One of the great mysteries in the world in which we live is the fact, the economic, historical, political fact, that free markets work and yet that everybody hates them. Free markets produce unbelievable amounts of wealth, prosperity, longevity, human well-being. Everywhere they're tried, to the extent that they are tried, they're incredibly successful. I'll go through some examples to try to at least illustrate the point. And yet nobody likes free markets. No country holds onto them. The trend over the last few decades easily is away from free markets, more regulations, more controls, more government regulations, certainly in the United States of America. A country that used to be very free, relatively capitalistic, had free markets. Today, it's not free at all. Generally, countries that have been free in the past, declined. We've got some South Americans here, so it's a good, we've got some great examples of this in Latin America. So I don't know how much you know about Latin America, but the country that used to be the poorest country in Latin America, anybody know what that was, what's the poorest country in Latin America today? Venezuela. Venezuela is the poorest country in Latin America today. On a per capita GDP basis, Venezuela is the poorest country. It's also the most socialist country in Latin America. What is the richest country in Latin America today? Chile. Chile is the richest country in Latin America today. 40 years ago, 30 years ago, what was the richest country in Latin America? Venezuela. What was the poorest country in Latin America 30, 40 years ago? Chile. Chile. What's the difference? Economic policy. Economic policy. Chile adopted markets by accident almost. In the early 1980s, it adopted economic liberalization. It freed up its markets. It protected private property, it respected contracts. It encouraged entrepreneurship and it basically left people alone and even privatized its social security. It privatized that and it became very quickly the richest country in Latin America. Venezuela went the opposite route. It nationalized. It moved away from free markets, it moved away from private property, it moved away from contracts. And it very, very quickly, in a matter of 20 years, became the poorest country in Latin America. So that's just one of, I think, hundreds of experiments that we have been running in the world over the last 200 years in terms of what economic political policies work, if the measure of work is prosperity, and what economic social policies don't work. You've got a living example right now on North versus South Korea. I don't know if anybody's been, I think some of you have been to Korea, but South Korea is a flourishing, wealthy, successful country. North Korea is basically dead, it's nothing dead. The best image to illustrate to them between North and South Korea is that satellite photo. I don't know how many of you have seen the satellite photo of the Korean peninsula at night. And the South is all lit up because there's electricity and people have homes and offices and street lights and it's all lit up. And the North is all dark, a little bit of lights near the Capitol, but generally all dark. The difference between authoritarianism, call it whatever you want to call it, right? And relative freedom. Relative free markets. South Korea is relative free. It flourishes. North Korea is oppressive. It's dead. There's nothing there. It is just popping. Of course you guys lived it, East-West Germany, sometimes I have to tell, remind people that the war was built to prevent people from fleeing communism, not the other way around, because young people still have the belief that communism is some utopia, some ideal, some wonderful thing. And you'd think that the last 70 years would have proved otherwise and yet communism is still around. We still have kids at the universities here, if I was giving a talk, if I was a radical leftist, so I was a radical leftist Marxist, and I was giving a talk here in Berlin, I would have an audience 10 times larger. Communism is popular, free markets are not, even though communism led to poverty, destruction and death, freedom, free markets have led to prosperity. So something's going on here, because the system that seems to allow for human success, for human wealth, for human flourishing, for prosperity economically is the system we hate the most. And systems that are oppressive to human beings that result in poverty and destruction tend to be systems that are popular, which is, to say, the least bizarre. It's a strange, but it is the reality with which we live. So one has to ask a question why. What is it about free markets? And I'm not using the term capitalism, because I think capitalism is a much more loaded term, but capitalism is not just freedom in markets, but capitalism is freedom in everything. Capitalism is a system where your individual rights are fully respected, particularly your property rights, where you're left free to pursue your values, free of coercion, free of force. Capitalism is a political, social, economic system. We've never really had capitalism, but what's really amazing is that the closer we got to capitalism, the more successful the economic system is, the political system is. The further away we get from capitalism, the more destructive it is. And again, everybody's against capitalism in spite of that. Everybody's against free markets in spite of that. So the question, I think the important question we have to ask ourselves as human beings, as people interested in ideas, as people interested in the world out there, is why. What is it about capitalism?  Because there's something about it that we resent, that we resent so much that even though it's successful, even though it leads to prosperity, even though it leads to economic success, we still hate it. So we're willing to override that. So let me ask you, what free markets involve people with the spinning in markets, free of coercion, free of intervention, free of government, but why do people engage in markets? In other words, what's capitalist? What are free markets really about? What is the purpose of a free market? What is the purpose of any market?  What's the purpose of the market? What do people do in a market? Exchange goods, they value less for stuff, they value more. Yeah. So they exchange goods, generally they give away the stuff that they value less. They get something, they value more. That's trade. It's a win-win relationship. But before we even get there, why are they going to the marketplace to begin with? So, you know, if I'm my iPhone, right, it appears in all my videos that people laugh at us. They're familiar with it. So my, you know, why is Steve Jobs making these? Why did, why did Apple build them? Why did Steve Jobs initially invent them, think of them, produce them, create them, sell them. Who did he do it for? I mean, he deserves the need of a customer. Yeah, I mean, I didn't know I needed an iPhone before Steve Jobs taught me I needed an iPhone. The beauty of production is that the thing about great producers is they create demand. They don't satisfy demand. Demand isn't there until they actually create the product. And then the demand shows up because they're teaching you, one of the beauties of production is it teaches you the things you need. You don't know what you need. Steve Jobs knows what you need, but you, when he was alive, you didn't know what you need. Yeah, but why did he satisfy demand? What, because he cared about me? Did Steve Jobs build the iPhone for me? Yeah. Because? Because we can't do so much things with it. Because real benefit from? Yeah, with benefit. So did Steve Jobs build this so I could benefit from? No, for money. While he built it, certainly part of this was for money, right? And it's, you know, he made money off of this. Like the first iPhones had a profit margin over 50%. He made a lot of money off of iPhone. He could have sold it to me a lot cheaper if he cared about me. So Steve Jobs built this for money, profit, right? Now we all feel a little uncomfortable even thinking that, never mind saying it, which says something about the world in which we live. And we'll get to that. But it's not just about money. What else did Steve Jobs, why else did Steve Jobs build this? He looked for something that fulfilled himself. Yeah, he loved it. This is great. The consequence of creating something that was great for the public. Yeah, he had a vision. He wanted to create something new. He wanted to create something beautiful, right? I mean, this is a beautiful thing. He wanted to create something productive. He wanted to create something that people would love using. But who did he build this for? For himself. For Steve Jobs. So Steve Jobs could make money. So Steve Jobs could have fun. So Steve Jobs could be satisfied that he produced this amazing thing. Steve Jobs produced this. And at the end of the day, you go to work, not for your customers. Hopefully you like your work. You're going to work for you. You enjoy it. You like it. It fulfills something in you. It allows you to pursue certain values you're making and living. And at the end of the day, production, work is something we do for ourselves. And I remember the first iPhone I bought was in 2008, right? And this economy was spiraling into recession. Many of you are too young to remember 2008, but 2008 was a great recession. And this economy spiraling into recession. And I went out and I bought my iPhone because I wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to help my fellow man. I want to make sure people had jobs and I'd be taught by the Keynesians that consumption drives the economy. So I wanted to help boost economy. Because I know that's why you guys go shopping. You guys shop because you want to help make sure that people are employed and have jobs and know. A lot of benefit. You go buy stuff for whose benefit? A lot of benefit. Your own benefit. You're going shopping because you want to go buy something that you believe will make your life better. See, Job sells his products because that's to make his life better. You're buying his products to make your life better. And this is not a unique crowd, any crowd in the world. If I ask people why they go out and buy their shoes or buy their clothes, they say because we're trying to make our lives better. So markets are places in which we go in pursuit of our own values, our own interests, our own well-being. Markets are places we go in pursuit of self-interest. Markets are all about self-interest. They're all about people pursuing self-interest. And this is not a new observation. Anna Smith in The Wolf of Nations, written a long time ago, wrote that the baker bakes the bread, not because he cares about you. He bakes the bread because he's trying to make a living. And hopefully he enjoys baking bread. And of course you don't buy the bread because you care about the baker. You buy the bread because you want to eat. You're better off buying the bread. He's better off baking the bread, win-win. But you're not doing it for the win-win, you're doing it for the you. Fundamentally, markets are about self-interest. Fundamentally, everything about markets are about pursuing your own values and your own terms. And you don't transact if the terms are not appropriate. Everything about capitalism smacks some self-interest. It's all about people being selfish. To use a term nobody likes. So, Anna Smith told us this 20 or something years ago, but Anna Smith said the same as everybody else says. Anna Smith said, yeah, it's all about being selfish. And selfishness is bad. We know selfishness is bad.  Our preachers teach us that. Our philosophers taught us that. Certainly German philosophers have taught us that. Selfishness, being self-interested, is bad. Pursuing your own self-interest as an end is bad. It's not moral. It's not virtuous. And Anna Smith says, that's okay. Because when you add up all the self-interested activities of all these different people, what you get as a sum is society's better off. So the sum of vices is a virtue. And let me tell you, nobody believes that.  