John Allison describes philosophic fight for the future of America

hello everyone thank you so much for coming today and really excited to see such a good crowd and the folks in it I'm Kevin Hales I'm an attorney for Cisco Systems and RTP and I'm head of the triangle lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society The Federalist Society is an organization of over 40,000 lawyers law students and other individuals who believe and trust that individual citizens can make the best choices for themselves and society the triangle lawyers chapter is one of many local chapters that seek to foster a serious dialogue about issues of individual liberty today we are delighted to have John Allison executive in residence at the Wake Forest School of Business he is a member occurrence the Cato Institute's board of directors and he's chairman of the executive advisory counsel of the Cato Institute's Center for monetary and financial alternatives mr. Allison was previously president and CEO of the Cato Institute and prior to joining Cato as many of you know he was chairman and CEO of BB&T corporation during his tenure as CEO BB&T grew from 4.5 billion to 152 billion dollars in assets he was recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over last decade mr. Allison is the author of two excellent books with long compelling titles one is the financial crisis and the free market cure while pure capitalism is the world economies only hope and the leadership crisis in the free market cure why the future of business depends on the return to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and make sure you pick up your copy the books there on the table at the front are free so on your way out grab a copy they are they are free for the taking yep and we got a bunch if they run out I've got other I've got boxes also grab yourself some some dessert you know last time we had a lot of dessert left over so don't want to see that again so okay mr. Ellison is also a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill here he received I won't hold that against him I'm an NC State guy he receives his well I mean I'm at UNC got for Law School but doesn't count he he received his master's degree in management from Duke University and he's also graduate of Stonier Graduate School of banking please join me in providing a warm welcome to mr. John Allison thanks Kevin and good day it's really a pleasure to be here I always enjoy talking to federal society groups I'm like it's very hopeful to see lawyers that want to defend individual rights that's my topic of my presentation today's and philosophical fight for the future of America I think that this fight is going to have a profound is having a profound influence on the quality of your lives the quality of your lives and your children's lives I don't think we're fighting about the superficial stuff here compressed we're fighting over very fundamental processes before I get my presentation I just want to give you a little elevator speech on Cato I know some of you familiar with Cato but let me give you my elevator speech because it gives you a little context hello Cato is the world's leading libertarian think-tank okay that's mission is to create a free and prosperous society based on the principles of individual liberty free markets limited government and peace we really do believe in limited government I think the government ought stati pocketbook we also think I'll stay out of your bed ready we think government has a very important but very limited role the purpose of government is to protect individual rights I keep me from using frog force a frog to take what you learned and to keep you from using force a frog to take what so the government is in the business of protecting individual rights in that context behind the government has three legitimate roles one is national defense to protect us from bad guys overseas secondly is police to protect us from bad guys in her neighborhood and finally is an effective court system so you and I have a legitimate dispute we can sell it without resorting islands in our ideal world there'd be 95% less regulations at far more fair course than we have today the reason we think government power needs to be limited this government has a unique and very dangerous Authority it has the authority to needs to initiate the use of force government has guns Walmart can beg you to buy their products they can offer you special deals with the king made the government can make it they can take your property they can put you in jail they can kill you in five governments have killed hundreds and millions of people throughout history governments are very dangerous in addition commonsensical ii relationships that are voluntary of better than relationships based on force and government is about the use of force it's about people with guns making people do things that they don't want to do so anytime you support new legislation ask yourself when you take a gun and make somebody do that because that's what happens when the law gets passed all right in that context when we talk about this philosophic fight for the future of America on one side of those of us and call it classical liberal tradition the defenders of the principles that we think made a Mack America great life liberty the pursuit of happiness now talk about our side in a minute and on the other side of the stage of all kinds stays are people that believe fundamentally government has the solution to the problems they're plenty of life stages most right-wing stages are more interesting controlling your personal life step left Wednesday more interested in your control and your money although now they've gotten very interested in your personal lives the most visible form of statism today's is so-called progressive the radical