then, you know, lower corporate taxes dramatically and slowly phase out all the regulations that are imposed on them. but absolutely, government shouldn't be involved in any of that stuff. my sense of the occupy wall street movement is it's far more about -- they're very much, in terms of inequality, this issue of inequality. i don't have a problem on it. i don't know what's the right -- i don't think david knows. i'm curious what the i do not know what is the right inequality of wealth. i do know that inequality is a good thing. i do not think we should all be equal. tall people would have to have their legs cut off. >> let's give david a chance to comment on that. >> on the question of what is the right amount of inequality, there is no absolute answer to that.

i think it would be a good thing if we lived in a society where all boats rose together, which was the case for most of the early post-war decades. the rich got richer, made a lot of money, but the middle class rose, the working-class rose. starting in the 1970's, we entered a different kind of economy in which only the costs -- gots really went up. the income of the top 100% have grown by almost 300% since 1979 while the incomes of middle- class and working-class have barely moved at all. that is not the kind of society we want to live in and that is the kind of situation we get when we have an unregulated form of capitalism, when we take a hands-off approach. i think we need to do something about that if we're going to

retain our egalitarian democracy. remember, inequality of income and wealth always translates into inequality of political power. people with money and wealth can easily translate those resources into a bigger say in our democracy, and that is not compatible with the values of this country. [applause] >> so, i said i do not know what the right mix is, but i know how to get there. how to get there is freedom, is leaving people alone, is getting the government out of picking winners and losers and getting the government out of leaving some to falter while helping others. let people be rewarded based on what they produce, not based on what some bureaucrat thinks they deserve. >> let me put the question directly to david. is government pose a role to redistribute wealth?

>> absolutely -- government's role to redistribute wealth? >> absolutely, yes. we do it through social security and medicare, which enjoys wide public support. we do it through education. redistribution is a fundamental role of government. the last time we had a situation like yaron describes is 100 years ago before the income tax, before the regulations of government. what did that society look like? it was in effect an oligarchy. that is what we will get again if we try to go back in that direction. >> this is completely rewriting history. >> robber barons? >> from 1800-1850, average incomes in united states doubled. gdp per capita grew from the

civil war to 1913 at the highest rates of human history. at the same time, the united states was absorbing millions and millions of the poorest of the poor from all over the world. freedom works. was there disparity of wealth? absolutely. i am not against that. i think that is wonderful. if some people are making huge amounts of money, that means that we value the services we're providing. how do you make money in a free market? not today, were some people make it by getting subsidies from the government. you make it the way microsoft made money, by selling a product that people value. and you benefit from the service that product provided your life. good for bill gates. he worked to the max. he lived his life to the fullest.

and at the same time, at the same time, he made all of our lives better and that has made him a lot of money. [applause] >> let me ask you, -- >> microsoft employees here in seattle. >> let me ask you, should the government role be to promote disparity in wealth? >> know, the government is neutral. this is the radical position i take. let me just address one thing. he is right. america notes -- america wants what it once. this is not a debate about popularity. nobody likes i'm advocating for, but i am right. and believe in the separation of government from economics. i do not believe the government's should be involved in distributing wealth, managing capitalism.

if you want to be a socialist, you can, as long as you can convince other people to go and live with you and a commune. if you want to bail at detroit, get a bunch of people together, pull your money and go bailout detroit. >> is it important to have significant wealth disparity as a product of society? >> if it is a product of freedom, then yes. i am a strong believer that equality is an evil gold. the regime that came closest to achieving equality was in cambodia. they killed 40% of their population in the killing fields. who among you is equal?

i do not believe in equality. i think it is an evil idea, an awful idea. when the founders talked about equality, they talk about equality for the law. in those days, if you were an aristocrat and you were accused of murder, the aristocrat on a much lighter sentence. what the founding fathers objected to was that kind of inequality. the government should treat everybody the same. the marketplace is going to treat us all different because we bring different things to the marketplace. that is what makes it fun. >> i think we have our clash in terms of what the role of government might be, at least in terms of outcomes relative to wealth. let me turn to a point on which i think i perceive some agreement between our debaters, and that may be the role of the government in regards to national security. if you wish to throw in law enforcement, i would invite you to do that as well.