And they know because everybody teaches it that self-interest is evil, bad, or at the very best, a model. What is morality? We talk about morality, we talk about ethics. What is it to be ethical? What is it to be moral? What do we mean, Tom? To be altruistic. We're taught to be like that. To be altruistic. To think of others first. To live for the sake of others. The whole focus of morality is on how we treat other people. So benefiting other people, that is virtuous, right? Benefiting yourself, that is not virtuous. That's what we taught. So you would think that when you benefit other people, you would be considered a morally good person. Who is the greatest, who are the greatest beneficiaries of mankind? Who has benefited human beings? What profession has benefited human beings more than any other profession? At least materially. Inventors? Yeah, inventors are important, but inventors often, their inventors sits in their garage and nothing ever happens there. I would say investors. Investors, financiers? Yeah. So capitalists? Yeah, basically people will look for the good idea and give the sign. Look for the good idea? Certainly. I think that's a category within a quarter category that I'm talking about. I'd say business people. Of which, I agree with you, investors are actually the most important. And not just investors because we love it to capitalists, but bankers, the people we love to hate, we hate them more than anybody. I've got a book. It's called The Moral Case for Finance. And it has essays there about why banking is virtuous and why finance is the noblest profession because exactly for the reason you said. The inventor doesn't get out of his garage without capital. The inventor also doesn't get out of the garage without a CEO, without a business expertise, without the knowledge how to build a business. It's one thing to invent, something else to build a business around it. It's one thing to invent. And it's another thing to turn that invention into the type of thing that people want to use, that people can use. I mean, think about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was not an innovator. He didn't take care of his garage. That was Wozniak. We barely know Wozniak. We know Steve Jobs because he knew how to organize. He knew he had a vision. He knew and he knew how to market. He knew how to sell. You have to get it into the hands of consumers. But all their category, put that category from banker to innovator to CEO, businessman are the people who have taken us out of the mud, out of the hut, out of subsistence farming and brought us into wealth, into the world in which we live. Without them, none of this exists. Without their knowledge, their energy, their willingness to take risk, whether it's risk of capital, risk of their time, nothing exists. You don't even have labor without capital and without businessmen. Labor never comes together. It starts a business. It just doesn't happen. Somebody has to have that idea. You have to have an entrepreneur. You have to have the capital to pay the labor until the business become profitable. And yet, we all hate businessmen. I mean, we not maybe in this room, but generally the culture. Why? Again, because businessmen are pursuing their own profit. Worse than all of the financiers. Because the financiers are turning money into money. So you don't even see a product. They're behind the scenes. That's why they're always behind every conspiracy theory as well. Because they're the people that are unseen. A businessman who produces like Steve Jobs, who produces a product and hide behind the product and say, look, I'm doing something good for mankind. But a financier who sits behind that has a much harder time. It's a much more abstract role. Much more difficult to explain to people how productive a function he is actually pursuing. I mean, so think about this. The most, the people who benefited society the most. Other human beings the most. Our business people. We still hate them. So I don't know about this altruism stuff. They say what you should do is help other people. Well, Steve Jobs helped other people. Bill Gates helped other people. How did they help other people? We talked about this, right? I buy an iPhone for a thousand bucks. How much is this worth to me? Much more. I mean, this is worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. Don't tell Apple. But it's worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. Just in terms of the quality of life, improvements. I remember, you guys don't. But I remember what life was like before this. This has improved life dramatically. Particularly for somebody like me who travels a lot. This is a life-changing. When I moved from Israel to the United States in 1987, all my families in Israel never called them. They would never talk to my parents. Not because I didn't like them, but because it was too expensive. Long-distance phone calls were super expensive in those days. They couldn't afford it. I couldn't afford it. So we talked about giving two months. Now, I can talk to anybody, any way in the world, for as long as I want, by video, at a cost of zero. I have access to every piece of music I've ever produced at a cost of zero. I had maps navigate any city in the world without having to look at a map. Again, you guys don't remember driving a hockey and a map at the same time. It was very, very dangerous. I mean, the benefits of this are through the roof. I know you have a question. Can we leave it for the question period? Or do you want to? I just wanted to answer your question. Oh, which one? Pardon? Which question? Sorry. You just asked, Paulette Price, you're doing this video call stuff. I wanted to answer the question. Oh, okay. He wanted it. Yeah, okay. So, my life is better off by tens of thousands of dollars. Steve Jobs made some money off of this. Probably less than tens of thousands of dollars because they're on a cost of thousands, right? He's better off, I'm better off. Every time a businessman makes money in a free market, he is making the world a better place. The only way to become a billionaire is to make a lot of people's lives better. You cannot be a billionaire in a free market and not have made other people's lives better. Hundreds of millions of people's lives better. Sometimes millions of lives better. I would argue Bill Gates, by creating the PC revolution, changed the lives of billions of people on planet Earth. He's not a hero. He's not a model hero. We're not building statues. We're not naming roads. Like who's a model hero? If I say model hero, what name comes to mind? Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa. Hercules. Hercules. Okay. Not Hercules is a model hero, okay? Because he helps other people. He goes fight for them and all of them. But Mother Teresa is a great example. Mother Teresa comes to mind as a model hero. She's a saint after all. And, you know, there are a lot of statues of Mother Teresa out there. Why is she a hero? Because she helped a lot of people. She did so altruistically. Which means what? Without any self-interest. Yeah, without any gain to herself. On the contrary, she did it while suffering. She did it while not being happy. She did it clearly as a sacrifice. If she had been happy, holding parties, celebrating her successes, being, you know, and really helping people at the same time, she wouldn't have been a saint. What made her a saint is she was as poor as the people she was helping. She seemed like she was suffering. If you read her diary, she was in agony the whole time. That's what makes you a saint. Now, if you go to the museum in Berlin, there are probably some Renaissance paintings of some saints. Any of them happy? Any of them smiling? Any of them doing fun stuff? No, because the whole point of being a saint is not to help other people. The whole point of being a saint is to suffer. The whole point of morality, as we understand it, is not to help other people. If that was the standard, just helping other people, then our businessmen would be moral giants. The whole point of our morality is about individual suffering. It's about not being self-interested. In a sense, it's a negative. Don't pursue your self-interest. Don't be successful. Don't be happy. And if you can help other people while not being happy, while not being successful, so even somebody like Bill Gates, when he's an entrepreneur, and he's helping hundreds of millions of people, and we hate his guts. And when an American justice man goes after him to try to break up Microsoft, everybody's excited and everybody thinks that's great. When does Bill Gates become a little bit of a hero? For a little while, until COVID. For a little while. When he leaves Microsoft, God forbid you do anything productive. He leaves Microsoft and goes and starts a foundation and starts giving his money away. Giving money away, that's good. That we love. Charity. We love. Production, not so much. Charity, that's cool. How many people will be helping this charity? Probably does some good work. More or less than in his business. A lot less. The world does not change by charity. I can often tell people. You know, in America at least, this is more of an American story. In 1776 when America was founded, it was a third-rate colony. The British didn't care that much about it. That's why they didn't really fight. It was poor. It was meaningless. Within 130, 20, 30 years, it was the strongest military and economic force on planet Earth. By World War I, America was the top country in the world. How did that happen? How did that transition happen? Because of charity? Because of community service? Because of other traces of the world? No, because of business. Because of the Carnegie's and the Melons and the Rockefellers and the people who built America and made a lot of money doing it. And what do we call those people? In America? Rubber Barons. They're crooks. They're bad guys. We hate them. Why? Because they built America. They made the country. And every country has the same story. We resent the people who actually are responsible for the success. And that's all driven by this morality. The morality of altruism is anti-markets. In altruism it's anti, I would say, human nature. It's a morality you know, arguably comes from Christianity. It's a morality that worships. Sacrifice in worships. Pain in worships. Suffering. And yes, if you have some other people on the side, that's okay. But success, prosperity, happiness, wealth, account. Again, at best. Emole. But usually, emole. So why do people hate capitalism? Why do people hate free markets? They hate capitalism and free markets because capitalism and free markets are based on the emole system. They're based on self-interest. They're based on people pursuing their own well-being. Both in the production and the consumption side. But on every part of every part of a market, what you see is self-interest. And yes, people might be better off but they must be at catch. They must be something wrong because you can't have it without sacrifice. It's not moral. So there has to be something evil going on. So in my view, you know, we can continue to teach the value of free market economics. It's good. But we won the economics debate a long, long time ago in my view. I mean, the economic proficient doesn't know it but they're just spinning wheels. Like, we've had great economists, Hayek and Mises and Friedman and lots of others who've articulated the case of free markets as well as anybody can have shown that Marx and Keynes and the Neocainsians and all the rest of them are just wrong about economics. That's been done. There's not a lot of more work to do there.  But it's not going to lean anyway because most of the important work has already been done. We've got, we know the economic history. Anybody with eyes can see the economic history. And the sheer fact of the success of capitalism versus the failure of any other system. One of my favorite stories there is I don't know if any of you have been to Hong Kong. Sadly I used to say to your audiences you've got to go to Hong Kong at least once in your life because it's such an amazing city but sadly the Chinese have taken it over so I don't recommend going to Hong Kong anymore. But Hong Kong, like, at the end of World War II was a fishing village. There was nothing there. And it's a rock in the middle of nowhere. There's no natural resources. There's no gold. There's no oil. There's nothing. And yet before the Chinese took over Hong Kong, Hong Kong GDP per capita was higher than New York City. Sorry, higher than the United States. Hong Kong had more skyscrapers than New York City and it had seven and a half million people living on this rock. Where did they come from? They swam. They emigrated from every other country in Asia just to get there. Why? Because there was a free market. They could actually go out there and exhibit themselves and be entrepreneurs and be successful and they could it was all theirs. Taxes were very low. Regulations were very minimal. The welfare state was as minimal as you would get anyway.  