All right, questions? Yeah? What would you say to Bill Gates if he had the opportunity to talk to him? What would I say to Bill Gates if he had the opportunity to talk to him? Stop listening to Warren Buffett. I don't know if you know, but Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have become very good friends. And Bill Gates views Warren Buffett as a father figure. And Warren Buffett is the second richest man in the world, or the third richest, or something like that. And Warren Buffett is very, very corrupt intellectually. He is a student of a philosopher, a famous American philosopher named John Walls. I don't know if you're familiar with John Walls. So this is Warren Buffett's explanation for his wealth. I got lucky. I got lucky.  He doesn't believe in free will at the end of the day. So he believes that he had the right genes, the right parents, and was born in the right century to take advantage of those genes and those parents, to make them on either he did. He didn't choose anything. And Bill Gates has been very influenced like this. And Warren Buffett as a consequence always advocates for higher taxes out of guilt. Of course, he always finds ways not to pay them, but he advocates for them. And Bill Gates has learned from him. So he used to be much better. And over the last 10, 15 years, he's been under Warren Buffett's influence and has become, I'd say, stop feeling guilty. Take pride in your achievements, which I think he has anyway. You can tell he's got a sort of vibrancy to him, just like Steve Jobs used to have. You get a sense that this guy knows somewhere. But at the same time, he feels guilty. He's split. He's conflicted.  But at the end of the day, what I'd really tell Bill Gates is thank you. Because whenever I paid for all the Microsoft products, I'd bought all those years. And it's not that much because I'm an Apple guy. I've been since 1989. It was hard. There were years where it was very hard to be an Apple person. But I would say thank you because whatever I paid for those products, it's a fraction of the value I got from it. And I think if we all had that attitude and we told the very successful businessman, thank you, I think the world would be a much better place. And my question is actually also about Bill Gates. You were saying that if he wasn't focused on charity and he was just producing what he was before, he would be helping more people. But isn't that just up to him? And you're assuming that he feels guilty. But maybe this is just what he wants to do. Yeah, but I prefaced that by saying that when you watch him talking about his charity, it's kind of OK. When you watch him talking about investment, he lights up. He lights up. So I'm guessing I don't know him, but I think it's a pretty good educated guess, given the culture, given everything, and given the justice to bond that went after him, and given all the trials. That his attitude is I need to do the charity to be a good guy. But I love the investing. And what I'm saying is drop the unearned guilt. If you really did something bad, you should feel guilty about it. But if you did something good, you shouldn't feel guilty about doing something good. He feels it. You can tell in his speeches when he talks about it, like Juan Buffett.  He could burn it. It's his money. But there's an industry and a political right and what I think is morally right. And morally, I think he's committed crime. In a sense, that he's not living to his full potential. He's not doing what he really wants to do. He's doing it based on a feeling of unearned guilt, based on a false morality. I'm going to go that way. How do you integrate externalities in your story? How do we deal with externalities, like? Yeah, the environment or like polluting. So the primary way to deal with externalities is to internalize them. The problem of externalities is that too much of a space is public. But if everything was private, and I go all out, say if the rivers were private, then nobody would pollute them, because nobody pollutes my backyard. Because we have law that is well established for thousands of years, hundreds of years, that says you can't put your garbage in mine. If I owned the river, you couldn't pollute the river. Or if even if I owned a chunk of river, there's law that deals with all these things. It's sometimes messy and complicated, but there's a legal system exactly for that. If a factory over here spews stuff into the air that I can prove causes me harm, I'm getting sick, I have legal recourse against them. And if lots of factories clearly spewing out something that's causing harm to people in their lawsuits and there's medical proof, then sure the government steps in and bans that because the government's responsibility is to protect individual rights. And if they're violating my rights by poisoning me, then they need a stop. But that requires proof that real harm is being done to real individuals. And that's not what happens today. What happens today is speculation about maybe this thing might one day be damaging to somebody. And it would probably require precedent in a court of law where there's actually, you show evidence. And a court would have to, well, yes, this is poison. And then the government would take into account and maybe ban our product. So that's how you would deal with it. Let me say this. And you guys are all young, but most of you are young. We live in the cleanest environment in human history.  The air you breathe, even in industrial Rotterdam, is cleaner than the air your ancestors breathe on farms where there was horse dung and manure everywhere. And they couldn't afford to clean. Who could afford? Who had money to clean? In London, in the 19th century, in the streets. What do you think was in the streets in London in the 19th century? What was the main mode of transportation? Horses. What did they ever bring to Disneyland? In Disneyland, whenever parade of horses, there's a guy on the back who runs after the horses. And every time they poop, he scoops it up and puts it in the bag. Nobody scooped the horse dung on the streets of London. They piled up, which means the rats were there. It was filthy. And it stunk. And when we lived in caves, we burnt wood. You think that smoke was good for you? This is like amazing the air quality we have today. Do you know why Europeans drink beer? Because the water used to be so filthy that they couldn't drink water. So they had to create a liquid that was drinkable that did not have all the bacteria that water did. And you know why the Chinese drink tea? Because tea makes sure that you boil the water. Because the water wasn't guaranteed to be safe. It was guaranteed not to be safe. Today, you open a faucet and you drink, at least in the West. Wow. Clean water. It's amazing. So stop worrying about the environment. It's great. It's doing really well. In America, there are more trees now than there were 200 years ago. And let me tell you this. This is a simple economic truth. Do you guys recycle paper? Everybody in Netherlands recycles paper? I mean, a lot, right?  The more you cycle, the fewer trees there will be. The more you recycle paper, the fewer trees there will be. Now, I know that's mind-boggling. But think of it this way. If we stopped eating chicken tomorrow, would there be more chickens in the world or less chickens in the world? Less, because people would not farm chickens.  