this is it the that the one thing government should do is keep us safe. does that mean that you favor significant, even massive increases in our military budgets? >> i think we would both agree that government has a major role to play a national security. we may even agree on the size of resources needed for that. >> should we increase it? >> at this point, clearly we need to reduce our military obligations. in fact, that is already going to happen under the budgetary deals reached by congress in august and also through the trigger agreement. we're looking at defense cuts of about $1 trillion over the next decade. i think that makes sense. we've been fighting two wars abroad. we need to turn to domestic challenges and we need to really focus on the economic challenges that we face to compete with the likes of china, brazil, india.

it is a jeer-economic game, and we need to be more effective -- geo-economic game, and we need to be more effective at that game. >> i certainly think it can be cut. i believe the military should serve one purpose and one purpose only. there is the theme here, right? that is to protect the lives and property of america. i do not believe we should be building democracies. i do not believe we should be helping the south koreans defend themselves when they do not want as helping them defend themselves. i believe the role of the u.s. military is to defend america. somebody attacks us, we should go find them, crush them, and come home. i do not think we need to build anything that breaks or rebuild anything that breaks. i believe in the military that is lean and mean in the sense that it does what is necessary, whatever is necessary, to

protect the life and property of american citizens. >> we want to move soon to the point in which we involve all of you and the questions for our speakers, our debaters this evening. i want to turn his back before we do that to the question of why we have government in the first place. i think is a fascinating question. each of you have touched on it. how are we supposed to evaluate the effectiveness of our government? whatever its size may be? and if i may be permitted an editorial comment, i think it is fair to say that if you ask americans today what is their view of the success, not what it should look like, but the success of government, you have a very poor response. people see dissension, dissension in politics, a lack of commitment at least even in the words to the pursuit of the common good but rather the acquisition of power.

it seems to be a great infirmity in government today, at least that is how i think much of the public use it. what is the metric, from your different points of view, on how government can be successful? you mentioned the gross product of our country. what is the output of our country? i think you could go to other parts of the world and they might choose a different kind of determinant for whether or not government is successful. is government successful when it promotes happiness? if that is true, how is it defined? is it common good, a financial success? is it the degree to which people can engage in leisure time? what is the metric of government success? >> i think that is a good and tough question. i think for too long we have been measuring the success of our society through narrow economic indicators.

gdp is the dominant indicator we are always using to look at how things are going. taking the need to move beyond that to create indicators which capture how people's qualities of life are, and that involves a number of different things. involves how much time they have for leisure, the strength of communities, the cleanliness of the environment. demos has a project right now called beyond gdp in which we are looking at these kinds of alternative indicators. bhutan famously has the gross national happiness. i think that is going in the right direction. one thing government can do is the instigator of some of those new indicators and create the kind of data necessary to major our progress. in terms of how you measure the met tricks -- necessary to measure our progress.

in terms of how you measure the metrics themselves, that is difficult to do. many americans in the abstract art disenchanted with government, but when you ask them about the particular things government does, they like it. they like social security. they think government has been very successful in ensuring retirement for older people, injuring the seniors have access to medical care. the allied governments -- ensuring that the seniors have access to medical care. they like the government's role in keeping the miming clean. today, under 10% of seniors live in poverty. that is a remarkable success for the war on poverty that has so often been derided. >> is there a metric for happiness? we have gross domestic product, we have a gross national happiness scale being proposed by others around the world.

i fear that your answer may involve something more like well, the less the government does, the happier we are, but i want to invite you to offer a metric for government, even in a very limited view, what would be in metric for evaluating government? >> my approach is completely different. this is not about what makes most of us happy or some measure of happiness. i certainly want to distance myself from the idea that the measure of successful government is high gdp. i just think that a successful government has that, but my view of the metric is individual freedom. if the job of government is the protection of individual rights, then the measure by which we measure if the government is succeeding or not is, is it protecting individual rights, or is it the biggest violator of individual rights?

government violates our rights today. it infringes on our freedom, so the metric i would use is, to what extent are you free to plan not your life, to make the choices you need to do the things you want to do in your life? i think on that matrix we are failing. we have been declining dramatically for the last 100 years. i believe government should not be engaged in, for example, the decision of whether i should be allowed to take viox or not. there is risk involved, but i should be able to decide.