It created massive amounts of wealth. In a fair amount of time there was a lot of money. Massive amounts of wealth. In a very short period of time. What it took America to do in 250 years, they did in 75. So the evidence of the success of capitalism and markets is all around us. All people have to do is open their eyes. They don't care. They don't care about the economics. They don't care about the evidence. What people really care about is morality. What people really want to be is good. And they won't believe that capitalism is good because capitalism is self-interest. And this is why I think the debate this is why I think we lose the debate. I know a lot of free market guys libertarians, economists who try to somehow make the argument that free markets are altruistic. Because everybody benefits. Which is true. But they don't get what altruism is after. They don't understand the philosophical power of morality. And as a consequence I think we continue to fail and fail and fail and fail. And the world is moving away from capitalism. I mean the fact is that the only philosopher who has challenged the philosophy of altruism and presented an alternative to it because you could argue Nietzsche challenges altruism but doesn't really provide you with a mild code that's an alternative for a man. And this is I think why she is such an important figure and why she is so crucial I don't think it's possible to win the battle without her because she's the only one to actually provide an alternative to the conventional both religious and secular moral code that exists out there. I mean Iron Man asks the altruist one simple one word question. Why? Why should I sacrifice to you? Why is your life more important to me than my life? Why is your happiness more important to me than my happiness? Why? What's the purpose of my sacrificing to you? Where does it gain me? There's no after life. What credit do I get? For and the fundamental question is the fundamental purpose of morality is not to teach you how to sacrifice and die. The fundamental question of morality is how to teach you how to live successful at living when the only species on planet Earth who doesn't have the how to live encoded in our DNA we have to figure it out we have to use our mind to figure out how to live we have to figure out what's good for human beings and what's bad for human beings it's not encoded a means of survival a plant needs sunlight it needs water it doesn't have to think it doesn't have to conceptualize that it knows it, it's in the DNA so it reaches to the sun and its roots are going looking for water every species out there knows what to do and when the environment around it changes what happens? it usually dies because it can't change fast enough, evolution is too slow and human beings don't function that way we don't have the programming we don't know how to survive I mean at the very basic level we don't know how to survive like how many of you if I if I dropped you into the Amazon jungle you can't rely on your instincts to survive you would die in hours if you relied on your instincts to survive what would it require you to do to survive the Amazon jungle what would you have to do think, figure it out stop for a minute and say okay, I need to figure out shelter I need to figure out water water might not be that hard but I need to figure out what's going to kill me and what's not going to kill me what I can eat, what I can't eat how to protect myself from dangerous animals how to maybe create some traps to catch the animals none of that will come to you instinctively none of that is in your genetic code to survive have to figure it out even at the very basic material level never mind the most abstract spiritual, conceptual, philosophical level we need principles in order to survive and the purpose of morality is to teach us those principles the principles for self survival and ultimately to flourish what does it take for the guys that they can live to flourish as a human being I mean this is a project that I ran picks up, if you will, from Aristotle like Aristotle's philosophy Aristotle's ethics is all about identifying the virtues that lead man to be the best that he can be to live a life of eudaumonia in Greek of flourishing, of happiness however you want to define it fully, a full life so Randa is saying, yeah that's exactly what morality is so let's go out there and figure it out and the first thing she identifies is for human beings in order to live well the one thing they have to do the one thing that there's no choice about is to use their reason it's to think it's to use their mind it's to figure out how the world works and adapt the world to them adapt to the world this is the great fallacy in environmentalism on a different topic, right the great fallacy in environmentalism is the way human beings survive is by changing nature we chop down trees to build huts we blow up mountains to build to build skyscrapers we build air conditioning so we can live in the desert we change the environment to fit our needs that's what we are as a being that's how we survive so morality should be a code of values to teach you how to live, how to live well how to succeed, how to be happy how to serve your own interests how to be a good egoist if you will how to be appropriately selfish and it's very easy to show that the caricature of the person who's selfish lying, cheating, stealing, just a bad person when we think about selfish when we think about egoism when we think about self-interest we think about lying, cheating, stealing we think about bad people we do bad things and it's interesting that we think that's selfish but also making money is selfish by trading notice that if those two go in the same category we may stop mixing them up and now we think every businessman is the lying, cheating, stealing, thief what do you do what do you have to do to them what are you going to do to the businessman if they potentially might be a lying, cheating, stealing, thief what's that what are you going to hate them but what would you do actually, actually do take away their stuff well you're not going to take away their stuff control them you want to control them, you want to regulate them you want to look over their shoulder I like to use the example of I don't know if it's true in Germany but in America you walk into an elevator and on the wall in the elevator there's a little piece of paper and it says a government inspector has inspected this elevator it won't fall and kill you and I always go, cool, I'm so glad because if not for the government inspector, I know that that greedy horrible evil businessman would build elevators that dropped and killed me because I know the best way to make money in a free market is to kill your customers but note that is the assumption behind almost all regulations almost all regulations are based on the idea that without them those greedy evil selfish interested businessmen would do something bad to you and they don't care, of course because they're greedy selfish, they don't care about themselves so McDonald's would poison you their restaurants would poison you you'd eat bad meat and this idea of reputation or this idea that you know, somebody who runs a restaurant would be a decent human being and it's not particularly interested in hurting you and trying to make a living and all regulations almost every single piece of regulation we have out there is built is explained in terms of if we didn't have the regulation some greedy businessmen would do something bad and therefore we need the government to protect us cool, good for the elevator inspectors so happy but that's exactly this notion of self-interest is evil self-interest is necessarily about lying, stealing, cheating but lying, stealing, cheating is not selfish it's not in my self-interest to lie, for example I don't know how many of you have lied before and are not going to ask because they don't really want to know but lying sucks I think that's a technical word for it lying is not a good strategy to get ahead in life in anything and if you don't believe me try spending a couple of days lying to your girlfriend to your boyfriend, to your spouse not a good strategy you're not going to get very far with it and the worst person to lie to is whom? it's yourself it's yourself because if you rely on reason if you rely on thinking thinking depends on facts thinking depends on reality in fact, your thinking is going to be corrupted and if you're survival is going to be threatened I mean, I'm getting to the age where I can barely remember what I did last week if I lie about what I did last week, I have to remember two things instead of just one what I really did and what I lied the lie but it's not even two things I have to remember the truth and who I told the truth to and who I told the lie to why I told them the truth and them the lie it's so complicated I can't hold all that information and think about the mental energy that goes into categorizing that and keeping that afloat which could be spent on better things more productive things so no, lying is not a good strategy if you know people who lie a lot they're almost always reasonable, pathetic human beings the best example of this what is the only profession on earth where lying actually advances you in the profession in every profession, lying is a detriment people don't want to deal with you except one acting acting is not lying, acting is performing there's another profession where lying is kind of a requirement it's done every day and you actually get rewarded for doing it well politicians politics is all about lying I've met a lot of politicians in my life I've never met a happy one they're all pathetic miserable human beings just look at Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton just look in their eyes and you can see it miserable thieves can't live with themselves lying, cheating, stealing is a terrible strategy for living it's disastrous, it's not self-interested it's self-destructive it's actually self-destructive it actually is destroying your own soul who you really are so Rand I think is the only one to defend capitalism morally because Rand is the only one who's willing to stand up and defend self-interest and say self-interest properly understood properly defined, properly articulated thought through, a philosophy of self-interest is the only morality that can then justify capitalism which is a system of self-interest indeed she said she was pro-capitalism because she was pro-egoism rational egoism and she was pro-rational egoism because ultimately she was pro-reason and they all flowed from one another but think about it this way if we had a culture of people trying to pursue their rational self-interest of people who are committed to making their life the best that it could be people who are convinced that they had the capacity the reason, the ability to think for themselves, to live for themselves to pursue their own happiness what kind of world do people like that want to live in where they want mother governments sitting on their shoulder telling them what they can and cannot do what they can and cannot eat where they can and cannot go no people like that, people with self-esteem people who love their life who make the most of their life and are convinced of their ability to do that and do not feel guilty about the fact that they're pursuing their own happiness in their own life they just want to be left free they just wouldn't be left alone to go out and do the things that they know they need to do in order to achieve