 Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this... What is it? It's Wednesday, May 10th. God, this 2023 is passing by so quickly. It's pretty amazing. It is almost my birthday. All right, so I am still in Valencia, Spain. I travel to Rome tomorrow. And I thought I would do another one of our news roundups. And, you know, we'll try to do as many of these as I can while I'm traveling. And maybe some of the shows as well, depending on time and availability and time zones and all the rest of it. Hopefully all of you are having a fantastic week so far. And, yeah, I mean, let's just, I guess, jump right in. Remind everybody that if you want to ask a question, if you want to help shape the kind of topics that cover on the show, you can use the Super Chat feature to ask questions and have me discuss topics that are beyond what I've planned. And it's also an opportunity to support the show, value for value, and allow me to continue to do these shows. All right, let's jump in one minute. Let me just figure this out. Thank you, Antonio. I really appreciate the support there. Antonio, use the sticker to support the show. I really appreciate that. All right, let's jump in. I mean, the first story is, of course, the fact that Trump was, has been indeed indicted, not indicted, found, lost the lawsuit. I guess this was not a, this was a civil case brought against him for rape and sexual abuse and also defamation. He was found, in a sense, liable, both for the sexual abuse and defamation. And the court is basically told him to pay $5 million to the woman who made the accusation, E.G. Carroll. It became quite clear that, yeah, I mean, why is this surprising to anybody that I don't think it is? What really is shocking, and I'm not going to talk too much about this because, God, it's so sickening. But what's really astounding is, here's Donald Trump, who is accused of sexual assault. You know, it really appears by anybody who's looked at the case, and a jury clearly found that he is, that he is a, you know, that he did commit sexual assault in this woman. At least a jury found that. It's not allegedly. We have a court system in the United States. The court has found that he has committed sexual assault and is liable for sexual assault. So you don't say allegedly anymore once it's been to court and when a court found this way. It's going to be appealed and we'll see what happens on appeal. But yes, a jury did find it. And of course, if this had gone the other way, everybody, all the same people who have these skeptical about it, would all be chewing the court decision and justice has been found. Because this is exactly, it doesn't matter what a jury finds. It doesn't matter what anybody finds out about Trump. Trump, as he said in 2016, you know, he could go into the Middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody dead, have it on TV cameras, have everybody watching. Everybody knows that it happened and it wouldn't change one iota where people like Ken and Edward in the chat think about Trump. They will follow Trump no matter what. They will believe whatever they want about Trump. Facts will not get in the way of their support for Trump. And this is the real, you know, this is the real shock. The real shock is that here he is, you know, found responsible, not guilty in the sense of a crime, but because the statute of limitations passed. But liable for sexual assault, not for some trivial thing, for sexual assault. And it's not surprising, again, given what he has said, you know, in that famous tape about, you know, kissing women and grabbing them by the, you know what, it is not surprising at all. And yet it doesn't matter one iota, right? He is still by far the favorite to win the Republican nomination. He could even win the presidency. You know, I still think that probably won't happen. But he could win the presidency. Biden is unpopular enough for him to win the presidency. And nobody seems to care that this guy is, you know, is a scumbag. He is, you know, beneath contempt as a human being. He has a horrible character. And again, we face today, we don't face a situation where it's a Republican versus Democrat. We face a situation where we can choose which Republican to vote for. And yet everybody's defending him. Everybody's rallying around him. He is, you know, he appears to be the candidate the Republicans will rally around. And it is truly despicable and disgusting. This is a human being that, I don't know, doesn't deserve any kind of job. He's not, I don't think he's a worthwhile, valued human being. And yet he is seriously being considered to be, again, the president of the United States, in spite of everything he's done, in spite of everything he says, in spite of the revealed character that he has, in spite of the lying, the cheating, in spite of sexual assault, sexual assault doesn't even matter. Nothing this guy does matters. Nothing this guy does matters to the people who vote for him. And they will tell you, well, we know he's a flawed character and we'd rather have somebody else. No, you wouldn't rather have somebody else. Because the reality is right now there is an opportunity to vote for the Santas. There's an opportunity to vote for a number of different candidates, who are running and the reality is who are probably more likely to be Biden than Trump is. And yet they will still vote for Trump because he is what they want. He is what they admire. He is what they respect. He is, you know, worshiped by people. And wow, I mean, it is something if, you know, for somebody with this kind of character to have this kind of following says a lot about the, I think, how many people out there, I guess, don't care about character. But, you know, but I really focused on, I mean, they really love this guy. They love this guy. And I don't believe a word when they say, well, we don't really like him, but what option is they know? There are options and they still support him with no reservation, zero reservation. And it's, to me, that's stunning. And, you know, they're all alternatives. They're really all alternatives. And yet it doesn't matter. He is by far leading all those alternatives. I think he's, the latest poll shows him 41 points ahead of DeSantis in spite of everything. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. None of these things actually matter, right? So anyway, you know, here we are. Well, do you, Jennifer, do you think that Trump stuff is similar to Bill Clinton or is it worth? I think it's definitely worse than Bill Clinton. I mean, Bill Clinton was not accused of sexual assault. He was accused of lying. He was accused of, you know, having sex in the closet, or sex in the closet with a young woman. But this is sexual assault. I mean, this is a different category. And it is worse than Bill Clinton. But the same people who, with Bill Clinton said, well, you know, character matters and we should vote Clinton out and on and on and on and on. When it comes to Trump, they will tolerate literally anything, literally anything. And it really does not matter what he does. And I don't know. I mean, this is why I, this is the, I think to me this is the, the most negative thing about America today and the right today. Yeah. I mean, Bill Clinton is a horrible human being. A real, real nasty human being. Tessie says I'm wrong that he was actually accused of rape, possibly, but it never went to trial. He would actually went to trial. You know, it's also the case that, yeah, I mean, Bill Clinton's slept around. Bill Clinton did all kinds of horrible things. And he's a horrible human being and he, he, he rots in hell every day. If you watch his face, you can see how, what a horrible life he has. But remember that the same Republicans who are now enthusiastic about Trump were saying that Bill Clinton should not get elected based on his character. Well, Trump has the same character, same character as Bill Clinton. So maybe I'm wrong about Bill Clinton, maybe as much, maybe he was indeed as bad as Trump and that's certainly possible. So I, I, I stand corrected Tessie, Tessie, but you know, and Bill Clinton didn't get reelected. So maybe this is not new, but I think Trump is one standard deviation even more out there in terms of his character than even Bill Clinton. This is my estimation. All right. Let's see. I mean, the evidence there was a trial. Evidence was presented. Testimony was presented. Joey could have ruled that there was no evidence and, and, and acquitted, acquitted Trump. There was plenty of, there was plenty of evidence. And then there was evidence about defamation, not only did they accuse him of the actual assault, but also defamation. So, so, so, you know, we still use the court system for the most part, unless we have, unless there's evidence to suggest that some egregious miscarriage of judgment justice have occurred. And I haven't seen any new stories to suggest that that is the case here. But, but we also know again the character of Donald Trump, you know, and, and, and his sexual exploits. I mean, do we need you not familiar with the evidence regarding Stormy Daniels? Are we not, you know, not familiar with the evidence of his sleeping around with, with lots of women and women of questionable, obviously questionable character? Did he not say locker room speech? I don't know how many of you have ever been in a locker room. I've been in a locker room, plenty of locker rooms. I've never said I grabbed women by the, by the what I've never said that I would, you know, and I wouldn't. I wouldn't associate with somebody who talked like that about women. And if you guys would, so be it, then, then I don't want to associate with you. But that, that is, that is, that says something about a character of a person who talks like that about women. It's not neutral. The fact that it's locker room speak does not excuse it. I mean, who the hell wants to be in a locker room with you if you speak like that? I don't. All right, but, but that's fine. We have a lot of people with the lesson minds and with, with inability to achieve maturity and think maturely about human beings. Let's see. Andrew, I'm just going to take a question about Trump. Andrew says, Trump is running ads against the Santas for supporting a raise of the retirement age for Social Security. Yes, we know that. He will protect the Social Security Medicare. How did Republicans lose their way in entitlements? Well, Trump, right? I mean, in 2016, pretty much every candidate up there, Ted Cruz certainly, but certainly some of the other candidates, were all running on a platform of entitlement reform because everybody realizes that if you are particularly conservatives, if you are semi-even responsible, semi-responsible, then you have to talk about entitlement reform and you have to propose a plan around entitlement reform. And we're not going to get the U.S. budget and the U.S. economy on the right path without entitlement reform. You know, even not taking the radical position of entitlement, phasing out retirement, just reform. And Donald Trump went up there and says, no, there's no entitlement reform. We're not going to touch entitlement. I promise you, we will not touch Social Security, we will not touch Medicaid. And that was more successful as a political message. And since Donald Trump won the 2016 election, one of the many things in which Donald Trump destroyed, in my view, the Republican Party, is that he took the entitlement reform off the table and he's doing it again now. It worked in 2016. He's doing it again now. You know, some people in Congress were starting to talk about entitlement reform. DeSantis hinted at it. And Trump basically came out and said, no, any deal you have about raising the debt limit or anything like that, entitlement off the table. And the Republican says, yes, Trump, we will do what you say, Trump. Trump has taken those issues completely off the table. And it's a disaster because, you know, it has to be done. And if Republicans won't do it, then you have to wait for Democrats to do it. God, that is pathetic. But yes, Trump is attacking DeSantis for the few virtues DeSantis actually has, like his willingness to take on entitlement reform. All right. What's next? Oh, fentanyl, fentanyl. Well, there's a huge fentanyl crisis in this country, as you probably know, because it's in the news and everybody's talking about it constantly. And the fentanyl is coming into the United States from Mexico. But there's been a real shift over the last few years in terms of, you know, how the fentanyl gets made and where it's coming from. There's recently been a new study coming out of the Department of, out of the DEA Drug Enforcement Agency. And it's, if in the past what was happening was fentanyl was smuggled into Mexico from primarily China. And then from Mexico smuggled into the United States. The Mexicans, the Mexican cartels have got a lot smarter about it. When they were buying the fentanyl from Mexico from the Chinese and smuggling it to the U.S., their