it is a decision i should be able to make with my doctor or my pharmacist. every time the government makes a decision like that for us, we have less freedom, less ability to pursue happiness. and yes, i believe individuals are less happy as a consequence, although i do not think you can measure happiness, certainly not collective happiness. >> do you have a comparative analysis from your viewpoint? is there another government somewhere that you think we should be emulating? are you referring to the united states government or all governments? >> no government has ever been like the government i would like. no government has ever practice the kind of government i think the founding fathers imagined. even they did not practice it. but to the extent that governments have advocated for

freedom, people have been successful, gdp has grown, happiness has grown, freedom has ground. i am a huge lover of 19th century america. i know that david has a different perspective of pre- world war i america. i think that was the golden age of this country in which individuals were actually as free as we have been in america. if you compare china to hong kong. if you compare america to hong kong, we are sinking in economic index like a rock. i think there are better governments and worse governments, and i think the u.s. government, which started out as the best government in the world -- i am an immigrant. i came here because i believe this is the best government in the world. i think it has eroded over the

last 100 years and is moving away from that freedom. even by simple indexes of freedom, dropping dramatically. >> the me turn to david to give us a comparative analysis. >> i find yaron's dark picture of the last century rather puzzling. the last i checked, the last entry was pretty good. this was the time we created the first mass middle class in the history of the world. the 20th-century was a time when we became the freest, most dynamic society in history of the world. it was a phenomenal century when america became the richest country in the history of the world, and that period also coincided with the rise of a powerful government that was committed to making america

number one in a lot of different areas, a government that was committed to building a modern middle-class through the gi bill, the interstate highway system that opened up the suburbs, public universities that made higher education affordable, scientific investments that put us on the cutting edge of industry and technology. the government played a central role in creating the golden age. the golden age was not the 19th century when children were working in factories, people did not have the right to organize and robber barons ran america. the golden age was the 20th century, absolutely. and in terms of the international comparison, i think one of the best examples in the world right now is denmark, a country known for its economic freedom, a country that is a great place to do business, but also a country with a great social safety net and a lot of investment in human

capital through its education system. we are in a major competition right now with other countries that have very strong governments that are trying to chart their role in this 21st century. >> let me take this opportunity to invite the participants who are here with us in the great hall of seattle's town hall to join us at the microphone here to my left, to your right. we will have someone here to sort of moderate activity for us, but i ask you to begin thinking of your questions and to come forward. while we're doing that, i just want to make a comment about this last bit. maybe i am standing in the middle for a reason. i would say that from my standpoint i continue to believe that i live in the greatest country of the world, whether we look at it from our

economic success an opportunity to the role that we play in terms of safeguarding the world's security. not to say that we're perfect. i think americans, better than anybody else, expose the weaknesses for all to see, and that is a powerful thing. since there seems to be some agreement that this government may not be good for certain things and that our metrics may be skewed, let me just give a few. this is from "newsweek" magazine, who attempted to pull together some of the of the happiness indices from around the world, health, education, politics. in the quality of life index, the united states this 31st. in recent rankings of the world's most livable cities, economists ranks the american entry at 29. the quality of living survey,

number 31. perhaps we have another form of agreement here. >> which countries are at the top of those lists? >> i could not say. i believe a number of them are scandinavian. others believe that china, as the emerging power of the world, will head the list. >> i propose that we take the top of that list, scandinavian countries and others, and open the borders in both directions and see where people move. i'm willing to bet that the movement will be to this country. that is were smart entrepreneurs want to be. we would have to have a very different political environment to engage in experiments like

that. >> we do want to involve our guests here at town hall, so we will take some questions now for our speakers. >> a question for yaron brook, i wonder where is the morality of allowing unhindered accumulation of wealth. in a country where you have people working three jobs and having no health insurance, i wonder where the morality is coming in. also, a country that prides itself and christian values, christianity does not espouse that you have such a wealth disparities. >> let me just make it clear in case i have been understood. i'm a radical. i do not believe in christian morality. i think it is a corrupt morality. i think it is bad. i do not believe you are your brother's keeper. i do not believe you belong to anybody else. i believe in the morality of

rational long-term self- interest. i think your own responsibility is to your own happiness, rationally pursue the of the long term. i do not believe and sacrifice. i do not believe your job is to take care of other people. i believe one of our jobs is to take care of ourselves, make our lives flourish. i want to ask the opposite question. what is the morality that says that i cannot accumulate beyond a certain amount of wealth? what if i am selling products that you guys love so much that you keep buying, and you buy more and more, and i make a profit? why do we live in a country where making wealth, creating value for people, trading what people value for value, is somehow despicable morality? giving it away after you have made it is good. if you want to make bill gates a sane, do you know what he would

