April 13, 2018 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| One of the things I'm most amazed by at the moment is how the ideas and issues that we're talking about | ||
| every week here on The Rubin Report are relevant not just in America, but all over the world. | ||
| The amount of email I'm getting from you guys across the globe, whether it's Sweden, Australia, Brazil, Hungary or Japan, is actually staggering. | ||
| It really seems to me that there has been a reawakening as to what being a free human being is all about. | ||
| You are in charge of your own life, and if you start with this simple premise, you can accomplish anything. | ||
| While the discourse on social media may seem more toxic than ever, I see a growing, dynamic group of people coming together through ideas and conversation, regardless of where they were born or the color of their skin. | ||
| We're partnering with Learn Liberty again this week, and our guest is Rajshree Agarwal. | ||
| She was born in India to a traditional family, only to move to America, where she now teaches about capitalism at the University of Maryland, where she is the Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship. | ||
| She believes that capitalism provides maximum freedom and happiness to all people, regardless of race, religion or anything else. | ||
| The ideas of freedom that once sparked in her as a young child are the same ideas that she's now helping further by teaching minds of young people today. | ||
| That is what freedom is all about. | ||
| If you want to join me in spreading these ideas of freedom and individuality in person, I'll be joining Jordan Peterson on his 12 Rules for Life tour for as many dates as I can possibly fit in. | ||
| We kicked off the tour a couple weeks ago at the Beacon in New York City, where the energy in the room was absolutely bananas. | ||
| I'll be traveling with Jordan to the UK to speak in London at the Apollo Hammersmith Theatre on May 13th, and then on May 14th I have the incredible honor of speaking at the Oxford Union. | ||
| Hopefully I'll get to meet as many of you guys as possible, and I also promise to down as many pints as possible. | ||
| I'm also working on an Australian tour and hope to have some more info on that for you guys soon. | ||
| You know, I've mentioned on the show lately that the endless hysteria of the left and the politically correct craziness that we're caught up in was eventually going to drag me back into stand-up comedy, and this finally came to fruition this past Sunday at the Irvine Improv. | ||
| The show was billed as an evening of stand-up and sit-down, as I did about an hour of stand-up, and then Bob Saget joined me on stage for about 45 minutes of a sit-down. | ||
| It was awesome meeting so many of you guys out there, and the show was a huge success. | ||
| The manager of the improv even told me that it was the first sold-out standing ovation she's seen at the club in her 18 years. | ||
| We're going to announce travel dates for upcoming stand-up gigs pretty soon, and I hope that you guys will join me for at least a two-drink minimum and plenty of laughs. | ||
| And finally, after years in the making, we taped our interview with Dr. Thomas Sowell yesterday on location at Stanford University in San Francisco. | ||
| We flew our whole team up there and rented a studio to make it happen. | ||
| It was truly a personal and career highlight for me, and I can't wait to share our sit-down with you next week. | ||
| Big thanks to our supporters on Patreon who make interviews like this possible. | ||
| So all these announcements aside, whether you're in the US, India, Oxford, San Francisco, or anywhere else, we're all in this fight together. | ||
| Keep fighting for what you believe in, and I'll do the same. | ||
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| We're continuing our partnership with Learn Liberty today and joining me is the Rudolph P. Lamone Chair | ||
| and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, | ||
| as well as the Director for the Ed Snyder Center for Enterprise and Economics, Rajree Agrawal. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you for having me Dave. | ||
| I feel we're going to have a very good talk because we've already sort of had the interview before we started. | ||
| We've been doing it already. | ||
| I'm looking forward to this because we did meet once before. | ||
| We were at a conference in DC that was sort of focusing on academia And free speech, and we spent a couple minutes talking, and what I thought was interesting, yeah, I don't think you knew who I was beforehand, and I didn't know who you were beforehand, and they sort of brought me there to talk a little bit about how YouTube plays a part in reaching young people, and technology and all that, and you were very interested in that. | ||
| So we didn't really focus on free speech together, but we focused on how technology is shifting the conversation. | ||
| So just very quickly to start, Why are you interested in how technology is affecting the conversation related to free speech, capitalism, the whole thing? | ||
| So, I'm not interested in technology per se, but I'm interested in technology because it represents the manifestation of the human mind at work. | ||
| Ultimately, what is technology? | ||
| Technology is better machines. | ||
| But what are machines ultimately? | ||
| Whether they're fast computers or whether they're the industrialized age engines or whatever you call it, right? | ||
| They are ways for us humans to make our lives easier by using machines. | ||
| So, technology ultimately is a way for humans to communicate better, to live better lives, and to use their mind in doing so. | ||
| So, I study innovation, I study technology, because it enables us to be the best we can be by using our mind. | ||
| I was very proud when you walked in here, because you study innovation and entrepreneurship, and this is my garage that we turned into a studio, so I thought, Yes, and think about all of the creativity that went into it, right? | ||
| Not just by you, but all of the techniques, the machines that we're looking around. | ||
| It was someone's mind that had to come up with it first. | ||
| So creativity, which is at the heart of individual enterprise, is what I love, and that's what I study. | ||
| All right, so that's what we're going to spend most of this hour talking about. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And, you know, when we do these shows with Learn Liberty, they always send me just a quick one-page bio on everybody, and I really loved yours. | ||
| There was a bunch of quotes in there that I want to quote directly to you. | ||
| Now, you should know that when they asked me to write that bio, I dished that out in about Fifteen minutes at 4.30 in the morning. | ||
| Oh, look at you patting yourself on the back. | ||
| No, I'm a morning person. | ||
| That's all I'm saying to you. | ||
| Well, this was really good when you got here. | ||
| But first, let's talk a little bit about your history because you have an interesting history. | ||
| You were born in India and you lived there for your first 21 years. | ||
| Tell me a little bit about that. | ||
| Well, I was born to a very, very traditional family, Hindu family. | ||
| My father was your typical rags-to-riches entrepreneur. | ||
| He embodied enterprise. | ||
| And he, in fact—I'll tell you about this one story. | ||
| I was in fifth grade, and I came home so upset, because the history lesson that I had just heard was all about how the United Kingdom, Britain came in. | ||
| And just plundered this golden peacock that was India, and look at all of the nasty things that they did to us, and how oppressed and victimized we were. | ||
| And my father, who was very much a traditional orthodox Hindu, at that time said, Actually, Britain did more good for India than they did bad. | ||
| And it's like, huh? | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
| And he went on to talk about why, before that, it's true that India was rich, but what did rich mean? | ||
| It meant that the kings and the traders were rich, but there was a very feudalist economy at that time. | ||
| And of course, they were also very balkanized, because each of these kingdoms were fighting with each other. | ||
| So, one of the things that he talked about is how the advent of the British—you know, they bought the rule of law, they bought infrastructure, they gave us English as a language. | ||
| You know, often people—my husband says, oh, wow, you talk better English than I do. | ||
| And it's like, yes, that's because I was educated in English, as well. | ||
| But at the same time that he was such an entrepreneur in his mindset, he was very traditionalist in his views of how women should be. | ||