profit margins were relatively low. But what they have figured out is that they can actually smuggle, not fentanyl into Mexico, but they can smuggle the basically the chemicals, the precursor chemicals into fentanyl from China at a very, very low cost. So they can take $800 worth of chemicals and they can then manufacture the fentanyl in Mexico, turning it into pills and powder. And $800 turns into $640,000. Talk about a return on investment when it sells in the United States. So the profit margins are huge. The incentives are huge. And it turns out that the sons of El Chapo, the famous drug cartel criminal, his sons have now built a network of laboratories across Sinaloa. And they are basically smuggling in the precursor chemicals from China. China can then say, we have nothing to do with the fentanyl trade, it's just these chemicals. And they're turning these chemicals into fentanyl and they are making a huge amount of money. There is, you know, this cash that the cartels get then is used to bribe politicians and it's used to bribe cops. And it's used to buy basically an army of hitmen and of military grade equipment. And it institutionalizes these cartels in Mexico as a real threat to the Mexican government, to the civilians in Mexico and indeed to the U.S. One American dies from fentanyl over those every eight minutes. Of course, the solution to this, of course, is to legalize fentanyl. It's to legalize all of these drugs to let a market emerge. Of course, if a market emerges, then it won't, first of all, prices would plummet. Remember, $800, $640,000. Prices would plummet. Fentanyl would be made in the United States. And the competition would be over quality. And instead of selling a drug that kills one American every eight minutes and kills over those deaths in the United States, over $100,000 in 2021, they would have to be able to provide a high without killing people. And that would save a lot of lives of the users. And of course it would save a lot of lives, who are the victims of the cartels, save a lot of lives of the war that the war drugs would also prevent the corruption of judges and prosecutors and cops and politicians and all, you know, not just in the United States but in Mexico and all over the world. The only solution to the fentanyl crisis is not to go to war with Mexico, but it's to legalize fentanyl and legalize all hard drugs and create a real market in them and drive prices down and get rid of all this violence. All right, let's see. Yeah, I talk about entitlements. You know, there is a real crisis right now regarding U.S. debt and the ability of the U.S. government to pay back the debt. The Congress literally has to raise the debt limit so that the government can issue more debt so it can pay back the previous debt. Not only pay expenses, pay entitlements, pay for all the things the government pays for, but also to be able to pay back the debt that expires and to pay interest on the debt. And without issuers of new debt, it is almost impossible, with some exceptions of some gimmickry that the Treasury might be able to do, but it's impossible really to pay off the U.S. debt and you might see the U.S. government actually default on its debt. That is not pay its creditors. It never happened in U.S. history. One indication that this is a real threat, that the market at least, the markets really believe that this is a real threat, is that the cost of insuring America's debt against default skyrocketed. Now, you can, using credit default swaps, buy in a sense insurance that pays you if the U.S. defaults on the debt. Now usually these credit defaults are super cheap because the probability that the U.S. government will actually default on debt is assumed to be close to zero. But right now, the price to buy this insurance, to buy these credit default swaps, CDSs, on U.S. Treasury bonds is actually higher than to buy insurance against Greek bonds, Mexican bonds, Brazilian bonds. In other words, the U.S. is more likely to default on its debt, not because the U.S. doesn't have the money to do it, not because the U.S. can issue debt, but because of kind of the political stalemate that we're in, the kind of political jockeying of our system. The probability of the U.S. defaulting on its debt is higher right now than Greece, Mexico, or Brazil. And you know, this is truly unbelievable. Now I think Kevin McCarthy is using this, as Republicans used it in 2011 or 2012, to try to get a Democratic president to agree to spending cuts. Obama ultimately agreed to that. And in the last six years of the Obama administration, from 2012 until 2010, really, so this is 2011, from 2011 until 2017, actually saw as a percentage of GDP U.S. spending stabilize and actually go down after the spike of the stimulus package post financial crisis. Kevin McCarthy is trying to do the same thing now with Biden. Biden is resisting. They're playing chicken to see who will give. You know, it's hard to tell. I think ultimately they will cut a deal. I think Biden ultimately will agree to spending cuts, just like Obama did. But we will see. I mean some of the economists advising Biden are far more committed to big government spending than I think economists were during the Obama era. And Biden's agenda is kind of linked to a lot of spending. So we'll see what happens. But it is interesting. I don't think I ever thought I'd see U.S. credit default swaps selling at a higher price in Greece, Mexico, and Brazil. You know, a world. And by the way, again, Trump is not helping here because Trump is saying entitlements off the table. Kevin McCarthy can't cut entitlements. So what is Kevin McCarthy? You have to cut a lot because he can't cut the fence and he can't cut entitlements. He has to cut a lot of everything else. And that is a tricky political position once you actually look at the details of what's being cut for the Republicans. And it's tricky to get a deal with Biden. You know, I view this as theater more than anything else. And it's interesting to watch and interesting to see how convoluted all this becomes and how they entangle themselves in this. I don't think at the end a huge amount of damage is done to the U.S. economy one way or the other. However, this is settled. All right, let's see. What was the next? Okay. Yeah, Russia. This is an interesting story. So, you know, Russia really for 20 years now, you know, once the internet was launched and Russia became one of the most sophisticated players in the world. At cyber espionage, you know, the