 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday. Juneteenth, new holiday. We'll talk about Juneteenth in a minute. I've got a lot of stuff to talk about today. Thank you, thank you, everybody, for joining me. I hope you're having a great weekend. I hope you're having a great, for those of you celebrating, a great long weekend. And those of you who already started your work week, hope you have a great week. All right, let's see. I'm still recovering from the harassment I'm getting on Twitter. It's kind of fun to watch. Yes, for a long time now I've been going after people's favorite conspiracy theories, and there's a price to pay for that. I'm paying that price. And yesterday's RFK show hit a nerve. My tweeting about it has hit a nerve. And add to that everything else where I hit nerves on people. Yeah, the fact that I tack the ride all the time, nobody likes that. So I know you guys who listen to me on a regular basis, you're kind of unusual. You're a rare breed. Thank you. Thank you for finding what I have to say interesting enough to join me. And thank you in particular to those of you who are regular supporters of the show. Thank you, Remo, because it's not easy, I think, right now to be a Iran book show supporter, given kind of the energy that's out there and given the vibes that even within, broadly speaking, the objectivist world, it really is kind of bizarre. And I never really noticed it until, and maybe it's always been like this, but I only noticed it with Trump. And I was thinking today, because I was reading a story about ISIS and stuff, I was thinking today about how I used to be harassed constantly about how I wasn't serious about Islam. Yeah, me, who wrote all those articles about foreign policy, that I wasn't serious about Islam, and that I wasn't serious enough, I wasn't harsh enough when Trump tried to limit Islamic immigration into the country and so on. And how panicked everybody was, how how hysterical everybody was about the threat of Islam. Islam is going to take over the world, it was going to take over the United States, it was going to take over Europe, it was terrorism was going to implode, explode, because I wasn't taking Islam seriously enough, it was all my fault. And how that played out. Anyway, we are here to talk about, YouTube is kind of naming the shows in kind of a weird way. I have to, I have to figure out how to fix that. But alright, I'll do that, I guess I'll do that now. Let me just do this quickly guys, and I'll be right back with you. Alright, so first I want to talk quickly about Juneteenth. Juneteenth indeed is a federal holiday now, established by Biden where it was a year ago, so I think last year was the first Juneteenth, but I think today is kind of the first one which we're fully in. You know, I have mixed feelings about this on the one hand. Great, what better thing to celebrate than emancipation? What better thing to celebrate than the end of slavery? What a great day to both commemorate the fact that they were slavery and to celebrate the fact that it was annihilated and roll that into the fact that we've come such a long way from Jim Crow, and that the country has moved so far past that horrific past. And that's wonderful and a good thing to celebrate. I think maybe it could have been rolled in with Martin Luther King Day, but okay, maybe you want to, one for the Civil Rights Movement and one for this. But then the same thing is, because you know, there's a lot of goodness there and there's a lot of good for Americans and it really shouldn't be a holiday for blacks, it should be a holiday for all Americans. We all are happy and benefit from the fact that slavery was abolished. And everybody who lives in America today is a beneficiary of that fact and should rejoice at that fact, should celebrate that fact. The challenge, of course, and the fear, of course, I think legitimately is that this holiday, this occasion is going to be hijacked by kind of the BLM forces in the world out there. And it becomes a holiday where everybody goes out with their reparations, demands and horrors of systemic racism and whatever it is, flavor of the weak kind of attitude towards all these issues. So, you know, to the extent that it's going to be hijacked, to the extent that it's going to be turned into some BLM-like celebration, some white fragility, white guilt type event that it focuses on the guilt and not focuses on the emancipation, to that extent I think it's going to be, it's a disaster and it's horrible, to the extent that we can really turn this into a celebration of emancipation and embrace it no matter what your heritage is, embrace it as the rejection of slavery and the abolition of slavery and, you know, the idea that that is a good thing universally, unequivocally a good thing, then it's good. I think that's going to be a challenge to focus the holiday on that. I hope I'm wrong. But anyway, yeah, I mean, we could have, I could have done a show on kind of slavery as a, I guess, or on emancipation as a celebration of Juneteenth. Maybe next time, maybe next year I'll try to schedule a show relevant to the topic on this day, what is it this second, third Monday of June, whatever that is, next year. All right, let's see. Yeah, Rumazah, because there's