much, but, but about coming back in my mind, which is the us population is like three times what it was in the early 20th century, right? We're we're 333 40 million people. Now we're a hundred million people.
Speaker 1 00:48:39 Not that long ago, Harvard still has rough admits roughly the same number of students, right? So you, what you have is this, you know, and has roughly the same number of professors that a lot of these elite universities have not grown even while the country gets three times bigger. And also while the, the, the whole educational system and the, and, and the economic system become much more internationalized. You have all these students from China and what have, and, and, and, and Europe, but all these other countries trying to get into Harvard. And so it creates this a tremendous competition. This is hugely intensive. And also by the way, most people are better educated, you know, and most more people graduate from high school than they used to. More people aren't capable of going on to college. So you have this enormous increase in the supply of people who could potentially be, uh, applying to these elite institutions, but they've kept the, the number of spots.
Speaker 1 00:49:36 The number of places at Harvard are artificially kept it, you know, they've deliberately kept it fixed. Now you can see some of the, you know, incentives that they have. It's like, oh, we keep it fixed. So we are procedurals up even higher, cuz there's so much rarer, but you also see why this, it, it comes from a shortage. It comes from and feeds into this shortage mentality of, oh, there's, you know, X number of students who get admitted to Harvard every year. And you know, it'll never change. They'll never grow. There'll never be more spots. Uh, more chances to get into this elite institutions that become one of the top people. And even as the society gets so much bigger and so much better educated that there ought to be, there ought to be way more people who are the same quality of te to be teachers there, way more people who ought to be the same quality to be students there.
Speaker 1 00:50:26 Right? So it's this how this, this stagnation mentality, this fixed pie mentality gets so deeply into all of our institutions and all of our assumptions about everything works and then produces these weird, you know, dog eat dog vicious level of competition because, well, if you admit blacks, there's a big scandal now is if you admit black students in the Harvard, basically the only way to do that is you have to stack the decks. So the Asians can't get it right. And Harvard is basically caught doing this. They've caught basically creating a system which would, which would intentionally exclude Asian students. So they're all out there, you know, famously working very hard and getting high, high scores and other tests and doing all these amazing things. And they can't get into the elite institutions because they said, well, if we'll get another group in, we can't let you in. And it's that shortage mentality that, that the idea that we're all in competition over a fixed and effect, not only a fixed pie, but one that one that gets smaller and smaller compared to the population. So it shows how deeply that, that fixed pie shortage mentality has gotten into people's brains and, and permeates all the institutions and, and how they're created.
Speaker 0 00:51:38 Good stuff. David, did you wanna say something?
Speaker 2 00:51:42 Uh, no. I'm uh,
Speaker 0 00:51:45 Okay.
Speaker 2 00:51:47 Sorry. I, I
Speaker 0 00:51:49 That's. Alright.
Speaker 2 00:51:50 Okay. I'm still here. Um, but no, no, thanks. Thanks Rob. Thanks. Uh, Scott. Okay. I'm interested in whoever else wants to, uh, pose a question.
Speaker 0 00:52:00 Yeah. Um, some of this seems to go back to, uh, you know, Rand's essay the establishing of an establishment because so much it's like the people in the elites, they want there to be a small, you know, group, no matter how many people that are just, you have to have gone to those schools to, you know, really rise high and, um, you know, elite government status. I mean, uh, Rand also used the term, the aristocracy of pool. And so I, I think, you know, part of the reason it's not growing is the, the people that, that benefit from having that don't don't want the club to be much larger doctors do the same thing.
Speaker 1 00:52:45 Well, yeah. And what I wanna point out with this, this is why this ness con issue is so resonates so much with all these other different issues is they're wrong about that? They're wrong actually, factually wrong, that they are somehow better off by restricting other people from having these things. You know, they, they come so much from that stagnation mentality that fixed client mentality that they actually, I mean, this is where Geus con must have come from. Like I said, he had a rough childhood, he had a childhood where it was killer be kill. And he created a system that was largely based on that. I mean, the one innovation he actually had was let's not kill each other. Let's not kill our filler. Mongs, let's go out and kill other people, but <laugh> so we're suppose you can say that's progress. Uh, but, uh, he had that sort of killer kill, be killed mentality.
