 fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Oh, right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show. And this, what is it, Wednesday, October 4th. I hope everybody's having a great week. Sorry for the lack of shows the last few days. I was traveling, and even before that, I caught some kind of bug, some kind of cold flu. And what happens when you travel is whatever you have, it just gets worse, right? It just gets worse. So you don't sleep as well. I think the dry air in the airplane makes it worse. So I came back home sicker than when I left, which is no good. And I was wondering whether to do a show today, but I decided since I hadn't done one in a while, I would do it. So I'm a little, maybe a little bit more mellow today than usual as a consequence. And certainly, I assume you can tell from my voice that I don't have my full voice available for me today. It's a voice of somebody with a cold. All right, so I got a lot to talk about today and we'll cover this. I do want to mention that we'll have a news roundup tomorrow and then we'll also have heavy binge-wearing all beyond tomorrow at 8 p.m. for an interview show. So we'll have him tomorrow. And then Friday, we'll also do two shows. And then Saturday, no show, because I'm traveling again. Sunday, I'm hoping to do a show during the day from California. And then after that, God, I just don't know what the schedule's gonna be. We will have to play it by ear in terms of when I can do shows. But basically, I'm not back home until November 1. So my hope right now is that I get better before I fly to California on Saturday. I really hope I get better before I fly there. I don't wanna be sick in California and then I go to Europe and God, I need to get better. So working on that as well. So anyway, I'm not giving a talk in California. No, nobody invited me. It's the usual thing. I go where I'm invited. I give talks where anybody invites me. Anybody wants me to give a talk, organize an event, invite me. I'll happy to do that. Reminder, you can use the super chat to ask questions. Don't use the chat. Use the super chat to ask questions. I can follow the chat and I can't keep up with that. So Canada, I'm not going to Canada. Why would you ask about Canada? If you invite me to Canada and organize an event for me, I'll come and do a talk in Canada. I don't know what CRC is, but happy to come to Canada to give a talk. But again, need an invitation. And ideally, some funding. But even without funding, we can often arrange it as long as we get an invitation and we have a good audience. All right. Oh, CA is California and not Canada. All right, yeah, so no invitations from, no, but Maximus asked about Canada. God, thanks, Fred Harper. I appreciate it. Harper says, get well soon. So I'm not doing a show today at 8 p.m. I'm doing a show tomorrow is with Harry. So if you have deep questions, if you have philosophical questions, Harry is available tomorrow. And if you have other questions, I'm available on Friday at 8 p.m. And of course, you can always ask questions here. I'm always happy to answer questions in the news roundup, deep questions as well, if my mind can last that long. So we do have time. All right, let's jump in. As you probably all know, Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives is now the first, the first speaker of the House in American history to be kicked out of his job, to be fired by the House of Representatives. He is also the second, he has served the second shortest term of any House Speaker in history. The first one was shorter because the House Speaker died of, I think, tuberculosis or something just after he was elected Speaker. The vote came, it was triggered after Matt gets the representative, the MAGA representative. It was furious at McCarthy's deal with Democrats, whereby they extended government spending for another, I think it was six weeks under the existing spending, existing spending another six weeks in order to avert a shutdown when Matt Goetz and his people were not providing any way to prevent a shutdown, not providing any mechanism by which a shutdown could be averted, were not articulating clearly what indeed they wanted. Much of what they wanted was just never gonna be achieved, never gonna be agreed on. So basically Matt Goetz, the representative Matt Goetz, was pissed off because he didn't get to shut down the government. So he instead of that triggered a vote on McCarthy. This is something that McCarthy had given Matt Goetz the power to do when he was elected and to get enough votes to get elected. McCarthy agreed that any member of the Republican caucus could demand a vote on his leadership and indeed that vote was done. Eight Republicans, eight Republicans voted against McCarthy, not a single Democrat voted against McCarthy. Four McCarthy, sorry, not a single Democrat voted for McCarthy, which you'd expect them not to vote for him. And now the Republican caucus is scrambling to find a replacement, to find somebody who can