I wrote another blog entry on this video (Thinking Change: 8/10/23), an interview with Jordan Peterson by Dave Ramsey. It was a video entitled Core Beliefs and Mindsets for Success with Dr. Jordan Peterson, made on 6/14/23. Minus the 8 minutes I already commented on, I took some notes on this 53-minute video, and make some remarks on my notes below.
J (Jordan): My dragon tie is emblematic of t eh famous children’s story where parents ignore the dragon or problem in their life, until it overtakes their lives. Some things cause problems and must be faced. We are to face our dragons truthfully without fear.
My response: we must all have courage and seek truth always to know what we are doing well, and what we are failing act, so we can know what we fear and have to resolve. We are to face what we fear and work right through it.
D (Dave): We have core values. We know what we have to do, and then it is a matter of executing those values. How does a business set up core values?
J: You must discover what you are trying to do. Are you trying to make money? That is fine. It is not enough just to seek after money and profit but so engaging is noble and important. If you have, for your business, an overarching goal, then your core values will emerge. Have enough rules but not too many so that bad rules drive out good rules.
Make a profit but run an ethical business, and that is not only the right thing to do, but it enables to business to survive, perpetuate, and grow. If you give good value for service offered and rendered, make good products, back up your work, and care for your employees, you are ethical.
Do not listen to jealous, envious Leftists that are generally useless and not productive.
My response: I agree with both men.
J: You are for profit, and are ethical long-term if you have returning customers. Ethical business is voluntary exchange, free and voluntary, and both parties want to repeat it. Voluntary exchange in free markets lead to mutual gain. The mutual interaction is one where mutual experience leads all to gain, and most enterprises continue and prosper.
Leftists: you made a profit so you can exploit. J retorts, no! Mr. Leftist, you are a loser, you have not made a profit, run a company, or made anything. And now you are jealous and want to take our wealth away.
My response: I side with the capitalists, and whatever Leftists complaints and criticisms are legitimate, and some are, then we need them to be resolved by the businessmen, by ethical businesspeople that voluntarily are ethical and work to take care of customers.
J: Resentful, bitter losers in Academia poison the minds of youngsters with sophisticated arguments as to why business is exploitative. Articulate Leftists are good at exploiting guilt. This is so because businesspeople are conscientious, and that makes them successful, but also guilt-prone. But J wants free marketers to no longer give accusers the upper hand. Who are you to come after me? Have you a family? Have you produced anything of value?
My response: Jordan is correct here.
D: Taxes are not voluntary so tax more and call it public generosity, and it is not.
J: They are generous with your money, and we should not be generous with other peoples’ money. Government steals money involuntarily and gives it to the poor and then falsely attribute to themselves the virtue of being generous. To be charitable it must be voluntary, and one has to have been productive and useful, and built personal wealth, a portion of which one can share.
And charitable organizations are often poorly run. It is hard to do good, to know how to run a charity. It is easier to sow discord.
My response: Great points made.
D: A business leader needs a peer group of friends, and they are people that wish the best for you.
J: True, we are individually, ideally, psychologically healthy but we need groups and larger community too to get psychologically sane and stay that way.
My response: This is true and proper if the agent primarily and foremostly individual-lives, pursues his enlightened self-interest and maverizes, more than he group-lives and does not individuate.
J: Sanity is being acceptable enough to other people that they tell you that you are being stupid. A friend is happy for you when good things happen to you and commiserating when bad things happen for you.
Marriage and business relationships alike are built on free speech so all can maintain the integrity of the relationships. If there is no free speech, it all falls apart, and there will be some conflict because free speech discusses hard problems.
Free speech is not given to you by the state. It is a precondition to the state and the state needs to stay the hell away from regulating speech.
My response: free but courteous speech is critical for morality and liberty to exist.
J: Good business ethics is mutually satisfactory and voluntary, repeated over time. Self-interest and mutual interest merge and become identical over time.
My response: Egoism and altruism ethically meet and become identical where enlightened self-interest is allowed, and maverizers pursue their self-interest while treating neighbors and business contacts with honesty, courteous and negotiated settlements of rates and disputes. What is good for all is good for the self and what is good for the self is good for al, and all gain personally and communally. These free market voluntary exchanges for profit motivated by self-interest and secondarily by community interest, is good for the single entrepreneur and for the common good as abundance and wealth are created by and benefit all.
J: Free markets and principles of voluntary exchange are now almost a universal norm so what much of the world has been lifted out of absolute poverty except where corruption still rules. Worldwide billions predicted formerly to starve now in the middle class in last 30 years, an absolute miracle. Even if capitalism is not further improved, it is projected by 2035 no one in absolute poverty will so suffer by 2035. We do not need to feel guilty about that, but conservatives must become articulate and take on your political responsibilities, so you are forced to become articulate.
My response: Capitalism is the miracle that lifts all boats and trickles down. Peterson is an eloquent defender of free market economics. We should not feel guilty but the Marxists should feel guilty for bringing about and perpetuating poverty, suffering, war and totalitarian bondage for millions, if not billions of people: they should be so ashamed that they dare not show their faces.
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