their own happiness their own success, their own fortune they would demand freedom they would demand capitalism and with no guilt, with no shame with no, you know politicians, the ones who are sometimes a good policy and they're apologetic because they can't be proud of their free market position because they know it goes against fundamentally in the world so if we want a free market revolution what we really need and this is what makes the battle so much harder than most of you think what we really need is a Mao Revolution thank you short break short break break the energy thank you very much now we're going to go into the question round we can also start a debate you're all allowed to controversially articulate your opinions about the question Germany doesn't have a really free market especially compared to the US so I would like to know what do you think about the German approach like having the social market so to speak well, I think it's a myth that the United States has a free market it doesn't fit, but Germany's was I agree, I think it's terrible I think it's terrible I think it's destructive, it's destructive both economically, you could be so much better off, you could be so much wealthier, you could be so much more productive and it's destructive to the human soul how many entrepreneurs are discouraged from pursuing their dreams how many people who want to start businesses and are allowed to start their businesses want to pursue a particular path in life are not allowed to pursue that path in life I think in many respects everybody suffers maybe the poor suffer the most because the free market is the few poor people there are, if at all if there are any poor people because they become more and more productive as you have more and more entrepreneurship as you have a great and great free market so, you know the world is in a disastrous place because it ignores the benefits of free markets and Germany which has an incredibly productive workforce, hard working very intelligent and you're barely achieving what your potential has so you would argue that being wealthy or being materialistically good off is really the ultimate goal it's not the ultimate goal does it provide the highest utility for human beings I don't know what utility means for human beings, I think that whole terminology is bogus I'm not a utilitarian and I think it's a bad way of looking at things no, for some people money is very important for other people it's not, it's why some people become teachers like me I could have been a finance CEO in Wall Street could have made a lot more money we make choices about how we want but the beauty of free markets is you get to make the choice and you have a maximum of opportunities available to you and you get to choose your own values and material wealth is really really really important for everybody some level of it's why we care so much about poverty clearly we care about poverty white because we know that being poor is bad that is not having enough material wealth is not good you do not want to live in Venezuela right now to a large extent because they're very very very poor and they also happen to be very very unfree but both of those go together so the spiritual values of freedom are consistent with the material values of wealth and both are important and one leads to the other they're not independent of one another you have to be free to be rich and if you're rich you're not free you won't stay rich very long so but yes, you know again material wealth is important it's not trivial and it might not be the most important thing but it's what accompanies the most important thing which is morality, the most important thing is to be a good person but to be a good person a society that's built to facilitate good people is a society that leaves people free and therefore we're going to be rich it's cool thank you you mentioned that the mainstream philosophy basically is very uncomfortable with self-interest and the concept of selfishness I wonder why that is what's the underlying reason what is the reason for that I have my own theories on that I mean partially I don't know I mean the philosophy is ultimately shaped by the geniuses who are the great philosophers and it just hasn't been since Aristotle anybody who's picked up on this thread of self-interest and really made it something other than our humanity but I think the dominant theme the dominant reason why it has it's unquestioned is Christianity Christianity is a religion of altruism Buddhism I'm talking about the West what dominates is Christianity Buddhism is a different version Christianity is an embracing of suffering Christians walk around the neck around the neck with a cross what does the cross represent absolute suffering the worst kind of possible death possible and somebody else Jesus in this case suffering for your sins talk about an injustice right so not suffering for their own sins that I can accept but suffering for your sins so Christianity is through has basically made altruism the dominant moral code in the West it is a religion of suffering it is a religion that elevates suffering to a virtuous position it's not an accident that the saints are Christian saints in that sense I think it deviates even from Judaism but it is the dominant force in the West Christianity is shaped so much of Western thinking and Western culture over the last 2000 years so even non-religious westerners when it comes to ethics are completely Christian because they can't think out of the Christian box so maybe they've given up the metaphysics they've abandoned God but they haven't given up the morality which is the morality of Christianity we're all living under Christian code when it comes to morality today what is the best criticism of objectivism and this fair capitalism that you have heard so far I don't know because I think capitalism works it's the right system I don't know what the criticism could be I don't have any it's the right system it doesn't mean that everybody the functions within capitalism is going to be perfect but the systems it's not easy to implement it's not easy to understand how it should be implemented but I see no flaws for example relative to having them illegal what's better so it's not a good the fact that heroin the fact that people use heroin is not a good thing but to ban heroin from use is much worse than to make it legal if you think about coca cola producing heroin and putting the same marketing into that could you imagine it could have a personal society that wouldn't be worth the free market system in no case because again, look you're not going to get a society that is free without people taking the personal responsibility of what that freedom implies and part of what personal responsibility of freedom means is that for example when I moved to the US I don't know if you've ever been to the US but in the United States they have hundreds of different beer commercials all the beer commercials were the same basically young women in bikinis running around drinking beer and all the beer tasted exactly the same now I'm not a beer duker I know that's a sin in German even I'm not a beer duker but to me all the beer tasted the same and all the commercials had the now I always thought in a rational world where people use their minds even a little bit would anybody run these commercials and the answer's no they wouldn't have any effect I mean they didn't have an effect on me I just looked at them and said ok a bunch of I watched them from the bikinis not for the beer but it doesn't advertising doesn't work that way it's advertising is there to provide us with information we need to analyze that information we need to be responsible for all the actions and if Coca-Cola got behind heroin as if that would happen I mean that's another big step that you have to take that a marketing agency would be willing and interested in representing the heroin cartels maybe they would I doubt it and then we would all say because this marketing campaign says heroin is good I should take heroin I can't google heroin and find out how disastrous and horrific it is I mean I will say this if you legalize drugs one of the things that would happen is that there would be an entire industry that would arise that would counter the effects of a drug addiction I think more people would try drugs ok and then they would take whatever medicine or whatever gimmick the industry came up with to get rid of the addiction so what is there something inherently evil about trying drugs I don't think so it's a damage it does to you but you see if capitalism only can come about when people take responsibility for their own lives and take responsibility for their own thinking then those kind of people are not going to just en masse devote themselves to self-destruction hmm yeah I'm not sure how much people really hate capitalism and how much of it is like a player of words or a quick use of language for example there was a study where they asked American students like socialism or capitalism and those who like socialism were also asked what their thing socialism even was and they then came up with some sort of capitalism lied which is just fair up for some reason I mean people really hate losing what they have so if you are like an urban leftist who is somewhat wealthy and you like to enjoy much a lot then your favorite privately owned coffee shop you want to annihilate the coffee shop you want to have cheap and much a lot you want to have basic income so that you can always pay for much a lot so I think it's harder to argue against that it's very easy to argue against labor camps or against a mass poverty but how would you argue against capitalism lied well so let me first address this issue of words that it's there I don't think that's true and yes they don't understand what the words mean that's absolutely true but if you explain it to them if you tell them what capitalism is so for example they did serve in the US only like 20% like capitalism 40% like free markets 60% like free enterprise so everybody said well let's start using free enterprise instead of capitalism we win but then when you ask people what they mean by free enterprise it's capitalism lied it's socialism lied it's not capitalism because it means much more to them in terms of the content I agree with you it's very hard and this is why I think for example Ayn Rand resonates more in Eastern Europe and in Latin America than she does in Germany because in Germany life is comfortable it's mediocre it's not exceptional but it's mediocre and mediocre is not bad particularly when you think of most of the alternatives in human history have been really really bad we've barely survived we've been dirt poor we've been substances of farmers the kind of wealthy mediocrity that we live under today it's not bad at all I get a new iPhone every single year how cool is that so people can ignore where that comes from even the mediocrity depends on something depends on production depends on some economic freedom and therefore it's very very difficult to convince them to take a risk in their mind because they have more freedom because then they can get even more than what they have today they're pretty satisfiable with what they have today it's a huge challenge and this again goes back to morality in my view because a good morality tells you to be ambitious it tells you to strive in life it tells you not just to want a macchiato but to want everything the freedom can provide you psychologically, spiritually and materially trying to be the best not just mediocre but the best human being you can be and this is the challenge we have this is again why it's so hard because it's not about economics the economics are easy I can show you on a chart I can prove equations we can do the economic analysis to show the free market's work in terms of creating more wealth people don't care small ambition is wanting to have a great life and it would be nice if we had more variation between countries or more free countries and allow more immigration so that ambitious people could actually move to the places because I could have I moved to America for these reasons I was ambitious and I could have stated that I would have had a fine life and