do? he would give it all away and given to attend. then we would declare him a saint. -- he would give it all away and moved into a tent. then we would declare him a saint. rex thank you for the question. >> i do not think that wealth is created by individuals acting alone in some heroic fashion. i think well this created by individuals working within a society where there are the foundations for wealth creation, the roads, the schools, the infrastructure, the legal system, and that society decides together how that wealth is used. individuals do not get to

decide completely on their own. and actually, this is not a view that i created out of the blue. this is a view that andrew carnegie famously espoused in his essay "gospel of wealth," in which he argued for an estate tax on the grounds that because society created wealth collectively, created opportunities for people like carnegie, we needed to capture some of that wealth and recycle it so that opportunities were created for others. that is what redistributive tax policy is all about, creating opportunities for all. as to some of the other points, he keeps saying that look, government should not have to solve the problem because people will step forward to solve it through charity. we know historically that that is not the case. 75% of seniors lived in poverty in 1975. in his world view, we get rid

of government and we expect charity to solve it, and then we also espouse the philosophy of radical self interest which takes away anybody's sense of obligation for anybody else. that is a formula for a brutal, brutal society. [applause] >> next question, please. >> i would like to bring the discussion down to two very concrete issues that seem to me some of the greatest threats we're facing today. one question for yaron. how is your understanding of the role of government deal with what economists callnegative externalities', which is simply pollution, the danger of global climate change in the world?

and for david, it is a question about democrats who seem to join so eagerly in waging war for the purpose of gathering resources in the world because we realize we're running out of everything. and finally, if i could ask mr. mckay, to include you so you will not be left out -- >> you are very kind. >> one of the issues i have understood the courts are doing, related to the role of government, is ruling that if we go to war, that is a political issue, and make no judgment about whether the war is legal or illegal despite the fact that our supreme court justice jackson said that initiating a war of suppression is a crime. that should last the three of

you for under an hour. [laughter] >> thank you for the questions. i think our speakers are who people came to see tonight, but i think that the courts have had a very important role in determining accountability for international activities, especially for war crimes. you yourself mention nuremberg, but also the war crimes tribunals for yugoslavia and rwanda, for abuses in what we consider to be the rules and laws of war. >> media did not make myself clear, against a -- maybe i did not make myself clear -- against ourselves. i am speaking of the invasion of iraq. >> on the question of guantanamo

bay, the executive branch displayed a wide view of the power of the executive to hold individuals outside the united states in what could be seen as a constitution-free zone. the supreme court stepped in and said not so fast. individuals there have the right to petition for habeas corpus. it is a pretty dramatic conflict between the role of the executive in war making any application of constitutional rights. the court spoke loudly about what could go one at guantanamo bay and very much restricted the role of the united states there. i think we will continue to see the supreme court taking an active role in the national security -- the executive branch.

that is my answer to my question. thank you for involving me. he made me feel more useful here, because i think the better questions are coming from you than from me. let me turn to david first to answer the question he posed to you. >> very quickly, it is crazy to be fighting wars and expending resources 12,000 miles away. we need a policy for developing renewable energy here at home, and in my mind, this is a great place for government to take the leading role. this is a strategic area, and i think the best thing government can do is to set a price on carbon. push up the price on carbon and the market will solve the rest of the problem. if we do not do that now, quite apart from the challenge of climate change, we're going to continue to be dependent upon oil from some of the most dangerous places on earth. >> they are related, i guess, because they all deal with oil. i do not want to get into the

question of our policy on war, because that will take this in a completely different direction. the idea that renewable energy is around the corner is ridiculous. it is vanishing. it does not exist. 95% of all the energy in the world is from carbon sources. except that. it is going to be like that for a very long time. if there was really an alternative, do you think a venture capitalist in silicon valley would not be investing like crazy in it? all government is doing is throwing money at this problem. it will be one of the biggest boondoggles in american history. the idea that windmills and solar panels are going to solve the problems in seattle in terms of producing enough energy for us to consume the way we are today, forget it. the only way to do this -- david is right. to have a carbon tax and lower the standard of living dramatically. that is what happens when government intervenes.

