 Just a couple more minutes, and we'll be on. Just a couple more minutes, and we'll be on. Oh, radical. Fundamental principles of freedom. National self-interest. And individual rights. This is the Iran Brook show. Everybody welcome. Sunday afternoon is $100 or more, but we had a bunch of people signed up, so we changed the time on them, so I don't know if there's some confusion or some people are missing. Also, Zoom is still not streaming on to restream, so I apologize for the confusion about where the stream was going to be, but we are now on YouTube, so it's at least working there. We'll get this right. All right, so the way it's going to work today is I'm counting on you guys on the super chat because we've got Phil here. Phil is going to ask me some questions, and then we're going to pop back and forth on the super chat. I am going to put some lights here, and Jonathan Honig said he would join us, and he says he's got an urgent question to ask me, but he said he would join us in about half an hour, so weird sound on top of that. Anybody else getting weird sound except Jimbo? All right, we got Matt joining as well. That's good. And nobody else is complaining about the sound being weird. All right. Anyway, before we get to this, I remind everybody, I don't know if anybody who doesn't know, the interview that Lex Friedman did with me and Mike Amalis is now live. It's already being seen by, I think last time I looked 76,000 people, four and a half hours of four hours and 25 minutes of interview. So I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. I don't know how it came out. I don't watch myself, so you guys are left to tell me if it's any good or not, or how my dealings with Mike Amalis, if they were reasonable or not. Michael's not easy, but he's a lot of fun. So he's a funny guy, and he's very personable, and he's easy to get along with, and he's very knowledgeable about Iron Man, which surprised me. So hopefully you liked the interview. Hopefully we'll get some new subscribers as a consequence of the interview and we'll get some new people on board as a consequence of the interview. Also, I put up recently, a couple of days ago, an interview I did with Guy Adami. Guy Adami is a CNBC host. He's got a TV program in CNBC. He's a financial kind of guy. This was for a conference business that do regular interviews about finance, and I thought he was going to interview me about my investments and about my investment strategy. I'd send him a bunch of stuff about bank consolidation, which is what I invest in, and he was not interested in any of that. He wanted to talk about the Fed from beginning to end. He asked me like one question about bank consolidation just to get it out of the way, and then he went right back to the Fed. So the whole interview is about my views and his views about the Federal Reserve. So I think you'd really enjoy it. I try to stay less radical than maybe I would have been otherwise because it's for this business and it wasn't for, supposedly for general consumption, but I think it turned out great. It's focused on the economics of the Federal Reserve. The interview with Lex is on Lex Friedman's channel, Lex Friedman. I just go to YouTube, put in Lex Friedman, and it's the first thing that shows up. He's also got a bunch of clips that he's made out of it, so there's a bunch of clip segments that will be out there. So I expect this will have several hundred thousand views. We'll see how big it gets. Hard to tell. Right now it's at... Last time I looked was 76,000, and we're picking up some new subscribers. It's not the pace of my first appearance of Lex Friedman, but you don't expect that. A lot of the kind of the low-hanging fruit we've already picked up, so we're getting some new people. All right, so the way we're going to do this today, we've got Matt and Phil on. Jonathan is going to join us later. They're going to get an opportunity to ask questions. If you have super chat questions for a few to jump in with anything, I'll give priority as usual to the $20 and above questions that you guys have, and then we'll go with Matt and Phil, and we can talk about pretty much anything, and we'll see if we get some additional people joining in. Given that we changed the time, we're supposed to be at three o'clock Eastern and the last minute we changed to one o'clock because a bunch of other stuff is happening. Let's start with Phil. All right. So I got a question about kind of changing culture in the workplace. So we're seeing a lot of kind of rising woke-ism type stuff within our workplace, and the culture of a company as a whole is starting to change. And I'm wondering if you have any advice on like when to speak up, when not to, when is the time to leave, you know, like how do you frame those decisions and that kind of thing? I mean, it's a really, I think it's a really difficult situation to be in, and the answer to all those questions is, in a sense, it depends, right? It depends on how senior you are within the company. It depends on how confident you are in your position in the company. It depends on how much conflict you're willing to engage in. And then if this leads to you having to leave the company out, how confident are you in being able to find something new? I think the more senior you are in a company, the more it is important to speak up. The more you are part of shaping the company culture, whereas if you're junior, if you're right, if you're just at an entry level position or something like that, the culture is just there. You're