comfortable and everything and that's why I moved to the US and that's the kind of spirit we need to inculcate in people and that's why it's not just it's a psychological almost struggle that we're facing and Eastern Europe and South America they're still not quite as rich they're not quite as comfortable and that's why they're willing to consider more radical ideas because of that Thank you my question actually ties into what you just said basically summarized the main theme of your talk it's that everything changes on rationality and what I found over the years what I find extremely peculiar with the human condition is that me personally but a lot of people that I know can know perfectly well what I should do now and what the consequences are if I don't do it they're fully understanding rationally but yet I don't do it so what's your interpretation of that well I mean again people are not taught not encouraged to be rational not in a proper sense and they're not told why they should be rational that is that it's good for them because they're not supposed to say that you're not supposed to say that you're supposed to live for yourself and they have new things that are good for you so it's very much about education it's about educating individuals to be self interested to care about themselves and see rationality as a means to achieving that and you know that ignoring the rational ignoring the right path is self destructive and the self destruction matters again it goes back to being ambitious people wanting to live a good life and how do you inculcate that I don't know but you have to start young but do you agree that I mean I've studied objectives for 10 years I fully understand all this and I mean I find myself doing things that are purely rational and I know that I'm irrational or irrational so it takes work it takes effort but it's also like a biological component I mean Aristotle says we're the rational animal but we're still animal like we have the elliptic system we're driven to parts by we definitely have so the default for human beings I'm going to talk about this default for human beings is a perceptual level conception i.e. being rational, being abstract takes effort


garner and we organized this Training to build the capacity of the youth who are already interested in Sustainability and we saw a lot of youth close to hundred people who were trained both virtually and in person and it was It was really amazing So these are some of the issues that we're talking about and I believe that if people have access to these kind of knowledge They will be able to It will also be able to improve other people's habit or life because for me when I read about Topics when I read about stories around the environment it helped me to now understand it So now if I'm doing something I'm conscious about What I'm doing so that I can be able to protect my environment And it's all because I had access to these knowledge and this is what we are talking about You know, it helps to improve people's habit And it also helps people to Advocate their right because if you know your right, you'll be able to advocate your right This is just a brief story that I wanted to share with you all That you don't have to be an expert just come in have an open mind connected to your story See what you can do in the moment And so I'm I'm gonna we're gonna play a video that We put together it's just a summary of what happened in the community like Like a quick video. I don't know if alex you can go ahead to play a video We have some videos that we want to showcase to everyone Okay, so while we move in for How we're waiting for alex to Share his life So what will we be doing? um so what we tend to do in um From now on with is to um Okay, sure. Let's let us just go ahead. Yeah Can you hear me? No Yeah, we can hear you so The video wasn't working. We'll share it and uh, it's in the slides already And we'll share a little sorry So alex do we just move to the next slide? Oh, yeah Okay So all we keep doing What we want to keep doing is to be able to connect more youth to the movement through sustainability campaign and we're saying sustainability campaign because The youth have embraced sustainability topics issues around sustainability And it's a very great way to bring in the youth to sort of bring like have a space for Them to be able to do what they love best and in that kind of field We also want to continue to support communities as they need To work with more strategic partnership and partnership is very significant because a lot of That one of the great way to reach new audiences to get specific audience is through partnership and partnership has proven to be A very great way of Doing that so bringing in some strategic partnership is very important even just like this campaign This is a strategic partnership with a new and human right and all of that new and environmental Supporting and all that so It's it's not like a very great way like we did for the youth climate council. Look at your local communities see what kind of partnerships that can Bring sustainable strategic See which kind of partnership can sort of bring this kind of youth into your space into your community We document these kind of stories And we also want to be connecting deeper thematic training with a campaign to help organize this participate effectively And I like to be talking more about that how you want to Train uh campaign organizers and all of that. So we also want to provide regional support for the campaign Yes, regional support is very important because this is a global campaign. It's a campaign that we deal with different Continent different regions and each region is Different in the way that they respond to some of these topics. And so We want to be able to support regionally In terms of this campaign So I think I'll hand it over um to Alex to instead of like help more To handle So, um, I wanted to invite our some of our regional organizers, uh, who are on the call. Um, did Romeo Make it into the call I'm not Okay, so, um, we'll start with, uh, michelle then uh to talk a little bit about their experience in the minnow region and the aerobic community Hello, everyone. Uh, my name is michelle back in I was organizing the years campaign in the Arabic communities this year we had Really a great campaign because we tried to organize the campaign in using different approach And normally in the Arabic Arabic home word we have like 25 countries. So before we used to organize different Different contests and people efforts and participants were divided for different In different places. So this year we tried to organize a unified contest and thanks to the efforts spent by the Organizers and we were able to To achieve a great success And this is the first time in the Arabic community. We arrived to do a unified Uh, a unified contest For one of the wikimedia campaigns And we are happy to To do that In addition to that The contest was divided into Two parts we have We have editing campaigns, which is normal campaign where people go to the articles and try to add Contents to to to these articles and we had also an image An image contest where people Can go to the street can go to their own local Area to take photos and upload these photos to the To comments and then they have to to put the photos in the article that the corresponding articles As well as wiki data items From our perspective Last year our this year campaign was really a success And we are looking forward to repeat the same Approach with enhancement because we had a huge feedback from participants And we are looking forward to to include These feedbacks these feedbacks into the model we are developing and I think next year we are going To come back again with another enhanced version of the arabic unified contest And in the in the region. So thank you a lot for For giving us this This opportunity and for giving us a support to To to continue organizing this this contest Thank you so much michelle and it was really neat because michelle was a Campaign organizing fellow the year before and so helped me design the First iteration of the right to a healthy environment campaign and he was able to bring that learning back to the arabic community and like spend more time Actually building that practice and context And so this is a really important part of how we're designing this campaign is local skill out to regional skill out to local skill International skill out to regional and then local skill I want to invite I Probably not pronouncing. That's right. Get me solo. Uh, it was that close Hi Okay, so my name is Jamie solar and short from Nigeria and I co-organized with Project lead were the finia one do and james and james for cola, but i'm busy today So for the campaign this year What happened is that we had more We had we organized in more states Unlike the last one because we discovered that Well from last year we had much more. There was so much interest From last year. So we took the campaign to three other locations and what we did was that we split The campaign into different sections if you come to Nigeria before you will know that you have the northern Nigeria You have the southern you have the western Nigeria So what we did this year was that they had they organized in all these locations From the north central in Norway that we organized in the east or where we then we organized in Lagos I'm just going to speak more on the Lagos The Lagos location this year. We were able to partner with um We had the the information officer of the un come speak to us Apart from the normal editor turn that we do that we did so we invited her to talk about, you know, the environment knowing about, you know, the new The lord that when we learned that when released about the environment and you know Our rights, you know, the rights of the environment and she spoke about it To um for an extent then we had um the audience Participants in her act with her and I discovered that this campaign was was fluid was not second stone in the sense that It wasn't an all, you know for all the different Of locations that we organized We were not doing the same thing at the same time because we discovered that we couldn't do wasn't a one on one side before Or you know for this location and we discovered that just as ruby I said earlier There was you know, the youth was vested in In this campaign. They were so interested and There was something very surprising about, you know, this particular event There's a particular young man that came in and you know, his twist, you know, his approach to um the environment or talking about the rights, you know The human rights and the rights of health environment is that he he was a was an artist So he had written songs And he had written poetry And actually he was a bit famous although I didn't really know him But those some people have happened to know him and I just thought about it. Okay This could be a little way that, you know, next year perhaps He could use that to campaign, you know, you have songs go out and everybody knows that Most young people like songs. So that's another twist to it. So we're now looking at it. Okay That could be something that will show up next year Then we also discovered that the participants were we're so vested in it and they they took some of them We're ready I mean, they were they were so interested that we're ready to, you know, we have to practically, you know We have to practically end the session for the agreed time They also have a partnership with the american corner. We hosted the leg up event in american corner and We're looking at how we call, you know, develop more collaborations and partnerships, you know For this for the next campaign And we know to get it moving forward. Thank you Thank you so much. It's really wonderful. And for the next portion by gabriel, he's going to speak in spanish. So if you're listening with the translation, make sure you switch to the english channel Um, so uh Gabrielle, uh That's the And I want to thank all the opportunities that organize both wikipedia argentina as wikipedia uruguay bringing us workshops and opportunities to accompany us, to learn, to use the tools, to give us Demonstration Oh Chapter drafting committee is a group