other, of course, very sophisticated players, China, and it's likely the United States is better than both of them. But of course, we in the United States learn about, you know, Chinese and Russian Hanks hacks into the U.S. system. We don't really advertise, and I don't think these regimes advertise when the U.S. hacks into their systems. But anyway, Russia has been a very sophisticated player in cyber espionage and has been operating a variety of different cyber espionage programs against the United States for at least 20, for the last 20 years, really with the birth of the internet. Well, this week, the United States basically shut down a massive Russian cyber espionage operation. It's an operation that's been running, this particular operation has been running for 20 years, targeted at stealing sensitive government materials from the United States, but not just the United States. This is an operation that has been focused on Western countries generally, European allies and others. The Justice Department and FBI shut it down. Basically, the Russians, now I don't understand too much about this, I'm just reading off of news stories, but, you know, they were using a malware that entered into the U.S. systems and into European systems and basically fed a lot of information through a variety of different American servers, not to look suspicious, ultimately to Russian servers in Russia. Well, the U.S., I think, knew about this, has known about this for years, and for a long time was using it to feed the Russians bad information and to feed them false information without the Russians really knowing it. So this is like a double spy that it seems to be working for the Russians, but it's actually working for the Americans. This is how this malware ultimately functioned. Ultimately, this week, they remotely completely disabled the malware, completely disabled the entire operation. It's hard to tell why they did it now, maybe because the Russians had figured out that this was being used against them, and it was actually not providing them with useful information, but providing them with information the United States wanted them to have. But they basically disentangled this and shut down the malware. This was also directly linked to the Russian government that it's been spying on the United States, and my guess is the NSA basically neutralized this cyber-espionage tool that the Russian had. But again, the U.S. has known about this for years now, and I'm sure has been using this against the Russians during this period of time. So I found that an interesting story. I'm reading a book right now about a lot of the cyber-espionage, both on the part of the Chinese and on the part of the Russians. So I'll be talking more about that in the weeks and months to come. And this kind of fit in nicely with my reading. Let me see. I want to say something. Yeah, I'm just going to say this about Russia right now just because Russia came up, so I'm going to say this about the one Ukraine. Stories are starting to come out, and it's hard to tell how valid and how accurate they are, but stories are starting to come out of a significant Russian retreat from Bakhmut and significant Russian setbacks in Bakhmut and potentially a real disintegration of the Russian military around that area. I don't know if they are true, but there seem to be some indications. It wouldn't surprise me at all. I predicted that it quite possibly could be that the Ukrainian counter-offensive will go through Bakhmut and maybe that's why they stayed around to weaken the Russians. But also when you see the head of the Wagner group and you see the Chechen soldiers and you see everybody criticizing the Russian army and you see Russian generals fighting among each other, the Russian army I think could easily collapse here. The Ukrainians could see pretty rapid victory in Ukraine and pushing the Russians out of Ukraine. I think the question now is going to be how does Russia lose rather than whether Russia will lose? I think Russia will lose. It's more a question of how it plays out. Does it play out with Putin staying in power? Does it play out with Putin losing power? Does it play out with Ukraine taking Crimea? Does it play out with some peace negotiations? But in my mind, and I've said this now for months, Ukraine has the capacity to win this and short of some pretty big mistakes they will. Morale among Russian troops is unbelievably low. They have no idea why they're in Ukraine. They have no idea what they're fighting for. It's either for money or it's for obedience, out of obedience. And neither one of those motivations is particularly a good motivation for a soldier to fight. The Ukrainians know exactly what they're fighting for. They're fighting for their homes. They're fighting for their families. They're fighting for not being under Russian rule. They are far more committed and far more motivated and Morale is far higher. I think what you're going to see is a victory in Ukraine. It was always the case that Ukraine could only win with Western weapons. It was always the case that Ukraine, whatever it did, was with Western and European. So what? Ukrainians are going to defeat the Russians with American and other Western equipment. I don't think Ukraine is going to have to wait for American tanks in order to inflict significant losses on the Russians. And by the way, the war in Ukraine is one area where you can go back and listen to what I said very early on in the war and I've been right on almost everything with regard to it. All right. One last topic. What was the last topic? Yeah, a Turkey election just quickly. Big elections on Sunday. These are the first elections in which Erdogan could lose. Erdogan for the last 20 years has either been Prime Minister or President of Turkey. He's been the leading political figure. He has made Turkey more and more and more of an authoritarian state. Erdogan has also moved Turkey away from its secular path that was set upon Turkey by Ataturk, following its defeat in World War I, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has been since that collapse since the early 1920s on a path to secularization. Erdogan reversed that and made Turkey much more Islamic and much more Muslim. And he is much more likely to be pro-Russia in spite of being a member of NATO, much more likely to be pro-Iran, much more likely to be pro-many elements that are anti-the West. It would be a massive step towards freedom in the world. It would be a massive step away from