Because we're not using them. They wouldn't use them. So when somebody goes into a plot of land and chops down trees, right? I usually do a, I don't have a marker. Anyway, somebody chops down trees. And they have to decide how many new trees to plant. They look at expected demand for wood products in the future. And if expected demand for wood products in the future is declining because of recycling, they turn that land into farmland, or they build homes on it, or they build a factory on it. They don't plant trees. But if they think demand for a wood is going to increase in the future, because we're not recycling, then they're going to plant more trees than they were there before. Every tree that's chopped down in a world that consumes wood, a new tree is planted. So the number of trees in the US today is higher than it was 200 years ago, because we consume more trees. Sorry, but what about the Amazon? We know that over 60% is going to plant down. Because there's no private property in the Amazon. Nobody owns those trees. Nobody has any incentive to replant them because nobody can make a profit off of them. And it's exactly this issue. Since they can't sell the trees, what are they burning it down for? To use that land for something that they can make a living off of, which is what farmland? Because they're starving. Because the indigenous people who have been, because of the states in Brazil, they've been impoverished. But imagine if the Amazon was privately owned. Then the private owner could decide what to do with it. But if there was demand for trees, which there is, they wouldn't burn them down.  There'd be more trees in the Amazon, not less. Every time you use a cycle, paper, you're destroying a tree. It's not funny. This is reality, which nobody will teach you. But this is economics 101. It's a renewable resource. Therefore, the number of it increases as we use it more, like chicken. The more we eat, the more chickens there are in the world. The less we eat, the fewer chickens there are in the world. You know how they're trying to save elephants in Africa? I can't remember if it's Kenya or Uganda. One of the places, they're actually being successful in saving elephants. How are they doing it? Providing an economic incentive to have lots of elephants. And one way is hunting. There are other ways to do it.  Illegally, but they still do it. You can ban the killing of elephants. They still do it. But if you make it legal, then suddenly, people have an incentive to have more elephants and to save the elephants. That's the reality. Elephants will disappear unless we privatize them. Privatize the elephants. Yeah. You want spotted owls? Buy some. And buy a forest and put them there. And they'll be safe because they'll be yours. And I won't have a way to take them from you. We know how to protect that right. Yeah, in the back. Yeah, can we get back to Bill Gates once more? That's interesting. Sure, one of my favorite topics. I was just wondering, you said Bill Gates could change the world possibly four or five times. Yeah. Again, if he incentivizes or enables 50,000 people by his charity to do the same, wouldn't that provide a better result? Yeah, but that's not what charity does. What charity does. Doesn't do it. What's that? Doesn't do it. What does it do? Because he's got a gift like, well, I don't know the numbers. But tens of thousands of people. The newest devices and the newest educational stuff just to be able to work with them and create from there on. If he was investing his charity primarily in education, I wouldn't be with you. I'd say, yeah, that's probably really good, particularly if he knew what he was doing, which I'm not sure anybody does in education. But if he knew what he was doing, he's creating entrepreneurs in the future. Sure, but that's not what he's doing. Because that wouldn't get him the moral credits. That's a small part of what he does. The real moral credits he gets from doing what? From flying to Africa and buying a malaria tent. It's not against that. That's great. These people would be dead if not for him. Good for him. He's helping tens of thousands. But that doesn't change the world. And the fact is that you want to see the next world changing technology. It's in Silicon Valley. It's in somebody your age starting a business that's going to be what they call unicorns, the next unicorn or whatever. Now, you get that effect in education. And I am a huge believer in privatizing education and getting entrepreneurs like Bill Gates engaged in it so that we can create so that more people have the tools to be able to create Microsofts in the future. Absolutely. That's a great investment. But what he loves is finding talented people and helping them start companies and create the next Microsoft. And he'd be really good at it. And it's a shame he's not doing more of that now.  That's not my point. My point is that he's not doing that for the wrong. The unknown guilt is my point. The tragedy of the fact that he feels unknown guilt. What he does with his money at the end of the day is his choice. If he did it from purely devout of guilt reasons, then you know if he decided at the end of the day, you know what? I really enjoy going to Africa and helping these kids. And I'm really invested in this. And I love these people. And I want to help them. And then I would say, good for Bill Gates. But that's not the sense I get from him, right? That's not what he really wants to do. OK, so that motivation comes about like the results of what he's doing? Oh, yeah. No, I'm all for your selfish passion. What is good for you? Not what is good for other people.  I can't think of a profession in which. But the standard is not other people. The standard is you. Again, you have one life on this earth. Make the most of it. And making the most of it affects other people for the positive. A society of selfish individuals is the most productive, most wonderful society imaginable. Because everybody wants to deal with one another as traitors, win-win relationships. So everybody's winning constantly. Or they don't deal with one another. Or you walk away from the transaction. And that's true in personal life. Try having a spouse and living your life with them on a win-lose relationship. Not going to work very well.  Love is the most selfish thing. Imagine if it was selfless. Honey, I'm marrying you tomorrow, but it doesn't mean anything to me. This is completely selfless. You don't really make me feel that good.  