of wikimedean working together with the movement To write our most pivotal Document for our next chapter the chapter is a document that will consolidate our values and principles And that we all define world responsibilities Across the movement to which everyone who's willing to contribute to our vision should abide by It's going to be actually deciding on our governance It's going to be Stating the relationship between the different stakeholders and also showing the future structures that will be in our movement So in that sense, it's an essential document It's a key document and it will be providing a lot of guidelines for governance and for other areas for all the stakeholders in our movement The movement charter will be a document that brings together all our policies on governance and Will tell you everything you need to know For navigating the wikimedia landscape I got involved in the mcdc Considering that the role that I play within the foundation Has a lot of connection with the movement in the almost nine years that i've been working for the wikimedia foundation I feel myself part of the movement caring so deeply about The vision and the mission that we want to carry in the world And for that I want to make sure that I can play a role in shaping the future of how our movement Is governed is organized and is thought through better when I heard about it in the first time It sounded for me like an actual chance of leaving a fingerprint in the world Or let's say in the free knowledge world by participating in drafting The document that will shape and design our future in the movement our governance models our different relationships between different stakeholders according to the recommendations of 2030 strategy I got involved in the movement charter because I've been working all along the global conversations to Basically decide what should be going into it in their board term And then I helped craft the actual structure of the committee and through that some people suggested Richard you should run and actually I saw that there was benefit to be gained by continuing down it I think that with my 60 years of experience in the wiki media movement as well as my background in social work and combined with a lot of travels I've been Doing in in the last years I think I can help Create this essential document for our movement With the experience I have gained over the past 10 years in the movement in Africa and In the french speaking world I thought it Would be a good idea to contribute to the building of the movement by Choosing to apply as a member of the movement Chartered drafting committee as I come from North Africa. I really thought that Insights from my region needed to be in Elaborating this document in writing this document I wanted to join other people from different regions in the world from different interests and representing different Stakeholders either affiliates or the foundation or online volunteers in order to walk all together I joined the committee just a few weeks ago Helping to translate the principles of the 2030 recommendations into tangible structures for our movement And my one of my main motivations is to make those structures more accessible for people to join the movement And then have access to power and influence within it For me being part of the MCDC is a way to give back to my local community And other amazing people especially from other other represented communities in such strategic processes As I've been navigating through different spaces in the movement It became clear to me that we need structural changes and that the charter is the time in place to make it happen I love the idea of reimagining how our movement can be But I didn't want it to be just in my imagination. So Now a proud member of the MCDC and I truly hope I can bring value to its outcomes Currently we are working on Drafting subcommittees so that we can have parts of the document written We are planning to produce the charter by 2024 And we really would like to do it in collaboration with the community and with all the others stakeholders So that we can be able to deliver this really key document that will be very helpful for setting up the global council or setting up a lot of other structures and Guiding the governance of the movement in the future as it is recommended by the 2030 strategy You can expect from the content clear definitions of stakeholders and their responsibilities as well The description of new entities such as hubs and the global council The charter and its consequence ratification is also the mechanism for which the global council will be instituted We can understand the movement charter as a document that anyone who reads it can understand our governance model and how we work as This complex ecosystem made by so many different stakeholders Stay tuned for a lot of work that's coming from the movement charter drafting committee We're really eager to see how it can play a better role to make sure that we're creating a navigation roadmap A constitution for the movement that really finds ways to showcase the power that we have But also what are the roles the responsibilities the dues and obligations that we all have to be part of this work As to why as a community we need it The movement charter is there to basically address a number of the difficulties we have Between resourcing and authority of the foundation and the community and the affiliates And the science are willing to change and the movement charter is going to lay out how that's going to happen So this is very important that we agree on the one set of fair rules How we organize ourselves How we cooperate How we share responsibilities and resources How we support each other And how we hold each other accountable So the process of drafting the movement charter It should go by different stages We should draft it first then review it with the community then fix any missing stuff review any other stuff add Remove then review it again. So iterations so many iterations We hope the movement charter to be ready for ratification After the summer of 2023 A bit all will depend on your feedback Thank you for your time. We look forward to talking with you to build the stronger movements together Um, is carol back? Yeah, i'm here Hmm, great And i think we're going to move to manuf for the presentation on our current work Hello, hello, i'm manufreet and i'm going to walk you through the updates that we have In regards to the work that we have done so far and also how we have planned to take this work forward So yeah, so as all my fellow committee members have shared in the video that you saw earlier We believe that this is going to be a charter for the movement For our next generation next type of piece yeah, so currently like We are You can see the names of all the people who represent different regions different languages and projects on the committee We are being supported by three staff liaison at the time Abadnu and carol who are also joining us today for this session We also have board of trust cds on joining us and bringing their expertise and all the experience that they have Acquired over the years of their association with the movement Next slide So here you can see there are two sections the first is subcommittees and the next one is the drafting troops Subcommittees are the committees that we have formed within mcdc to support the workflows So the first one is the communication subcommittee and their primary responsibilities to actually plan and design engagements with stakeholders The research subcommittee is entirely working on Identifying the work that has already been done by different stakeholders in the movement and also by the committees and the teams Outside the movement and to actually bring that information to the relevant drafting groups The drafting groups are the teams that have been formed to work on certain sections of the charter As of now we are focusing on three primary subjects These are values and principles preamble and rules and responsibilities So we have all shared this responsibility among ourselves. You'll get to see like who's on this committee in the next slides Next slide please From all the discussions that we've had so far there are key content agreements that we Have within the committee. The first is that It should be the movement charter should be a concise high level document And we have also agreed that in order to keep it concise It's important for us to actually focus on appendices to address all sorts of information and relevant details there We're also going to focus on definition and preamble that is going to be the first content of the movement charter And then the fourth one is enforcing that the charter should include clear mechanisms of force enforcing the content Next slide please Yeah, so we met here at Berlin for our first in person meeting and in that Meeting we were able to finalize the content outline of the charter So these are going to be the definite sections of the charter The first as I mentioned earlier is going to be preamble The second section is values principles and policies and the third one is going to be definition Um, the fourth section would be global council and definitely we are going to segregate information in two sections Within that larger umbrella of global council, which will address two specific rules Like rules and responsibilities and the other segment would be entirely on decision making Apart from that we'll have a section dealing with amendments and implementations Because there's a lot of effort energy and time that is going into drafting this charter and being vigilant of how exhausting And tiring this process is and how this how much resources go into supporting the process We are vigilantly observing the changes that the movement might require with the evolving Affiliates and evolving projects We are adding this section to address all those changes as they appear in future The last section is appendices and glossary Where we're going to outline the key content and definitions Next slide Um, so this is something that communication subcommittee has worked on we have Defined a stakeholder engagement plan, which is not public as of now We are going to be talking more about this during week media summit and in our future communications We have one public email address Where you can reach out to us with your questions or with any kind of work that you have done In with your organization or as individual contributors to the movement you can share that work Hello, uh, we want to apologize so much for the interruption the delay from the work meeting of the year Interrupted the recording and unfortunately Gabriel had to drop off because of that moment We will make sure that his experience is captured and the wiki for human rights and my comedians for sustainable development Telegram channels and I I'm so sorry for that. Um, it's really important that we have these regional communities that Are involved in the campaign And especially as Gabriel was saying, uh, both the The there are some systematic gaps in languages like Spanish that are best addressed by platforms like Wikipedia We've seen this with the arabic and french and other communities that participated in non-english languages as well That the clang at environmental topics really do need coverage in these other spaces, um, so because we're presenting and Sharing the campaign, um, and we'll make sure this video is circulated We just wanted to share out what exactly is coming up for the next part of This topics for impact focus on sustainability um, and we'll uh share just briefly that And how that is working So we are going to be running an experimental training for organizers of campaigns, uh, in the the Wikimedia movement are in response to the topics for impact recommendation what we've learned from the wiki for human rights campaign is that These thematic topic called actions are really impactful for the wikimedia movement as ruby and All of our local organizers have said it brings in new and different communities into the movement Um, and it's really important that we kind of create space for that We are going to be launching an experimental course this year for 30 plus organizers who have experience