| And so, when I was 12 years old, he said to me, the right and the responsibility of finding a husband for you is mine. | ||
| Don't you forget that. | ||
| And, of course, any woman in his family couldn't work, because that was a slap on his face, in his ability to provide for us. | ||
| But if you think about it, at 12 years old, I'm being told that the two biggest decisions any individual can make for themselves Whom you marry and what you choose to work in. | ||
| And I'd like to think that those two decisions undergrid everything that we do, both at work and the not-work life that we live. | ||
| If those are taken away from you, What does that mean, about you as an individual, you as a person? | ||
| So between 12 and 18, I had to navigate that distance, because at 12 years old, I was a daddy's girl! | ||
| I said, of course, Dad, just please do me a favor, find me a husband who lives in Bombay, because I can't even bear the thought of being in a city that's different from you. | ||
| And at 18, I had to see for myself that I couldn't renege on that decision. | ||
| So, between 18 and 21 was really my discovery of who I wanted to be. | ||
| And at 21, I left India, two suitcases in my hand, left everybody that I loved, a very generous inheritance. | ||
| And my father did not speak to me for seven years. | ||
| Wow, I mean, there's so much there of your formative stuff that leads you to where you're at right now. | ||
| When you came home that day in fifth grade, you learned something in school, and then you hear something different from your father, who you obviously respected and admired and had, as you said, rags to riches, had provided a good life for you guys. | ||
| How did you go back to school after that? | ||
| I mean, did you go back and start arguing with teachers? | ||
| Oh, I was always arguing with teachers. | ||
| In fact, I remember my science teacher saying, Rajshri, why do you ask so many whys? | ||
| Pretty sure that's not what a science teacher is supposed to say. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's really fascinating. | ||
| So you picked up and left. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And left an inheritance, all this. | ||
| You get to America. | ||
| Just tell me a little bit about that initial experience. | ||
| So for me, this was freedom. | ||
| It was, you know, I had lived in India, especially in the generation that I was in, a woman didn't, a girl or a woman did not live by themselves, right? | ||
| They got, they stayed with their parents till they were married and then they went to their husband's house. | ||
| So the concept of really being yourself and having the responsibility to make your own choices is both liberating and But then I also realized I can't blame my parents for my mistakes anymore. | ||
| Indeed, five years later when my mom, or six years later when my mom came to visit with us, my husband said, you know, what is the one biggest difference that you see in your daughter? | ||
| And this will tell you a little bit about my personality there, too. | ||
| She says to him, she's become very responsible. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's fascinating, actually. | ||
| And she uses this as evidence. | ||
| She says, you know, Her father used to give her a very generous allowance. | ||
| But we would marvel at the fact that this kid would go through this allowance within 10 or 12 days, and then she'd say, I'd like more. | ||
| And then her father would sometimes give it and sometimes say, no, that's all you're going to get. | ||
| So then she'd come to me, or she'd come to her brother, or I started to tutor. | ||
| Because I often said I earned my own bread and butter, but my father provided me with the jam. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But one of the things that she said was, now she looks at me and she realizes just how responsible I've become. | ||
| That where before money would just flow off of my fingers and I wouldn't give it a second thought, I had become so much more responsible in my thinking. | ||
| And I think she was talking a lot more about then just money. | ||
| In India I was rebelling. | ||
| Because I was fighting against something. | ||
| I came to the United States, I didn't have to fight against anything. | ||
| So I had to figure out who I was and what I really wanted to be. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it allowed me to thrive. | ||
| Yeah, so you mentioned you didn't talk to your father for seven years after that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How did the reconciliation happen? | ||
| Or was it a reconciliation? | ||
| It was a reconciliation. | ||
| In fact, one of the things that I really, really treasure is, you know, for the... I was a daddy's girl. | ||
| And I did want his approval. | ||
| And after I got my PhD, I remember this one conversation that I had with him where I was this prodigal daughter. | ||
| He was just finally talking to me again. | ||
| I think he'd given up on the fact that I would be this person that would ultimately come home with my tail between my legs and say, you know, you were right, I was wrong. | ||
| He'd just completely given up on that. | ||
| And so, he was listening to me, and, of course, I was trying to impress him. | ||
| So I was talking to him about all of these achievements. | ||
| As a young assistant professor, I had received a couple of awards. | ||
| I was getting to go to these prestigious conferences. | ||
| And he's listening, but there's silence on his side. | ||
| And the more I'm talking, the more he's silent. | ||
| And then, finally, I just gave—I had nothing more to brag about or talk about. | ||
| And I wasn't getting the, I'm so proud of you, from him. | ||
| And so there was this uncomfortable silence after which he says, it's a phrase in Hindi, which roughly translated says, if a peacock dances in a forest, who sees? | ||
| So who cares? | ||
| And his point to me was, you can be all of the peacock you are, but if you're not next to me, It doesn't mean anything. | ||
| So that was the harshness that we started off with, even in the reconciliation. | ||
| But my last visit with him, paradoxically, was when I was asked to give a keynote in India. | ||
| This was immediately after India's liberalization. | ||
| It was thriving as an economy that we now know it to be. | ||
| And so I was asked to give a keynote at an academic conference on entrepreneurship and economic growth. | ||
| And so on my way to this conference, I stopped by and 10 years after I have done my PhD, I'm finally talking to my father about my research and connecting it to his own entrepreneurial spirit and him being a serial entrepreneur. | ||
| And I can finally see the pride in his eyes. | ||
| So you got there. | ||
| I got there. | ||
| And then at the keynote, at the end of this thing, when you go to India, you'll realize that when you give a speech, they'll give you a present. | ||
| So in front of about 500 people, they give me this present that I open, and believe it or not, it's a peacock. | ||
| Seems fitting. | ||
| Seems, yes. | ||
| There's so much there, and it's so obvious hearing the story, how it led to all of the things that you're teaching about now and care about now. | ||
| The concept between the battle between sort of traditionalism and then the entrepreneurial spirit is really a fascinating one, because he obviously had that. | ||
| He built something for himself, built a good life, and then still wanted that piece of sort of the old world. | ||
| And I think we all kind of struggle with that in a way. | ||
| Maybe that's what the struggle of Western civilization is, in some respects. | ||
| And I actually think that this relates to, often, the need to think and integrate one's psychological growth with one's growth in the material and in the riches realm. | ||
| So, one of the things that I think my father was as a paradox, unfortunately, and I think that caused him as well as me so much of this angst between us, is that at the same time that he applied his intellect into the economic realm, he psychologically did not necessarily realize that, you know, part of the reason he was successful is because he was able to make his own decisions, which also meant the freedom to | ||
| make your own mistakes and learn from your mistakes. | ||
| So while he allowed that there, as far as his family was concerned, there was this very | ||
| protectionist, "I need to take care of you." | ||
| But that—I'm realizing this as a parent—is not very conducive to your children's growth. | ||