just participating in it or not, and you can decide to leave or not. But it's going to be very difficult for you to help shape it. But if you're senior, you've been there a long time, or you're in a position where you've got a lot of people reporting to you, and if part of your job is to help shape a corporate culture, senior management should want to know your opinion about what's going on. And of course, there's a way to deal with it. And I think the appropriate way to deal with it is to go up the chain within the culture and within the company and to let your boss know, hey, I think this is inappropriate. I think this is damaging to the corporate culture in the long run. It's damaging to our ability to do business in the long run. This is too political, or this is just wrong. I can't enforce this with my employees, because I just don't think it's right. And then depending on how they respond, you decide on how much to push and how much to push it upwards. I think at the end, if it gets so bad, is that you expect it to participate in activities or participate in enforcing something that goes against your values, then you have to consider leaving. And then part of the big question is, where do you go in a world in which corporate culture is changing like this? I don't think it's uniform. I certainly think some places are worse than others. I don't think all senior management are bought into this. So I'm sure there are better places out there, but that doesn't mean you can get there, right? You can find a job there. So it definitely is a challenge. But it's part of the battle for fighting for better cultures to speak up against it. Now, again, if you're very junior, there's very little you can be able to do about it. Maybe you can find other people who agree with you and maybe as a group, you can appeal this to show that there's a little bit of energy around this. If you're a manager, maybe you can find other managers show that it's not just you subjectively opposed to this, but there's other people who are, numbers do matter in fights over cultural issues, in the culture and in a business. But again, I think the higher up you are in organization, the more incumbent it is, the more it's your responsibility to speak up and to object. And yeah, so that would be my suggestion. Is that helpful at all, Phil? Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm not junior, but I'm at a very large company. So not high enough up to truly shape the culture. Yeah, I mean, it might be worth speaking to your boss and just seeing how serious they are about this and are they getting any pushback or just to get a sense of where you are relative to everybody else. And at some point, it might make sense to leave. Right. Thanks. Sure. Matt. So I'm probably going to ask a series as my different turns roll around on a similar theme. And that theme is related to eviction moratoriums, eviction bands and experiences and encounters I've had, you know, with that and your thoughts on the matter. So the first one is a common, a common catch phrase that I hear in Southern California around it is that housing is a right or housing is a human right. You know, I know from being a housing provider that it's a product and a service. And I like someone told me a good analogy that they said, well, you believe in the second amendment, you know, the right to bear arms. And I said, yeah, sure. You know, I pretty much, I guess. And they said, well, but you don't believe that I have the obligation or the government has the obligation to buy you a gun and to provide you with additional bullets each month. So with housing, I don't think there's, there's no government role for either giving you a lump sum house upfront or subsidizing it on a monthly basis. The same as, so in terms of whether, any way that housing can be a right, the only way I can justify that at all is maybe sure there shouldn't, it's could be a right that the government can't prevent you from house, obtaining housing on your own in a market transaction. The government shouldn't be able to have some law that says group X is banned from obtaining housing. That's the only way I can see it. No, absolutely. I mean, you, it's, it's, you can't have a right to other people's stuff or to other people's services, right? The only rights you have are to be in a sense left alone to be able to be protected so that you can pursue your values, your rational values, right? That's it. You cannot have, so the sense in which you have a right to housing, the same sense in which you have a right to healthcare. It's the right to negotiate with a housing provider, a contract to have to sign that contract. If you can reach a mutual agreement and to have that contract protected by the state, right? By the state's role is to protect that contract. So you ever, you have a right to have, you know, the contract, your property rights, if you're the apartment owner, protected from people violating their contracts or violating by using force against you. But you cannot, rights are freedoms of action. They're not freedoms to stuff. They give you the right to act free of coercion in pursuit of your values, right? So it's the freedom to act in pursuit of your values, free of coercion. Housing is a value. So you're free to act to buy property, build a house, and that house would be protected, right? You have a right to engage in a contract with somebody else to provide you with housing, provide you with rent or whatever it is, rent or housing or whatever happens to be. But that's