the standard of living goes down. to the issue of externalities', first, i have to point out that people lois talk about negative externalities', but i want to talk about positive externalities', which are far more dominant. i keep bringing a bill gates. bill gates is a huge positive externality to every one of your lives if you live in this community. the number of jobs, facilities, the wealth created because he chose to locate microsoft here and build his business. and yes, he did not do it alone. he paid people to work with him. he paid his suppliers. he paid for the private infrastructure. there are no free lunches. i completely agree. the whole society is involved, but that is what the price system does. it rewards people for the degree

of their involvement. employees who became early and contributed more get more because of that. you cannot dump your garbage in my backyard. we know that. we have established that for a very long time. let's get innovative. let's create private property everywhere, including on water. including creative ways over the air. let's figure out how to protect our private property, each one of us. just like we protect our backyard from our neighbor polluting it with his garbage. there are creative, private, leo ways in which we can protect ourselves from harm delivered -- legal ways in which we can protect ourselves from harm delivered through the water and the air. we do not need massive government regulatory systems to achieve that, and indeed, i think it is slowing down the process. i think human beings would live in a cleaner environment if we

got rid of the epa. it slows down progress. the human environment today is the cleanest environment it has ever been in human history. it is cleaner and than london in the 19th century when there was menu are everywhere. industry -- a maneuver -- manure everywhere. >> government is the government of people. what is the proper government would depend on what your view of people is. what kind of creatures, what

kind of circumstance, how do people live, what are their capabilities, whether they're competencies', how should they live, and i wonder if both speakers could address, fundamentally, how do you view people? >> i think people are moral animals who believe in and cooperation because it is in their self interest. i believe human beings have a high degree of empathy for other human beings and that there are evolutionary reasons for that. when you cooperate, when you make sacrifices of your own self in order to strengthen your community, you get long- term rewards. i think that the government we have, in which people are making sacrifices, letting some of their wealth be redistributed to help others, is a reflection of that basic empathy and desire to advance the public good.

>> a believe that the fundamental here is that people are rational. the need to use their minds. the need to use reason in order to improve their lives in order to achieve happiness. all of the values around us are products of the human mind. the human mind thrives. it is possible to think, the reason -- to reason and be rational when the mind is free. be rational. be reasonable. create stuff. pursue values. when the government tries to tell us how and what we should do, who we should help, this or that, it is restricting our ability to think about what truly is in our rational self interest. it is restricting our ability to reason.

i'm all for corporations. i am again sacrifice. i'm against forced corporations. i'm against slave camps of any kind. free people voluntarily cooperate with one another in a rational way. >> i have a question for each of you. david, it seems that your view is that it is better to be a slave than to be poor. i want to see how you feel about my statement and hear your argument. then, for yaron, my question for you is, when government fails to do what we want through the democratic process, is there a point when it is proper to have a revolution, to initiate force, and if so, what the society look like at that point?

>> david? >> i think that yaron said he believed in voluntary cooperation among free people. that is what we have in the united states. not as much as we would like because there is too much wealth and power in hands of a tiny elite who are using that to have a large voice in society, but together, we are making decisions that have actually made us a lot richer. we have become a much wealthier society of the last seven years in part because of a proactive role -- 70 years in part because of the pro-active role of government to enable us to build more wealth, invest in human capital and invest in our physical capital. >> must be choose between freedom and slavery?

>> i do not think that slavery is on the table here. nobody is talking about slavery. the closest thing we have come to slavery in this country is when we had slavery, and it was slavery that was an institution run by the free market, unchecked by government. [boos] >> so, we have raised the question of freedom, the question of slavery. now the question of revolution. >> let me talk about slavery. clearly, slavery is wrong and it is the government's job to make sure it does not happen. i agree about the civil war. i think we should have gone to war because rights were being violated. that is the role of government

to stop the violation of rights. >> if it is the position that the government has failed in such a massive way, what we do? do we have a revolution? >> the founding fathers revolted against their government for a lot less than what we have to suffer under our government, a lot of it. i mean, in seattle, the tax your coffee. everything is taxed. it is a different context and a different world. i am not an advocate for armed revolution. for many reasons. among others, we would lose. [applause] [laughter] government needs the sanction of the people in order to govern. that is why we have the government have.