no substance and there's no actual talk about this, but Rumazah that the United States is heavily engaged in talks with the Iranian regime about suspending some of the sanctions, some of the restrictions on Iran in exchange for, please, Iranians, you know, please, we're really asking you to stop the targeting by Iranian forces of American troops and American contractors in Syria and in Iraq to stop the development of nuclear weapons. And in exchange, in exchange, you know, the United States, if the Iranians agree to that, please, because we're so weak we can't defend ourselves. So the Iranians will agree to that, then we will really, you know, stop some of the sanctions and release some of the money they have and so on. I mean, this is a complete and utter sellout by the Biden administration. It's a complete sellout of American interest. It's a reflection of American weakness. It is a pathetic response, particularly given Iran's growing closeness to Russia and Iran's explicit support for the Russians in Ukraine. And the fact that Iran, in spite of everything they say, in spite of everything they promised, in spite of everything they've said, are clearly building facilities for the production of nuclear materials that can then be placed in bombs, the fact that they're developing, or claim to have developed hypersonic weapons, and the fact that on an ongoing basis, on a regular basis, on a weekly basis, the Iranians are trying and sometimes succeeding in killing Americans in Syria and Iraq. Now, granted, Americans are not supposed to be in Syria and Iraq, and of course, Trump promised us that we had no more troops in Syria and Iraq, but they've been there, they were there when Trump was president, that they're still with Biden as president. But the fact is, they're Americans, and I don't care where they are, you don't kill them. You kill them? They're consequences, and the consequences are not, we come groveling to your capital. Well, they're not negotiating in the capital, they're negotiating in places like Qatar, in neutral grounds. We don't come groveling to you and asking you, please don't kill our people. You know, we'll be nice, we'll be nice, we'll give you money, we'll pay you. We'll pay you not to kill our people, please don't kill our people. I mean, it's pathetic. And this is not unique to the Biden administration, it's unique to all American administrations. I just watched the show, which I highly recommend, only because it gives you a slice of history. It's not particularly well made, although it's decent, but it gives you a slice of history that I think most of you don't know. I mean, really don't know. And it also will, I think, show you how lately pathetic US foreign policy has been forever in the Middle East. And how pathetic the CIA is, how pathetic the Reagan administration was, how pathetic they were in the Middle East. And that is, I think some of you recommended this to me, that is the ghost of Beirut. I found it interesting partially because the first episode at least dealt with the period in which I was very aware of what was going on in Beirut. I was in Beirut at the beginning of the show. They don't show Beirut very accurately. 1982 Beirut was completely destroyed. I guess they didn't want to put the money into kind of the CGI that they would have to require to show the tall buildings with basically no outer shell. Just completely demolished, half falling apart. I mean, Beirut was a wreck. It was a wreck after a decade of civil war and what Israel had done. There was very little there. And they didn't show that very accurately. But the rest of the show was super interesting. And it's basically, it tracks the guy who basically ultimately inspired the creation of Hezbollah. A guy who was basically hired by the Iranians or teamed up with the Iranians because he wasn't like he was hired, a hired gun. He wanted this. He got money from the Iranians. The Iranians trained him. And he basically started out with the first, basically invented the modern suicide bombings, car bombs, truck bombs. This guy invented it. And Imad, and I can't pronounce his family name. Anyway, he first tried it out on an Israeli military headquarters in Saida, in the south of Lebanon, and killed 20-something people. Initially it was thought to be a gas explosion, but it's clear that it was a truck bomb, one of his. Then he blew up the American Embassy in Beirut, killed, I can't tell you how many people died. I think 20-something people died there as well, including a very famous well-known CIA, senior CIA operative by the name of Ames. Then, you know, a few months later, he blew up Imad Mugherni. I can't pronounce it. Anyway, then he blew up the Marine Barracks, killing 244 Marines. CIA did basically almost nothing. They kind of knew where the Iranian training base was. They basically knew that Iran was funding this. They pretended not to know, because nobody in the Reagan administration wanted to go to war or wanted to do anything about Iran. They wanted to pretend it didn't exist. The Iranian problem didn't exist. So they pretended Iran didn't exist. They pretended Ayatollah wasn't paying for this, and they just ignored the whole thing. And Imad, later on, kidnapped a whole series of Americans in Beirut, killed