both as a Republican serve as the speaker of the House for the meaning of the term, which is I guess another year, another year and a bit. I don't know about you guys, but I certainly don't feel sorry for Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy deserved this. He was the definition over the last few years of a slick, unprincipled, do whatever it takes politician with no backbone, no spine, no principles, nothing. He was willing to sell anything and everything to achieve the speakership and deservingly it's now slipped through his hands. I don't particularly approve of the way it was done. I certainly don't approve of the people who voted against him, but I don't really care. I mean, this is the Republicans facing their demons. This is the Republicans facing their corruption and the fact that they have treated a sane, as normal, as okay, the nutty parts of their political spectrum. I mean, one of the people who did not vote against Kevin McCarthy, or actually supported Kevin McCarthy, is Marjorie Taylor Greene, a nutcase who should not be anywhere near Congress. Why did she vote for McCarthy? Because McCarthy had basically embraced her, given her juicy positions, treated her as a normal human being. Just for that, he deserves to be ruled out as speak anybody who views Marjorie Taylor Greene as normal. It should be ruled out of having any kind of leadership position in the United States. But it really goes back quite a while and his devotion and dedication to Trump. I'll just remind you that, what is it, about 20 years ago? Can't remember when this exactly, 20 years ago, there was a book published called Young Guns, a new generation of conservative leaders, and they were gonna change, they were probably gonna party, and they were ambitious and optimistic and principled and excited, and the three were, the three young guns of the conservative leadership were Eric Cantor, who basically was voted out by a Tea Party candidate in early on, and today makes millions of dollars in his job as an investment banker on Wall Street. The only reason he has that job is because he has political connection, that the investment bank justifiable he can leverage. Paul Ryan, who landed up selling his soul in a variety of different ways and ultimately had a basically quit because even for Paul Ryan, the Republican Party had become too disgusting, despicable, low, and unprincipled and pragmatic, and he couldn't live really, taste credit with the Trump era and therefore resigned. And finally, the guy who actually did survive in politics, Kevin McCarthy, Kevin McCarthy survived in politics by being a complete weasel, by managing to fit whatever the trend happened to be. And so he was a huge supporter of Trump because he knew where the winds were heading. He was a part of the election deniers after the 2020 election, and while after January 6th, McCarthy initially said Trump was responsible for the riot, days later, he rushed down to Mar-a-Lago, kissed the ring, and rejected any Trump responsibility for anything. When Liz Cheney was appealed for any kind of respect for her fellow Republicans, but McCarthy basically purged her, kicked her out of leadership, and ultimately made sure she was defeated in the primary. He's repeatedly tried to sabotage attempts to investigate the January 6th, reversing his support for bipartisan commission and making it kind of a political thing, just Democrats and therefore discrediting the whole commission as a consequence. And then when he tried to run for speakership earlier in the year, he made concession after concession, he sold out things that he said he would never compromise on, he sold out left and right, and he courted, he courted Matt Gatz, and he got Matt Gatz, and Matt Gatz turned around, stabbed him in the back. McCarthy has also gone after and courted anybody on the right who would give him airtime, in particular, if you remember Tucker Carlson, McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson all the security footage with exclusive right to use it, which I think is a massive violation of separation between state and media, but anyway, he did that, he has broken promises both with Republicans and Democrats, he's backed out of agreements, he has sort of appeased the radicals on his, radicals is the wrong word, the nutcases on his right, and while he worked with Democrats to get the spending resolution, you know, after he backstabbed Democrats and everybody else many, many times, nobody was sympathetic to him. So, you know, he's gone and good riddance, I'm not sure the next guy's gonna be any better, but at least good riddance, maybe, I don't know that anybody will learn a lesson from this, but maybe some Republicans will learn a lesson from this, but yeah, I have no idea. I don't know what it means to be banned from sending super chats, that's bizarre, so I have no idea what that means, I didn't know that was possible, you've discovered something new that I didn't know exists and why you would be banned