conflict and from war and from Islam and real problems if he loses. So here's an election where I clearly have a favorite, although I don't know that they're going to win. I have no indication, all the indications are that it's going to be closer than usual. But whether Erdogan can really lose this election, but if he does, that'll be real reason to celebrate, if you'll believe in liberty and freedom. It stuns me that people like, you know, it stuns me that people in the chat, people like Ken and others, do you know, they become, just like their attitude to Trump, where they become mark pieces of right wing, American right wing propaganda, they become just mark pieces of Russian propaganda and whatever the Russian propaganda feeds them, they come on my chat and they articulate it. They know exactly how many Ukrainians have died, why? Because the Russian propaganda has told them exactly how many Ukrainians have died. You know, 220,000 Ukrainians have died and only 25,000 Russians have died, according to Ken. Maybe you reverse that, maybe it's the other way around. But that's the Russian propaganda and they're going to give it to you without any embarrassment, without any shame, without even thinking twice. They are convinced it is the truth. Because they heard it, you know, from reliable sources, reliable sources. You know, on the American white that has, that has become, Tucker Carlson, Tucker won't even, I think, even quote these numbers, but Tucker Carlson and the rest of the apologists, Putin, apologists and Putin propagandists, but it is stunning. It is stunning how many people out there in America write today completely ignore reality, ignore facts, ignore what's actually going on on the ground in Ukraine. And we will see after this war it's over and people actually count the losses. You know, Russia has lost many more troops than Ukraine has, both in terms of death and injury. The amount of tanks, the amount of, it's just stunning. And the fact that Russia still doesn't have dominance of the airspace, it's just stunning the level to which Russia has failed here from beginning to end, failed during this campaign and how the apologists will just absolutely, you know, they won't accept it. They will deny it. And it doesn't matter. I mean, Moscow could be over one tomorrow and they will still claim it's all fake news and it's all mainstream media nonsense. I don't read the mainstream media. I have no sources, including sources on Ukraine. And, you know, these numbers and these pro-Russia perspectives are so bizarre and so counter to reality. But then it doesn't surprise me when you get this and then you also get the complete whitewashing of anything Trump does and the perspective on Trump. You know, they view Trump and Putin as heroes. And, yep, yep, I mean, they know more about tanks than I do. I'm sure they've been in a tank. I'm sure Ken, Ken is a tank expert. All right, let's jump into the super chat. Kim, and by the way, we're $92 short. So hopefully, hopefully with a little bit of effort here, we can make it to our target of $250 for the news roundups. Kim says, would it be a model to take a finance position for a city? Am I correct to assume that in an objective society, a finance role in a city government would still be a legit function of government? It would, but of course you wouldn't be responsible for tax revenues and other things. So it is a job that would exist. I think it partially depends on how authoritarian the city is, if you will. But yes, I don't think it's per se a model to work for a city. And I do think cities would have finance functions, although minimal, in a laissez-faire capitalist environment. So I wouldn't rule it out. It would certainly depend on the details and what exactly you would be doing and how much, you know, how senior position it was and how much ability you would have to actually influence policy. Michael says, what is the problem of induction and how is it solved? How come none of my philosophy professors know it is being solved? Well, because I think it's being solved by Lena Peekoff and your philosophy professors don't know Lena Peekoff, so they wouldn't know who it was. But the problem of induction is basically, you know, it's how do you get from, you know, here's an occurrence, here's an occurrence, here's an occurrence, here's an occurrence. Induction would generalize, okay, so here's the classic example. This swan is white, this swan is white, this swan is white, this swan is white. Therefore, all swans are white. And that would be a simple and simplistic induction. And the problem is, well, how can you make that? I mean, maybe the fifth one or the sixth one or the seventh one or the millionth one will be black. How do you know that you can generalize from specifics? How do you know that every time you drop something that gravity would work to pull it down? How do you know that will happen? Maybe it will happen a gazillion times, maybe gazillion plus one time, it won't happen. So when can you induce a truth? When can you come up with knowledge that is inductive? You know, the skeptics always say, but in an extra occurrence, how do you know it will happen again? How do you know the Sun will rise tomorrow? And I am not going to, you know, I'm not trying to completely understand the solution to it, but let it peak up shows that it's not enough, of course, to see an occurrence, an occurrence, an occurrence. It's not a numbers game. You also, from my understanding, and I hope I'm not misrepresenting, from my understanding, you also now have to understand the cause of relationship. That is, it's hard to understand that the Sun will always rise, but when you understand that, you know, the Earth goes around the Sun, you understand the forces at play in the Earth going around the Sun and why the Earth continues to go around the Sun. Once you understand that there's gravity involved and all that, once you can connect it causally, you see the occurrences and can connect them causally, then you can induce a new truth. Again, this is a good question to ask of a philosopher who studied this, but it is, it's that combination of seeing the occurrence and understanding the cause of relationship between why it occurs, why it occurs. And indeed, there are black swans, it turns out, right? So we can't induce from the many white swans, we see all swans are white, because there are black swans and once we understand the cause or mechanism of why swans might be white, we can certainly understand