left movement that's an old movement goes back over 100 years but it's become far more powerful in recent times even though it failed years ago progressives deeply believe that a group of elitist in washington d city know what's better for you they know how to make your life better and they always are going to act in the common good there you can always do what's good for the common common good underlying the progressive movement are three fundamental philosophical principles altruism collectivism and egalitarianism altruism altruism is not benevolence benevolence is a really good thing altruism is other is it says everybody is important but you everybody is important but you the problem with that is there only button users you give it none of the use matter individuals aren't important what is important and the measure of performance is the so called collective the good of the group and individuals are irrelevant and that leads to collectivism and collectivist always argue that they are acting in the so-called common good here's a problem with that the common good as presented by modern progresses is really an oxymoron when the founding fathers got through with the common good freedom speech freedom of religion the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution the Bill of Rights they pretty much defined all the real common goods today what we're really talking about slices and the common good is good for me not so good for you good for you not so good for me good for my groove not so good for your group good for the taxi drivers not good for good for the teachers maybe not so good for the teach for the students good for General Electric not necessarily good for general electrics competitors and so what you have going on in Washington DC today's group warfare everybody quote representing the common good and by the way if something were really equally good for all of us what we view to barking about it we wouldn't calm and good as presented by progressives is really an oxymoron underline the progressives movement and this is really critical in terms of what people think politically is their sense of justice your sense of deaths is largely Drive where you are in Caleta goes back and the progressive sense of justice is what I call radical egalitarianism now to some degree the United States is in the Galant area in society all all men are created equal but when the facts the United States we're talking about all men being created equal if talking about equal for the law just because you were the son of a baron didn't give you any special rights the progressives concept of a gallant arianism is equal outcome equal outcome Allah destroy that everybody be equal for law and it's true that every human being ugly treated with dignity and respect it is not true that everybody is equal every person in this room is a unique special individual we all have different strengths different weaknesses different abilities different goals and objectives that's great that's what makes human nature so interesting we're all unique special individuals but we're not evil at the extreme thomas has and the Boston Strangler are not the only way to get equal outcomes from equal people is to use force to take what one person has earned and give it to somebody that's not earned it so progresses are in the business of using force to take what one person has army then it can be money baby lots of other stuff and give it to people that haven't earned it let me concretize that before you this I'll tell you a story of take a little bit of bathtub how old I am where I went to school one of my heroes was Michael Jordan a real inspiration for for kids this will surprise you I am not as good a basketball players Michael children suffer serious differential in performance what's interesting however is that I can't be as good a basketball player I don't care how hard I try how hard you tried to help me I cannot be you cannot make the average grade you make errors better that may be a very productive very noble thing to do but you can't make the average brother however you can make the grade average progresses by definition in there he gallant Aryan focus are in the business of making the grade it's very easy to make Michael Jordan is good at basketball players men you just coach legs off right you say well we're going to do that I don't know we've been pretty tough on great people throughout history in poison Socrates and prison Galileo burne-jones are for more sophisticated today we do it with lots of balls and chains lots of government rules and regulations lots of high tax rates but people fail to realize is the great people like a dis portion contribution even wealthy everybody in this room your children your grandchildren have a better life thanks to Tom says as a non you've been the light above you've been director Bull general you've been at the research laboratories itself put balls and change some great people and reduce the quality of life for all of us the gallant Aryans like to claim the moral high ground and he that owns the moral high ground wins the fight conservatives often make a very bad mistake in having been a businessperson I get this mistake as I made it a lot we think is over the arguments for economics we won thinking I'm sorry our egos back in 1776 when Adam Smith published with other days we won those are it's a long time ago the arguments are over ethics and progressives like became the moral high-ground this you can argue with everybody being equal I don't think that was what motivates progressives is the most destructive of all human emotions and watch it in yourself it's called the 80s nature's are good for being good yo uh count arianism it's a lot worse than I just described because here's the fact any human attribute has to people blow