them, tortured them, tortured them horrifically, including the CIA, the head of the CIA Bureau in Beirut, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Imad. The CIA tried to track him down with basically no success for years and years and years, decades, really, until he resurfaced in Iraq, resurfaced in Iraq, killing American troops, being involved in the, again, as a gun for hire for the Iranians. He is instrumental in arming and creating the modern Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and really instituting the influence of Iran throughout the region. And in America, it could barely catch him. Ultimately, due to the initiative of one CIA operative in Iraq, she identified him. She ultimately teamed up with the Mossad, the Israeli Mossad, and they executed a mission in Syria to kill him. It's definitely worth watching the show, but part of it you'll see, they had an opportunity in killing Imad to also killing Soleimani, who later, Trump killed, had killed, and they didn't do it because they were afraid of pissing off the Iranians. So the general tenor of American foreign policy in the Middle East has been, don't piss off the Iranians. Find to go after Iraq, find to go to war with Iraq, find to go into Afghanistan, just don't piss off the Iranians. And of course, the Iranians are behind almost a significant number of the terrorist attacks, significant number of the murders of Americans in the Middle East, a significant amount of the terrorism against America, significant amount of the uprising against the U.S. in Iraq, the killing of many hundreds, if not thousands of American troops in Iraq. A lot of that was the Iranians, but God forbid America shouldn't touch the Iranians, shouldn't do anything with Iran. Now, in continuing with a long tradition, Trump constantly, while he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, which was a good thing, he constantly asked the Iranians to negotiate with him. Let's make a deal. Let's make a deal. Here's what needs to be done. I mean, and this is not my most radical position. If you ask me my radical position, I'll tell you about what to do with Iran. But what needs to be done with Iran right now is we know that they're building these very, very deep tunnels in the mountains, near the nuclear power plant that the Russians are building for them, really deep in the mountains. And the only reason to build something really, really deep in the mountains is to protect it from bunker-busting bombs. And as a consequence, use it to refine uranium to weapons grade levels so that you can build a nuclear bomb. The United States should just not allow this. Now is the time when the tunnels have not been fully built, when they haven't done everything they need to do. Now is the time to go in there with, I don't know, 50 cruise missiles or whatever it takes and destroy whatever it is that they've already dug. Just put it underground. Just destroy it. And that is very possible. They'll try again, maybe somewhere else. Every time they try, within a week or so, it should be destroyed. So any attempt of the Iranians to build any kind of facility related to nuclear weapons should be unilaterally destroyed by the U.S. and or Israel. Maybe bilaterally by the United States and Israel. And that's it. It should just be a regular thing. Every time they build something, we knock it down. Every time they build something, we knock it down. You know, that's fine. I mean, they'll get tired of it. We might get, hopefully we don't get tired of it, but there's no, no. Every time they build something, we negotiate. They build something, well, we negotiate again. They violate the premise of the negotiations. We negotiate again. You know, we are so weak, weak, no backbone, no assertiveness. Again, this is the regime. We talked a lot about how they treat their own women. And I really do need to get an update on that, but we did a whole show about, many shows about that. But yeah, American weakness. That is the story of American foreign policy over the last few decades. Since World War II, really. American weakness and American, I don't know, American weakness. All right, let's see. Right to Repair. Remember we did a show on Right to Repair? Right to Repair is a, there is no Right to Repair. I don't believe there's a Right to Repair. But in Massachusetts, they had a referendum about the Right to Repair. And overwhelmingly, people voted to provide a Right to Repair. And that is that violate the property rights of automakers and require, require automakers to pass on all the specs to make it possible to repair any car in Massachusetts. Anybody should be able to repair any car in Massachusetts. In complete, in my view, violation of the rights of the auto manufacturers who might want to say, no, only the dealers can repair it. Only certified repair shops can repair it. Now, State of Massachusetts, in its wisdom through the people, democracy, has ruled that the Right to Repair shall govern. And it was about to go into place. It's been challenged in court, but it's about to go into place so that any independent auto shopper, anybody can repair any automobile and get the specs from the auto company. So it requires the cooperation of the auto company. Anyway, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has