| Because what you really need to give them are the tools to make their own decisions, as opposed to telling them, you know, this is the way you should do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And ironically, had you not broken away and been free, although he may have been very pleased with your life, and who knows what your life would be, and maybe you would be happy in some ways, it wouldn't have led you to all this. | ||
| So you had to directly fight that. | ||
| I had to do that, yes. | ||
| So one more thing about India before we move on to everything else you're doing. | ||
| I told you right before we started that I get a ton of fan mail from India. | ||
| I think there's some really interesting political things happening right there that seem to be driving people to Watching shows like this. | ||
| Just give me one thing that we should know about India right now that maybe we don't know as Americans. | ||
| Which I think is probably everything because India never comes up in the news really. | ||
| Yes, so I can talk about India right now a little less than I can talk about the India that I grew up in and why growing up in India actually fostered my entrepreneurial spirit. | ||
| Okay, so we can do a little bit of that. | ||
| A little bit of that, right? | ||
| And I think that that is one of the aspects. | ||
| It's definitely selection at play, right? | ||
| I do think that across every culture, people, individuals are born tabula rasa. | ||
| Some cultures are much more conducive to having the entrepreneurial spirit bloom, and as a result, you see people go so much farther. | ||
| But there are other cultures, and other cultures stifle it. | ||
| But as individuals, I think we all have the same proclivity to be the persons that we can be. | ||
| But one of the things that I will always credit in my education in India is the focus on thinking. | ||
| And critical thinking and intellectualism. | ||
| So the concept of a nerd growing up for me was unheard of, because the coolest kids were also the ones that participated in science and elocution debates. | ||
| You know, I was always at the forefront. | ||
| I wasn't so much of a sports person. | ||
| But I was very much in debates, in elocution competitions, in science competitions, and so on. | ||
| And that was cool. | ||
| This is like bizarro United States. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| So the concept that there's a nerd and a nerd is socially awkward was unheard of for me. | ||
| I'll give you another example. | ||
| You know, my brother was the one that first talked to me about Ayn Rand. | ||
| And of course, in that journey that I was telling you about, where I had to find my own identity, reading Atlas Shrugged was really the pillar of strength and helped me identify my own sense of life. | ||
| But the way I read Atlas Shrugged, you'd find very funny, is in colleges in India, If you're a guy and you want to impress a chick. | ||
| You carry, at least in my time, a paperback novel of Atlas Shrugged in your back pocket, because that means that you're intellectually, you're thinking. | ||
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Now, it was also said... That's so fascinating to me, yeah. | |
| Right? | ||
| And it's also said, well, if you're young, then you believe in these views, but then you grow up and you grow over it. | ||
| I have never grown over it. | ||
| I think that that aspect of the mind, the ability to think through, Decisions is one that I will credit the Indian culture and my father. | ||
| Yeah for endowing in me Yeah, well, you'll be happy to know as I mentioned to you before that, you know I was at the Students for Liberty conference and I met several students from India who were there that are involved with Ayn Rand Institute Yes consider themselves objectivists and all that and it seems that some of those ideas at least are thriving there So yes, that brings it into the modern day Okay, so as I mentioned, I really loved your bio, and there were a couple of great quotes in there, so I wanna read one directly to you. | ||
| You said, my passion is upward mobility integrated across intellectual, psychological, and economic realms. | ||
| I care deeply about growth. | ||
| Achievement for me is measured not by the level you have attained as much as the road you have traveled. | ||
| For me, the journey is the destination, and I care deeply about integrity as in the whole of a person rather than the individual parts. | ||
| And I thought there's obviously a lot there, but it seems to me that this is sort of what we're missing these days. | ||
| We've got people... | ||
| that are just screaming at each other all the time, that everyone's pretending they're an expert in everything, nobody's sort of listening. | ||
| You know, I've been traveling with Jordan Peterson a lot, who's talking so much about what I think is such simple stuff in a certain way, although he's quite brilliant at it, you know, talking about personal responsibility and being a full person, and I thought that that was really what you were getting to here. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So, what's the question? | ||
| So the question is, Well, I guess I sort of know why you came to believe this, but we seem to have a real lack of an ability to be a full, integral person these days. | ||
| I think in part it really relates to this entrepreneurial mindset and a growth mindset. | ||
| And for me personally, that is a perspective that is in some sense selfish. | ||
| Let me explain what I mean by that. | ||
| And I mean selfish in a very positive way here. | ||
| I am right now an endowed professor. | ||
| I'll just give you an example of it. | ||
| And I get to mentor a lot of young minds. | ||
| And many of them come to my office, particularly PhD students, with this mindset of, I know so much. | ||
| It is true. | ||
| I know a lot. | ||
| But think about the interaction between a student and a professor, where if the professor says, I know everything, you're my student, and you're going to learn from me. | ||
| It's a one-way street. | ||
| It's the student benefiting from the professor with that mindset. | ||
| But how is the professor benefiting from it? | ||
| Where is my learning? | ||
| Where is my growth? | ||
| So, in this conversation, one of the ways that I approach this relationship is, I say, you have to start this conversation thinking of each other as intellectual equals. | ||
| I may know more than you. | ||
| But especially in the realm of research, which is creating new knowledge, I need you to have a questioning mind. | ||
| Because what happens if you're saying something that I want to challenge? | ||
| And after all, in academia, we're in the marketplace for ideas. | ||
| If I challenge you, and your mind immediately shuts down because you say, oh, Rashri said this, she's the expert professor, she knows everything, and you're not going to challenge me. | ||
| Then you're not allowing yourself to learn. | ||
| But more importantly, if I know that about you, I'm going to shut myself down. | ||
| And I am going to censor myself from expressing my ideas because I want your mind to be open. | ||
| So now we both lose and we both silenced ourselves. | ||
| So this is just one example of where I think that this this focus on growth and on learning | ||
| is actually very liberating, and in that sense, very selfish for me, | ||
| because now it becomes a two-way street. | ||
| I'm not just teaching, I'm also learning. | ||
| How do you get over the concept that selfishness is somehow evil? | ||
| That I think a lot of people believe this. | ||
| Inherently you say, well, I'm selfish. | ||
| And they think, well, you're evil. | ||
| So this actually relates to one of this point about the lack of integration or this thinking about either or. | ||
| So the common concept of selfishness is as in, well, you're only thinking about yourself and not thinking about the other. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Why does it have to be an either-or? | ||
| Why cannot it be a win-win trade, which is fundamentally recognizing your dignity, my dignity, your identity, my identity, and knowledge that should we, you know, right now you and I are talking, why are we sitting here and having this conversation? | ||
| Other than the fact, of course, that, you know, we're passionate about these ideas. | ||
| And we find that our time together is meaningfully well spent. | ||
| So, my enjoyment out of this conversation is not at your expense, neither is what you're gaining out of it at my expense. | ||
| In fact, we're creating value together. | ||
| Yeah, I like that you brought it into this room because that's exactly right. | ||
| For me, at least, it's like, in a way, I'm doing something selfish in that I'm doing my show. | ||
