Episode 121: A Wide-Ranging Conversation with the Always Interesting Yaron Brook

On this episode, I’m talking with Yaron Brook, Chair of the Ayn Rand Institute, in a wide-ranging conversation that launches into the case for why the profit motive is a good thing. Capitalism gets a bad rap in the media and pop culture, but should business be epitomized by Gordon Gecko or Steve Jobs? Was the 2008 financial crisis caused by greedy Wall Streeters or by wrongheaded government policies?  We agree that finance, properly understood, is about “win/win” strategies to move capital to more productive uses, but what about all the people left behind by capitalism’s “creative destruction?  Are Americans any longer willing to do what’s necessary to create their own future. We also talk about his view that our moral purpose should be our own happiness and that self-interest is not wrong.  We part company on trade with China and on Donald Trump, but wholeheartedly agree on the need for an optimistic freedom agenda that embraces America’s founding ideas.