Because they make you feel wonderful. Because they're adding value to your life, more than any other human being on the planet. That's love. That's selfish. Yeah? Is that when you need a moral permission? Yes. What does that mean? Does it only mean that being selfish is now moral and not immoral? Or is it not moral but also not immoral? Or is it now moral to only be selfless? I'm not going to ask that. Yeah, so it means that the standard for morality is your own self-interest. Now, that's not enough. You have to articulate what self-interest means. You have to articulate a set of values and a set of virtues that match up. If you think about what Aristotle did, he tried to figure out this golden mean. I don't really believe in that. But you have to study it. And you have to figure out the details. Ayn Rand does that. And you can read that. She's got a book called The Virtue of Selfishness, where she does it. And you can agree or disagree. But the standard needs to be my life, my flourishing as a human being, and what are the virtues and values that lead to that. I think Ayn Rand's discovered them, saved us a lot of work. But instead of the motivation being selflessness or wanting a mixture of the two, why mix poison? With good food? I'm for good food. And self-interest is good. Self-being selfless is not good. So what I desire is good. Well, if it's rational. If your desire is rational. Are human's rational enough to say that this whole system would work out at that point?  Everything, everything, think of everything that works in this city or even in this classroom. And that was a rational mind that made that. Irrationality doesn't make any of this. Emotions doesn't produce a single thing in this room. So human beings are incredibly rational. It's what makes us human, not thumbs. We are, as Aristotle calls us, a rational animal. What's uniquely. Now, do people act rationally? Do people use their reason? No. But they haven't been talked to. They don't expect it to. Because morality has nothing to do with how you live your life. See, my morality says if there's a commandment, the commandment is think. Most morality say sacrifice. You don't have to think to sacrifice. Sacrifice is easy. So it's an emotion. So a morality, a culture that is built around a morality that says reason is the most important thing in life. Think, use your tool, your mind. Elevates. Reason elevates thinking. Elevates rationality. Everybody can do it. The question is, does everybody do it? And we need to make it important so that everybody does do it. I think too many people don't use their mind. And the sad thing about that is the life that they are wasting for themselves. Most people drift through life. They just cruise. They're not happy. They're not particularly unhappy. They're just there. And I look at that and say, that's sad. They could be really living. I want you to really live. It's fun. And you only get one chance. You don't get two. One. So make the most of it. Yep. You were talking about the moral revolution. I was wondering, how do you think you could start something like that here in Europe? Because in the United States, the morality is more closer to something? Yeah, it is a little bit. Yeah, Europeans have a harder time. Although Eastern Europeans, not so much because they know what the other morality taking the extreme is exactly like, what it exactly means. When everything is shared and everybody is sacrificed, they know what that means. It's all about education. It's all about talking. It's all about writing. It's all about speaking. It's all about engaging with people. There's no shortcuts in life. There's no flip of a switch. This is hard. Any intellectual battle is hard. Intellectual battle that's asking people to reconsider their morality after 2,000 years of indoctrination, very, very hard. Even though Europe has abandoned the Christian religion, it is embraced fullheartedly the Christian ethics. We are, Europe is a Christian continent in ethics. And what you're asking them is to give up on Jesus. Because our moral ideal, and I can't say this in America because it'll lynch me, right? This is advantage of Europe.  This is like the worst torture you could imagine. Nailed to a cross. Not for since he committed, for since we committed. That's really bad. I don't like that. So it was a lot of work to do. Yeah? In a capitalist system, property rights are important.  I've got a moral dilemma. Property rights are important. But when you have a person who gets self-esteem and self-worth from cheating and stealing from others, and the law says you can't cheat or you can't steal, is it moral to get into prison? Yes, absolutely. So first of all, there's something wrong with this person. He's abnormal. He's sick in some way. Anybody who gets, no, he's not being selfish. And explain why being selfish was primarily being rational. And being rational means that lying, stealing, and cheating does not provide self-esteem, does not. And you can read up in psychology. No, this is not hypothetical. When you read about psychopaths, people who lie, steal, and cheat and don't care, right? Because they have no what people call consciousness. They are miserable. They are haters.  There's no eudemnia. There's no flourishing. There's no happiness.  Now, in the movies, we can create romanticized villains. They're no romantic villains in real life.  Because that's how we're built. That's the nature of how human beings function. It's because we rely on reason. And if you don't believe me, try it sometime. And it's A is A. This is the impact it has. So now, there are people who are sick. The people who enjoy it, you'll get pleasure out of torturing people. And I consider them sick. I consider them abnormal. It's the responsibility of all of us to put those people away so that they don't hurt us. The fact that they're getting pleasure of something does not excuse our sacrifice in keeping them around so that they can torture us. So you get rid of them. You put them in jail. Nobody would have qualms about doing that. And it could be a mistake. Somebody could misinterpret, like you do. That selfishness means lying, stealing, or cheating. And they could go and do it. I'm still gonna put them in jail. I don't care if it's because they're bad people or because they misinterpret it. You violate somebody else's rights. You go to jail because rights are the fundamental principle, which means no coercion. It's the fundamental principle in a social environment because that's the only way to protect the ability of good people to pursue their happiness, to pursue the values that they have. It's gonna be safe to, from another person, really enjoy this while it's really good. I don't care is my point. Okay, you don't care, but I find this very... No, but I don't care if they get the pleasure, but I also can tell I have the wisdom and I have the knowledge I'm a little older than you and I've seen the world and it does mean a lot actually because experience of life means a huge amount. That's fine. When I was 24, I thought exactly like you do about the fact that wisdom doesn't accumulate over time, but it does. It doesn't matter, at the end of the day, politically, in terms of putting him in jail, it doesn't matter whether they are happy or not. If they violate rights, they go to jail because my concern is with rational people and if he is interfering in the ability of rational people to live their life by using force, he goes to jail. And, but I can also tell you psychologically, he's a misopathetic human being. Don't believe me, that's fine. I have no problem with that. Just a last statement, I have two problems with that. The first one is, in the case of Enron, I get the management of Enron wasn't too unhappy with what they did. Well, they were very unhappy, but they are billionaires, so