| I'm bringing a guest on that, you know, will hopefully get people to watch, right? | ||
| And you're here because you want your ideas to spread. | ||
| The people that are watching this, hopefully are getting something out of it for themselves. | ||
| I mean, that's what people really need to understand, that that's what's integral about this. | ||
| It doesn't mean we're taking from you. | ||
| It actually means that we're giving something to ourselves and something to you. - Yes. | ||
| And so for me, this notion that selfishness means this brute that is just going to ride roughshod over everybody else's rights and responsibility fundamentally does not get to this idea that each of us have our right to live our lives the way we see best. | ||
| And, you know, take the consequences, good or bad, off our decisions. | ||
| How much of this do you think is about just whether people view humans fundamentally as good or evil? | ||
| So if you fundamentally think people are evil and you say to someone, be selfish, well, then it is that they're going to run roughshod over everybody and destroy the environment and steal money and kill people and all that. | ||
| Versus if you believe people are fundamentally good or at least neutral, then if they do something for themselves, it will potentially be So, for me, the only evil is really the use of force to throttle somebody else. | ||
| You can do what you want to do, so long as you're not infringing on other people's rights and responsibilities and their ability to live their life the way they do. | ||
| And, indeed, in a civil society, that is the fundamental respect that we owe each other. | ||
| That I live my life the best way that I think is done, but I'm not going to impose my views on you. | ||
| I may have a conversation with you about my views, and you're free to agree or disagree with my views, and free to agree or to interact or not with me. | ||
| But I can't force my views and my beliefs on you, and neither should you force. | ||
| I mean, that's fundamentally the conversation between my father and I. | ||
| If you think about it, right? | ||
| It is that we were both very aligned in our views 80% of the time, but the 20% where he thought that as a father, he had the right to tell me what I should do, as opposed to be the facilitator and guide and advisor to my decisions. | ||
| That is the fundamental disconnect. | ||
| Do you think we spend too much time on that 20%? | ||
| I heard Barry Weiss on Realtime call it the narcissism of small difference, where we can agree on almost everything, philosophically, and then we find something, and then that is what we focus on relentlessly. | ||
| And it really depends upon is that something in a hierarchy of your values, a fundamental issue that you do need to disagree on? | ||
| Or is that something in the hierarchy of your values and your beliefs, something that is not as critical? | ||
| To the conversation that we're having. | ||
| So I prefer, indeed, I am a big believer in win-win outcomes. | ||
| I don't, you know, my husband is my best friend. | ||
| I love him. | ||
| The last thing I would want is for him to say, Rashree, I'm with you. | ||
| Not because it gives me any selfish joy. | ||
| Not because I get any pleasure. | ||
| I take pity on you. | ||
| I feel sorry for you. | ||
| And that's why my life's objective is to take care of you. | ||
| Would you want to be in that relationship? | ||
| I'd walk out the door! | ||
| I'd say, if I am not giving you personal satisfaction and joy in being with me, if I'm not your best friend just like you're mine, then this relationship is not a win-win. | ||
| And I don't want to be either an object of charity or pity, or I don't want you to feel like you're obligated. | ||
| Yeah, so I want to back up to something you said a few minutes ago about the way that you teach and that exchange between professor and student. | ||
| Where it's sort of, you're trying to look at each other as equals, and I might learn something from them, and they might learn something from me. | ||
| So two parts on that. | ||
| First off, how often do you find that you actually learn something? | ||
| Oh, every time. | ||
| Indeed, last year, University of Maryland honored me with the Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award. | ||
| And one of my first slides was about exactly that. | ||
| The debt that I owe to my advisor, who incidentally gave me away when Rob and I got married. | ||
| Remember, my father wasn't talking to me. | ||
| My advisor was my second father. | ||
| And so I learned a lot from him. | ||
| And I have benefited from that learning of a mentor-advisor relationship, | ||
| but I have benefited equally from paying it forward. | ||
| So every one of my PhD students, I can pinpoint to you exactly what ideas | ||
| they helped me learn, which empirical context and innovative industries I went into along with them, | ||
| and how my own scholarship has fundamentally benefited and even changed trajectories because of my PhD students. | ||
| So the second part of that then would be, do you think that is a real rarity on college campuses these days, that professors are willing to learn from students? | ||
| Because when I go to colleges, which I'm doing all the time now, one of the things I hear most is that students are actually afraid to challenge their professors because they think it's gonna hurt their grades. | ||
| And that generally, just generally speaking, this seems to come from more leftist professors, that if you challenge them on intersectionality or any of that, That people actually think their grades will suffer. | ||
| Do you think that that's a problem in academia? | ||
| It is, unfortunately. | ||
| You know, there is this part of me in my soul that says that just cannot be true. | ||
| Please let this not be true. | ||
| Because the fundamental identity of an academic should be one which is focused on learning and focused on ideas. | ||
| And indeed, I would say that one requires a confidence and a self-esteem, and to be comfortable with being challenged. | ||
| And so often, I do have several colleagues that I worry about, in as much as they don't make good advisors. | ||
| And part of the reason they don't make good advisors is not because they are not experts in their sphere, but precisely because they cannot stand being challenged by their students. | ||
| And in my opinion, that's a lose-lose. | ||
| Not only are you stymieing the students' growth, you're stymieing your own growth. | ||
| Yeah, so when you hear people talking about the free speech issues on college campuses and at the conference that we were at, I mean, there were literally hundreds of professors there to talk about how do we defend free speech. | ||
| That was the whole purpose of it. | ||
| Do you sense that something has shifted in the last couple years? | ||
| Does it seem worse now? | ||
| I'll give you my own personal story. | ||
| About three years—two years ago, I ended up writing an op-ed in The Washington Post on confessions of a silenced professor. | ||
| Now, you've heard me these last 15-20 minutes. | ||
| Anyone that knows me says, Rashri, you? | ||
| Silence? | ||
| Give me a break. | ||
| You don't seem like the easily silenced kind. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And indeed, part of the theme of that op-ed was a very important self-realization that I had. | ||
| And that was that I was now starting to think, do I really want to take this on? | ||
| And it was a colleague of mine who we were just having a conversation about something that had happened at a conference. | ||
| And she said to me, and I was like, you know, I'm wondering, should I weigh in on this or should I just let it go? | ||
| And the point is not what the issue was. | ||
| The point is that I even asked that question, which is what this colleague said to me. | ||
| She says, Rashmi, when did you become so afraid of speaking your mind? | ||
| And that really hit me. | ||
| In my gut, if you will. | ||
| It's like, when did I start thinking, if I do this, what's going to be the fallout within the academic circles? | ||
| Should I repress myself? | ||
| And that's when I realized that the spiral of silence, where we end up—so, you know, you can talk about censorship. | ||
| I actually think at the University of Maryland, I am in a great university. | ||
| Precedent on down, we have an investment and a dedication towards freedom of speech and thinking about the academia as a marketplace for ideas. | ||
| That's so great to hear. | ||
| It's refreshing and wonderful. | ||
| I mean, just before I came here, I had a phenomenal conversation with the president regarding an event where we're worried about whether or not there is going to be some backlash because of some of the people that we're bringing in, in a debate. | ||