genetics, we can understand the mutations can happen and that some swans might be black, that it's not essential to swans' nature to be whites and therefore we don't come up with the inductive truth that all swans are white. But you have to understand something about the causal process. That, I think, is what Leonard, in much more detail, and he illustrates this through physics, he has a course that he did years ago about induction where he does it in history and in physics and he shows how induction works in both. So Michael, I'd encourage you to go listen to Leonard Peacock, because he is certainly the expert on this. He's the one who solved it, so of course he's the expert in his own solution. Schausberg asks, would support for Putin, such as there is, evaporate if he used nuclear weapons? No. No. It's the same phenomena of Trump standing at Fifth Avenue shooting somebody. Why would it evaporate? So for Putin is support, indeed I know many of the people on the American right who support Putin, want him to use nuclear weapons, want him to show how strong he is, want him to express that strength with use of nuclear weapons. I don't think the people who support Putin are offended by nuclear weapons. I think it's the exact opposite. I actually think if he used nuclear weapons, support would grow among certain people. So no. I don't think that it at all. People support Putin because they support pseudo strength. They support his, quote, supposed manliness. They support his hatred of the left, right? That's a big motivation. But really what people who support Putin and people who support, I think, some people who support Trump, what they really support is they support strongmen. They support authoritarians. They think that is, it's not even that they think, they feel that that is right, that that is appropriate, that that is the direction we need ahead. We need a head towards strongmen and they love Putin because he is such a strongman. And by the way, but they don't like Xi in the same way to logic then because Putin is a white European and he represents, quote, Western civilization. I mean, in my view, I think in truth, he is the antithesis of Western civilization. He is the anti-Christ of Western civilizations, quite supposedly. He is everything that Western civilization is against. But to them he represents Western civilization because to them Western civilization is anti-left. For them, even though Putin really is left, to them Putin's religiosity is a plus, not a minus. He represents Western civilization as the rejection of religiosity. You know, most people view Western civilization as the embracing of, you know, it's everything that Jordan Peterson has told us about, in a sense, why he views Putin as a good guy because he is, he hates gays, he's very anti-trans. What's not to love, right? That to them is what it's all about. That to them is what's important ultimately in the world out there. Here's a prediction that the West, Biden administration in Western Europe will not use nuclear weapons first. Probably wouldn't use nuclear weapons even second. That if nuclear weapons are used in this conflict, it will be Putin. But you see, even there, if Putin uses nuclear weapons and let's say the West responds, people like Ken on my chat and the people of that way of thinking or way of non-thinking will blame the West for it. I mean, because the West today, Biden and Western Europe are associated with the left and therefore they are always guilty. And Putin, because he represents the anti-left, is always innocent, is always the good guy. Oh, I mean, my view is the people, the people who support Putin would endorse his use of nuclear weapons like that, like that, in a second. All right, Hopper Campbell, do statists think keeping people poor keeps them in line? I don't see how this parasitic state apparatus doesn't collapse as more people get reactivated by objectivism. Well, it does collapse ultimately, whether because of objectivism, just because of the state economics of it. But no, again, you always try to attribute to statists, I think, sophisticated motivations and a deep understanding of what they're doing, which I don't think they necessarily have. Are there statists who think that the welfare state keeps people under control in line? Sure. Is that what motivates more statists? No. I don't think it's about keeping people in line. It's about, quote, helping people. It's about people not being able to take care of themselves and the status feeling like he is in a position to rule, to help, to control. I'm good. That's the rationalization he goes through. So almost none of them actually say to themselves, I want to control people. This is I'm going to achieve it. Just to be clear, I do not want, I do not want Biden to use nukes. I don't think you should be used. I don't think Biden should be used. I don't think the United States should, as an active participant, enter the world in Ukraine. And if anybody's been listening to my show, you all know that. How would you define inner strength? How important is it? You know, I'd say, I don't know, inner strength is really an application of integrity. It is really an aspect. It's just integrity. It's living by your values. It's sticking to your values. It's courage, inner strength, all applications of integrity to life. It's about dedicating yourself to your values. And in spite of threats, in spite of risk, in spite of obstacles that you face, sticking with those values, sticking with what you believe in, doing what your values dictate you should do. You know, not changing that. That's really inner strength. And that's courage is an aspect of that. It's having that commitment to your own life, to your own values, to your own righteousness, and being willing to live up to that. And not compromising. That's what inner strength is. And it's very important. It's very crucial. You know, particularly in a world in which many of your values are under attack, many of your values are, you know, you can see how my values are under attack right here in the chat, many of your values are under attack, truth is under attack, and you have to live up to it. You have to stick to the truth in spite of the accusations that you constantly face, in spite of the fact of calling your names, in spite of the fact that people dismiss you and ridicule you, in spite of the fact that you lose, in my case, in your own bookshows case, you lose subscribers, you lose revenue by sticking to the fact, by sticking to the truth. But