I don't know how unhappy you can be. Since when is money a measure of happiness? So let me give you an example that I know, and we can talk about Enron too, because I know a little bit about Enron as well. Bernie Madoff, everybody know Bernie Madoff? Bernie Madoff created a pyramid scheme. He stole this money, he became very, very wealthy, I don't know if a billionaire, but the Enron guys weren't billionaires, they were hundreds of millions, very rich. And he had this amazing pyramid scheme who was living a good life. And he was caught, like all of them were caught, like the Enron guys were caught, right? And he says today, in prison, Happier than he's ever been. Happier than he's ever been. Happier than, much happier than he was when he was stealing the money, why? Because when he was stealing the money, A, he had no self-esteem, because he knew he was relying on deception in order to gain any kind of value, which is self-destructive. But second, he was constantly looking over his shoulder, not because he worried about the police. He was worried that his best friends would find out, he was worried that his family would find out.  His son, who turned him into the police and a year after his son discovered he committed suicide. Even after his son committed suicide, he's still happier today in jail than he was before. He couldn't sleep because he was constantly worried about being caught. Again, not by the police, by the people he was stealing money from. He couldn't have a relationship with another human being, why? Because he was lying. Now, I don't know how much, this is an example of age, right? I don't know how many relationships you guys have had, intimate relationships with other human beings, sexual, romantic, and non-romantic. But if you lie, that relationship will not survive, not because the other person will catch it, but because you can't look them in the eye, because your relationship is built on a falsehood and you know it. Now, the older you get, the more relationships you have, the more you can induce this particular truth, one way in which we gain wisdom with age. But, so, money is not there. You know, the Marxists believe that money is happiness. Money is not happiness. I could have, I've got a PhD in finance, I could have gone to Wall Street, I mean, millions of dollars. I don't want to do that, because I don't want, the money's not that important to me. I'd much rather do this. This is more fun than making money. For me, not for somebody else, who will each have their own values. So I chose to be poorer, not poorer, but poorer than I otherwise would be, because of my values. So it's not about money. The N1 guys, A, they were caught, they suffered enormously, I know at least two of the guys, but B, these guys were schmoozing political types. They weren't the kind of, they didn't have the sense that you get from a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or, you know, because they didn't create the wealth.  It's like Donald Trump, take account example. You look at Donald Trump, can you say if Donald Trump has high self-esteem or low self-esteem? Very low, very low. Why do you know? Because anybody criticizes him. He's like, I've got to finish it. If you have self-esteem and somebody criticizes you, what's your response? There's one of two options. The person who criticized you is right. And if he's right, you should think him, because now you know better. The second option is he's wrong. And if he's wrong, why do you care? He's wrong, not you, you're right. That's self-esteem. When you have low self-esteem, when somebody criticizes you, you punch you in the nose. That's Donald Trump, right? Now, Donald Trump has no self-esteem. He exudes this false confidence that that thin skin is an example of an unhappy, miserable, no self-esteem type of person. You can tell these things about people. It's not that hard. And you can see he's not a thinker. I don't think he uses many of the cells inside them. And that's partially why he has low self-esteem, yeah. It's true that you look in your mind is a great wealth, but at the end of the day, it helps everyone, but the wealth is not really these two people, and they create further, bigger inequality. Yeah, but why is inequality a bad thing? I think inequality is wonderful. Think about what inequality represents, right? If you take a group like this group, we're all different. Everybody in this room is different. You all look different. I'm sure you've all got different talents and different skills. You're gonna do things differently. Some of you will be great teachers, some of you will be great business people, some of you will be great entrepreneurs. You'll all be different. Some of you do technology, some of you do healthcare. I don't know, right? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that amazing? And yeah, you'll create different levels of wealth. Who cares? What does that matter? You're not stealing from one another. Wealth is created. Wealth is additive. There's no fixed pie.  If I bake a big pie and you bake a little pie, why is that a bad thing? And why do you have a right to take some of my big pie if I baked it? It's mine. So there's no social pie that we then divvy up. There's your pie and your pie and my pie and her pie. That's the pies. And we each have, and we bake different flavors of pie, different sizes of pie, different colors of pies. So my point is inequality is a feature of freedom. Anytime you give people freedom, they become unequal. It's not a bug. It's a feature. So when were we all poor? When we were all equal? When we were unfree? When you allowed us to be free, we became all rich, some richer than others. Wonderful. As I said, Bill Gates got $70 billion by making my life better. I love billionaires who make it honestly. I don't like the guys from Enron. But I love billionaires because the only way to make money is by making my life better. That's great. There are a lot of studies that show that people don't choose a quality interaction. Other than that, there is not a perfect information. There's never perfect information. And one of the beauties of markets is that markets work to reduce information inequalities. So you get whole industries that are created in order to teach you about things that you don't know. Provide you information you don't know. And when we use strain markets, we actually get more information asymmetries than when we allow markets to flourish. But what do we do with people who are irrational? First, we expect them to be rational. See, in the world we live in today, we don't have that expectation. I'm talking about a moral expectation to be rational. It's morally a virtue to be rational. But secondly, if they're really not rational, and it depends on why they're not rational. If they really don't have the ability to be rational, they're born with a defective, what do you call it now, a challenged brain. They just don't have the IQ to be rational. IQ is a bad measure. But whatever the number is, whatever the measure is, then they're going to rely on other people. They're going to rely on charity. They have no choice. They rely on other people anyway. It's just in the welfare system we call us other people to help them. And in a charity system, people help them voluntarily. And I think there's such a small number of those people that we would help them voluntarily because we're nice people. At the end of the day, we're pretty benevolent. Selfish people are the nicest people in the world. Because you know what? If I love my own self, if I love my life, if I want the best life that I can have for me, I look at you and I see reflections in a sense of me. I see other human beings. I love you guys because you have potential to make my life much, much better.  