| But for us, it's very important to have that reasoned and respectful discourse. | ||
| But for me, it was—you know, people from the outside can tell you whatever they want, but when you start to silence yourself, that's when you silence your mind. | ||
| That's when you don't let your innovative creativity—you know, what is freedom of speech about? | ||
| It is not the freedom to agree. | ||
| It's the freedom to disagree. | ||
| But doing so in a manner, and again, coming back to this use of force, right? | ||
| I can say what I want. | ||
| I am not, you know, in college campuses these days, one of the things that they say is, well, words can hurt. | ||
| You know, I was in a convent, and the teachers used to say, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words don't hurt me, right? | ||
| And yes, words do have a power. | ||
| I'm not denying that. | ||
| For sure, several of the things that my father said to me psychologically were very wounding, and I had to work through that. | ||
| So I'm not denying the fact that words in the psychological and intellectual realm are very powerful, but the point is there's a fundamental difference We've had a long sort of slippery road on this, right, where people are starting to think that words mean action or that you have some sort of right to not be offended or a right to comfort. | ||
| our minds thinking and then communicating with each other. | ||
| Yeah, we've had a long sort of slippery road on this, right, where people are starting to think | ||
| that words mean action or that you have some sort of right to not be offended or a right to comfort. | ||
| I mean, you just simply don't have those things. | ||
| I think actually it's the converse is true. | ||
| You need to be courageous to look at something and say, this doesn't accord with my beliefs. | ||
| So you know, let me use a different analogy out here. | ||
| People often talk about open versus closed mind. | ||
| I actually think neither of those concepts make sense. | ||
| Because what is a closed mind? | ||
| That is the professor that you and I were just talking about who says, I'm right, how dare you challenge me? | ||
| I've made up my decisions already, right? | ||
| But an open mind is someone that's just sitting on the fence, not willing to take any kind of a committed stand. | ||
| In fact, I would prefer a closed mind to an open mind in that way, right? | ||
| But what I really care about is an active mind. | ||
| That I have some opinions, some beliefs, and they're based on the prior thinking that I have done. | ||
| But I'm not omniscient. | ||
| I'm not infallible. | ||
| I could have made mistakes in my thinking. | ||
| So having an active mind allows me, gives me the permission to say, I do have these thoughts and beliefs. | ||
| But if someone provides me with compelling evidence, And compelling logic that would make me change my thinking, then it isn't my best interest to do so. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| You know, it's funny, I find I often, I sit across brilliant people all the time, and every now and again someone drops something that I think, wow, that's what I've been trying to get to. | ||
| Active mind. | ||
| I mean, I'm going to start using that phrase, because that's right. | ||
| You don't just want an open mind of endless nothing, actually, and you don't want a closed mind, but an active mind. | ||
| Thank you, Dave. | ||
| Yeah, so I wanna ask you one other thing on this, and then I really wanna focus on all the stuff | ||
| that you're teaching for the whole second half. | ||
| What do you think the actual solution is related to this? | ||
| So if a professor like you has this sudden need or fear of self-censoring, and I think it's pretty obvious | ||
| to me how open and courageous you are inherently, What do you think the solution is? | ||
| And when we were at this conference, a lot of the professors were saying this has to come from the donors. | ||
| Because the administrators at the schools cannot be brave enough if they think that their jobs are on the line all the time, but that the one way to do it is that if the donors are slowly turning off the money to professors that won't defend free speech or administrators who won't back the professors who do, that that might be the change. | ||
| Does that make sense to you? | ||
| Yes, and I disagree with it. | ||
| Let me explain to you why I disagree with it. | ||
| You cannot. | ||
| So this comes back to the first question you asked me. | ||
| Why do I focus on integrity? | ||
| And why do I think about economics, which is money and donors, along with psychological and intellectual growth? | ||
| For me, you cannot have one without the other. | ||
| These are pieces that fit together to make an integrated whole. | ||
| Within academia, one always has to worry about the fact that you've got all of these pressures, pressures for conformity, pressures for funding and resources that are coming in there. | ||
| What you really care about and what you cannot renege if you are an intellectual entrepreneur, which is truly what being in academia is all about, being an intellectual entrepreneur, Is your unwavering focus on knowledge, creating knowledge, and if I may say so, on truth? | ||
| Resources, just like any venture capitalist, this intellectual entrepreneur may be a good analogy actually. | ||
| Venture capitalists provide you with the financial resources, but they are complementary resource providers. | ||
| They cannot tell you which direction should you go, nor should they. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you don't have that creative mindset, that intellectual horsepower, if you're not courageous enough to go for that, then any kind of pressure from the venture capitalists is not going to help, nor are any kind of pivots and directions and so on. | ||
| So the way I look at it is, I do not and will not ever change my research based on what donors may or may not give. | ||
| On the contrary, I will look for aligned donors. | ||
| Because you cannot put the cart before the horse. | ||
| You cannot put your purpose behind The money or the success metrics of your purpose. | ||
| Your purpose has to drive all of the other resources that you garner. | ||
| So if an administrator lacks courage, that's on the administrator first and foremost. | ||
| If an academic lacks courage of conviction, that's on them. | ||
| You can have complementary people aligned with you, kind of helping you along the way, but they cannot substitute for that fundamental drive that you need to have. | ||
| All right, so everything that we spent the first 30-some-odd minutes talking about, it sort of leads to academic integrity, it sounds like to me, that we need not only the students to have some integrity, but the administrators, the professors, everything else, everyone at the university altogether. | ||
| Do you think that's a fair assessment? | ||
| I suspect you do. | ||
| Absolutely, in fact, I think that we often confuse the terms academic freedom and academic integrity. | ||
| What we really care about is academic integrity first and foremost. | ||
| And academic integrity really means that I'm not going to sell my soul or my ideas based | ||
| on the highest bidder. | ||
| I believe that—you know, and this is, again, the search for truth. | ||
| That requires integrity. | ||
| And then, of course, I have the freedom to— to collaborate with people, including donors, | ||
| on areas where we find mutually beneficial relationships and win-win trade. | ||
| Yeah, so one of the things that you talk about, and I referenced it earlier in one of these quotes | ||
| that you really focused on is upward mobility. | ||
| And I think it's particularly interesting right now because if you listen to some of our political leaders, | ||
| it seems like we've sort of completely lost We're separated by class and all that. | ||
| You come from a place where upward mobility was very hard. | ||
| It's gotten less hard as they've embraced, as Indians embrace capitalism. | ||
| First, I guess, in the most broad sense, tell me why you think upward mobility is so important, but more importantly, what's the state of it in America right now? | ||
| So, I actually think that we in the United States focus on upward mobility as if this was a major problem in the U.S. | ||
| Other countries are becoming more market-oriented than the United States. | ||
| The United States still stands as the one place where you really, really have the ability to be upwardly mobile. | ||
| And I think that is the greatest asset that the United States still has. | ||
| And I'm very proud to call this country my country of choice. | ||