is beyond me, appeal to YouTube, see what they say. All right, so stay tuned, we'll be discussing whoever they appoint next for Speak of the House and whatever process they go through. Talking about our great institutions in Washington, DC, as you know, Senator Feinstein passed away last week and then it is the job of the governor of the state to appoint a replacement. The governor of the state of California has made his decision and Lafonza Butler is now to replace Feinstein in the Senate representing California, which is a little puzzling given that Lafonza Butler doesn't live in California, she actually lives in Maryland, has a Maryland address and is registered to vote in Maryland when this was pointed out to Governor Newsom, he said, don't worry, she used to live in California, not born in California, I can't remember where, but anyway, she's gonna re-register to vote in California, so no worries, everything's good, don't worry about it. So let's consider the credentials of Lafonza Butler to be Senator, because it's interesting, there are three candidates right now running to replace Senator Feinstein next year for the election, three candidates, I think all of them, members of the House of Representatives, all of them, I mean, these are Democrats, all of them Democrats are Representative Adam Schiff, Representative Katie Porter and Representative Barbara Lee. I mean, you know where my sympathies lie, they lie with anybody who's not named Katie Porter, but putting that aside, all of these three are House reps, they're experienced politicians, they have long track records within the Democratic Party, they have constituencies, and so what is it that drove Newsom to vote for, to choose Lafonza Butler? I think there are a number of things, one, one. I don't think he wanted to pick favorites between Schiff, Porter, and Lee. I don't think he wanted to be viewed as a position where he's picking who he thinks should win the election, so I think it was safer politically for Newsom not to pick one of those three and to kind of pick somebody external. So that's one, kind of reasonable kind of makes sense. Second, Newsom has political ambitions, he has ambitions to run for president whether he ultimately steps into this 2024 race to replace Biden or whether waits until 2028 is not clear, but one constituency that Newsom really, really wants to appeal to are unions. And if you look at Lafonza Butler's career, she has no experience in politics, but she has been a union rep involved in unions her entire career. She is the former head of the SEIU California, which is one of the, which is a very influential union umbrella group that boasts 700,000 members in healthcare and public service jobs. So she has an extraordinary connection with the kind of unions that I think a candidate Newsom running for president would want to have. So this is still a large extent Newsom boasting his union credentials. And then of course, there's another advantage to choosing Lafonza Butler. Lafonza Butler fits a lot of the intersectionality requirements. She is black, she is a woman. I think she's still, I think they still count women as women when it comes to because I think Newsom promised to have a black woman that he would nominate a black woman for the Senate. So he's fulfilled the promise, but I wonder in an era of gender fluidity, if, whoa, I don't know if you guys are getting the nationwide national test of the alert system. My watch and my phone just went nuts. Okay, so she's black, she's a woman. And finally, she's a lesbian. So she's married, she lives in Maryland, not in California with her wife, I guess. And so it covers everything. He's got everything. He's got LBGTQ, he's got minorities, he's got female, he's got unions, and he's not pissing off any of the candidates who are running for Senate. It's not clear whether Lafonza Butler will announce that she too is running next year for the Senate. Right now, she will only be kind of completing Feinstein's term, which ends in January of next year, January of 2025, end with an election really in November of 2024. So as you said, we will see whether she runs or not. And of course that'll put the unions in a bind because many of them are already committed to shift Porter or Lee, and now many of them will probably shift the alliance to Butler. Makes the California Senate race interesting. And it really gives an insight into how political candidates are chosen. This has nothing to do with the good of California. This has nothing to do with representing California. As I said, she's not even living in California. And this has nothing to do with qualifications. This has everything to do with the governor and showing up his political ambitions rather than anything else, anything else. Anything else? Yeah, I mean, the one good things I'll say about Lafonza Butler, I don't know that much about her, but the one good thing I'll say about her is she is very, very much committed and actually was very involved in abortion rights