Uh, running campaign activities in the movement where we will be talking through how to design a campaign from scratch The goal is not only to have more prepared organizers for the wiki for human rights Earth Day campaign window Around the topic of sustainability and climate but also to give you skills and insight required to apply that structure to other topics And so we're really excited for this. Uh, the hope is to have a regulator capacity building opportunity for organizers interested in campaigns We'll be announcing that soon Um, keep an eye out for announcements in the telegram channels and other spaces Additionally, there's uh, two campaign cycles that are relevant to this theme. Uh, both the african knowledge initiative campaigns that were recently announced by phoenix on the african wikimedeans mailing list with the wikimedia residents seslaus who Is a wonderful organizer of wiki loves africa and other campaigns And they're going to be doing other interventions around youth environment in africa day And we will be doing a earth day campaign cycle again That will include the wiki for human rights topics, but also other sustainability topics So keep an eye out for that announcement And those on the panels we've used so far Additionally, um because The wikimedia movement is one of the big open Communities working on climate. Um, I wanted to highlight a grant that was given to the open climate community group Uh, this is a group posted by open environmental data and apropedia who are allies of the wikimedia movement They are going to be announcing fellowships for organizers in the Wikimedia movement who want to connect with other people and other parts of the open movement around climate and sustainability on these the collaborations are designed to be Take the open movements values And kind of connect them to the climate movement in the moment we're in now If you want to follow more you can Go to apropedia in the open climate page um, and lastly, uh We want to keep you involved There are two telegram channels that where we share all the updates about the sustainability work Uh, the specific to the wiki for human rights campaign telegram channel and the wikimedia for sustainable development one Both of these have opportunities and like the role that ruby played this year michelle the year before We had another organizing fellow role For this year part of the goal of the campaign is to rotate Coordination of the campaign amongst different organizers within wikimedia movement They give them an opportunity to network and learn how to design these campaigns As ruby was saying it's a really important opportunity for you know development and learning and get to a really neat chance to dive deep And then go back into your part of the movement and use those goals So apologies for the disruption in the the session And it's really I hope the next part of the The program is able to continue And we're really excited that we So I will be sharing links to these opportunities in the various telegram channels and it's really exciting and thank you michelle ruby and given solar for Hanging in there and trying to come back I realized that when presentations are disrupted. It's always challenging. So Lots of appreciation for everyone involved The 40 community events the 700 participants only happens when we pull together as a movement to address topics for impact And this is the the future that movement strategy and other parts of the Movement strategy wants us to go and so I'm excited for this and we hope we can keep learning together on how to do this better each year So thank you. And if you have questions, please reach out to us in the telegram groups and again Because of the disruption I do expect Very many people to be in the chat And we hope we can Connect more. Um, if you have questions in the ether plan, I will try to answer them. But otherwise, please connect with us in the telegram groups I I am yeah And we saw some people so if you have uh Uh questions feel free to drop them in the chat. We can we can respond to it. Uh, just discovered that their folks still hanging out um We can definitely respond to those or the ether plan I see that we had a wonderful two day event so sitting down across and come from different Um, I spoke with a class and that's for the movement campaign It was a site for we learned we talked about And most of them before the first time they Actually In helping to bridge their content Hi, my name is Rejuvena Mishibar Fellow at the Wikipedia Foundation for the YouTube Human Rights One thing I learned from this workshop is you don't have to be a professional to publish a stuff The little you can do Edit your word, add a meaning, add an explanation to something and then it goes a long way And also be sure to try as much as possible to publish every little thing that happened in July So And this program has been I've been working with one knowledge as to how climate change is changing the world and how I can contribute to my What's up to the development? We Are That's the kind of land was the ability to edit from Wikipedia and also help write our own story to help Hi everybody, my name is Sarah from Wiki for human rights fiction So I joined this with this today For their edits on issues relating to the environment and climate change Initially, I came with some very funny discussions about Wikipedia, but I've been really enlightened But it's more than just Editing things, but in between much like you can actually And it's very The sources are really credible as well. So I've been really imparted and I hope to be To benefit the community and the companies and the ground companies were like I'm going to play the community video as well It's not coming through Completely correctly For some reason the screen share is not working on the video. I think the Okay, this is a little bit challenging. We're not getting a proper We're not getting a proper screen share in the audio. Um Yeah, were there any other questions or observations we wanted to capture on video before? Well, I I think we will see the floor because of the complexities that happened here And I'm so sorry. I did answer a question in the chat about the Wikimedia foundations positioning on Renumeration and stuff um The place to look for information about our human rights positions about how the foundation supports Human rights is through the human rights impact assessment and the other Parts of the the other part of the organization that's focused on human rights You can ask specific questions there on the talk page My team is not a policy team But it is a organizing team. And so we aren't the primary stakeholders Playing and a lot of experience like I love how to do my own things I'm gonna uh suggest we stop the session because um We don't have any more questions and the video playback is not working very well So Hello My name is Darya Sibulska the director of programs at Wikimedia UK And I'll be presenting research that I did last year with my colleague Agniesz Prusik um The aim is of this short session is to present a broad narrative that could be used for advocacy for our work And it connects Wikimedia activities with digital skills and civil society I hope it can also be a inspiration for other groups affiliates of how to Pick ideas for for research based on your strategic framework So let's start this slides um So this is just a 15 minute session. Um, I'm not sure I'll have questions time for questions But do feel free to drop them In the ether pad or on the chat or contact me The details are on the slide If you follow the QR code, it will send you to my slides as well So you can copy content from there if you like Um, I'm very mindful. This is almost the end of the conference So many thanks for joining and thank you for your attention And next slide So let me start with the conclusion of the research the sort of top line that we arrived at A research showed that Wikimedia programs teach participants information literacy And that higher information literacy can significantly increase citizen engagement in democratic processes Meaning if you have Higher information literacy It makes you a more active engaged citizen In the full research, uh, we've uh done a lot of analysis and kind of explaining Uh Terms such as information literacy various literacy frameworks democracy Um, I won't get into all of that. But just for this presentation I want to uh explain one key term for me civil society means All the activities of citizens in which they take collective action Uh for social good independently of government or business And next slide For a little bit of a background of how I arrived at working on on this. Um, so, uh, I work at wikimedia uk and My inspiration is our strategic framework Which is a vision of a more informed democratic and equitable society through open knowledge The mission is to enable people to engage with open knowledge And access reliable information to be more To have more understanding of the world and make good decisions. And we also have a number of Long-term outcomes And of which the important ones are That we reflect wikimedia reflects our diverse society That our work has increased free ethical access to knowledge And that our work has supported the development of high levels of information literacy And for me as a program director I think about designing activities programs that speak to this strategy. And so I was thinking How can I show that um Our work is supporting information literacy and that in turn it Creates a more equitable democratic society So that was my sort of impetus to look at this And next slide And the other the other thing is the global context really of the shrinking civil society space meaning that It seems that there's fewer and fewer spaces where citizens can develop and practice key civic skills such as collaboration self-representation Work within diversity and difference of opinion And and I think our work provides that sort of a space Which means that it's quite important we can continue Talking about it and continue protecting and offering that space So onto the research itself next slide And just to say when I when I when I say research we did a lot of desk analysis analyzing materials Papers that have been done so far and a lot of interviews with participants of of wikimedia case programs And through all of this we concluded that we can evidence that participating in wikimedia Programs increases information literacy and when I say wikimedia programs is any sort of typical Activities that we do like editing training editathons Explaining wikimedia ecosystem to others essentially getting them to to participate so The key the key elements of information literacy that we've focused on and I'll talk you through those four elements The first one is understanding content meaning content meaning ideas opinions facts And and where that content comes from so evaluating the trustworthiness of of information Verifying the information so finding the original source fast fact checking checking against other information So that's the first area second is Applying critical thinking skills analyzing detecting bias evaluating synthesizing and reflecting on the impact of false information on society Then there is using collaborative and group learning skills Like communication problem-solving teamwork and lastly Encouraging civic disposition, which is a big a big phrase But it means things like respecting diversity of opinion or Taking personal responsibility for your behavior online And I'm sure you can see as I talk for those areas that Participating in wiki editing or learning those skills Hit all four of those areas like anybody who is Participating in a wiki editing training would develop information literacy skills based on how Our project is structured So that's the first area like our work builds information literacy skills And then on to the second area next slide We can Also evidence that our work helps strengthen civil society and democratic processes And again, uh, we've identified four areas in Which this happens? The first is that wiki media overall provides open and free access to information We facilitate capturing and sharing of Historical and cultural memory And and this is particularly