it. It's a freedom to action. It's a freedom to pursue values. It's not a freedom. It's not a right to the value. I hesitated to even bring it up in the past because it's just so obvious, but it's still, it's still happening and it's heating up even more. It's still happening. It's still happening. It's still happening. It's still happening. It's still happening. It's been on a public hearing. My county passed a new emergency ban. Just a few weeks ago, right? Vaccines are available for anyone who wants one right now. And a brand new, this is the fifth extension of this ban. And Stanford law, you know, white papers are coming out that eviction bands should be permanent. And it's, it's an excuse. I listened to the, you know, the public comment for off and on for about six hours. And, you know, I'll let someone else, you know, give a chance to come back to it on my next turn, but I want to go through to some of the, the, the points on both sides and where basically everyone just misses the mark. Yeah. And note that, that, you know, this is all driven by the, the morality of altruism. It's, I need something. It's your obligation to provide it. If you have it, you're obliged to provide it. And it's your more responsibility to provide it. And therefore, if that's true, if altruism is true, then I have a right to whatever I need. And that's the source of it, right? I've a right to whatever I need because that's what morality dictates, right? That's what morality says is your more responsibility. This is why the real battle at the end is about altruism. It's about, you know, the purpose of your life. And as long as altruism reigns supreme, freedom is, is not, is ultimately not possible. It's going to, it's, we're going to be in decline and they can claim, they can claim any of your stuff as their own. If they can make the argument that they need it. And clearly people need housing, right? They need food. They need healthcare. So those kind of are going to be the first things, but they, they're also going to need iPhones when it comes down to it. And they're going to need an automobile and they're going to need all these things. And as they do, the government has to provide it for them. You know, and this is the basis for the welfare states, the basis for, for all the socialism that we have around us. It's such a losing argument. Some of the people who called into the virtual hearing who were housing providers went into the, made the argument of why need, people need to pay rent because I have to pay, I have expenses. You know, I have a mortgage. I have this and that. And then it's just in a battle of who needs something more, which is irrelevant and you'll, and you can never win. And it's just a downward spiral, you know, and it's just, it's not the issue. Absolutely. So the competition becomes who needs it more. And you're not going to win that one. You're not going to win that one. Now, in a sense you can, because they can get their housing unless you provide it for them. So yes, right now maybe they win, but in the long run, they lose, but in the long run, it's lose, lose in the long run, everybody loses, but you know, conservatives have always combated socialism, the expansive socialism by this argument that they need more or the capitalist need it more. Nobody believes it. It doesn't work. Alright, thanks, man. Sorry, you're having to go through it. It's you and Phil. God. Emmanuel. Hey, Ron. I just finished reading The Man Who Solved the Market, the biography of James Simons. I'm not sure if you've read it or not. I have not, but this is the founder of Renaissance Technologies. Yeah. You need to meet him and hang out with him over dinner once. Oh, wow. Did you have dinner with him? It was, it was, it wasn't one-on-one, but it was, we would fundraise it together and we were at the same table. I think we sat next to each other and we got to chat a little bit during the evening. Wow. That just to be in his presence was, it must have been pretty cool. Very cool. Very cool. My question for you, I mean, this is kind of a silly question, but given your finance background, where do you think Investment Management will look 10 years from now or 15 years from now? What are the trends you're seeing today that you think will proliferate? I guess the obvious answer is AI and ML and Robo Advisors and all that, but I wonder if you have any other thoughts on where the industry is trending? I mean, it's a really interesting question and it's, and it's very hard to tell. So on the one hand, the passive investment trend is not going to go away because the fact is that for most people, passive investment makes sense, particularly in a world where regulation makes it impossible for them to invest in the good active managers, right? So to invest in a hedge fund manager like Renaissance, to invest in Renaissance, Renaissance, basically is one of the few managers that is beating the market pretty much every single year. 2020 was a bad year for them, but that is a very, very unusual outcome. Pretty much every year they're beating the market and by a big margin. So it's just unbelievable. Their numbers are unbelievable. Most finance people tell you their numbers are impossible, but they're not. They actually beat the market. Some companies do it. Some hedge funds can do that for a short period of time, but what's unique about Renaissance is their ability to do over the long run. So quite astounding. So I think passive investor is not going to go away because what option do passive investors