for women. So it's a solid vote for abortion rights for women. And that of course is a positive. We need as many of those in the Senate as possible. All right, again, I remind people, use the chat to ask questions and super chat to ask questions. Sorry, not the chat. Super chat to ask questions. And also to support the show, value for value, you've got 91 people watching right now. So it doesn't take many of you and it doesn't take much from each of you to get us to I think the very reasonable and very modest target of $250. So please use the super chat feature and you can do stickers. And we've got a few stickers already from Jonathan Honing. Thank you, Jonathan. Ryan Schenck, Antonio, let's just go with Antonio. And Fred Harper, so thank you guys. But a few more stickers would be a go a long way to getting us to what we need to be in terms of our goals. All right, what else do we have? Yeah, just quickly, interest rates. We've talked about interest rates quite a bit over the last few weeks. The interest situation is getting more interesting and more, I think concerning for many people looking at the economy, the probability of real economic problems is only increasing as the 10-year bond is reaching for greater and greater heights, 4.75 a couple of days ago and still hovering around 4.7. As I've told you when interest rates go up, the value of assets goes down. So, stock market has gone down during this period of interest rates going up. And at the same time, at the same time, I'd expect everything all self-constant and other investments have gone down, commercial real estate, even your home, almost every asset, particularly assets that basically have cash flows in the future, the value goes down as interest rates go up and that's what we're seeing across the board. This is also bad news for anybody refinancing their debt, whether you have to refinance a home or sell a home and buy a new one and now you face mortgage rates well above seven or whether you're a business that has to refinance your loans, a commercial real estate company, an office building company that needs to refinance the mortgage on those. For all, everybody, interest rates are significantly higher which means the cash laid out for interest is gonna be significantly higher, which means of course that it's much more difficult to be profitable. It also means that the government, as the government issues debt, it's gonna have to be higher and higher and higher interest rates and that of course makes deficits even bigger and makes it much more difficult for governments to be responsible. Not that any of them are responsible anyway but it makes it much more difficult for them to be responsible. So all of this increases the probability of recession. It doesn't look like it's going away while interest rates are down a little bit over the last couple of days. They're not down significantly and the energy and the expectation is that interest rates are gonna stay high for the foreseeable future and again, none of that bodes well for the US economy. And the global economy really because if you look at the interest rate rises in pretty much every country with exception maybe of Japan, every major industrial country any major developed country, all interest rates are super high whether it's the UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, the 10-year bonds, 10-year yields, interest rates on the 10-year are up significantly from where they were just a year and a half ago. So global economy, look out, we're entering into difficult times. Of course, remember, we're talking about 4.75% on the 10-year bond. The 10-year bond has been higher in the early 2000s. It was higher in the 1990s. 7, 8% was not unusual. You know, it's all of the problems we face today. All of the economic challenges we face today including the inflation and everything else are fundamentally consequences of the insane zero very, very low interest rate policies that the Federal Reserve and really globally central banks engaged in during the 2000s post financial crisis. So in the 2000s, and I said it at the time, it was inevitable that would cause real financial difficulties. It was inevitable that that would cause real economic problems. And it has. We're experiencing now. The cycles of these things can take a long time. It doesn't necessarily happen all at once. But bad policy, bad results always. And here we have a great example of them. All right, some good news. If you remember, we've talked a lot about over the years about the California drought. Well, the drought, even the most pessimistic, the most climate-changing client now cannot deny that the drought in California is over. Maybe it'll start up again, but at least as of now, it's over. There was so much rain and snowfall during just this last year that state reservoirs where they were really, really low and really, really dry and really, really in trouble, state reservoirs of water are basically at 128% of the historic average. And last year was