the people, the overwhelming majority of people, believe, in one form or another, slightly to the left, slightly to the right, with this. if you believe in something different, what we need to do is convince them that they're wrong. convince them that their ideas are wrong. this is an intellectual, philosophical, ideological battle. it is the battle of the mines. it is the battle of reason. it is not a battle of arms. and we're not going to win the battle unless we engage in it at this level and try to convince enough people that the way we're heading is the wrong way. >> i think you have covered the ground. let's go to the next question. >> thank you for spending your evening with us. it is my understanding from what you are saying that people inherently tend towards

violence and that humans are also inherently selfish. you talk about acting in your own self interest in the basis of morality. i wonder if he could talk about the role of correction in your ideal government. how do you catch the bernie madoffs if you do not have regulations and checks, and how the use of the rampant corruption -- how do you solve the rampant corruption we see in our government now? >> how big and robust must government be in order to catch all of the bernie madoffs better out there? >> unfortunately, we do not catch them all because we're too busy with other stuff. first of all, let me correct you. i do not think people are inherently selfish. i think to be selfish requires

hard work. my conception of selfish is the pursuit of your best interest, rationally, over your lifetime. what is best for me? how should i live my life so that i should live a flourishing life? aristotle talked about this. that to me is hard work. that is not a common view of selfishness, doing whatever you like or in a momentary sense, lying, cheating, dealing -- stealing. how do we catch bernie madoff? there are lots of ways. in the case of bernie madoff, it was actually pretty easy. some of the people who wanted to invest with bernie madoff looked at his books and said, this is a problem.

and i'm going to call the cops. and they did. a hedge fund manager wrote a nice memo to the sec. he sent it twice. it was about six years before they finally caught him, elaborating on this being a fraud. i think it is not hard. when all you're trying to do is catch crooks, it is not hard to catch them. let me argue something radical. there are a lot less croaks under capitalism than with regulations. regulations create all these loopholes. we lebanon in burma were businessmen are taught do what ever you can get away -- we live in an environment where business men are taught to do whatever they can get away with. i do not think we need a huge

government -- i think, you know, certainly, the justice department could be quite a bit smaller. you need enough to get the bad guys. >> our other speaker tonight is the author of a book called "the cheating culture and the moral center." you might be able to address this. >> i said in my opening remarks that capitalism is a great system in many ways. it is fantastic at producing wells. it is dynamic. it rewards hard work and creativity, but it also has some down sides. i talked about inequality being one of the down sides, but another of the downside is that capital-letter some, when it is not properly regulated -- down sides is that capitalism, when it is not properly regulated, it tends to become corrupt. it also tends to corrupt the political process.

in terms of the corruption of capitalism in business, we have seen that in spades in the last 10 years. everybody talks about the financial crisis we just went through, a crisis that occurred, in part, because the ratings agencies that were supposed to tell us whether subprime mortgages were sound were compromised. they had a major conflict of interest with the companies they were reading. there is huge corruption throughout the real estate and mortgage industry as well, with lax regulation of mortgage brokers, appraisers, lax regulation every step of the way, and that helped to produce the collapse we saw. remember, there was a housing bubble in almost every

developed country in the world. it turned into a financial crisis here because of weak walked dogs -- week watchdogs in weak government. capitalism inherently krebs government because wealth inequality -- inherently corrupt government because wealth inequality affects government. the financial industry spent $3 billion loosening regulations -- lobbying to loosen regulations. how do we deal with that? we have to get money out of politics. we need tougher rules on lobbyists. we need to do a number of things. >> but you're not suggesting that regulations are actually the cause of the problem. our regulations causing the bad conduct? >> that is totally false.

during the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, and into the 1980's, before the systematic attack on the regulation of our financial industry, we did not have the kinds of scandals and crashes that we have seen in just the past 12 years. we did not have enron, world,, tycho, not to mention goldman sachs, countrywide, and all of the stuff we have just seen. we had some financial instability. we had some scandals in the 1970's. one reason we had the accounting scandals later on is because we did not respond effectively to the accounting scandals in the 1970's. regulatory changes were never made. accountants or writing their own roles in washington, and that is how the system got broken. >> before the justice department went after microsoft, microsoft spent $0 in washington.

