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(Voiceover) They
call it human capital. How much is it worth in strict economic terms to the
Japanese that they have such good families who teach such good discipline and
such good habits of learning, and such good habits of high quality work and a
willingness to work long and hard.
It's worth a lot.
Japan has almost no resources, but it's a rich country. It's rich mostly
because of human capital, not material. Brazil may be the richest country on
earth for resources, natural resources. It's got probably more of everything
than anywhere else on earth. But it's a relatively undeveloped country. More
than half the people have a third grade education or less. And so -- so
economists know that moral habits are a form of wealth. They have many other
good things, but they are also even -- they even have an economic reality, and
they're a form of democracy because without certain habits you can't make the
law work. If people don't tell the truth, if they lie and cheat, you can't
trust the courts.
HATTIE: Right.
MICHAEL: Both
democracy and capitalism depend on more -- I say the free society has three
legs to it, three parts to it.
- There's a
political part of law and rights.
- There's an
economic part of freeing people from poverty, growth and development.
- And there's a
moral and cultural part which is the habits, of knowing the point of the whole
thing. Treating one another as brother, sister, as community. And working for
justice and truth and liberty and love and so forth.
And, all those
three parts have to be developed. If any one weakens, the other two also
weaken.
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