one of the wettest years in state history. And of course, now the problem is, because this was a problem. There's never good news. The problem is, how's the state going to manage water? Can you imagine if water was private and it wasn't a matter that prices would be the way you manage water? So it's going to be interesting to see how California deals with all of this. And of course, what the weather will be this coming year is also going to have an impact on how people's attitude towards this. But we will see. Lots of water restrictions hopefully will be lifted and people go back to living normally with water. And maybe the state can start doing things to secure water long term drought or no drought. For example, by building more desalination plants, there's one in San Diego County. By recycling water better, there's a huge recycling plant in Orange County that does a good job. And by building reservoirs and capturing more of the rainfall and the snowfall for consumption. So we will see. But officially, the Iran book show declares the drought in California over. And now, given our mixed economy, now the frantic rush to capture water rights is on. To capture water, not rights, the rights are not there. To capture water is on. So every little pressure group, almond farmers, one of the most water-intensive crops, there is rice farmers, other farmers, cities, everybody is jumping in to try to capture as much water as they can. All right, I still didn't list in the thing, but somebody sent me just before the show started. A story out of Canada, a favorite politician, I think in the world, Justin Trudeau, Trudeau's administration, it just seems to top itself constantly in its authoritarian proposals and it's an authoritarian nature. Anyway, the Canada Radio and Television and Telecommunication Commission has released a statement that happened on Friday saying it would advance a plan to ensure online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian notices, Canadian and indigenous content. Aren't the indigenous people Canadians? I mean, this is really horrific to think that Canada does not consider its indigenous people as actual Canadians. That's not nice. That's really bad. Anyway, to quote the statement, we are developing a modern broadcasting framework that can adapt to changing circumstances to do that, we need broad engagement and robust public record. In other words, they want to regulate social media. They want to regulate every podcast that every social media company that earns more than $10 million or more in annual revenues. Luckily for me, I don't earn anywhere near $10 million worth of revenues, not even at one-tenth of that. But I am hopeful that you guys are going to help me get to $10 million because I would love to be regulated by the state of Canada, by the country of Canada in my broadcasting. So if any of you in a position to help me achieve the $10 million of annual revenues so I can qualify for being regulated by Canada, I'd really, really appreciate it. Let me know. I'm sure we can facilitate it quite easily on an ongoing basis. Anyway, registration, all these companies and podcasts, so individual podcasts included, are going to have to register by November 28th this year. And once they register, I'm sure they will be monitored by the Canadian Broadcasting Commission and their content will be either given a thumbs up or a thumbs down. They will be screened by governments. I mean, this is just a blatant, unequivocal, unabashed attack on free speech by the Canadian authorities. And it's disgusting, despicable, and it'll be interesting to see what happens because Twitter, Facebook, all these companies have to register. Canada is already in a big fight with Facebook over news released on Facebook. Now that fight might even be broadened. So this is a story to watch. Elon Musk has already declared this an attack on free speech, and it is. It actually is, and this is what I agree with Elon. But we will see how this develops. We will see how the story works out. And then finally, on a positive note, although I'm sure some of you listening with this will be pissed off that I chose this to highlight, but I will, I am and I will. Whoops, shit, I closed one of the windows. That one. All right. Kathleen Carrico and Drew Weisman received the Nobel Prize for Medicine, which is super exciting and super deserving. I particularly know Kathleen Carrico's story, but both of them are responsible for basically the pioneering work that led to the development of mRNA vaccines, famous, of course, for the COVID vaccines that have saved millions of lives around the world. And Carrico has this amazing story of being denied funding, being denied funding by the government, having almost losing a job. Weisman was one guy who believed in her and allowed her to do the research in his lab. Together, they solved the problem of how to get the body not to attack the mRNA that was being injected into the body and allow it to enter the cell and to do what it