Some of you might start a new business that I will benefit from. And even if you never did, just the fact that you're alive is kind of cool. There are other human beings out there. I love it. I mean, we care about pets and plants. We water the plants and we pet our pets. Human beings are much more interesting than pets. We care about them a lot more. So charity, and this is, again, a European thing. Europeans don't do charity. Americans are very generous. Why? Because Americans are free and they're more selfish.  Now, if people choose not to be rational, if people have the capacity but choose not to use it, which I think is most people today, that's their problem. 99.999% of the people on the planet Earth have the capacity to be rational. Whether they choose to do it is a different question. Whether we incentivize them to do it is a different question. Whether we encourage them to do it is a different question. They have the ability to do it. You don't need much. And it's very demeaning to say, oh, those people, they can't think. I can think, but they can't think. It's just not true. People's IQ, for example, changes over life. Culture is affected. But IQ is not a good measure anyway. I know people who measure low on IQ and are really smart. So it's about do you engage your mind in dealing with reality, in integrating the facts around you, and everybody can do that. Again, the different levels. That's why some people are really, really rich. And some people will be middle class. Some people will be relatively poor. But in a free society, people who are relatively poor are relatively rich compared to any other society. That's why they're poor in America. They have air conditioning. They have cars. They have iPhones. But they're poor because if you have a bell curve, somebody has to be in the bottom 20% or the bottom 10%. But the bell curve is so far towards wealth that we have to go. OK, I haven't asked, I haven't taken any questions from here. Were there any? There weren't any. OK, yeah. OK, so you're next. You go and then him. So there are many examples of countries with a relatively free market doing very well. Why do you think that in the West we're more moving away from a very capitalistic system or towards regulation? For the reasons my whole speech was about, because we hold an ethical system that's incompatible with free markets. Because we believe in the nobility of sacrifice and selflessness. And we watch these businessmen. And we say, they're immoral. And we need to control them. So it's not about the economics. The economics, there is no question about the economics. But it's about the morality. We believe that people who are pursuing their own self-interest are immoral. So we don't trust them. We don't trust entrepreneurs. We don't trust businessmen. We want to control them. We want to regulate them. So assume that most policy makers are still fairly rational people. So they should also make the same conclusions. Well, you're making a weird assumption. I know a lot of politicians I've never met one who I would say was rational. They're powerless. People who go into politics want to control you. The kind of people we elect to politics are the kind of people who want to control. They want to manipulate. They want to be overloads. That's their psychology. That's who they are. That's why it's very rare to meet a happy politician. It's because they're not motivated by good virtues. They're not motivated by good stuff. They're motivated by bad stuff. They're about power. They're not about truth. They're not about truth. I don't know if politicians is about truth.  They're exceptions. They're here and they're there a few. I'm not a big Ron Paul fan for a variety of reasons. And I don't think he is. No, if you look at politicians, what they're about. If you look at Hillary Clinton, what did she want? She wanted power. Did she believe in anything? Really believe in anything? No. She wanted power. She loves the idea of being president of the United States and be able to pull strings and manipulate you guys. That's what she gets her kicks out of. Not healthy kicks, not happiness kicks, perverted kicks. And what is Donald Trump? Does Donald Trump, what's this about? This is about Donald Trump? Being able to put his big name on the White House. The whole climate debate is not about facts. Stuff is not about facts.  It's not about facts. It's not about them wanting to know. It's not about science. They're not interested in these things. No, that's what I tried to explain. I tried to explain that selfishness is exactly the opposite of that. Selfishness is about being rational and pursuing rational values. Values that actually enhance human life. And power does not. Power over other people does not enhance your life. It actually makes your life worse, not better. Power over reality, over your reality, being able to control your situation, that gives you self-esteem.  Having power over them is demeaning to them, and by definition, demeaning to you. You can't have, I can't say self-respect is important universally, but only I should have it. That's not. If you believe self-respect is a universal value, right, reason is a universal value, then you have to respect it in every human being around you. And abusing other people undercuts your very argument about self-respect. So you can't even respect yourself. This is why people with power lusters, again, are not flourishing human beings. But then you should also respect people who are irrational. Yeah, I respect them. I leave them alone. I just don't, if they're rational, they have no value to me, because they're not creating values, right, for me. So I leave them alone. I have no interest in them. It's not that I disrespect them, or I do bad things to them. I just, they're not affecting me, and therefore I leave them alone. But don't expect me to fund them. Don't take my money and give it to them, right? They choose to be rational. Fine, let them go and live their lives. So I'm not insisting everybody to live like me. I'd like them to. I think it's good for you. But you can live your life as long as you don't expect me to subsidize it. All right, well, let's take this and then we have to run. You said at some point that the crisis from 2008 was caused- Oh my God, a short, a short question, you're asking me? I leave by too much rules and regulations, and they didn't really get to return of thoughts there. Yeah, so I recommend you, I mean the two books I recommend, one is my book called Femal Good Revolution. Another one is a book by John Allison. What was it called? Remember? Financial crisis. Financial crisis, I'll leave by financial crisis. But this is the outline. This is the really