| So let's sit in that idea for a second, because I totally agree with it, and it seems to me that all of the people who say that's not true are missing that our laws here allow you to do whatever you want with your life. | ||
| It doesn't mean that you are going to do it, it doesn't mean that it's going to be handed to you, but as you just said, as an immigrant that came here, that has become tremendously successful, you're living proof that you can do it. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And that still holds. | ||
| In fact, in some ways, I think we so take these laws for granted that we don't know what the rest of the world is out there. | ||
| So, my daughters have grown up and been born in the United States, but I think that their biggest learning moments come when they leave the country and see things even in India. | ||
| Today, as it exists, they see the disparities of the things that they can take for granted, versus in India, where you still have to fight with the corruption. | ||
| You still have to fight with the status aspects. | ||
| The United States is very status-free relative to most other countries, including India. | ||
| And there's a dignity to human labor here that is often missing in many other cultures. | ||
| That is the aspect that I care about when I care about upward mobility. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| Let's be honest out here. | ||
| I did not have the kind of privileges that my daughters do. | ||
| I could bemoan the fact that, you know, I came from a country or from a traditional family values that I had to—the family tradition there was such that I had to have this fight that for sure defined me positively, but also caused some psychological scars. | ||
| And of course, my hope is that my daughters don't go through that. | ||
| And I could go there and say, you know what, the level at which they're starting off is so much higher than the level I'm starting off. | ||
| And aren't they privileged? | ||
| And look at all that I didn't have. | ||
| Or I can focus their minds and their ideas at, you know, you may start here, but the definition of your achievement is not your level, but where you end. | ||
| Do you find it fascinating that people are constantly attacking that? | ||
| They attack people that have a little bit more to start with, which is the whole point of life. | ||
| You want your children to have more. | ||
| And the only way that it would be fair is not because I can be raised to their level, The only way to do it is to bring them down to the level that I started. | ||
| And how is that fair? | ||
| Right? | ||
| And so, again, by focusing on the level that one starts with as a measure of an individual's achievement, I think is not necessarily focusing on their individual effort. | ||
| And there are a lot of people, even in India. | ||
| You know, as I said to you, my father went from rags to riches. | ||
| And there were a lot of people that were my friends that were quite rich. | ||
| And they had a very entitlement mentality. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I don't think that they're any happier. | ||
| than I was even when I was poorer. | ||
| So this comes back to the point that you, the quote that you had. | ||
| I can't just measure a person's success by their economic riches. | ||
| You also, happiness, which is what I care about, is a state of mind, it's a state of consciousness | ||
| that has to be earned. | ||
| Self-esteem, when combined with the sense of I'm materially at a place that I'm comfortable or rich, | ||
| but more than that psychologically and intellectually, I feel like I've made something of myself. | ||
| I think that is something that is so much more inspiring to go after. | ||
| Money? | ||
| You know, Ed Snider used to say, money is the reward, not the reason. | ||
| And I completely agree with that. | ||
| Yeah, it's so interesting because I've been thinking about this a lot lately because obviously the show is kind of catching fire, and I'm doing okay financially, and we're building something good, and I'm traveling a lot, and people say nice things to me all the time, and I've been thinking about that, and people keep saying, well, you're gonna get some big offer from one of these networks or something. | ||
| And I hope you do! | ||
| I hope I do too, but I love this. | ||
| I'm actually happy now. | ||
| I'm doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing, and I don't know where that road goes, but Looking at everything holistically, it's not just about money. | ||
| It's about doing something that gives you value and all that. | ||
| But we seem not to focus enough. | ||
| But that's the point, right? | ||
| I get so much joy, again, to that quote that you were talking about. | ||
| For me, the journey is the destination. | ||
| I feel younger today than I did when I was 20 years old. | ||
| And what's the big difference? | ||
| I feel like I have earned the self-esteem, not recognition outside. | ||
| And you know this. | ||
| You meet a lot of people and they come to you and say, Hey Dave, you're so great. | ||
| But who is saying you're great makes a big difference to you hearing. | ||
| You see what I mean? | ||
| So there has to be a sense of, do I believe that you're saying I'm great for the reasons that I value? | ||
| And if that is there, then I will take external adulation as a positive. | ||
| If not, it's hollow. | ||
| It's empty. | ||
| So self-esteem is truly what one should be striving for. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you think at some level capitalism and maybe the Western world in a wider sense is suffering from success at the moment? | ||
| That it almost seems like because we've been so successful we're now going to that place that we mentioned earlier where we're just fighting over little differences. | ||
| Where then, there's a lot of people right now, I mean, if you talk about socialism on college campuses, you'll sell out the room, you know? | ||
| And if you talk about, fortunately, I find when I go and I mostly talk to libertarian or capitalist or whatever groups, you know, we're doing quite well as well, but that the ideas that are completely contrary to everything you've just said seem to be gaining some momentum. | ||
| So I don't think we're victims of our success. | ||
| I think we're victims of the fact that we have never really sat down and thought seriously about the reasons for our success. | ||
| And by eschewing that intellectual thought and ideas that underpin our success, we have actually sold our success short. | ||
| How should we have done that? | ||
| Do you mean that our politicians should have talked about it more, or do you mean more in academia? | ||
| I think it starts from K-12 education, actually. | ||
| I think that we have taken this concept, we have short-circuited our mind. | ||
| In K-12 education, all the way through college, and this comes back to your example of the faculty advisor that does not want to be challenged by their students. | ||
| When you have the mentality as a teacher, whether it's in K-12 or as a professor in academia, where I know what is best and I am going to tell you what it is, as opposed to facilitate your learning process. | ||
| We are not training our students how to think anymore. | ||
| We're not giving them the ability to learn in the manner that they do. | ||
| I'll give you another example. | ||
| Memorization. | ||
| Caught off as a huge negative today. | ||
| You know, Sir Anthony Leggett, who was a Nobel laureate and a professor at Illinois, which is where I was, gave this inspiring speech to middle schoolers one day. | ||
| And the theme of it was, the more you know, the more you know what you don't know. | ||
| Knowledge is a building on process. | ||
| You have to learn first to then learn what you need to learn again. | ||
| And so fostering that spirit in students will then allow you to go back to first principles. | ||
| So it's not about being an expert on any area, but it's about any area that you choose to go in there. | ||
| Don't just look at the outcomes. | ||
| Don't just look at the success factors. | ||
| and then try to emulate the symptoms, if you will, or the things that accompany success. | ||
| Go down to the very fundamental levels of what are the ideas and what are the first principles | ||
| that enable success to begin with. | ||
| It's interesting 'cause this seems to be a place where maybe technology has harmed us | ||
| because it's like instead of having a holistic and integral view of really knowing | ||
| what you're talking about, well, what do we do? | ||
| We Google it. | ||
| And maybe you'll get there, right? | ||