have? They can't invest in the Renaissance as of the world because to invest in a Renaissance, you have $5 million of investable securities. You have to have a certain income level. So the government in the name of protecting investors basically makes it impossible for most people to invest in the best funds, the best funds exclusively there for the rich, right? Which makes the rich richer, right? So it kind of goes against what supposedly the government is there supposed to do, but it works the other way around. So first, passive investor. Second, yeah, I mean, AI is going to become bigger and bigger. So more sophisticated algorithms. The challenge, of course, with AI is that it's like a nuclear race, right? Every fund is going to develop them. Others are going to develop, you know, there's going to be a constant race of better and better AI. And that race will probably, you know, in a sense make market more efficient and make it more and more difficult to make money in the market for these hedge funds because it will become cheaper and cheaper to gain the edge. AI, you know, ultimately once you make the investment is fairly cheap and you keep hiring the kind of the algorithm builders and that's your main cost as a hedge fund and they keep, and it's going to be harder and harder and harder to make money in the markets because algorithms are going to be chasing every little bit of what remains out there to be bought. Now, I think there is a space in the market. And just if anybody at the SEC is listening, this is not a pitch for my fund. It has nothing to do with what I do or anything like that. But I think what is going to happen is a continuation of a trend that exists today and I don't think this goes away. And that is that it will still be true that in order to deploy these algorithms and deploy the kind of skill sets that's required, you're going to have to have a lot of money, make a lot of money and therefore be able to trade, be able to deploy a lot of money. And that means that the space of liquid stocks where there's a lot of trading going on is going to become more and more and more crowded. The margins are going to be smaller and smaller. And it's true, like I think it is today, that the place where you're going to have an edge is in small stocks where there's very little liquidity and where the algorithms have a hard time playing because it's hard to deploy enough capital to make it worthwhile to build the algorithms and to bring them on board and to do everything that is doable. So there might be a bigger bifurcation or separation between liquid stocks and illiquid stocks in terms of the profit opportunities that exist in each. So that might be one opportunity. The other is to the extent that there is something there, if the extent that you can bring something that is hard to put into an algorithm, put into a formula, that'll give you an edge. The stuff that is easy to put into an algorithm, that's going to be driven out and the things that require more judgment are going to, there's going to be more opportunity there to make money. Does that make sense, Menel? Yeah, yeah, it's super interesting. I think I just, it's kind of a metaphor, I just started getting into baseball and baseball went through kind of a similar trajectory where it was gut-fuel intuition then hey, let's bring analytics in the Oakland A's and then everybody started using analytics and now it's kind of not as much of an advantage perhaps as it once was, so I wonder if finance is going through a similar arc and so that'll return to something more like what you're describing. I think that's right. I think that people have been trying to mimic the Renaissance analytics for a long time so finance has been growing analytics since the 1980s but AI now is the next kind of the next big push. It is massively, you know, it can contribute so I think there'll be this next big push where she'll drive everybody into AI and drive markets to be even more efficient than they've been and maybe through that make it even more profitable to be in a passive strategy, right, an index passive strategy. Just perplexing that, you know, Uncle Warren singing an Omaha with his newspaper kicking his feet up versus these quants, I mean just two completely different. I don't know how much that is just marketing on his end, but it just seems like two completely different approaches that are both enormously successful. I haven't looked at Warren's returns over the last 10 years and I know over the last couple of years they haven't been very good and I wonder how he's done over the last 10 years so Warren Buffett made a lot of money early and whether he's made a lot of money recently, I'm not sure because his strategy is to buy great stocks and sit on them and wait it out and to some extent, and stocks he understands and so Coca-Cola is his favorite famous example of Warren Buffett stock but whether that can long term, whether he's still making money on that strategy, I just don't know I haven't followed Warren Buffett closely enough. I just don't know. Well thanks, thanks a lot, that's super interesting. He did for years, but I don't know if he still is. Oh wait, Jonathan, you're muted, Jonathan. Great to see you and thank you for all the interesting shows you've been doing lately, timely and fascinating and passionate and all the rest. I actually have another investment question for you. A couple months ago now you made a comment, something the effect of that real estate is a consumption item, it's not an investment, it's