today, microsoft spends $9 billion annually. >> let me clarify, you are referring to another washington. >> i am referring to washington, d.c., far away from this one. >> just a quick warning, we have about five minutes left. >> the questions are excellent. please bring them forward. >> i have to be quick. this has me going nuts, i must say. in full disclosure, i am a big government democrat, no question, but i have run into government 1000 times and thought, this is the stupidest thing. but it does not happen more often in government than in the private sector, wells fargo,

comcast, sprint. every single private entity idea with has regulations based on the assumption i am cheating and it makes it more expensive to deal with. my real question is, why do we believe this is about government versus free enterprise? the american system of government -- those founding fathers -- i read a lot of the federalist papers. they were not talking about john locke and economics. they were talking about roman systems, athenian systems, and how human beings are at risk of abusing power. in government, we tried to set up a system to regulate the abuse of power, and we have no such system in free enterprise to regulate the abuse of power. here is my question.

in america, we get a credit for free enterprise which is built not so much on free enterprise for the first 20 years as it was on free land. >> is there a question? >> the question is, -- >> we will ask that question. >> can we take another question as well? >> we will take on the role of free enterprise and another question and give our speakers a chance to answer both. >> why has there been absolutely no, not one mention, that our freedom is about to be taken away with the two stealth provisions put into the defense bill of 2012 that is voted on tomorrow.

why are we not talking about this, because it is about ready to happen tomorrow? >> can we take another one? >> we will take one more. >> i was wondering if both of you could try to define for me the common good and what that means to everyone, not just in this room, but across america. what is the common good? i hear that all of revenues and everywhere, and i have never really heard it defined. it all over the news and everywhere, and i have never really heard it defined. >> that is a tremendous final question along with the other ones. we will give the speaker is an opportunity to sum up with their comments. >> i think that the society we want to build is a society of balance, a society where the

america and the value of mutual obligation is respected, upheld an advanced through government. civil society can play a role, but i think government has a dominant role in ensuring that we take care of one another. it is also about ensuring a strong free enterprise system. these are not mutually antagonistic ideas. government and business have often worked together, historic they come to create more wealth and opportunity -- a historically, to create more wealth and opportunity. we struck the right balance in the early postwar time when we had strong free enterprise but also strong government. i believe we can do it again. that would be one definition i would have of the common good, a balanced society where you

have both strong government and dynamic free enterprise. they're certainly not antagonistic inherently. >> it is no surprise that you have no definition of the common good because there is no such thing. there is no such thing as the common good. all there is is individual good. we can create a society in which individuals drive by pursuing their good, or we can criticize -- individuals thrive by pursuing their good, or we can create a society in which some benefit by other disadvantaged. though some may be unions, politicians, whoever. they are all bad. the idea of sacrificing some people for other people is bad. the kind of society -- [applause]

i do not want balance. i do not want a little bit of poison. i do not want a little bit of sacrifice. i do not want a little bit of violation of my freedom. i want to be free. i want you to be freed. i want a society in which those freedoms, this individual freedoms are protected, and that is the job of government. there was a question about the marketplace. it is really important -- we do not have a free market today. when sprinter whoever treats you badly, that is not the free market. all of these businesses are heavily regulated. there is no competition in cable. there is no competition in these services. there's no competition in ratings agencies. the three are the government granted monopoly and guess what? they do not do very well. what we have is a mixture.

lots of government controls and regulations and some freedoms. the reason we have been successful over the last 100 years is because that mixture has not gotten too toxic. the amount of freedom left in our society has allowed business to create the wealth, to create the products to make the goods that have allowed us to thrive and be successful. but that mixture is becoming more and more and more toxic, to the point where, i agree with the steady, incomes in the united states are flat to declining. economic growth is flat to declining. our freedoms are declining. so, i am an advocate of individual freedoms, individual rights, no common good, government stay out of my life except to protect me from bernie madoff. [applause]

>> let me just add a couple of quick words of thanks, first to seattle's own town hall for hosting this event, for all of you for participating in it tonight. thank you very much. i think all of us would agree that one important role of our government is to allow this kind of criticism and debate to flourish. so i think all of you for joining us. i want to thank for being with us -- i want to thank david callahan and yaron brook for being with us. we have had this debate about the role of government for as long as there have been government.

it is a healthy debate. i want to thank our two debaters. please join me in thanking them. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> we will take your comments and questions on "washington journal." then we will have a debate over a payroll tax discussion. first lady michelle obama and bills the white house holiday decorations later. this morning on "washington journal," we will talk