Human Flourishing: The F Word - Alex Epstein

I'm really excited about our next presenter because when this dude talks, he usually says incredibly profound things that makes me think. And every time he's given a presentation in a Genius Network meeting, people are like, whoa. So let me introduce him as a Genius Network member. You most likely feel so strongly about what you do that you want to change the world. In some ways, the way you can do that is to know the power of just one word, a word most entrepreneurs don't even think of. After you hear Alex Epstein's message, you'll not only know this word, you'll know how to use its power. Alex has been called the most original thinker of the year by political commentator John McLaughlin. Alex is a deep thinker. Well, actually he's a philosopher and an expert on energy and industrial policy. Alex's title is the F Word. Please give it up for my friend, Alex Epstein.

So in the last couple decades, there's been a really important transformation, or I would say expansion, in how entrepreneurs think of themselves. We've always thought of ourselves as ambitious businessmen, individuals who want to make a transformative contribution to our fields. But increasingly, and I think this really started with the Gates foundation, there's been this conception of the entrepreneur as an ambitious citizen, someone who wants to make a transformative contribution to human flourishing more broadly. Now, this is something that is definitely necessary. If you look at the state of the world, it's no surprise there are a lot of problems, or we can call them challenges. Just in my field, which is the field of energy, There are over 1 billion people who do not have electricity. So we throw these numbers around, but think about this for a second. One billion people don't have electricity. So that's like saying if there was some completely evil person who went through every single town, in every single city, in every single state and province of North America and Europe and cut off the power and it never came on again. That's the world that we live in. There are over 1 billion people who live like that. And as you know, there are many other problems in education and technology and healthcare and issues like that. And entrepreneurs have taken an interest in that, most recently Mark Zuckerberg. But here, Bill Gates, the most successful people in the world. And I think that's a good thing. If, and this is a big if, if we know what we're doing, if we know what's actually going to make a transformative contribution to human flourishing. And I think that if we want to do that, actually, I'll say, I know. If we want to do that there is one word, one word that we must know and understand and promote above all, because this is the one word, and I mean this literally. This is the one word that is the fundamental solution to every problem that I mentioned and every problem you can think of. When people understand and apply this word, it solves education, it solves health care, it progresses technology, it makes energy available to people. Just one word. And here's the interesting thing about this word. This word is something people are terrified of. How do I know they're terrified of it? Well, I first noticed this, actually last year at Genius Network. And this is going to be a little mean to some people, but it's necessary. Everyone was talking about their different philanthropic causes, and I don't remember one person using this word. And then I read last year's letter by Mark Zuckerberg, and It was over 2,000 words, and he was telling, here's how I'm going to spend $45 billion and improve humanity in all these ways. And yet this word didn't come up once, nor did any synonym. And it doesn't come up with Warren Buffett, it doesn't come up with Bill Gates. It's almost as if it's profanity because people are unwilling to say it. And that's why I call it the F word. And the F word is shout it out. Freedom. Freedom. Flourishing. Very good. We'll get to that, too. But freedom. Now, why is that the one thing? Well, before we know what it is, it's important to know what freedom is, and particularly, I mean individual freedom or political freedom. So this. It's really important to know exactly what we mean by freedom. So freedom is the ability to act without forcible restraint by others. It's the ability to act without forcible restraint by others. And that absolutely includes the government. Now, why is this so important? It's because our fundamental nature as human beings is that first we need to think of an idea of how to create value in the world, and then we have to be able to act on it. And life and human survival and flourishing are really that simple. We need to be able to think about an idea about how to create value in the world, and then we need to be able to act on it. And when we can do that, like in the United States of America, for the most part, unfortunately, it's disappearing in many ways. But when we can do that, we get amazing results. And when we can't do that, we get concentration camps. So to just give you one example of China, which is Still a place that has massive problems with freedom. But under Mao Zedong, farmers were not allowed to think and act freely in terms of how they use their farms. And so what happened? The government got to dictate to them what they would do. And the government dictated really irrational things. And it was the biggest starvation in history. 