quick outline. What's that? We all have an event about the 6th century. But here's the outline. In 2002, the Federal Reserve under Allen Green's fantasies, they don't want to have a session. They lower interest rates but lower the rate of inflation. Negative real interest rates. Now today we think that's cool, but it's not good. That created huge liquidity in the market. Lots of money slushing around. Artificially, bubbly, right? All of that money went into housing. Why did it all go into housing? Because the American government was heavily, heavily, heavily subsidizing housing. Through Freddie and Fannie, and through the tax system, and through the Community Reinvestment Act, they were heavily subsidizing housing. Why did banks getting involved in really risky transactions that were not gonna last very long and they were gonna lose money at some point? Because they had too big to fail. So they knew that they would get all the rewards and when they failed, the government would bail them out. That's regulation. That's a bad incentive. And I could go on and on and on in the thousand different ways regulation caused this crisis. There's nothing wrong with credit default swaps. Credit default swaps are fabulous. They were abused. They were abused because there was an incentive. Basel II, I'll give you an example. Basel II, credit default swaps. Okay, credit default swaps are example of wonderful instruments. They're an insurance policy. I bought a bond and I'm worried that there's some probability this bond will default because the company will go bankrupt. I'll buy a credit default swap and if the bond defaults, I get compensated for it. Nothing wrong with that. The credit default swap market did not create the crisis. It didn't cause the crisis. It didn't make the crisis worse. I thought you meant the other one, the not the credit default swaps, the collateralized debt obligations, CDOs. Again, there's nothing wrong with a CDO but they were done badly because there was an incentive to shovel out as many as possible because Fetty and Fanny were buying anything because they were being subsidized but they were told by the government that they had to have a certain percentage of all the low-income mortgages in the United States. I've literally done a six-hour course on the financial crisis that I've delivered. Every time you peel the onion on a different aspect of the crisis, what you discover are bad incentives created by regulation, bad regulations and bad central banking. And the other element is what happened in 2008 is that the policy makers panicked. Polson and Benenki panicked and everybody saw them panic and they said if Polson and Benenki are panicked that means the government doesn't know what it's doing. That means we're in for a hard time and the market went like that. It wasn't Lehman Brothers' collapse that caused the market to collapse. It was the fact that Polson went to Congress and said the world's gonna end unless you give me $700 billion which in the law it says he can do whatever he wants with. That's crazy. So again, there's a million examples of this but that's the essential is government screwed up big time. And that's the same cause as the Great Depression. If you go back to the Great Depression it was government that caused the Great Depression from beginning to end. Stock markets go down. When stock markets go down a lot that doesn't cause a Great Depression unless the government react badly which is what the government did. Thank you. After this event we will go to the Sports Café to have a few drinks and to discuss this event furthermore. I would like to say for starters that as Roltenhoff students for Liberty the speech of Yaron is not necessarily our own view. I think it's not your view at all but we would like to have this discussion going on. First of all, thank you all for being at our first event. We're delighted to see that so many people are interested in such a controversial topic. And I'll start it with Roltenhoff students for Liberty. Now you might be wondering what is Roltenhoff students for Liberty? So I'll give you guys a short introduction. Roltenhoff students for Liberty promotes personal liberty. They try to empower students with academic events, leadership training and social events which I will talk about later. And Roltenhoff students for Liberty is part of a global network which is called Students for Liberty. And there are actually three main principles that students for Liberty tries to sell basically. It's a social freedom which for example means that you can do whatever you want to do without being constrained. So say for example that two people in the same sex should be able to walk hand in hand on the streets. Secondly, intellectual and academic freedom. And lastly, economic freedom which for example means that people should be able to pursue whatever job they would like without being constrained. So Students for Liberty is a global network that has around 1,900 local groups around the world on every single continent. And what's left of Students for Liberty is one of those local groups. And Students for Liberty actually provides a great opportunity which is called the Leadership of the Local Coordinator Program. And in a Local Coordinator Program they actually teach you leadership qualities. And topics such as social change, communication, marketing, activism will be discussed in this Local Coordinator Program. Also with the Local Coordinator Program you can try to be free to conferences which every local group of Students for Liberty organizes and in these conferences you will create a global network with people with the same values and the same interests as you have. So, Students for Liberty tries to focus on making academic events, such as lectures, debates, and panels. Also we try to focus on leadership training, such as the Local Coordinator Program which you can apply, Leadership Forum, and some workshops. And lastly the social events which are pub rolls, weekend trips, dinners, and moving meetings. So the European Students for Liberty will also organize a conference which is in Prague and it's on 17th and 19th of March. So, what is next? We have a few events already coming up which is next week we will visit the cinema to see the new cinema movie, if not that new and more. Also an event about the financial meltdown where you can just ask the question about and we'll show a movie here as well. Then Bit Nation which is an online nation without borders and actually the person who made this site lives in Amsterdam and will visit. Then of course the conference in Prague and the free market row show where there will be different panels and workshops talking about the world after Brexit and Trump, and much more. So, because we're kind of a startup, sort of student association, we look for new people and maybe you can be the new leader in Liberty. Thank you very much. I am Les Cholévis, I'm the president of the J.O.C.E. Ranges, the Rotterdam branch of the youth organization of the Dutch youth whole party. I'm very proud of the work of the Rotterdam students for Liberty on their first event, organizing this great lecture by Jaron Broek. Whereas Rotterdam students for Liberty is dedicated to liberty and