consumption I don't know if you remember making that comment. Now I've owned a couple of apartments in Chicago that haven't appreciated in 10 years but I always thought that was much more due to the tax situation here because I know in California people, so can you kind of talk a bit about that of how can you say real estate is not an investment, it's consumption when people make money in real estate all the time. So first, it's not that real estate is a consumption item, it's your house, the real estate you purchased to live in is a consumption it's not an investment. Now, so what does that mean? It means that in a normal marketplace, you don't make money on your home and the reason for that is that on average the house becomes less valuable over time and it's like your car does, it's being used. It's getting shabby, it's getting older and therefore in terms of its value it's getting lower in value. Now the land is not depreciating but the house is actually depreciating in value. So in a purely free market and on average you would expect housing prices to decline over time. Now why don't they? Well first it's not clear that they don't on average as you said Jonathan in Chicago your condo is probably flat over time and in the parts of the country where it's clearly declined over time where it's almost impossible to sell a house in particular areas or particular time periods. Why is prices going up in other parts like in California? California prices are going through the roof of housing. I would argue that that's artificially caused by government programs primarily by the restrictions on supply. So let's say it was true that you bought a house and over time prices would go up. Then what would happen? Well people would want your house because hey it's going to appreciate in value, it's a great investment and they would bid your price, the price of the house up pretty quickly to the price that captures the expected increase. So the only reason that the price actually appreciates, the only reason people expect it to go up over time even though it's a depreciating asset is because of restrictions in demand. So I didn't finish my example. Let's say everybody knew the price was going to go up, the price went up, now the price is much higher than it was before. This provides a massive incentive to build is to come into your neighborhood, it's a joining neighborhood and to build, increasing the supply, increased supply would drive prices down and your home would return to approximately where it was before. So supply and demand would function as demand increased for a certain house, more houses like it would be built. Real estate is peculiar because you can't build two houses on the same plot, but the differences between plots is not that great unless you have really exclusive properties. So for example, if you have property on a cliff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah, I can see how that property would have the potential to increase over time as demand for that particular property and it's so unique. Nobody else can build right nobody else can match it, although in a free market. Somebody would probably buy it and build condos there or there would be an urgency to build more housing on that space. So in other words, in a free market supply drives prices back down. What doesn't allow the driving of prices back down in California is there's no increase in supply. That is regulators zoning, not in my backyard limitations on high rises. All of these things stop housing from appreciating and and keep them and keep home prices. Oh, sorry, stop prices from going down and keep prices high. And of course, what happens is people who live in San Francisco own houses in San Francisco have no incentive to see home prices go down. They only want to see home prices go up. So keep voting for more regulations, more zoning controls, more limitations of building more restrictions because that keeps supply restricted, and it makes the value of their home keep going up. But again, in a free market that wouldn't occur except in particular situations, particular locations where you cannot replicate them and where for a while houses would go up until a point where people couldn't afford them. But overall, on average, prices would be would be declining. What's what's the rent really quickly quick follow up if I may. What's the rent on a good two bedroom in Puerto Rico now, you know, Well, it depends what you consider good. So at the high end at the, you know, because there's a big gap, there's probably not a lot in the middle. Let's just say the high end. You're talking to your own the high end. All right, so the rent on a two bedroom on the beach, right on the water condo is probably, I don't know, five to 8,000 a month. All right. That I mean that's that's well in that excess that's New York prices at this point. Almost not quite so it's well below Miami prices so to take Miami which is comparable you can get something on the beach. I'd say it's about half half of what Miami is for the equivalent for the equivalent thing it's about half of Miami. But it's expensive. It's not cheap because Miami's out of, you know, out of control. Miami also has much higher supply. The challenge of Puerto Rico. This is a good example of supply and demand. The challenge in Puerto Rico is a lot of wealthy people are moving into Puerto Rico because of the tax situation. They're leaving New York, they're leaving Connecticut, they're leaving California and they're coming to Puerto Rico. And then they want