40 million people died. 40 million people. That's bigger than most states in the U.S. then what happened? Well, the government certainly didn't become totally free, but it started liberating people, and it allowed individuals to start thinking and acting about how to use their own property. And suddenly the starvation almost completely ended. It helped China become much more wealthy, and the poverty rate around the world got driven down dramatically because of China's situation. So this one thing, this simple thing, freedom is at the root of everything. If we understand it in that precise way. You can take any field, and this is how it works. So if we're serious about being ambitious citizens, if as entrepreneurs we want to be ambitious citizens, we should be talking about freedom all the time. So that's what freedom is. Now the question is, why don't we talk about it? It's not an accident. I didn't just reveal something that's never been discovered in history. The connection between freedom and human flourishing is absolute. It's been demonstrated many times. Why don't we talk about it? Well, I think there are two basic reasons. Lack of study and lack of courage. Like lack of study and lack of courage. If we have a goal as entrepreneurs, let's say we want to sell more of our product, what do we do? We study the science of business, for instance, we'll study the science of marketing. But often when we get into the realm of promoting human flourishing around the world, we don't take it seriously as a science. Just somebody has a good idea and we give them money or we join a cause. That's complete bs. You can't accomplish anything that way. If you have a goal in life, you need to study what are the root causes of achieving this goal. And there are several fundamental root causes of mass human flourishing. And the one I'm focusing on today is freedom, because that's the ultimate condition that's necessary. So as entrepreneurs, if we want to make this kind of impact, we need to commit to studying the root causes, the fundamentals of human flourishing. We can't just do things and think that because we're so smart, we can make a big difference. And this is particularly true with freedom. And here's a fact about history that's amazing and Scary. Never in the history of the world, to my knowledge, has any country ever become prosperous through the philanthropy of wealthy people. Never has a country not become prosperous when it has significantly expanded individual freedom. So all the philanthropy in the world won't help people, and freedom will absolutely help them. So if you want to be the best philanthropist, be a freedom fighter. But you need to study it. And the other thing you need to do is have courage. Why do you need to have courage to be a freedom fighter? Because freedom is unpopular. It is not popular as a word. Right. People smile when you say freedom because they're vague about it. But if it really means the ability to act without forcible restraint by others, guess what? The vast majority of people in the world believe that they have a right to forcibly restrain others. I'm going to bring up some controversial examples. Some of you will get uncomfortable. And this will prove my point about courage. At different points in history, every major religion has had massive violations of freedom. Right now, the leading violator of freedom in the world in terms of a religion is Islam. There are people. There are many people. It's a religion. 1.6 billion people, not anywhere near that violent, but a huge percentage who believe that we should be enslaved to a particular religion. Many other religions believe that. Here's a more controversial example, if you think there is one. In my field, energy, I believe that an incredibly destructive movement that is harming billions of lives is the movement that calls itself the environmental movement. This movement opposes. They say they're in favor of solar and whatnot. You can be in favor of anything you want as long as you leave me free to do what I want. But they're against the three most effective sources of power for human flourishing, and that would be fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro. The second two have nothing to do with CO2. So it's not about CO2. They're against every practical form of power. So why aren't Zuckerberg and Gates and Buffett, why aren't they opposing the these people, the environmentalists, the Islamic totalitarians? Because it's scary. Because it's scary to have courage. It's a hell of a lot easier if you're a billionaire to give away billions of dollars to politically correct charities than to take a real stand for the issues that matter most. So what do we do about it? Last time I talked about this issue at a Genius Network meeting, people understandably said to me, okay, great, I'm excited. What do I do? And what I said was, well, there are a bunch of good not really that good, but they're okay. Some pro freedom organizations, and go find them. And people understandably found this not very motivating. And I thought about this and I realized, well, what needs to happen is there needs to be a new organization, but really a new movement. And this movement needs to be a movement of people who absolutely 100% care about human flourishing. Above all, they care about it more than than they care about human approval. And so I call this the human flourishing movement. And I just posted the link where people can learn about it today@humanflourishingmovement.com so you can check that out. But the idea is we are a group of people who take human flourishing seriously. And that means we study the root causes of it. We don't just blindly act. And it means we have the courage to act when we discover what the right root causes are. And I think this movement absolutely needs to be led by entrepreneurs. Last year has convinced me of this, because what are entrepreneurs? We're people who believe passionately in the right goal, which in this case is human flourishing. We're willing to learn whatever we need to accomplish it that studying. And when it comes down to it, if we're right, we don't really care what people think. So you should join the human flourishing movement. And as a first step, I want to hear F bombs dropped all over this conference.

All right?

It.