the concepts, J.O.C.E. Rijnmond is dedicated to influencing politics, especially through influencing our model party. One really important thing about our organization is that we are politically independent from our model party, which means we can make up statements all the way we want, which allows us to become sort of a moral compass for Dutch politics. And this can be quite handy because our liberal party can sometimes be quite conservative, quite interested in more real politics instead of more liberty-minded issues. And in the past it has paid off for our organization. So for example, in the 70s, J.O.C.E.D. has allowed our country, which was then ruled mostly by Christian parties to institute as the first country in the world, gay marriage as a legal thing. Nowadays we are slowly making moves towards convincing our model party to legalize weed as a former last party congress. We managed to make some steps towards that. The J.O.C.E.D. also is a very cozy organization. I think the word gezelle, which some international people here know, really applies to what we are about. We have lots of drinks, lots of speakers who come to visit our city and to talk with us. These are often really prominent politicians. Like two weeks ago we had a Dutch former speaker of the House, Woonerska van Miltemberg. And in January we will have the defense minister, Janine Hennes. And this is a really great opportunity to network with these people on a personal level because these people are often really inaccessible. We make them really reproachable. You're sitting in this kind of setting with people who are actually in power, which is a great network opportunity. I've seen lots of people of net internships or even jobs through these kinds of opportunities. So to summarize what the J.O.C.E.D. has to offer is in-depth political activities, great people to get to know. I mean, Stavey's also a member, so you get her in both the deals. We offer great networking opportunities within politics. There's also another more external and more selfish reason. We all love selfish things after the speech by this is what I got here. This is a Knapplach. It can give you all kinds of discounts in Rotterdam, at bars, clubs, restaurants, shops, you name it. Normally it costs 15 euros. If you become a member of the J.O.C.E.D. for just five euros, we can give you one for free. There's a limited supply, so be quick about it if you want to. If you want to become a member, if you are interested, you can just speak to me here or at the drinks afterwards where you can simply fill out one of these blue little forms I've shown into you and we'll get you going. So that was most of my speech. I want to thank you very much for visiting and I hope to see you soon there. Thank you. Thank you.


It is 7.32 p.m. It is Tuesday, May 10th, 2022. Good evening, my name is Christian Klein. I'm the chair of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals and I'm calling this meeting of the board to order. I'd like to confirm that all members and anticipated officials are present from the Zoning Board of Appeals, Roger Dupont. Here. Patrick Hanlon. Here. Kevin Mills. Present. Dan Riccadelli. Here. Have you, Ben Riccadelli? Here. Have you? And Ms. Hoffman, I believe is traveling this evening as she will not be joining us. On behalf of the town, we have Rick Valorelli. Good evening, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. And Vincent Lee is on as well, but I believe he is traveling in the car moment. And then also with us, we have Doug Hyme, who's town council and Jennifer Raid, who's the director of the Department of Planning and Community Development. They're joining us specifically for the executive session at the end of tonight's meeting. Good morning. Good evening, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. And then we also have a couple of former members of the Zoning Board of Appeals. Stephen Revlak is here. Good evening, Mr. Chair. Good evening. And I don't know if Mr. O'Rourke has joined us yet. Mr. Chairman, Mr. O'Rourke contacted me. He'll be late and he will circle back with you later. Oh, perfect. Okay. And I never heard back from Mr. Ford, so he may not be joining us either. Okay. So this open meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals is being conducted remotely, consistent with an act extending certain COVID-19 measures signed into law on February 15th, 2022. This act includes an extension until July 15th, 2022 with a remote meeting provision of Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, which suspended the requirement to hold all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed to continue to participate remotely. Public bodies may continue to meet remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. An opportunity for public participation will be provided during the public comment period during each public hearing. For this meeting, the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals has convened a video conference via the Zoom app with online and telephone access as listed on the agenda posted to the town's website, identifying how the public may join. This meeting is being recorded and it will be broadcast by ACMI. Please be aware that attendees are participating by a variety of means. Some attendees are participating by video conference, others are participating by computer audio or by telephone. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you, your screen name or another identifier. Please take care to not share personal identification. Anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording. We ask you to please maintain decorum during the meeting, including displaying an appropriate background. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda. Ms. Chair, I reserve the right to take items out of order in the interest of promoting an orderly meeting. So going to tonight's agenda. Starting this evening with a few administrative items, including the approval of a decision. This item relates to the operation of the board and as such will be conducted without input from the general public. The board will not take up any new business on prior hearings, nor will there be the introduction of any new information on matters previously brought before the board. After introducing each item, I will invite members of the board to provide any comments, questions or motions they may have. If members wish to engage in a discussion with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself for the record. So we have item number two on our agenda is the approval of the decision for 4-6 River Street. This was a request for special permit. We passed a motion to approve with amendments at our prior hearing, which was April 26th. Patrick Hanlon is prepared. The decision on this case now is distributed to the board for questions and comments and a final version was released this afternoon. Are there any further questions or comments from the board in regards to this decision? