00:00When I went and reread The End of History several years ago, all I could think about is this explains
00:06why so many billionaires who have all the power in the world, all the whatever in the world,
00:12what they really crave deep down at the base of that Maslow's pyramid is to be listened to and
00:19respected. And it drives them crazy that they have everything, but they're still not as influential
00:25as like a typical like op-ed columnist. And I think this is the source of tremendous psychological
00:30angst, even for the most powerful people in the world. All right. Now imagine that on a society
00:35wide scale. Everyone wants to feel superior and recognized in some way. How are liberal
00:40democracies supposed to deal with that? So just as a footnote, I mentioned Donald Trump
00:45in the original End of History and the Last Man book. At that point, I said the great thing about
00:50having a capitalist democracy is that there's a way of bleeding off some of that desire to dominate
00:56and be great because you can just get rich. And I gave Donald Trump as an example. Little did I
01:02know
01:02that just getting rich wasn't enough, you know, that he also wanted the political glory. So I don't
01:08think you can get away from megalothumia, this desire to be recognized as greater, because that's the
01:14source of any excellence. You know, if you want to be a great pianist or a great football forward or
01:19a
01:19great, you know, athlete or anything, you have to have this will to excel and to be better than
01:25other people. The trouble is that it oftentimes leads in bad directions where you simply want to
01:31be a tyrant. And I think you're right that, you know, if you're a billionaire, there's no material
01:36need that you have unsatisfied. What you don't have is the recognition of other people, of other
01:42billionaires. And I think that's really what's driving a lot of the competition, you know, in our
01:48economy. If it just stayed economic condition, competition, that would be fine. But when it
01:54becomes politicized and turns into political ambition, I think that's where democracy gets in
02:00trouble.
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