needed to do inside the cell. They did that by switching out, by switching out one part of the RNA that they were, the messenger RNA, so they could get it in. They will share the prize, so they'll each get half a million dollars. Carrico is an immigrant from Hungary and really struggled early in her career, and she didn't give up. She kept fighting. She knew mRNAs, revolutionary technology. She fought, she struggled to get this done. Again, Weisman is the guy who supported her and who helped her and who made it possible. So this is amazing. This is great. But it's not just COVID, and maybe COVID will be one of the lesser significant achievements, because the reality is that mRNA vaccines are going to be a crucial way in which we deal with disease but also conditions in the future. mRNA is already showing amazing results with cancer. It's showing amazing results with other diseases and the development of vaccines for other diseases. This has opened up a whole world, and the success of the COVID vaccine has opened up an entire world, an entire world to medicine and is gonna be responsible, I think, for improving and extending our lives and for saving many, many, many more millions of people's lives. So it's, yeah, it's fantastic. So good for Kuriko. Good for Weisman. If you remember those of you who've been with me since the days of COVID, I highlighted Kuriko's role in the mRNA process very early on. I've talked about her often. She's a real hero as compared to all these anti-vax doctors who claim that they invented whatever vaccines or whatever. She's the real deal, she's the real thing. She worked with BioNTech, the German company, that ultimately developed a vaccine, the COVID vaccine with Pfizer or for Pfizer, not with really, for Pfizer. She's a real, if you wanna look up, hero scientist. I think Kathleen Kuriko is a hero scientist. Just as an aside, the United States, I think, got 75% of all the Nobel Prizes so far in the sciences announced in the sciences. They got 75% of those. Two thirds of the scientists, the American scientists who got Nobel Prizes, two thirds of them, I think it's two thirds of them, are immigrants. Immigrants. And it's just stunning to me how this country has turned against immigrants given how much all of us benefited and benefit from these immigrants and their contributions to science, technology, entrepreneurship, and I have to add to gardening, right? All right. Let's see, that is all I have for the news today. Let's go to your super chat questions. We'll start with Sylvanos who came in with $100, and we're just $12 short by the way of our goal, so Sylvanos has got us there really quickly. Sylvanos says, hope you get well soon, Iran. Thank you. I hope so too. Not happy to see the speakership thrown into chaos despite McCarthy being a slime ball. Yeah, will the Dems regret this? I don't see the next speaker being more sympathetic to Democrats. No, I don't think he will be, but I think the next speaker will be, it will be clearer the way he stands. He'll be potentially a more, make America great again, a Republican type. The government, probably more inclined to shut down the government in November when negotiations break down. I mean, I'm not encouraged to see a political house out of order, but this is inevitable. This is the state of the world. This is the state of the Republican Party. And all this does is it make it a little realer. It makes it the chaos, the anarchy, the insanity that is just gonna become more real. You know who the lead candidate the Republicans are putting out there to take over the speakership of the House? Because the speakership of the House does not have to be, the speaker does not have to be a member of Congress. So the number one candidate that they are proposing, that Republicans are proposing right now, I doubt this will go through, but the number one candidate that they're proposing right now is Donald Trump. Now imagine Donald Trump, the speaker of the House, talk about chaos, talk about nihilism, talk about the complete destruction of the American system of government. I mean, there's a part of me that says, bring it on. Let's just get it over with. Why drag this out? Why make this slow? Why make it agonizing? Let's just make Donald Trump, speaker of the House and get it all over with. And so everybody in the United States and the world will see what this is like. And the scary thing is Republicans would love what it's like. And in that sense, it strikes me there, just as many nihilists among the Republicans as there are on the Democrats, because it would be insane. Now, I think ultimately they'll come up with, you know, Jim Jordan or Scalaus, Scalaus, Scalaus as the nominee, I actually know Jim Jordan, but, you know, we'll see what, you know, let's see what actually happens. Ken says, yeah, let's do it so he can subpoena some crooks. Yeah, he can subpoena himself as crook number one at the top of the agenda, but that's okay. Crook number one is already being prosecuted all