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the final written decision for 6-8 River Street as submitted this afternoon? Yes, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hanlon. So moved, except I think it's 4-6 River Street. Oh, beg your pardon, thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Mills. So voting to approve the final written decision for River Street, vote of the board, Roger Dupont. Aye. Thank you. Patrick Hanlon. Aye. Kevin Mills. Aye. Dan Riccadelli. Aye. And the chair votes aye. That is approved. And Mr. Riccadelli, I know you have another commitment this evening. That was the one thing we needed to do for specifically. So if you need to leave, you may do so. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. You're welcome. And that concludes the administrative items for the portion of tonight's meeting. Next, we are turning to the public hearing on tonight's agenda. This is item number three, Docket 3695, 1820 Bellnab Street. That's a continuance from our April 26th hearing. So we will recall at that meeting, there was some confusion in regards to who should be hearing this case and what the current standing is. So I have been speaking with the council on this with the Department of Planning and Community Development and also with Inspectoral Services and with our own board. And so I have the following. So the application was filed by Spipon Development LLC in regards to their property at 1820 Bellnab Street. It was filed with the zoning board of appeals requesting a special permit to allow a change in the non-conforming use of the existing building to expand that use into a newly constructed portion of the building. The builders pursuing the renovation and expansion of an existing non-conforming six unit building reducing the number of units to four. The record appears to indicate that the property has been listed as having four units for the past several decades. Past applications before this board from 1968 and 1980 both requested permission to increase the number of units from four to six and both applications were previously denied. In regards to the expansion of the building in reviewing the materials it was determined the submitted site plan did not properly note that the property abuts the Minuteman Bikeway. Under section 342 of the zoning bylaw an exterior addition or change in use requiring a building permit and a special permit in accordance with the use and regulations for the applicable district and located on a site abutting the Minuteman Bikeway it's subject to environmental design review under the redevelopment board. As this application should not have been filed with the board of appeals the board has requested the applicant request to withdraw without prejudice. The applicant has submitted a letter via email to that effect and that letter has been posted to our website for this evening. So tonight, I will just ask the DBA vote to accept the letter and then it will be up to the applicant to consider how they wish to proceed moving forward. Mr. Chairman. Hanlon. I move that the board of zoning appeals accept the request of the applicant to withdraw its application without prejudice. Thank you Mr. Hanlon. Do I have a second for that motion? Second. Thank you Mr. Mills. And then I will take, excuse me to vote of the members present. Mr. Dupont. If this is Bellemap, I think I'm abstaining. I beg your pardon, that is correct. You have mentioned before you have, you do have prior dealings with the owner. And as such, you are requesting that you be excluded. Apologize for that. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. Riccadelli is not with us at this moment. Mr. Holly. What? Aye. I just put a glass on there. And the chair votes aye. So the request to withdraw 1820 Bellemap Street has been accepted. And so at this point, that is back in the hands of the applicant to determine how they are to proceed. I would direct any further questions on this matter to Inspectional Services. That is the end of the hearing portion of tonight's hearing. Which brings us to item number four, which is the executive session regarding Thorndike Plates. So at this time, I'll move that the board enter executive session for the purpose of discussing legal strategy in regards to the applicant and a butter appeals to the Thorndike Plates comprehensive permit decision. Attendance will be limited to the members of the board, both current and those serving at the time of the decision, the board administrator, town council, and the director of planning and community development. Upon entering executive session, all other meeting participants will be returned to the waiting room until the conclusion of the executive session. At the conclusion of the executive session, the board will reopen the meeting for the purpose of a journey. The board appreciates your cooperation. May I have a second? Second. Vote of the board, Mr. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. Holley. Aye. The chair votes aye. We are in executive session and resume the public meeting. That motion may I have a second? Second. Hanlon. The vote of the board, Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Dupont. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. Holley. Aye. The chair votes aye. We are returning to regular session. The board is now in regular session. Mr. Valle, please admit all of those in the waiting room to the meeting. Good night, folks. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. With that, so our next meeting is Tuesday, May 24th at 7.30. And we have four new hearings that night. 82 Grandview Road, 44 Edmond Road, 30 Venner Road and 39 Tufts Street. And we will also be forwarding to you. We have a stack of minutes to review and vote upon. We are quite a bit behind on our minutes. So I'm going to try to catch us up a little bit, but we do have some reading in the next couple of weeks. And Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. One of the things that I'd like us to look into procedurally is that there are requirements for us to both take and renew courses in the open meeting law. And I remember doing that a number of years ago. And I would like to have it on our agenda to sort of follow up with what the requirements are and make sure that we're all fully compliant with law. Thank you. Very well taken. Checking into that in the morning. With that, we're at the conclusion. So thank you all for your participation in tonight's meeting of the Arlington Zoning Board of Appeals. I appreciate everyone's patience throughout the meeting, especially I wanted to thank Rick Valarelli, Vincent Lee, Attorney Heim. It's great. And everyone else for their assistance in preparing for and hosting this online meeting. Please note the purpose of the board's recording of the meeting is to ensure the creation of an accurate record of the proceedings. And it's our understanding that the recording made by ACMI will be available on demand at ACMI.tv within the coming days. If anyone has comments or recommendations, please send them via email to zbaatown.arlington.ma.us. That email address is also listed on the ZBA website. And to conclude tonight's meeting, I would ask for a motion to adjourn. Moved. Mr. Hanlon, have a second. Okay, Mr. DuPont. Vote of the board. Mr. DuPont. Aye. Mr. Hanlon. Aye. Mr. Mills. Aye. Mr. Holley. Aye. And the chair votes aye. We are adjourned. Thank you so much. Thank you.


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