important when we capture Knowledge that has been under represented Which means that we can redress the imbalance of of representation of marginalized groups Second like we said already our work improves information literacy skills um, this can help fight miss and disinformation and and Through that Work against systemic bias Which then means we can build more tolerance and cultural understanding across diverse groups Then we encourage we can encourage volunteering um Working on wiki media provides opportunity for anybody to self organize self represent Learn useful skills become active members of democratic society And then lastly we provide Accessible collaborative infrastructure. This points a little meta But what I mean is that our programs are delivered within the wiki media ecosystem Which uses collaborative tools and draws on consensus-based community decision-making process And so when participants learners editors, um kind of Participate and use that system. They gain direct experience of navigating that sort of community decision-making process um Participation online, which means that they build civic engagement skills for wiki, but also skills that can be used elsewhere And I think those four areas Are useful for for anybody for any groups, but I think they're particularly important for marginalized groups um when we did interviews for for this for this research, we talked to some refugee groups and they said that um participating on wiki media and sharing their content Gives them opportunity to maintain Cultural identity and share something self represent in a way that wouldn't be possible otherwise Which I think is very powerful now This is in an ideal wiki media world. I guess where we've reached Knowledge equity and our community is particularly inviting to to those groups But the hope is there and so last Next slide And so this is the core of the argument and at wiki media uk we've been thinking about how to Use that for our advocacy work essentially and we came up with a number of recommendations that we're going to be using and so those recommendations are that We recommend that definitions of information literacy At a national level promote the importance of information literacy for democratic participation That the culture of that democratic participation is embedded in formal education curricula because we found that It's not always included and we think it's important and wiki media could be used as a way of demonstrating that process of civic engagement And we recommend that information literacy resources from wiki media are harnessed in education programs because We on our projects not only have a lot of educational content As such but also a lot of information And knowledge about information literacy itself like referencing, you know, citations versatility reliability and and so on and We also came up with a number of recommendations for our partner organizations because a lot of our work is done in partnership with cultural or educational organizations and those are that organizations should organize wiki volunteering activities as a way of promoting civic engagement and that can be Prompting civic engagement both online and offline as well actually We also recommend that The organization support marginalized groups to harness the skills gained through any wiki training so they can Learn how to share their cultural heritage self organize self represent And develop any other skills that can help them become members of a of a democratic society and then lastly that The organization supports citizens to tackle systemic biases on wiki media so that The project more accurately Reflects our society so To put the The research and the conclusion of it in another way participating In wiki media projects can facilitate the spirit of working together Towards a common good of the goal of free knowledge for all And it can facilitate collaboration with others Activism which in the long run encourages and empowered civil society And this can go some way. I hope to realize the wiki media uk vision of a more informed democratic and equitable civil society And so on to the last slide And so that's all I have um The qr code on the slide Sends you to a pdf with a summary of the research And so does this this short link, but um in a few weeks time. I'll have a full publication That that will be nicely designed that can be shared with with people. So if this is Of interest Please get in touch with me or watch this space. I'll I'll be sure to promote the Uh research when the project is when the publication is ready So I think we're at time I'm having a quick look at the Etherpad, but I'm not seeing anything there I will have a look at the chart as well Um Which is busy But I think I'll I'll have a look at that In a second and respond the best I can Once we've concluded the session Thank you Hello everyone Day four, we made it through this meeting is being recorded We made it through the end of day four of wiki mania 2022 The hybrid edition well I am Incredibly proud and honored to have been part of this team to make wiki mania come to life I am incredibly proud of our cot this year Thank you to everyone all the volunteers that have supported wiki mania throughout these days Uh in any role in any capacity We could not have done this without you. Thank you to all our presenters Uh that had some patience with us on day one and remained patient throughout the days Um But we made it y'all. I hope it was a fun experience. I hope you learned a lot I hope you danced. I hope you sang a little bit Um I also want to thank uh my colleagues and the movement communications team Y'all are fantastic. Y'all rock And uh, yeah, I will see you all in 2023 Singapore in case you have missed it. We're going to Singapore Uh And yes, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for spending time with us in odd hours of the day Thank you for spending time with the wide the wider movement I I can't be any happier for this to be one of the most inclusive wiki manias ever We have offered 13 languages through live interpretation this year I think we set a new standard for wiki mania Um, and i'm i'm just so proud to be part of this global diverse movement Oh fego Yeah, I think you can hear me well now. Um We just got off from the global dance off. So that was really fun seeing a lot of you dance Um, and I just wanted to actually jump in. I think Joel Has started off with some thanks, but I'd love to really reiterate that for The core organizing team. They were just amazing to work with and really they put in so many hours and brain power To bring wiki mania to life this year and just really excited at the results But with that I actually would love for them to kind of also give their last words and jump in as they'd like I see nanor's reacting. No, nor would you like to jump in? The heart that I used to show to you during the Meetings it's not it's a little bit far from me. So just give this heart from here So happy to be a part of this I don't know where where these six months and all these meetings and hours went so fast and happy to be part of this and I hope that everyone Enjoy it as I did and see you on 2023 Thank you anyone else from the cot want to jump in give some words or Anyone else from the team as well. Feel free to jump in One more go ahead Thank you. Well any thanks to everyone for the active participation to the speakers to the volunteers who were being both there is a long list of the wiki mania foundation staff and of course most all thanks to my fellows cot members and and control 2022 We share an exchange different point of views and Well, I look forward to wiki mania 2023 Singapore with Thank you. Omar opening it up for anyone else from the cot or from staff and then As well if any attendee wants to jump in as well and give some words And then we can call wiki mania 2023 2022. Sorry a wrap Mayor go ahead Hello. Thank you. I will find you. Um, hi everyone. This is my year. I'm the director of movement communications I really wanted to take a moment to thank the core organizing team I don't know if everyone we have a lot of newcomers this year knows this like hours and hours of kind of volunteer labor goes into Uh, delivering Uh wiki mania These people are working, you know, so hard to pull together an event for all of us That get to kind of come to it and to enjoy it and So, yeah, so I just really want to celebrate the volunteers You know behind Pulling this together from coming up with the idea of us Of a session that of a wiki mania that welcomes newcomers and nanor has this amazing story that you should all make her tell you About her first wiki mania and how someone told her that it's not meant for newcomers and how you know years later She's kind of come together to put out a wiki mania that's specifically for newcomers and everyone in the cot You know has similar stories of kind of how they've come to pull off An event like this. So I just really want to celebrate them and also want to celebrate So many volunteers from kind of people who Offered to volunteer for trust and safety people who were kind of on the wiki mania wiki changing the program as we went along You know, we attack issues and people would help change the program on the wiki all these things, you know It's not else it's wiki medians So thank you all of you. All right, we'll take two more Whoever would like to speak. I think I see someone M. Kabir I believe You go right ahead All right, we can't hear you but if anyone else would like to jump in or some last words before we let each other go and Generate excitement for singapore 2023 I can say something else. I go sorry. I can't see the option for raising hands So I'm really glad that this is my second wiki mania my first was 2021 and I was part of the 2021 co-organizing team and I got to experience the 2022 wiki mania as tough but I'm I'm looking forward to experiencing the 2023 wiki mania, which is an in person event and I know many newcomers like myself I also looking forward to that just to get a feel Of what wiki mania was like or rather what it's been like and what it's going to be like So I'm excited about that and I'm really Grateful and I want to acknowledge all the effort that I've seen go into Making wiki mania what it is from the co team members from all the volunteers from staff You guys rock. You guys rock. You are the unsung heroes that people hardly see There's so much work that goes behind the scenes. Yeah, and I'm so proud of you also see you in singapore Thanks so much. Winnie anyone else would like to jump in About their experience or anything you'd like to close off wiki mania 2022 with Antony go ahead Thank you so much I'd like to thank everyone everyone for participating new wiki mania 2022 It was really amazing to see that some of you Have joined the conference Even on the hours that are really night in your in your scenarios Or in your area that you are coming from but still you enjoyed and you were there with us So I really want to appreciate for that also Inshallah, Inshallah, they say See you on wiki mania 2020 Thank you All right, perfect. Thank you so much, Antony. I see I think Mikael with your hand raised go ahead Yes, just before I say maybe it's confirming that you hear me. Yes Perfect, I know there were a lot of interesting talks a lot of technical talks as well for the wiki editors Those were fantastic, but above all I want to make it short. I don't want to repeat anything but During this wiki mania, I've encountered a lot of people with great hearts And that's the most lovely thing above all And in the last dj set we saw people dancing having fun and above all reuniting So it's a great space for you know, come side and Let to get to know one another. So thank you and the cot members they spread of course a lot of knowledge A lot of involvement a lot of hours. You have no idea how much hours they spend But above all above all and I've been saying this word a lot above all A good heart. So thanks everybody Thank you, Mikael Anyone else would like to jump in if not we can close off for this year It seems like that was it El Figo That's a wrap everyone See you all in Singapore Bye-bye everyone. Thanks so much everyone. Enjoy Thank you Thanks everyone See you Singapore