stepped in and said, uh-uh, don't do it. Stop. Basically told the auto companies that they should not share information with auto shops and drivers and everybody else. Because this, they claim, poses a risk, a threat, a cybersecurity threat. The fear is, because of all our cars today are completely electronic, that somebody, if they have these specs, can easily basically hack your car and take it over. Cause acceleration, cause it to do things you don't intend and to take over the car and manage it. And therefore, the data in terms of how the car runs and how the electronics work and so on, needs to be protected and preserved. And so it's sent a letter to dozens of manufacturers, including 4GM, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Honda, Assume Chrysler, to say that they have an obligation under federal law, which conflicts with the new Massachusetts law and therefore they should not provide the data. Which is interesting because the rest of the Biden administration is very much pro-right to repair. So you've got a little, this is the problem with statists. They sometimes discover that their ideas don't actually work in practice. Sometimes they have the audacity to actually go with practice and with reality on top of the philosophical beliefs. Good for the National Highway Safety Administration. We'll see how the rest of the Biden administration deals with this because they're not happy about it. And down for right of repair laws. I did a whole show on that. When was it? A year ago? Something like that? All right. Quickly, bipartisanship. You know, I'm a huge skeptical bipartisanship. I often tell you bipartisanship when the Republicans and Democrats agree on a bill, run for the hills. It's really, really, really dangerous, right? So be very, very, very careful. So, yeah, I've got two quick examples. They're relatively, you know, small, but I think they're illustrative. And they just show you how, I mean, I think you know this already, but how not free markets your conservative congressmen really are. So here's one. This is a bipartisan bill. It's an antitrust reform bill. This is one of the attempts to use antitrust to control big tech. And this is called the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. I love the names. Love the names because they're so exactly not what they were about. The American Innovation Choice and Online Act. This one is presented by Senator Amy Kobusher, who is a Democrat from Minnesota, considered one of the more moderate Democrats. Lastly, a Republican of Iowa considered one of Donald Trump's biggest allies in the Senate. And what this is meant to do is to prevent dominant tech platforms from preferring, preferencing their own products and services over rivals. So I guess what this will mean is Google should not populate Google Maps. When you press on Maps, it should offer you a menu of all the different apps that do maps, not the Google Maps. On the iPhone, Apple should not, when you click on direction, should not take you to Apple Maps. It should open up a menu and offer you all the different apps that have navigation on the phone. Indeed, actually thinking about this. It's not clear at all that Apple should be allowed to actually have its own operating system on the iPhone or for that matter on any Apple computer because it creates a hardware. Shouldn't it allow for competition on the software? That is, shouldn't it allow for competition on the operating system? Now this, all of this really Hawkins back to the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s. That antitrust lawsuit was about the fact that Microsoft dared in its operating system actually provide you as part of the package when you bought the operating system with an internet browser that was, drum roll please, free. I mean the horror of it, the horror of providing a browser for free. At the time of course, Netscape, Mark Andreessen's company, I still can't really forgive Mark Andreessen for this, was charging like 70 bucks for Netscape. Microsoft said, how browser you can get for free? Netscape went to the government and said, antitrust and that's how the antitrust case against Microsoft began because of the horrible monopolistic power that allowed Microsoft to offer something for free. I mean, we consumer really suffered as a consequence. Well, this is the same thing. Now they want to institute this into law. Grassley said that the bill would help quote, create a more even playing field and quote, ensure that small businesses are able to compete with those platforms and promote an environment for greater consumer choice. It's fabulous that we have conservative, Republican, conservative politicians really watching our back and making sure that these tech platforms don't exploit us and take advantage of us. And of course, you know what the consequence of this is going to be and how bad this could become. It'll be interesting to see whether this passes. For many Democrats, the bill is not radical enough. If we're going to reform antitrust, they want to go after big tech completely. For some Republicans, I'm sure people like Rand Paul at least will vote against it. But it's again, it'll be interesting. So there's a chance because Thomas Massey, who is a Republican who does not support the bill, is the head of the committee through which this bill will have to pass in the House of Representatives that it might not even make it to the floor. So there's chance that this bipartisan bill won't pass. But remember Grassley. Well, here's another one. And I think I talked about this, but I can't remember, so I'll mention it again. Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz together with who is a Democrat? I mean, it's a, yeah, Ted Cruz with Democratic Senator Edward Markey. Markey's like a way out there leftist. Cruz is supposed to be a way out there conservative. They have come together to propose a bill that would force all new cars, all new cars to be sold in the United States to have AM radio. This is what your great senator from the great state of Texas is busy with. AM radio wants to save AM radio. And it turns out that AM radio interrupts electric cars. So there's a, there's a, there's a problem. So you have to, you have to create some kind of additional costs that kind of sound kind of shield to shield the AM frequency from the electric car or something like that, which, which raised the cost of most electric cars coming out now. I'm not going to have AM radio. And that is offensive to Ted Cruz, who again believes that he is a qualified central planner who can, who can better decide what shouldn't should not be in automobiles. All right, so yeah, bipartisan deals run like hell from them. All right, finally, this is a story about alfalfa. Alfalfa is a kind of grass. It's like it's, it's a grass. It is very high in protein. It's very high in nutrients. It is used for feeding beef cattle and dairy cattle. So it is, it is, it has a huge amount of protein, I guess, per acre that is produced by this. Anyway, alfalfa consumes massive amounts of water. It sucks up water. It's a crop that grows most of the year and it grows in places. At least it is grown in the United States in places where it doesn't rain. It's grown in the deserts in California, in, in Arizona, in Utah, sorry, Nevada. And it uses up gazillions of Colorado River, you know, just huge quantities of Colorado River water is being used for this. At a time when the Colorado River basin is struggling to provide water for anybody. There's just isn't enough water. And yet 80% of the water consumed in a Colorado River basin each year is for agriculture. And alfalfa is responsible for more than a third of that 80%. So over 25% of all the water, I just want to make this clear, over 25% of all the water consumed in the Colorado River basin, which you're hearing the news all the time about how they don't have enough water. Over 25% it is consumed by growing alfalfa. Now, how is this possible? If there's a water shortage, wouldn't you expect prices to go up and prices to go up to the point where crops that consume a lot of this stuff become uneconomical? Just not profitable. You'd think that's what would happen with alfalfa. I'd probably throw in almonds and California into this as well. But no, alfalfa crops are not suffering. There's not enough water for Phoenix. They might not enough water for Vegas. But there is plenty of water for alfalfa. Now, this all has to do with the ridiculous nature of water rights in the West. The fact that water rights in the West are all basically controlled by government, that there is no market for water. The fact that prices do not adjust to the supply and demand for water. The fact that farmers are allocated quotas, and the law provides them a massive incentive to either use it or lose it. That is, they have an incentive to use their entire quota. And it's a lobby for more. They get the quota at hugely reduced prices. In spite of the massive growth in population centers all over the desert West, 80% of all the water goes to agriculture. Even though the desert is not exactly the best place to grow stuff, alfalfa, for example, in many of these areas, they use the least most efficient irrigation systems. Why? Well, because you use it or lose it and the water is not expensive. Because it doesn't adjust the price. It doesn't adjust the supply and demand. There are better irrigation systems, drip irrigation, for example. I think invented in Israel, especially for the desert. They don't use that. It's too expensive. It's too expensive to build. And if they don't use all the water allocated to them, they lose it. So why not use it instead of investing? This is a great one more of a million types of examples of the lack of property rights, the lack of real property rights. This law, the water, these water laws, some of them are 139 years old. It pushes ranchers to use as much water as they possibly can, even during a drought. And it's throughout the Colorado Basin, these states have these laws. If you had private property over water, if you had the price per system used for allocation of water, as you would if you had private property, then the kind of crops being grown in the desert would be the kind of crops that make sense to grow in the desert. In the Israeli desert, you don't grow alfalfa. You grow other things. It's not like you don't grow. Israel has mastered the ability to grow crops in the desert, but they grow them with minimal amounts of water. They