| Maybe you'll get there with Google, but you'll get just the quick answer instead of going to the root of what you're talking about. | ||
| So here is where I'd say, again, technology is a tool. | ||
| Absolve us of our responsibility on how we use the tool. | ||
| I'm actually a huge fan of Google. | ||
| Google Scholar has made my life so much easier. | ||
| I remember being a doctoral student and having to go through Lockwood Library in six feet of snow in Buffalo weather if I wanted an answer to a question. | ||
| Now Google Scholar allows me to do it in seconds. | ||
| Young people don't know what microfiche is. | ||
| Exactly, and I had to work with Mike Rofish to do my data gathering. | ||
| But the point out here is, I can use Google Scholar to get just an amazing amount of knowledge at my fingertips. | ||
| How great is that? | ||
| I mean, I am so thankful to technology to do that, but that does not absolve me of the responsibility of saying, here is all of the pieces of information. | ||
| In fact, I would say in this age of information technology, The need of the mind to have judgment and to discern across all of these pieces of information is at an all-time high. | ||
| Yeah, so obviously you teach and you talk about entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurship. | ||
| One of the things that I think is fascinating related to technology right now is that Peter Thiel is leaving Silicon Valley because he feels that Collectivism, leftism, cultural Marxism, maybe you have some other phrases for it, whatever that is, has sort of crushed the ability to think so that there isn't the creativity coming out of Silicon Valley that there used to be, which is why we don't have that many new apps anymore, we don't have that many new breaking technologies, and he is a capitalist and he's ironically moving to LA to become | ||
| Freer, which is sort of, people don't think of us as a capitalist haven here in California, and LA specifically. | ||
| Do you find that fascinating, that Silicon Valley seems to lean so far left, and yet is supposed to be the place of innovation? | ||
| You know, now that you're saying that, I just made a connection that I never thought of. | ||
| My father represents exactly that if you think about it, right? | ||
| He was very free market oriented as it came to the economic realm and being entrepreneurial in terms of creating new products and services and economic riches. | ||
| But when it came time to thinking, he was very traditionalist. | ||
| And I think that that bifurcation, this mind-body dichotomy, if you will, is what's plaguing a lot of people right now. | ||
| So, I am not an expert on Silicon Valley. | ||
| I have noticed, of course, that a lot of people—so, Facebook. | ||
| I just saw Mark Zuckerberg say something to the effect of, you should have economic regulation on social media. | ||
| It's like, huh? | ||
| The whole reason why you were successful is because you did not have any barriers to entry. | ||
| The best way to keep a monopoly is to have government regulation. | ||
| Because again, that's the use of force, right? | ||
| If I cannot go into an industry, Because there is prohibition. | ||
| So think about Uber and what Uber had to deal with in the taxi cab industry. | ||
| Think about when airlines was not what we know it, because they were just that regulated carriers, right? | ||
| That's a monopoly. | ||
| And the best way for an entrepreneur who has achieved success, but now no longer wants to continue to earn their success, Is to say let me create barriers to entry through government regulation so I can be protected by any entrepreneur such as me those days ago to then come and infringe on what I have. | ||
| It's almost as if he's trying to protect what he has. | ||
| You think, maybe? | ||
| You think? | ||
| You know, it's so funny, also, how these things change, because, you know, 15 years ago, before Uber, I lived in New York City, basically, my whole adult life, and people would complain relentlessly about the cabs. | ||
| They were all broken down, the drivers aren't friendly, they don't pick you up if you're a certain color, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Then Uber comes around, fixes a lot of these problems by ingenuity, and now people are saying, you see what they did? | ||
| They put the cabs out of business! | ||
|
unidentified
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The same people who were upset In Boston, it's even worse. | |
| In Boston, every Uber or Lyft ride has to pay 5 cents of a surcharge. | ||
| And every fraction of that, I don't remember whether it's 2 cents or 3 cents, but you know it adds up in millions of rides, goes to the taxi cab industry. | ||
| That's incredible, to the industry that's actually being replaced by this and doing a much better service. | ||
| Yes, yes, exactly. | ||
| So that just, so then is there a flaw in capitalism there somehow? | ||
| Because that there's probably some cronyism that's allowing the politicians to write these ridiculous laws. | ||
| Cronyism is not about markets. | ||
| Cronyism is about statism. | ||
| Cronyism is not capitalism at work. | ||
| It is government regulation at work. | ||
| And this comes back to, you know, Dave, you're successful. | ||
| I take pride in watching your videos, simply because I enjoy it. | ||
| But there, I'm sure, is a bit of envy, too, about, gee, I wish I could be as eloquent as Dave is. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think you're doing all right. | |
| And as the 500,000 people that watch the Dave Rubin Show, you know, wow, wouldn't I love to have that kind of an impact? | ||
| Now, that's envy on my part. | ||
| There are two things I could do. | ||
| It can either be a positive driver of my energies. | ||
| I could say, I want what Dave does has, but I don't have. | ||
| And that can put me on a growth mindset, entrepreneurial mindset. | ||
| What is it that I need to do in order to achieve those success factors? | ||
| Going back to first principles, what are the reasons behind Dave's success? | ||
| And what can I do to emulate or do differently than Dave? | ||
| Or I can say, no. | ||
| I want what Dave has, but I don't need to earn it. | ||
| I don't need to do that. | ||
| So let me get the government to take some of what Dave has, some of Dave's sponsorship, right? | ||
| And that's what income inequality and redistribution is all about. | ||
| I'm taking some of your viewership and I'm going to be forcing those people to now listen to me. | ||
| So that's where we're using government force, whether it's income redistribution or any kind of yardstick of value where we redistribute. | ||
| We're saying we're going to take it from you, and that actually negates your viewers' rights, right? | ||
| Because now, if I had the government saying that, then some of them would be forced to not watch you but watch me. | ||
| On the other hand, there's jealousy. | ||
| By the way, the difference between envy and jealousy, one of my colleagues just told me recently, envy is when I want something I don't have. | ||
| Jealousy is when I want to keep something that I have. | ||
| But I'm being threatened against, right? | ||
| Again, positive or negative. | ||
| If I feel jealousy because I feel threatened about what I'm about to lose, I can go ahead and say, what is it that I need to do in order to keep it? | ||
| Or I can create barriers and say you can't have it through the use of force. | ||
| The same principles are worked at cronyism at both sides of the yardstick. | ||
| So, when we talk about relative poverty in the United States as an income inequality—by the way, coming from India, I know what true poverty is. | ||
| We in the United States, the minimum level of poverty here is so much better than the rest of the world. | ||
| So, if we care—again, it's about envy. | ||
| These rich people have what I don't have, and I should get them. | ||
| Or, on the rich end of the spectrum, I have this as a wealthy person, regardless of whether I got it out of inheritance or because of prior entrepreneurial thinking, it's being threatened, but I want to keep it for myself, so the best way for me to do that is to lobby the government and erect barriers to entry. | ||
| On both sides, the use of governmental regulation To respond to envy and jealousy is a negative, not a positive driver of economic growth. | ||
| So where do you draw the line or where is the starting point then of what government is supposed to do? | ||
| A government has a legal monopoly on force. | ||
| As it should. | ||
| Because you and I, in a civil society, cannot focus our mind, our effort, on creating value if we're always going to worry about somebody looting or taking things away from us. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So I am not an anarchist. | ||
