Northwestern’s College Republicans brought a follower of Ayn Rand to Harris Hall on Wednesday, who argued that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were more moral than Mother Teresa.
Yaron Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, delivered his address, “Capitalism without guilt: The moral case for freedom,” to an audience of about 70 students and community members. Brook argued America will only thrive economically once it embraces a morality that encourages self-interest.
Brook is a follower of Russian-American thinker Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, the political branch of which emphasizes individual liberty and free-market capitalism. Rand argued for a limited government approach in which government exists only to protect individual rights and citizens are free to trade among themselves.
Brook said America needs to embrace self-interest as a moral belief.
“Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the moral heroes when it comes to people caring about their own lives and taking care of themselves,” he said. “There are people who are much richer than me. How did they get richer than me? By selling me stuff I wanted.”
Brook praised entrepreneurs like Jobs and Gates for facilitating “win-win” exchanges in which both the producer and consumer benefit. He criticized society’s current framework of morality for encouraging “win-lose” interactions in which the needs of others are prioritized over self-interest, citing Mother Teresa as an example.
“She was a miserable, pathetic, torn human being,” he said.
Although Brook said what America needs is a moral revolution rather than a political one, he touched on several hot-button political issues. He was unequivocal in his support for smaller government and was critical at times of religion for encouraging a morality in which selflessness is emphasized.
Weinberg sophomore Justin Moore, College Republicans’ vice president for events, said America’s religious base will make such a moral revolution difficult.
“Christianity preaches the whole morality of being selfless,” he said. “You would have to change that. That would start by teaching people at an early age in households. It’s kind of an unpopular view, but that’s the only way I see that being done.”
Weinberg sophomore Dane Stier, the president of College Republicans, said Brook’s unconventional views made him appealing to the group.
“We like to appeal to a lot broader base than just strictly conservative values,” he said. “We try to have objectivist events and libertarian events and stuff that appeals to more people.”
Brook repeatedly returned to his praises of capitalism during the lecture. He said he wanted to convey to his audience that they need to be thinking about capitalism in a new way.
“I believe that capitalism is resented and hated and moved against not because it’s not successful and not because it doesn’t work but because people view it as unethical,” he said. “That’s what I want to challenge. I want people to start thinking about ethics differently and as a consequence to start thinking about capitalism differently.”
Brook was dismissive of arguments against capitalism as an economic theory. He said if wealth is the primary objective, “there is no better system” than free-market capitalism, which discourages government regulation. He called the three industries that were hit the hardest during the 2008 economic recession