a verse by definition as people blow eras and intelligence and athletic ability and artistic ability the only way to make everybody equal is to go down literally to the lowest common denominator oh I'll concretize that before you I was up raised in a church where the preacher wanted to everybody seemed very loud except me I may be really bad sinner it would be a tragedy if everybody had to sing as poorly as awesome a lot of joy would go out of the world and I would lose too right now when you confront I get to debate progressives okay though okay that's always an interesting though they're always back away said oh we don't really mean to go that far so here's my question how far you mean together you know michael jordan's legs aha three times four times and here's the big question who decides how many toes that's when the power Luster's the tyrants show up that's when elizabeth warren joins the party right she knows exactly how many toes oughta be cut off on neutral and then they'll back up again and say well I don't exactly mean that what I mean is we want equal opportunity interestingly enough people opportunity is another oxymoron half the people were born above average intelligence half below average half above every time and as I can build half of what combination is all that look like and those of you there in mind or if you see this over and over again siblings same genetic pool went to the same school same socioeconomic class same everything radically different outcomes the family fathers had a riot it was equality before the law that matters equality how about the other side of the argument the classical liberal tradition life liberty and the pursuit of happiness each individual's unconditional moral right to their own life each individual's unconditional mall right to pursue their personal happiness each individual's unconditional mall right the product of their labor if you produce a lot you get a lot lose the right to give it away to whoever you want it for whatever reason you want to and if you think about that set of mall prerogatives it demands personal responsibility it rewards self discipline it rewards productivity life liberty and the pursuit of happiness classical liberals are primarily in the liberal Liberty business where primary and business and a lobby will pay lip-service of Liberty but what libertarians and classical liberals understand these liberties not just nice it is nice but it is also essential for human well-being but physical well-being and spiritual well-being in the physical sense in order to be productive I don't mean about it gonna be created you have to be able to think for yourself if somebody forces you to act like 2+2 is 5 you literally cannot think and lots of government rules and regulations for people to act like 2+2 is 5 in addition all human progress 100% is based on innovation creativity unless somebody does something better there can be no progress and anything better is different creativity and innovation is only possible to an independent thinker tomayto things like the crowd cannot be innovator cannot be created cannot contribute to human process their progress that's why entrepreneurs are so important Austin Ortega is the scientists and engineers and turn them into reality without entrepreneurship there's literally no human process what about entrepreneurs what do they do they're experimenters they failed try again for every Google they're 10,000 failed Google 30 Walmart that's 100,000 fill Walmart's on computers think out of the box they think differently they have to be able to think independently they have to be free to pursue their odd thoughts when I was in college if somebody presented me a knife under told me you know my lifetime we're gonna have a phone that can do everything an iPhone can do I said that's the interesting making 500 years you know I don't know I see jawsaw iPhone he saw it make a list of all the innovations that came out of the Soviet Union or North Korea so really shorten is communism socialism is always doing the favor dispelled over number D because the destroys innovation creativity was a source of all human progress make a list of all the innovative creative ideas that come out of government bureaucrats the hundreds of thousands of government bureaucrats in the United States it's another very short list okay to propose a book about eighteen months ago called poverty and progress that looked at human well-being I'm immoral from the evolution of Homo sapiens two and fifty thousand years ago to the late seventeen hundreds life expectancy basically was the same he may have been some improving the quality live my life but life expectancy and then something happened in the late seventeen hundred that transformed both the quality of life and life expectancy first in Western civilization announced through another over the rest of the world it was an invention far more important than fire more important than weed it was the invention of rule of law of individual rights of free markets of the social system we call countless the capitalism is the only system that allows innovation and creativity that rewards those that produce the most productive ideas and capitalism has transformed the quality of life on this planet because it allows people to be free to have Liberty to pursue their truths so Liberty is essential for human physical well-being it's also essential for human spiritual well-being in context of the pursuit of happiness when I talk about the pursuit of happiness an uncommon having a good time Friday night although sometimes it's good to have a good time on Friday night I'm talking about happiness and the Aristotelian sense of a life well-lived when I call it blood sweat tears happiness when you're 80 years old you can look back and it was hard and I'm glad