over the country. And, you know, if they really dig deep enough, you know, these prosecutions is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Trump's corruption. All right, yeah, I mean, you hate to see this, on the other hand, it's inevitable. What other possibilities are there out there given the state of Republicans and given the state of Democrats, given the state of politics in this country? It's a disaster in both political parties. I gave the example of what, of Newsom's replacement for Dan Feinstein. I mean, Dan Feinstein is gonna be missed because she was, today, relative to the Democratic Party which moving, she was a relatively moderate, right? Rimo says, thoughts and idea of retiring early from a very productive career because you want to spend more time with your family, like, for example, legendary investor, Peter Lynch. I find it difficult to understand. I, you know, by the time Lynch retired, I mean, what was family, was grandkids or whatever? Couldn't he have kind of semi-retired? Or, I mean, I just don't understand how you give up a productive career, the central focus, the central purpose of your life for family. I mean, those grandkids are gonna grow up. What happens then, you're just gonna travel. I, you wrote a couple of books, but beyond that, Peter Lynch just kind of disappeared. I don't know how satisfying a life can be. And I would suspect that it's not very satisfying. That it seems like a great idea at the time. And then it's a dead end and where do you go from there? The reality is that people who retire, people who use their minds on a regular basis, people who are really productive, who retire, it has a very, very negative effect on them, on their life, on the quality of life, on their sense of life. So, yeah. Alexis, hey, Alexis. Did you watch First They Killed My Father, a movie about the brutality of the red Camus? I'm considering asking you for a review. I have not, well, wait a minute, I did see that. It's when they literally show the evacuation of the city. And it's, yes, of course I saw that movie. Yeah, how would I not go see a movie about the brutality of the Camus, Camerouge? Yeah, happy to review it. It's a good movie and it's an important movie in the sense that we don't have many examples of depiction of communist brutality. And in this case, egalitarian brutality, this was all done in the name of egalitarianism, the same ideology driving the modern left today. So, yeah, it would be a great review to bring out the similarities with the modern left, what's going on today. All right, thanks, Alexis. Let's see, Michael says, why aren't many Americans moving to Germany and Portugal? I don't know that many Americans are moving to Germany and Portugal. I haven't seen the stats on this. Certainly Germany, Germany have not heard that many Americans are moving to, but I do know a lot of Americans are moving to Portugal to a large extent because Portugal is offering Americans relatively easy way to get citizenship by, I think, buying property for half a million dollars. You basically qualify for citizenship and then having a very low tax rate and by gaining Portuguese citizenship, you gain European Union citizenship, which makes travel to and within the European Union work within the European Union much, much, much easier. So, I think it's a high tax rate, high regulations. Portugal is also an incredibly pleasant place to live. It's got really nice weather, friendly people. Lisbon is a beautiful city. So there's a lot going for it if you don't want to move to Florida, if you don't want to move to the South and you live in New York or California, Portugal's not a bad place. It has weather very similar to California weather. Michael, what are your thoughts on Gideon Levy? I don't know who Gideon Levy is, I have no thoughts about him. I can look it up if you really want me to, I will. Michael says, do you trust our legal system today or does it have no problem putting innocent people in prison and letting the guilt and guilty out? I think I trust the criminal legal system more than I trust the civil legal system. I think the criminal legal system is for the most part still pretty objective. The standards that qualify for guilt, the way evidence is presented. I mean, you do get things like the OJ case where the guilty are let out and you do have fundamental problems with the fact that many of the Jewish just can't think. They don't have the epistemological ability to think. But fundamentally, the system is in place. I think have the protections to prevent the innocent from being prosecuted or being found guilty, put it that way and the guilty being let out. I have a lot less faith with the civil partially because I think their philosophically system is completely corrupt. A whole liability system is completely corrupt. I think that the also the regulatory laws, anything to do with business anytime the government is suing you, I don't trust any of that, any of that because it's subjective, it's arbitrary and