| I believe in governments. | ||
| I believe in the rule of law. | ||
| I believe in the protection. | ||
| So there are basic functions of the government that absolutely are essential. | ||
| Beyond that, keep the economy away from the realm of the government. | ||
| Because the government's only ability to do something is to say, you, in your best judgment, think you should go A. I am telling you, you need to go B. | ||
| You're forcing the mind to not think or act on their best judgment. | ||
| Yeah, so it's interesting in the case of Uber and what you were describing in Boston and the pennies going back to the cabbies who have nothing to do with it, that actually is because of regulation. | ||
| Of course! | ||
| And the only way to eliminate that and let new businesses thrive is Let them thrive. | ||
| Just unleash them, let them go. | ||
| All right, so there's a couple more things that I want to do with you, and you had four questions about personal leadership that you ask a lot of your students, and I thought that these were really great. | ||
| And really, this, I think, sort of puts a nice bow on everything that we've talked about here. | ||
| So the first one is, what is your purpose? | ||
| Kids must be kids. | ||
| Students must be, they must look at you kind of curiously when you ask them that one, because that's a big one. | ||
| So let me spend two seconds just telling you about why I came up with this framework. | ||
| I'm a strategy and entrepreneurship professor and I was asked to teach in a program which was largely minority high school student based. | ||
| And I was asked to give a lecture on strategic management. | ||
| Now strategic management is typically the realm of CEOs. | ||
| How can high schoolers identify and associate with questions that a CEO has to deal with. | ||
| That was the big challenge that I had. | ||
| How am I supposed to talk to them about, at that time, what Steve Jobs is doing for Apple, | ||
| even though they recognize Apple, and make it real to them? | ||
| And I realized I didn't need to do that. | ||
| I could say to them, especially because they're at the cusp of identifying who they are and creating their identity, | ||
| you're the CEO of me, Incorporated. | ||
| Are you thinking like a CEO? | ||
| What are the four fundamental questions that a CEO should ask? | ||
| And are you asking those questions of yourself? | ||
| And it begins with the first one is, what is your purpose? | ||
| The second is, what does success look like? | ||
| The third is, what's my value proposition, given that that's my purpose and that's what success looks like? | ||
| And then finally, and this stumps a lot of people, with whom should I trade? | ||
| So these four questions, I think, are the essence of any entrepreneurial individual or any entrepreneurial organization. | ||
| How often when you ask these students these questions, do they have some good answers? | ||
| Oh my gosh. | ||
| These are tough. | ||
| I mean, what is your purpose? | ||
| These are the questions of all time, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Exactly. | |
| You're asking them in the framework of business and entrepreneurship. | ||
| Or of themselves, actually. | ||
| So I'm actually agnostic about whether they want to define what is your purpose as it relates to their career or as it relates to their life. | ||
| But the answers that I provide them in the context of thinking, and you would be amazed as to how much this resonates all the way from beginning high schoolers, including my own daughter, who was forced to take this class with me, to executives in my executive MBA. | ||
| So what is your purpose really requires people to think about what problems do I want to solve that are meaningful to me? | ||
| So, it again comes to making the world a better place to live by doing something important to yourself. | ||
| And, you know, people say, oh, making the world a better place to live. | ||
| Oh, come on, Rajshree, right? | ||
| But what is your world, Dave? | ||
| What is my world? | ||
| It's the places you go, the people you meet, and the things that you do. | ||
| And if, in doing these three things, you have solved a problem and made it a better place, then you've made the world a better place. | ||
| But you've done it by focusing on things that are important to you. | ||
| Yeah, so it's interesting, you're talking about all these things through the business lens, but... Business for me! | ||
| But really what you're talking about is what you said before, which is happiness. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| And in fact, on that point, so what does success look like to me? | ||
| It is the ability to say, I love what I do, and I'm good at it. | ||
| Because that's the virtuous spiral that enables self-esteem, and when you have self-esteem because you're good at something, you want to invest in it to become even better at it. | ||
| Yeah, it's pretty cool waking up with that feeling. | ||
| So that was number two, what does success look like? | ||
| You mentioned all of them already, but I just want to spend a little bit. | ||
| So what is your value proposition? | ||
| So notice that the answer to the question, what does success look like, takes an inward perspective. | ||
| What do I love? | ||
| And then what are my abilities that will help get me to where I love and what I'm good at. | ||
| What is my value proposition is still looking at your abilities, | ||
| but now the yardstick is how is it creating value to you? | ||
| So clearly I love enterprise and innovation, right? | ||
| I love what I do. | ||
| I think I'm pretty good at it. | ||
| You're pretty good. | ||
| I come up every morning with a spring in my step. | ||
| But why would that cause you to want to ask Rajshri to join you this morning as opposed to multiple other people that you do? | ||
| So what's my value proposition to you? | ||
| What benefit do I offer you with the features that are unique to me? | ||
| That is the focus on value proposition. | ||
| Yeah, and it's obvious because we have the evidence right here because of all the people that I talked to that weekend. | ||
| You were one of, I think, two people who I said to the Learn Liberty guys, we're gonna get her on the show. | ||
| Thank you, thank you. | ||
| Because you came up to me after, we had a great conversation about all this stuff. | ||
| And there you go. | ||
| And then finally, with who should I trade? | ||
| That is the one thing that stumps a lot of people. | ||
| And goes back to the What is my purpose? | ||
| Making the world a better place to live by doing something important to me. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So providing benefit to someone else But making sure that I'm benefiting and I'm doing something I love to. | ||
| The answer to what does success look like is really getting to what you love doing, which is about you. | ||
| The answer to your value proposition is providing benefit to someone else, right? | ||
| Making the world a better place to live. | ||
| With whom do you trade is bringing those two together. | ||
| So you and I are trading right now. | ||
| We may not be exchanging any dollars, but there's a trade going on out here. | ||
| And that relates to your abilities and your aspirations and my abilities and my aspirations. | ||
| And we're combined together with a common objective. | ||
| So the alignment of your aspirations and my abilities are what's going to determine our actions. | ||
| And in doing so, I get to do what I love doing. | ||
| I offer you a benefit. | ||
| So do you. | ||
| And it's a win-win trade. | ||
| Well, I got to do what I love doing here. | ||
| I feel that we, I think we did almost everything. | ||
| Is there anything that we possibly missed? | ||
| This was truly a pleasure because this was exactly what I've tried to do in my life and with this show and everything else. | ||
| Just exude exactly what you're talking about, which is a joy to see. | ||
| And in fact, that's exactly why I want to trade with you. | ||
| I love trading with you, right? | ||
| Because you exude the same positive, can-do sense of life. | ||
| And I would rather have people around me that have that same spirit, make me better, make me more energized than people that either I bring down or they bring me down. | ||
| Can we do a live event together? | ||
| Can we do something at the University of Maryland? | ||
| I'd love that. | ||
| We're going to make something happen. | ||
| Sounds good. | ||
| This was truly a pleasure. | ||
| I'm glad it happened after a couple months. | ||
|
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Thank you. |
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