did it happiness in that context has to be earned you cannot be entitled to be happy to earn happiness you have ten senses focus you have to develop strategies to accomplish that purpose and you have to act to accomplish those strategies consistent with your beliefs and your values as a free and independent person now being pretty doesn't guarantee you'll be happy but being unfree guarantees you cannot be so Liberty is essential for human fiscal well-being but it's equally important for human spiritual well-being let's talk a little more about the pursuit of happiness I would argue that the world-changing idea in the Declaration of Independence is pursuit of happiness for Jefferson before the fingers of the Enlightenment everybody's is it somebody else's good can't get stuck in the church no by existed for their own good Jefferson said that each one of us has the mall right so our personal happiness when I can guarantee success in that pursuit we have that right that was a world-changing idea creating the most successful country in history in the most benevolent when people have the right to their own life they're naturally nicer to other people and social some comments to say in the day everybody's up hating each other because they're all slaves to each other and I agree with Jefferson each of us has the right to pursue our personal happiness let's talk a little more about the pursuit of happiness however I talk a lot of college students and this is a point that's tried reasoning with pursue the happiness Wow what a selfish idea you're gonna go out and pursue your personal happiness how selfish can you be and selfish is back at it right I see uh Johnny in the sandbox three or four years old playing with his truck I bothered anybody and a good time long comes Fred Fred would like to have Johnny's truck Johnny doesn't want to give in the truck accession debate argument ensues mom dad so school teacher kindergarten teacher gets involved in the argument and mom says hey Johnny give that truck to Fred don't be selfish don't be bad to great moral lessons being taught right they're the same right weird afraid in the right to Johnny's truck you want to know where our social welfare system comes there it is right in the sandbox and now Fred would like for Chinese providing with a GMC Yukon but what about John and I bet everybody in this room Johnny what lessons did we learn what lessons did we we learned that we had some kind of moral obligation to take care of Fred even those Reds lazy incompetent stupid a guy who wouldn't want spend five minutes with and we got this obligation to take care of Fred it's an interesting burden to assume it now let's talk a little more about selfish because we get a false discussion of selfish mystifying self is just acting in one's for rational long-term self-interest packing one's rational long-term self-interest we're presented with this false dichotomy which is to take advantage of other people or self-sacrifice neither one of which makes any sense take a lot of people think that itself is just about that humanity here's the irony take advantage of other people's not self as your self destructive you self destructive in two ways you know you might fool Tom Dick and Harry they're going to tell Medicare wait you Sarah nobody's gonna trust you if you're not trusted you're not going to be successful you something you probably know people about it but there's a deeper issue while we all probably luhan's people on Providence once you if you let go of reality you try to be like somebody else's mind try to take advantage of somebody else you can do a lot more damage to yourself and you do then in my career I've gotten to meet a lot of successful people I've never met anybody but successful and happy but I think God I met some people have a lot of money and I think God they're taking advantage of other people and they're the most unhappy people I have ever met taking advantage of other people it's not selfish your self-destructive how about self sacrifice self sacrifice is a moral code of our society you hear it everywhere here at home and church on TV in school we're all supposed to self sacrifice I want to ask you to ask yourself but I would argue the most important question you can ask yourself and if you have children and grandchildren I'd like you to honestly think how you'd like your children and grandchildren to answer this question and here's the question you have as much right to your life as anybody else has to their life do you have as much right to your life as anybody else as to their life of course you do she did why would you believe anything different and by the way if you are not willing to defend your right to your life you cannot defend anybody else's right to their life because I don't know right in my life I don't have a rock in my life I don't know right like if none of the eyes have a right to their life nobody has a right to their life you cannot defend individual rights unless you're willing to defend your right to your life and by the way that's when the Elizabeth Warren show up again because you don't have a right there like that she knows how your life arteries so taking advantage of other people in self-sacrifice to be the one making sense but there is a rigorous demanding moral code that underlies free and prosperous societies we are fundamental traitors we trade money for life hey life is about figuring out how to get better together when I was finding tea we had a good level commitment to help our clients be canonically successful financially secure and we expect to make a profit to stable relationship conditions win win and lose lose whenever you get greedy and you set up a win lose you see this in spousal relationships you end up in a lose-lose relationship and happily interestingly