Ayn Rand Institute Live!

Every major philosophy gives you answers to questions about the nature of the world we live in, about human nature, about how to live one’s life and organize society. The answers we accept (implicitly or explicitly) give us guidance and a framework for living. This talk will provide an overview of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and her original answers to these questions, which have sparked an idealistic movement for reason, rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism.Recorded live at Ayn Rand Con Europe 2023

We’re told that the gap between the poor and the rich has widened. Many decry the “injustice” of income and wealth inequality. But is it actually a problem and are the proposed remedies truly just? What is a fair “distribution” of income and wealth? Yaron Brook takes on these and related issues and argues that a genuinely laissez-faire capitalist society is, in fact, the only system of fairness, that is, justice.Recorded March 5, 2014

Central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the question of whether the state of Israel has a moral right to exist. In this talk Dr. Yaron Brook argues that Israel deserves — but is not receiving — America’s moral and political support; that by sacrificing its loyal ally for the sake of appeasing our common enemies, America is undermining its own war on terrorism.Recorded December 12, 2002

Why is it that people don't seem to learn from experience? It is clear that our existing Keynesian economic policies have failed miserably. We can compare controlled economies with those less controlled, and compare more regulated sectors of our own economy with those sectors that have fewer regulations. Logic and history are on the side of those economists who have advocated for free markets. Why do those who advocate sound economic policies continue to fail in substantially rolling back government intervention in the economy? It would seem so easy.In this talk, delivered on December 1, 2011, at Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, identifies the reasons people find the free-market idea so difficult to accept and why statist policies seem to make so much sense to them. He identifies why we have been losing this intellectual battle, and provides real solutions on how to make significant headway toward ending these bad economic policies, allowing us to achieve more freedom and prosperity.

Biopharmaceutical innovators responded heroically to the COVID-19 pandemic. In unprecedented time and with cutting-edge technologies, they created vaccines and other medical treatments that saved millions of lives around the world. For this extraordinary achievement, leftists and libertarians have vilified them, and politicians are actively seeking to confiscate their patents. This talk explains how patents made possible the unprecedented response to the pandemic and why these vital property rights have been wrongly attacked. Recorded live on July 7, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Charles Darwin was far from the first person to defend the idea that new species originate by a natural evolutionary process. Between 1750 and 1850 the idea had many defenders, including his grandfather. Why did Charles Darwin succeed in convincing his fellow naturalists, when many before him had failed? Based on a decades-long study of his private notebooks and correspondence, this lecture by James Lennox will describe the inductive method that lies behind Darwin’s brilliant presentation of the theory of evolution by natural selection presented in On the Origin of Species.Recorded live on July 3, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

How do we judge viewpoints — political movements, ideologies, philosophies — that seem to contain mixtures of good and bad ideas? How do we determine whether any specific element of a broader framework is good or bad? This talk discusses a range of viewpoints, from environmentalism to religion to Black Lives Matter, and examines the means by which their concrete positions should be assessed. It explains how to identify the fundamental of any systematic viewpoint, and how that must shape our judgment of those concrete positions. Recorded live on July 7, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

In the last few years, a new intellectual community and movement has arisen, centered on the value of scientific, technological, industrial, and economic progress. These ideas have caught the attention of business leaders, academic economists, and prominent journalists. Where did this movement come from? Why is it gaining traction? And what are the key steps to maximize its positive impact? Crawford will give his viewpoint as someone who has been inside the epicenter of this movement since its beginning. Recorded live on July 7, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Mr. Scott, restorer of the film classic We the Living, will give a talk celebrating the movie’s astonishing 80-year journey—from 1942 to 2022. Scott will vividly describe the many controversies and intrigues surrounding the film’s production in war-time Italy; the heroic efforts to save the film after dictator Mussolini ordered the film destroyed; Scott’s personal experiences working alongside Ayn Rand on the initial restoration of the rediscovered movie; and the meticulous new restoration. Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Ayn Rand’s original screenplay for The Fountainhead was 283 pages long. The final screenplay for the 1949 film was less than half that length. Much of her work, therefore, has never been available to the public. The OCON program includes a performance of several scenes as originally planned and written. This follow-up talk provides additional information about Ayn Rand’s choices in the 1944 screenplay regarding the order and contexts of scenes and includes scenes rendered visually with no dialogue. Recorded live on July 4, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Having spent much of the past two years offering psychological support to entrepreneurs, Dr. Gorlin has witnessed how much support the most ambitious people need—even, sometimes especially, when they already have the right philosophy. This talk will recount what she has learned about the psychological needs and challenges of entrepreneurs, and what this has taught her about the work we all need to do on ourselves in order to build the lives and careers of our choosing. Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Emil Kocher, Swiss surgeon in the late 1800s, is known mostly for revolutionizing surgery of the thyroid. In his hands, the mortality rate of thyroid removal dropped from 50% to less than 1%. But tragedy soon followed triumph: before Kocher, no one could take out the thyroid gland. So no one asked if you should. The consequence of his surgical genius was the belated realization that the thyroid plays a crucial role in growth and development — much to the dismay of his young patients. This is the story of one man’s professional crisis, and how he met the challenge. Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

The most significant figure in the history of logic after Aristotle is 19th-century German philosopher Gottlob Frege. Frege’s work in logic and philosophy is foundational to the “analytic” tradition in philosophy and has had a strong influence on mathematics and computer science. This lecture discusses his revolution in logic and critiques its philosophical foundations. Recorded live on July 6, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Dr. Binswanger defends a radical position on immigration: the moral imperative to end all forms of governmental interference with freedom of travel. Crossing a national border, he argues, should be as free, unregulated, and unsupervised as crossing a state border. He takes on all the common objections to open borders, including: “Immigrants take our jobs away,” “Open borders abandon sovereignty,” “Immigration is harmful in a welfare state,” and “Immigrants will vote the wrong way.” He concludes by explaining why freedom of entry is of special importance to Objectivists. Recorded live on July 2, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

Mr. Douglas will describe how insider trading laws criminalize several forms of economic inequality. Property law generally protects a business owner’s freedom to profit from trade secrets and business opportunities, and by setting prices. By contrast, the prohibition on insider trading undermines the usefulness of information for its owners and treats less informed investors as victims of investors with information advantages. The result is a system of regulation that actively redistributes and even nullifies investors’ wealth—all in the name of protecting property rights in information. Recorded live on July 5, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.