Speaker 1 00:53:33 And so had this idea that the best way forward is I become powerful and conquer everybody else. Um, and I think that's similar sort of things that happens in a lot of things today is if people think, well, we would be better off, you know, we, the elite would be better off if, if we restrict everything and make sure there are fewer people who are able to be in the elite, well, you're actually not better off that way. You know, if there were more doctors, we would all be better off. If there were more people who got a really high quality education and good contacts and the abil and, and, and, uh, sort of entree into the institutions, we would actually have more people going up and creating more stuff, starting more businesses. We would actually all be better off, but again, because people look at it as the zero sum thing, uh, that, you know, there's only a fixed number of positions.
Speaker 1 00:54:19 And if, if I don't get them, somebody else, uh, if somebody else gets one, then I I'm out in the I'm out in the cold because they have that shortage mentality so deeply buried in their psyche. That's why we get these, these, these weird situations where, you know, actually we, you know, we, we better way better off with more people having access to an elite education so that, you know, if the elite education is any good is of any actual value, they'd be able to out do more and create more. And we'd all be better off, but people get, like I said, that's the, the, it took thousands of years to get to the point of having this idea of enlightened self-interest. And as the basis of a society. And then to get to the point where we actually had an example of the industrial evolution of that kind of society leading to enormous progress and growth, so that everybody's better off. And it takes so long for people to get better on their heads. And to understand that, and to be able to accept that as you know, an historical scale, this is a relatively new phenomenon that we've proved that this can happen. And it takes people, you know, it takes a culture so long that people rebel against it in various ways, it takes the culture so long to get that actually, to grasp those ideas and, and to be able to internalize them and, and accept them as normal.
Speaker 1 00:55:39 I like those points.
Speaker 2 00:55:41 I could add maybe one thing here, uh, going back again, just gone for a minute. Um, one, one of his offsetting, uh, one of the small things that offset his visualness is he, as I understand it, he seemed to have, uh, a, a sense of merit and he hired people, uh, generals and engineers, and so forth who could actually produce. And he somewhat, regardless as he conquered more countries, took on people, uh, from different cultures who were, uh, had merit. And that's one of the things, again, don't hold me into this, but my understanding is that that's part of what made him successful, but bringing that forward to the present day. Uh, and what you're saying about the elite institutions, Rob, um, you know, I, you're absolutely right about the, uh, I mean, we've all read about what parents, some parents, um, do to get their kids into Harvard or Yale or PI or whatever, but, um, think of the, the, the really great achievers of our era, like Jeff Bezos, uh, Elon Musk, uh, they, uh, Steve, Steve jobs, um, uh, the Microsoft guy, um, went
Speaker 1 00:57:06 Bill get dropped out.
Speaker 2 00:57:08 He dropped out of Harvard. Um, Peter teal was actually offering money to people to drop out of college and for a while, and I mean, these guys, they did not count on their elite education if they even had it. I'm not sure about the others, but gates was at Harvard anyway. Um, but, and left, they were not counting on their elite education. They were counting on their merit and, and, and look what they've done. They did it in the few parts of the economy that are still relatively free. Um, but it's, you know, it's just, I keep waiting and I'm not the only one who say for, for people to say, wait a minute, you don't, you don't need to go to Harvard to do great work and be successful. It's we should have, you know, there's still a level of meritocracy. I, I don't like that word, but, um, of merit of, of the merit principle.
Speaker 1 00:58:13 Yeah. Also a lot of things that happens with, with places like Harvard is they often have very successful alumni, but it's partly because they have selection effects, right? They select only people who are top achievers by the time they're 17 or 18 years old. And so these are people who are, I mean, instead of the argument against higher education is these are people who are going to be successful no matter what they could have gone to, you know, you, they could have gone to community colleges. So been successful because they're so driven and they're so hard. They're so hardworking. They're so intelligent. They're so hardworking. They're so driven that, you know, no matter what circumstances you put them in, they would've, they would've done something
Speaker 0 00:58:55 Great. Well, um, that's, uh, Lawrence, I'm sorry. We're not gonna get a chance. Uh, this, I really enjoyed this subject. Um, tomorrow at 5:00 PM on the ATLA society are continuing series of scholars asking scholars will feature Richard Salzman interviewing Jason Hill should be a good episode. Um, Thursday back here on clubhouse at 4:00 PM Eastern, we'll be with TAs, founder, David Kelly on what is open. Objectiveism one of my favorite topics. I like to say it's only for those not afraid. And then finally Friday, uh, Richard Salzman, uh, will be back here on, uh, clubhouse at 5:00 PM Eastern with an ask me anything on objectiveism. So we look forward to those and everyone who participated today. Thank you very much. And we'll see you this week. Thanks everyone. Take care.