enough whenever you get self sacrificial and you set up a lose I mean set up a lose win you'll get better and you end up in a loose loose relationship so in any meaningful relationship in your life you should ask what's in it for me that's a fair question but you should also ask what's in it for them because if there's nothing in it for them end of the day there'll be nothing in it for you life is about creating wind Russian ships now of course in your rational self-interest to help the people you care about people matter your family your friends and people you work with in fact you love your children helping your children it's not sacrifice fact somebody tell college students love is the ultimate form of selfishness I use the example you get ready to get married bigamy in your life your future spouse can join up you thing I'm so excited about marrying you this is the biggest self-sacrifice I've ever made what you wanted to hear if you really love somebody you would risk your life to protect them because they're so valuable to you I'd hate to be faced with this choice but back into between my life and one of my children's lives I'd say I'm gonna die but I couldn't live with myself if I chose differently if I sacrifice more much more I believe is in my rational self-interest is for the United Way and I always a umbrella charity organization does a lot of good in the community and which I live I wouldn't want to live I believe it's in my irrational self-interest so what would you have to do to really act in the rational self matters well the first thing you have to do is what I call hold the context a lot of times when people talk about selfish they talk about taking advantage but they're also talking about something I call tunnel vision and there are people that are kind of self focused the irony's being self focus is not rational the first question you gotta ask is what kind of world I'd like to live in and what would I enjoy doing making that world a little better place and as I see or what I like to do and what can I do and what would I enjoy you and it might make world a little better place I'd have sense of purpose I figure in my body that he tried on exercise will I take care of my mind I'm read study thing I'd work hard to create healthy relationship with other people to share my values and I'd have a rational value system what if everybody had sense the purpose is the best they could take care of their body their mind worked hard to create healthy relationships with other people that shared their values and had a rational value system I believe there's a vast majority the world's problems would go away you constantly hear that the problem is people are selfish my observation is very few people consistently act in their rational self-interest most people act in some form self-destructive manner i drugged and drank 24 beers a day got cirrhosis of the liver my 24 beers of death died people say yourself as you know yourself destructive Bernie Madoff the guy that sold hundreds of billions of dollars in his family plans that he said the best day his likes when he got called you might spend 30 years they those and your family and friends how miserable could you possibly be in order to defend free and prosperous society you must first be willing to defend your right and everybody else's right to the pursuit of their personal happiness as long as they don't violate anybody else's rights that is the foundation for a free and prosperous society one less thought about about happiness happiness in the ERISA team since the life well live is the end of the getting ride happiness sometimes business people can get confused I think my name's money's a good thing but it's not the end of the game happiness and that D since the word isn't in the game and the foundation for happiness is real self-esteem from my cliche stuff they try to sell at schools today real self esteem self esteem is a complex subject I'll show you a couple thoughts first self esteem is fundamentally self-confidence and your ability to live and be successful giving the facts of reality so you earn self-esteem how about how you live your life nobody can give you self-esteem you cannot give anybody self esteem you cannot give your children self-esteem self-esteem has to be earned live your life with integrity consistent with your bags and your beliefs and you will raise your self-esteem and that's why I'm tagra t is so important for everybody in this room and the vast majority of people on this planet the single biggest driver of your self-esteem is your work we spent a dis portion amount of time effort and energy at work and you I find working the broadest on that phrase into a very hard very productive work however you define your work what makes it importance it drives your self-esteem something I said many times the employees at BB&T it's real important the BB&T that you do your job well it's far far more important to you might fool me about how well you do your job might put your boss about how well you do your job you'll never fool if you don't do your work the best you can do it give them your level of skill given your level of knowledge you can't do the impossible if you don't do your work them yes you can do it you will lower your self-esteem here's good news do your work best you can do it give your level skill given your level of knowledge and you will raise your self-esteem this is more important than when you get a promotion or more because us about your character and I think there's a very significant social issue that flows from that concept take a construction worker a bricklayer he has a tough hard finding like my friend did that burglar has a tough hard riding life but gets something very important from this work he and his wife successfully raise her children may be