grow crops that don't need a lot of water. But the incentive structure in the United States, given these 140-year-old laws when there were no cities in the West, there was no consumption of water by non-agriculture in the West, significant consumption, is insane. And the solution is the American solution. The solution is property rights. The solution is private property. Anybody proposing that? No. There's rejiggering the allocation, more treaties, more deals between state governments and federal governments and all of that. Pretty un-American and pretty pathetic. So if you wonder why these states suffer from a drought, there is no drought. There's massive amounts of wasted water. That's what there is. There's no drought. There's no shortage of water for consumers to use in their homes. What there is is a lack of a price system. What there is is massive, massive just wasted water. All right. That is news highlights. Thanks, everybody. In the next few days, I will give you an update on Ukraine. A lot of stuff is happening there. It's happening slowly, so I can't give you a daily update because not enough is really happening on a daily update. But I will dedicate the beginning of a show soon to Ukraine. All right. Let's jump in. We are, like, $48 short of our target for this morning. Oh, for this afternoon. Just $48, so that's two $20 questions, one $10 question, and we're there. So please consider doing stickers. We've got 70 people watching, so a buck from each person will get us there. Value for value. As you're watching live, you're getting something out of this. A dollar is not a big deal. $2 is not a big deal. I hope you think it's worth it. All right. Remo, thank you. 60 euro, actually. Thank you for your courses that are on YouTube. Listen to some more than once. I learned a lot. Amazing. Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed them. I'm glad you liked them. And yes, I'm glad you're so valuable. You're listening to them more than once. Yes, I have a lot of courses, like multi-session on different topics on the history of the Middle East, the history of Islamism, to financial markets and institutions and the corporation and a few others. You know, you can take advantage of them. They cost exactly zero. You can find them online. I have playlists for them. You can find them online. And I think that, I don't know if they're timeless, but it's certainly not the still appropriate today as they were when I produced them. So hopefully you guys can enjoy them. And another reason to become a supporter of the Iran Book Show, I offer them for free. You're getting a value from them. This is an easy way to show, to return that value. All right. James says, how much money do you put into marketing? Based on the short clips that have done well, have you all considered hiring influencers to watch your videos and react to them, hiring TikTokers, Instagram, et cetera? I really put no money or very little money into marketing. I was putting on, you know, we do some social media marketing, some marketing on the different social media platform. Of course, we create, I consider marketing, the creation of the short videos, the very short videos, the longer, not, you know, the five to 10-minute videos. All of that, the Christian does. That's part of marketing. But beyond that, I don't put any money into marketing. I have not thought about hiring influencers. I wouldn't even know how to approach that. But I am opening, I'm definitely open to ideas on how to better market the show out there on YouTube and on other platforms. I haven't really done any buying of ads or anything like that either. So almost nothing except the creation of the videos themselves and posting them periodically on other platforms there's really no marketing done for the Iran Book Show. Yep, so, but if anybody has ideas, if anybody wants to volunteer, let me know. Alan says, kind of like, don't piss off China and this super chat is mainly general support. Yeah, I mean, China's different. First, China's an actual threat. China can actually do stuff. China is, you know, China, you could argue you have to figure out and really have a strategy around. Iran is not a threat. Iran can be taken out in days. Iran, the Iranian problem is simple. That's what makes it so pathetic. China is complicated. China is difficult because of what Taiwan is because of all the industries in China because China is a nuclear power. I mean, one of the reasons to deal with Iran now is so it doesn't become a nuclear power because it's a lot more complicated once you become a nuclear power or have nuclear weapons. Real elvish rope. Hey, Ron, I saw someone say there is no ethical consumption in capitalism. What is your take response to that? No ethical consumption in capitalism. I don't know what that even means. I mean, all consumption in capitalism. Well, no. You know, the ethics of consumption is only a question of whether you're consuming to make your life better. As long as you're consuming to make your life better, it's ethical. Indeed, but I think what they're saying, what they mean by ethical consumption is oh, everything is made through exploitation. And my argument is exactly the opposite. Capitalism is the only system in human history that has created ethical