inner strength, courage, integrity, requires you to do it in spite of all that. It's crucial, it's crucial to living a successful happy life. And we'll ask, I want to convince objectivist that emotional oppression belongs on the front lines with mysticism and altruism as a major enemy of objectivism. E.g., wanting Ukraine to win does not result in being non-objective qua de want. Yeah, I agree. I think you're right. I think it's the, maybe the number one psychological goal is to eliminate repression. You can't live with that capital L that I talk about. You can't fully live if you're emotionally repressed. If you don't know what your values are, if you're not connected to your own passion, and if you don't feel life, if you don't experience life, if you're not emotional about this. So repressing your emotions is ultimately involved in repressing your values, and it is crucial to fight it. The tools to fight it, I think are somewhat different than the tools to fight mysticism and altruism because I think a lot of repression is so psychologically ingrained that you have to fight it with psychological tools. And psychological tools are different than philosophical tools. They require different methodology. They require advancements in psychology because I'm not sure we have fully those tools. But yeah. And by the way, you can want Ukraine to win and be unbiased about the facts about whether it is winning or not. That is, the fact that you have a side, the fact that you believe in something doesn't make you non-objective. I want to live a successful life. That requires me to be objective about my life. So the fact that I care requires objectivity. It's not a rejection of objectivity. So the whole idea that objectivity requires neutrality is false. The whole idea that objectivity requires repression of your own values and your own emotions and your own point of view is false. It is a false view of objective. It's what Inren rejects. You know, it's exactly because you're passionate about certain things that you have views about certain things that you have to be objective. You know, an objective means fact-oriented. It means, you know, treating the facts as facts and knowing what the facts and knowing what is fake, false. Knowing what is wishes. Knowing what is, you know, knowing what is pretend. And so many people. I mean, one of the things that I've opened my eyes to over the last seven, eight years is the number of people, the extent to which people light to themselves and deceive themselves based on a particular value, a particular perspective that they have. And how non-objective, 99% of people out there, but how non-objective so many people claim to be objective or claim to be influenced by Aaron Randall. So, I mean, that's been shocking to me. And I think, again, I think Trump and much of what Trump has done and now the war has really brought that home. The number of people who have no sense of objectivity about Trump. No sense of objectivity about the war, about Putin, about Ukraine, about what's going on. How blind they are by their own hatred of, quote, the left is stunning to me how non-objective people are. Yes. Okay, Paul, I am reading Nietzsche and the Nazis. Do you think Trumpsters think Trump is the next overman? Yeah, I mean, I don't like the, you know, by the way, just to clarify, because these lies spread and they even get spread to... I did not say that everybody who voted for Trump is non-objective. I did not say even that everybody supported Trump over Biden is non-objective. I said there were a lot of people who are non-objective who support Trump. Not the same thing. Logic people. Logic. Read logic. Right? I know lots of people who voted for Trump who I don't consider non-objective. Non-considered, non-objective. That's not what I said. But the number of people who lost their objectivity over Trump is stunning. But I know logic is not your strong suit, Ken. That's just, that is the reality. Do you think Trumpsters think Trump is the... I mean, it's a similar phenomenon for some people. Again, not everybody who supports Trump thinks this way. But for some people, it certainly is a similar phenomenon. You know, I think there are big differences between, you know, Trump and the Nazis. The fact that Trump has no ideology, the Nazis had a clear ideology. Trump is ultimately a complete disintegrator. Trump is ultimately a fragmented disintegrator. He has no unifying philosophy. The Nazis were the opposite. So there are big differences. But I think in terms of the worship of the man, there are real differences. Right? Real differences. It's not slick, Ken. It's logic. And you guys don't listen. All you do is you eject logic and you imply, you know, you'll do anything to imply that I did something bad and you'll use certain people to try to go after me, which is fine. You know, I guess in love and war, all is fair, people say, right? James says, have you seen John Stossel's interview with Ron DeSantis? He is surprisingly impressive if you would lay off the appeal to populism. He's smart enough and knowledgeable enough to be a decent president. I mean, I've not seen John Stossel's interview with DeSantis. I'm sure DeSantis rose to the occasion because you know kind of what Stossel's views are. Yeah, I mean, I was told a long time ago by John Fund. John Fund used to be the chief editor of the Wall Street Journal that Ron DeSantis was fundamentally a Reaganite and he was doing all the stuff around social issues just because he needed that to win the presidency. I don't completely believe that. And if he did that, I think DeSantis gone completely overboard with it. But yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of people out there. I think that he is smart. There's no question he's smart. The question is, does he have the charisma? And I think he's made a huge mistake with Disney. I think he's made a huge mistake with going overboard over the social stuff. I think he's made a huge mistake not taking on Trump straight on and fighting with Trump. I think the only person who can be Trump is somebody who's willing to really attack Trump with the so-called high ground. The high ground is viewed as weakness. You have to get into the trenches and really go after Trump. And I think Trump has laid himself bare to going after him. So that needs to happen. So yeah, I mean, we'll see. So far DeSantis is not impressed as a candidate. Alex says, Ayn Rand lived through World War II. Was she worried? Did she think this was the