his granddaughter become CEO of the trading company maybe not but he gets something really essential from that artwork he gets to be proud of himself he gets self-esteem take that same bricklayer and give him welfare he may be better off financially but he loses part of his soul there's a lot of conversation in in DC washington DC today by both parties about security unfortunately we need on the perspective it has nothing to do with reality but even if it did it would be off mission Americans care about security but this is not the land of security people didn't gilma boat come to Jamestown to be secured the United States is a land of opportunity opportunity to be great opportunity to fail and try again but most importantly the opportunity of that bricklayer to live life on his own terms pursue his personal happiness based on his beliefs and his batteries to pursue his happiness is a free and independent person that's why people came to America that is a unique special sense of life that made America great is I would be glad to answer questions about anything that anybody wants to talk about their never be about that that answer anything there's a brave man yes can you give us your perspective on what's going on with the NFL Wow well you know I think the national anthem is a united thing in our country and I is following along before Tom truck brought this up and these players were you know using that as if it's a method to express their keys I want to do that I don't think that's appropriate thing to do I think that the owners of the teams are really responsible I mean any business makes rules about how their boys have to be a and we wouldn't let our employees do things like that that were disparaging to our customers and a lot of the customers who disparity now I'm disappointed that compound lifts the way he did but he had a pony and I think that's one of the that makes mixed blessings about it but I think the owners are the ones that are really responsible I notice a good football team this is something you have to do they do have a behavior rules and they should have been forced them I have a problem to people but the whole idea of white privilege you know what privilege is it's being born in America people that have ought to complain they're people of boiling Bangladesh anybody 99.9% of people this country have you got a British this would be important this country and that's a really I don't think we should let that issue go you know I was debating and can't college campuses about this whole issue of inequality and I pointed out the obvious there's practically no poor people in Baltimore poor people live in Bangladesh that's what poor people on bottled water in and Kato poses has not even progress up wizard looks at what's happened and what's happened to Bangladesh inequality global he's in a free fall because per capita income in Bangladesh it's gone from $200 to $600 a year now $600 sounds terrible but compared to 200 it's what it's huge and in places like China India and Bangladesh in much of Africa people send a big leg he's been rising very rapidly and so the local inequality has been the freefall and so this whole idea of white privilege I see yeah American Prince you born in America wow what a bandage you have over all the rest of people in the world and doesn't mean we don't have wards and things you got to worry about but it's a rock you know you need to take it in that context and that's not the context of State John The Wall Street Journal says you're on a short list is that particularly the next chairman you probably can't come in on fan speculation okay you come that from your perspective on the role and the faith all the government well a little carrying world our national defense police and courses so the government wouldn't the trouble monitor there's no more reason to the government run the monetary system then it would be for them the next time the reason governments from the monetary system is because this is defendants warps took over my finger they lend money and they print money to finance Wars now they're trying to do it use it for economic purposes although the evidence is overwhelming that they're mistime they actually make recessions much worse than they would have been and they can they and they drive you know excessive expenses like probably we have a problem we have the stock market today so they make a lot of mistakes several countries went for long periods of time with private banking systems where the money was private and the United States was small in that way to go it's only supposed to coin money I'm supposed to take oh make it into coins and was essentially a private bank really up to the Civil War in order the Mansa Civil War the government really started taking over the monetary system so I think I think the risk implicit in a government monopoly of money is dangerous i it does encourage huge levels of debt which we have it does encourage too high spending and it also I think encouraged swarms world it's the interesting world war one I don't know how many it's the stupidest war of all time I thought I mean it some people are devastated ruling World War one but if the reason that it got so bad is because that was the first time central banks financed Wars and so everybody barri out of kazuma when they when traditionally the king was kind of constrained about yet to get his money from somewhere or hey and unless he had no or something the war would have been too many years before smart as if they couldn't have printed the money to finance the war very fact that I think could be an issue also that says one of the things we're doing in Cato state called cyber currencies and I think we'll see cyber currencies developed that actually can become competitive with the Federal Reserve I'm not a big fan of