consumption or ethical production, if you will. Production is what makes consumption possible. Every other system has produced unethical consumption because that consumption relies on slave labor or on coercion in one form or another. Capitalism is the only moral system in history. Nothing, all other systems, all other systems in the mixed economy to socialism to fascism are all immoral in every aspect, including in the production and consumption. And, you know, capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. It's based on choice. It's based on your values, your choices. It's the epitome of ethical. Adam, ironic that those government bureaucrats no longer recognize the checks and balances that were intended for their own power and control. Well, they were intended to check their power and control. Yeah, they don't, but bureaucrats, bureaucrats are not interested in checks and balances. What they're interested in is power. And checks and balances, the whole point of checks and balances is to reduce their power. But yes, generally, we're at a time where checks and balances are very unpopular both on the right and on the left. Chicken from Norway, as a Norwegian, I disagree with you somewhat on yesterday's take on Scandinavia. I grant you partly the ambitiousness, but Americans are all for suffering in ways unconceivable here. They still value your take. I am truly, that's interesting. So I'm really interested in what ways you think, and I probably agree with you at that, but I'm really interested in what ways you think Scandinavians reject suffering where Americans embrace it. So in what realms do Americans embrace suffering that Scandinavians don't? And I think to the extent that America is more to the extent that Scandinavia is more is less Christian. I can see that, but I'm curious about what the concrete examples are. In what ways does it manifest itself, this American suffering that Scandinavians won't do. I'm curious if you can put that in the chat or sometimes just tell me. I find that really interesting. Could you talk a bit about how America isn't making use of its nuclear waste. There is technology that enables us to be recycled and used again, but we aren't taking advantage of it. Yes, I mean we're not. In France, they completely recycle all their nuclear waste. They have almost no waste that actually be buried or something like that. Modern nuclear power plants are very good at recycling their own waste. The problem with American nuclear power plants is partially some of them are very very old. We haven't built any new ones. We're not building any new ones. I think there's one going into or has been turned on in the south, somewhere in the south a country of South Carolina, Alabama somewhere in the south, which has better technology, more modern technology, but part of the issue is that I think the nuclear power plant that Bill Gates is trying to build and I think they're doing a demo of it that is still coming on Montana or something like that is going to be run only on recycled nuclear waste. So there's a massive opportunity here for us to build nuclear power plants that use all the stored nuclear waste that we already have and then just keep recycling it. It's amazing how much energy you can still get out of again so-called nuclear waste. Again, France is doing this The Navy, the Finns just turned on a massive new nuclear power plant. They are doing it, and I think it's just stunning to me how, behind the times, when it comes to nuclear technology, the United States, we're not quite as bad as Germany, but we're not that far away. The innovators today in nuclear power in Asia, primarily China, but even Japan is reintroducing nuclear power and considering building new nuclear power plants. Korea and then in Europe, France and then Scandinavia, including Finland, or the Finland technically as I was told is not Scandinavia, are far more advanced than the United States, which is unbelievably sad. Bradley says, reading the patent seekers builds a case that high functioning autism and innovation are linked. Many traits sound like rands, heroes, and her. It's as society is hostile to them because they are threatening to norms. I've heard that, somebody once gave me a whole, I've heard other books about this, that basically, autism is on a spectrum that many, the autism is actually even more prevalent than what we today think it is, that many geniuses and many really, really smart people autistic, somewhere on that spectrum of autism, and that anybody who's a little different is a social in some way is on that spectrum. I don't reject that idea, and it is interesting. I don't know enough about what autism actually means. I don't know enough about what the problem really is. I don't know what the spectrum is, so I don't know enough about it, but I do know that there is a lot of disagreement about the whole phenomena, about its dangers, about its risks, and about what causes it, but certainly about even just what it is. Is it growing? Isn't it growing? Or is it just that we recognize it today and it's always been with us? So thank you, Bradley. It sounds like an interesting book. It sounds like an interesting area to research and to dig into. It is a real cultural phenomena, in the cultural