it's just yeah, I don't have any trust in that. So it's a mixed bag and some judges are better than others. I think generally kind of the federal courts and the Supreme Court are better than many of the other courts. But yeah, I mean, but it's also become so politicized even our court system. Michael says, is karma a legitimate concept? Karma, no. In a secular way, bad karma is bad for your psychological state. Yeah, but then why would you do that? Yeah, but then why do you even use the term? I don't like using terms like karma that have a clearly deterministic and mystical association. So some words used by religion are worth preserving. I don't think karma is worth preserving. Michael, is it worth being nice and generous with people today if they just see it as a sign of weakness to be taken advantage of? Well, if they're that kind of person, why be nice to them? Right, if they're the kind of person that views it as a sign of weakness to be taken advantage of, then screw them, why are you nice to them? They don't deserve being nice to them. So no, it wouldn't be nice to people like that. Is there no external advice that can replace your judgment? Even if your judgment is wrong and external advice is right? No, I mean, advice is always good, right? But at the end of the day, it's your judgment. So external advice cannot replace your judgment, but your judgment should take into account external advice. So no, I mean, it's better to be wrong and to have based it on your own judgment than to be right and based it on somebody else's judgment. Again, not talking about advice, we're talking about basing something on somebody else's judgment. Michael says, how do you course correct after moral breach? Well, it depends what the moral breach is, but you've got to make amends. You've got to acknowledge the breach. If people have been harmed, you have to make recompense, but the main thing is acknowledging and dedicating yourself to making sure you don't do it again and making sure that you recompense whoever suffered as a consequence of the moral breach. Steven, thanks for another interesting news roundup. Get well soon. Thank you, Steven, really appreciate it. WCZ, thanks to the Wool series. I appreciate it. And I need to do more of those shows, I know. Doodle Bunny says, you're getting way too old to travel. Thanks a lot, Doodle Bunny. I really, really appreciate that. Fendt Hopper says, in an objective's world, would you be sick? Just kidding, ha ha. I appreciate you working through illness. Would I be sick? Less so in an objective's world, probably. It'd probably be healthier for a variety of reasons and in an objective's world, we'd already have a cure for the common cold, which is probably what I have. In an objective's world, there would be cures for literally everything. What would kill us? Maybe we wouldn't die. A car ramming into you, a bullet wound to the skull, those things would kill you and new diseases would probably crop up and bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics in the short run might kill some people before we develop a response. Who knows? Alex says, do you want to read my immorality, immortality framework? No idea what that even means. What is an immortality framework? I don't know what that means. Walin says, happy travels, keep it up. Thank you. Walin, at least Walin doesn't think I'm too old to travel. Alex, I can't send links to the super chat. You can send me links by email if you want and maybe I'll have a chance to look at it. My email generally is youron at youronbrookshow.com so you guys can communicate. All right, let me remind everybody if there's still somebody out there in the UK or in Europe who would like to come to, or in the US who would like to come to my public speaking seminar in London in basically two weeks on the 18th of October, please let me know now, ASAP, today, tomorrow, youron at youronbrookshow.com. I need to get a final list of attendees to that so please let me know as soon as you can, as soon as you can. Yeah, we're good, thank you. Wow, we've got 113 people watching now, that's good. Maybe it's the, the people overcoming, because they had withdrawal, a lot of people are coming now. All right, I will see you all tomorrow for a show like today, a new show. And then tomorrow night at 8 p.m. is Harry Binswanger. Please prepare your philosophical, epistemological, metaphysical, deep, troubling, difficult questions for, oh, Alexis is in New York, the week I'm there to do the seminar. Ah, that would have been, it would have been perfect to have you there. Anyway, so come tomorrow at 8 p.m. for Harry Binswanger, there'll be a lot of fun. Friday will do two shows as well. So if you have any more questions, please bring them for the show on Friday. All right, everybody, I don't know if Michael asked his deep questions yet. I don't know if those count as deep or not. I will talk to you all tomorrow. I hope I get better. I hope you guys are doing well. I'll see you then. Bye, everybody.