Bitcoin because it's been used for so much speculation and blocks of up I mean the economics of adolfo mean it's mostly doing by the only China India places that they're trying to get around systems but whole ideas out of a currency I don't think you can drive the pillars or out of business but I do think you can do the Federal Reserve what's happened to the post office there's no question that FedEx and UPS and this from the post office and the post office is a much better ones they still terrible it's a much better organization that it would have been it hadn't been for that competition and I think cyber currencies what I would like to see is the size of currency didn't set just based on mathematics has some connections physical could be though could be corn or soybeans or something and I think when you really make that connection the dilemma with our currencies though when they really start working to go with some closing down in the end they've done that over and over again in the proxy problem today is you know states candies you currency make an easy go pharmacy and if they ever did they drive the federal government out of business real quick but the way to set up is go was treated as a commodity attacks on so you have a you have your records own it and be very hard unfortunately of America I think that's a great way and that's what reason in Kalos you know I spend a lot of time trying to help you understand how the financial crisis was called by government policy you know be regulation but it's a hard message to get out because the media that's a different message I think the single most important issue with in America company policy issue is a privatization education I think we had truly private is can subsidize steam success parents that you won't do this I would actually support that but private education you'd have a revolution because I think the government controlled educational and for horses there are a few people that edition good ideas with the vast majority of teachers first what what do they learn in college politically correct stuff and now course what we're seeing ends up going down the people who go into teaching and I think it's a it's a very destructive environment and if you think about it spent some time in DC with Cato we have an inverted reward system for education you know in business if you if you allow the business you get to fail in education DC Public Schools is what happens with a lousy schools they get more money they have more money for capital and worse outcome in America is the inverted incentive system and it stifles innovation creativity eyes and I think that I think that there's radically better ways over time to teach kids but it has to be done systematically and and I don't know the answers but I'm for the privatization of Education you know Sweden this is I think it's ironic that Bernie Sanders kept using sweetnesses hen more Sweden's education system is largely for-profit private education so it's very interesting that way that you know the premier Sweden when burning some button being socialists in the United States we write them you know it catered race you're yet Sweden the right way above the United States and freedom but anywhere they have a for-profit private education system and it works it works whenever how are you as a libertarian once when I say this presence whether they're conservative stays or progressive says when they're smart we always come down to an idea of consent you know that they say well when they're smart they say well you consented to these laws about living the burden of saying we didn't know like it you can leave device making you stay and I have a hard time figuring out you know I certainly did consent to contract with my employer about certain things and I say you know all kinds of restrictions on my livery pretty insensitive that but I wouldn't necessarily say that I've consented to everything in the Federal Register you know that's where to stop so I have a hard time figuring out where to have an articulable you know cross over from from I don't know about any people words with them I've heard that argument in my answers I didn't even say didn't mean I'm prepared to leave without the worst places in this and I'd like to change the re so I didn't fact very fortunately in recent years and people don't come on I voted for it been elected but recent times I know I was never very buddy go later so you know I didn't do consent to the framework the United States Constitution in fact you're not our agreement in a northeast law supposed to be constitutional and they are I mean they're only seventeen things that Congress is supposed to do according the Constitution and so yeah I can send in a certain sense to the Constitution but I don't consent all these laws but I use the example and running big et I got this sometimes that we had FDIC insurance well we did it because we had no choice if we didn't have an FDIC insurance it could be a business but FDIC insurance was hurting us not help us FBI sources subsidy for high-risk organizations right so we mean he's been in business since 1872 paid hundreds and maybe it's probably not sure billions of dollars into the FDIC insurance fund we got nothing out of it right we just kept lossy competitors in business till they went product it's a ripoff so did I consent to it not you know I'm not sure you know regardless people with guns when you may not consent it to it because people put their guns away and I might do different things right [Applause]

Channel: John Locke Foundation

Views: 797

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: John Locke Foundation, North Carolina, Carolina Journal, John Allison, Federalist Society

Id: hJs_fXZ2I2c

Length: 47min 49sec (2869 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2017