debate, no question. James says, is it possible to reason without language? I noticed that my dog, when I block him from jumping on the bed, he circles to the other side and jumps on. There's some element of reason there. I wouldn't call it reason. He's programmed to look for other paths. It's a basic hunting thing. If a lion is chasing a deer, and suddenly there's a, well, not a deer, but I don't know, a zebra, and there's suddenly a fallen tree in his way, he's going to go around it, he's going to find another way to get to the zebra. So I think this is pretty solidly programmed into the gene's reason, requires you to think, to actually contemplate, to actually consider, to look at the evidence, to evaluate the judge, none of that is happening with your dog, none of that is happening with your dog. And it requires, fundamentally, it requires choice. It requires you to actually focus on, ooh, I need to find a solution. Let's take a look. It just does what it programs, programming allows it. In this case, the programming allows it. So to chicken says, your shopping in Norway is very automated now, without being checked. And the stores doing it has less looting than before. So respect property rights a lot, contrary to San Francisco. Yeah, I think that's right, but, and that's true in a lot of societies, I mean, American society is prone to crime. It's prone to property crime, and it's prone to, it's prone to other forms of crime. I think the same thing is true in Asia, in Japan, and in South Korea. Now whether it's a true respect of property rights or whether it's cultural convention, I mean, all of that is interesting, right? All of that is interesting. But there is a certain sense in which there are certain cultures that where you just don't steal. You just don't steal. Now the government can steal, but individuals don't steal from one another. And that's pretty strong prerequisite for civilization. And that's why, in many respects, civilization is breaking down in San Francisco because they're allowing it, people are doing it, and there's no enforcement. Liam says, why do you think status don't fear us? Is it something we're doing wrong, or are they delusional and overconfident? Well, I'm not sure they don't fear us. I think there's a reason Paul Krugman mentions Ayn Rand as often as he does. I think there's a reason somebody like Robert Reich won't debate me, has blocked me on Twitter, generally attacks Ayn Rand whenever he has an opportunity, but won't engage. So I don't buy this, they don't fear us. I think they do. I think they know many of them. There's a reason Christopher Hitchens used to attack Ayn Rand frequently. So I think they do fear us. And I think on the right, it's the same way. One of the reasons they want to co-opt Ayn Rand for themselves, and one of the reasons I am so vehemently object to that is because they fear us. But also, look, they're the majority, and they think the majority is maddened and we're a tiny minority. They don't fear us because they believe in a numbers game, and they're confident that they have the numbers and they can sustain them. And they do have the numbers, and maybe they can't sustain them. You say there's no free market push on the right anymore, but Vivek Ramaswamy calls himself an unabashed capitalism and his policy proposals are very free market oriented. I mean, some of them are not. He's a very mixed bag, and a lot of his policy proposals are there for shock effect more than anything else. I'll do a show on Vivek once I kind of get a handle on all his policy proposals and the mixture and the good and the bad in them. But okay, let's say he's an unabashed capitalist. He's very articulate, he's very charismatic, he's amazing, he's well spoken, he's doing his marketing himself like crazy, he's going on all the talk shows, he's everywhere. How many votes is he going to get? Almost nothing. So there's no free market push. I mean, if he was a candidate that you thought, wow, he could beat the Sanders, he could beat Trump, he could, you know, maybe, maybe not a high probability, but he could, but nobody gives him a high probability than zero. All right, Lewis Phillip-Noel says, yes, for full show in Iran, I will consider and maybe we'll do that. Wolland says, keep it up and never mind unsubscribers, those who are willing to think will stick on, absolutely. Michael says, if Texas bans property taxes, would you consider buying property there? Sure, but it's not going to happen, don't worry. Bree says a YouTuber named Lewis Rossman, 1.8 million subscribers, has a pro-right to repair foundation. You could promote YBS by debating him, he is not crazy. Sure, I'll copy paste that and look at that. All right, I think we're done. Thank you guys. We made our goal. I appreciate that. Thank you to all the superchats, thank you to all my monthly supporters. Those of you who are not yet monthly supporters, please consider it. You can do so on Iranbrookshow.com slash support, all on Patreon. And yeah, that's how this show is funded, that's how you get. As much of my time as you do is through the support I get from you guys, value for value. Thank you all. I will see you all tomorrow, I'll see you all tomorrow for another one of these new shows and there'll be a show.