start of the next Dark Ages? No, I mean, she thought quite the opposite. I think she was too optimistic because she knew the Soviets and both the Communists and the Fascists would lose. She knew collectivism was loose. She thought America would win. And she thought, and this is where she was wrong and overly optimistic, is that with the defeat, the thorough defeat of collectivism, both in its fascist and its communist form, that individualism would be on the rise. And I think the big disappointment was that in spite of the thorough intellectual and military defeat of collectivism, collectivism would not go away. And ultimately she would be so disappointed in America today and to see both right and left descending into collectivism in ways that she thought America would never succumb to. So, no, she did not think, if anything, she thought the 70s was much closer to the center to the Dark Ages than World War II. World War II was a war she thought and I think convinced America would win and we would come out of it stronger because we would come out of it more individualistic with the complete defeat of collectivism. Tasey asks, always love making a live show. There's an energy to it and it gives energy to my day. Thanks, Iran. By the way, LA is way nicer since post-lockdown, less dystopian, happily surprised. Yes, I mean, lockdowns were horrific and LA kept them on for a long time and the mask mandates for a long time and it was just, but yes, I'm glad you're enjoying LA. LA can be a fabulous place, can be. Michael, is the left's willingness to engage in political prosecutions going to lead to a faster breakdown of the civil society as civil war seems the left of babies playing with fire? I don't know why you think that. I think the left and the right of babies playing with fire. I don't think the left is, I think the left and right here are almost equal in this. I don't think we're going to have a civil war. I've explained in the past why not, but suddenly we're seeing a descent into, I don't know, into hell of civil discussion and of, you know, kind of civil society. But I don't think it's going to descend into civil war. Vuldron says without proper set incentives, can the profit motive distort markets? Does the profit motive always lead to societal prosperity? Self-interest without principles is corrupting and destructive for all? Yeah, I mean, of course not. If you have the wrong incentives, then the profit motive leads to bad outcomes. You saw that during the financial crisis, leading up to the financial crisis. You've seen that every day in businesses that are heavily regulated, have it controlled where incentives are distorted. The part of profit motive leads to results in bad outcomes. It's not the profit motive leading to bad outcomes, it's the bad incentives created by regulation that are leading. I do think that even without a deep understanding of self-interest, the profit motive, when the government doesn't create bad incentives, is self-correcting in ways that regulations don't allow for and therefore ultimately leads to positive outcomes. Brian, is it possible metaphysically for the government to operate without long-term debt? Thanks. Yeah, absolutely it can. And indeed, the United States, funnily enough, doesn't operate with long-term debt. Almost all the debt that the US government has is short-term debt, one of its biggest mistakes. If you're a status, then one of the first things you should do is issue long-term debt and short-term debt, particularly when long-term debt is cheap. But there's no reason why a government cannot operate without any debt in the 19th century. The US government operated mostly without any debt. Debt was viewed as a negative thing for the government to engage in something you took on during wars and then paid back as soon as you could. Wesley says, was land lease aid to the UK during World War II more moral than to the Soviets? The British Empire killed four more people through famine than the USSR. Also, the UK was never under serious risk of invasion. Yeah, I think that's a huge mistake to equate the British Empire with the Soviets. I don't think any of that is true. The British Empire did not engage in purposeful famine. They made a lot of mistakes. They made a lot of errors. They were negligent and caused famine in India. But Stalin purposefully starved and led to the deaths of tens of millions of people. There's no comparison between the British Empire. The British Empire is a beacon of civilization and of morality as compared to the USSR. Britain ultimately brought many liberal values to many of its colonies. It brought wealth and industry to compare colonialism to communism. I think it's completely wrong. The motivation is wrong. I mean, there's a whole show to do with colonialism. And colonialism was bad and was bad economically. It was bad for many reasons. But it's nowhere near the kind of evil that communism is and the USSR was. So absolutely the United States should have helped the British. The British were the good guys. They were fighting for civilization. They were fighting for the values that America stands for. They were fighting for freedom. The Nazis were the opposite and Stalin was the opposite. So suddenly in the war, by the time of the war, most of the Empire was gone. And it was clear that the Empire would not survive the British Empire. Clearly Britain was on the side of virtue and both Stalin and Hitler were on the side of vice. And the United States should have stood with the UK and not with the Soviet Union. Kim says, so what working for a city like San Francisco be immoral as compared to other cities? No, I mean San Francisco is still a basically a free place. I mean, so no, I don't think by definition it's immoral. I mean, it partially depends on what you're going to have to do as part of it. But I don't think just the fact that you're working for a city, even a city as bad the run of San Francisco is, it makes it immoral. All right, everybody. Thank you to all the superchatters. We made our goal. I really appreciate that. I'm not sure when the next show will be. Maybe tomorrow. I'm not sure. And I, but I will be back soon. Those of you would like to continue supporting the show, but not they live in order to do it with super chat, please consider becoming a monthly contributor on Patreon or on your own book show dot com slash support by PayPal. I will see you all later this week. Have fun guys. And yeah, don't get caught up in the propaganda. Bye everybody.