to buy something good or they want to rent a beautiful condo and the number of those condos that appeal to that group of people is very small. So that drives that crisis. So what is that doing right now? What's that doing right now is there's a building boom in Puerto Rico right now. So not so much in San Juan, the city, but out in Dorado, which is this big relatively wealthy neighborhood, they're cranes everywhere. They're building like crazy. Now if they build enough, if they build enough, what will happen to prices that come back down because people will stop building, you know, abiding each other for the few properties. So you can get prices completely out of whack in real estate for a short period of time. And the reason that is true as compared to widgets or as compared to other kind of products is because it takes a long time to ramp up supply. So it takes, you know, you have to bring in workers, you have to put up capital, you have to really get the equipment and then it takes a while to build the building. It can take a year to build a high-rise building. So ramping up supply can be slow and during that period prices could go through the roof. But that doesn't change the fact that housing is a consumption good. But that is, by the way, true of other consumption goods. Let's say there's a big earthquake in Japan that basically shut down automobile manufacturing in Japan. No more automobiles are being produced in Japan, right, Toyota, Honda, all of these companies don't produce any more cars for six months. What's going to happen to those cars prices in the US? Well, they're going to go up because the only way to get a car is to use up the inventory that exists in the US, which is very limited because that inventory is not going to be replenished. And that, you know, that they wouldn't go up because they'd said that your price down. Well, yes, I mean, the government would step in and stop you where they don't do that in real estate, interesting enough, because there's in real estate, there's a massive constituency that is for price gouging. Because when your house goes up in value, if I'm your neighbor, my house has gone up in value as well. So I want the price gouging, right, because I benefit from it. There's leftist San Francisco, people who live in San Francisco, they're hippies, they're lefties, they're cool. But the one thing they won't allow is low income housing in the city. They won't allow dense housing in the city. They won't allow high rises in the city because they don't want to put their own property values. So they talk the talk of being caring about the poor and wanting to solve the homeless crisis and doing all this, but they won't act on it because it could hood their pocketbook. And that's typical of kind of leftist intellectuals. All right, let's do a couple of super chat questions and then we'll go back to a panel. Suppose someone started out in life the same way Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. But instead of the bishop, he met an objectiveist philosopher and turned into a heroic rational egoist. How are his actions compared to Valjean's actions in the novel? Oh, God. Because I got criticized already for getting Anna Karen in a story not quite right during the Lex Friedman. And now I haven't read Les Miserables in a long time, so now you're going to give me a trouble for maybe not getting the story quite right. Okay. I'm not quite sure because I don't remember the details of the novel well enough. But one of the things I love about Les Miserables is if you remember Jean Valjean in the beginning when he first turns his life around and he goes to this town and he starts a business. He starts a company and he makes a lot of money and he hides a lot of people and he does very, very well and he does well. And the novel makes a big point out of the fact that he's helped everybody else but he's also helped himself in a significant way. That suddenly, that part of it is consistent with, with Objectivism and I'm not sure how exactly it's consistent with the bishop but it's certainly consistent with Objectivism. But if I remember right and I haven't read Les Miserables in at least 20 years, so there's a lot of attempt in the novel to explain to the world how this is good for everybody else. In a sense at trying to apologize for the success and apologize for making the money by explaining it away. It's a little bit like what John Mackey does with stakeholders and conscious capitalism stuff, right? Rather than having just the pride and achievement of what is done. I'd have to say that most of what John does is rational in the novel from what I can remember. And again, I don't remember enough of it. And it's one of the things that makes it such a heroic book. He pursues his values and his passions and I'm trying to think which of his values is irrational, right? You know, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. Are any of Jean Valjean's values irrational from the perspective of egoism and irrational self interest. And I'm going to have to reread the book now, which is great, because I can't think of anything more fun than to go and read Les Miserables. And actually, I think I'll get it on audio tape. So I know you put a lot of money in this question. It's a really good question. But let me. But now you're giving me the motivation to go read the book. And I'll try to get back to this question. I'm going to copy and paste it into my permanent list of questions. And I'm going to get back to you after I read the question. I'm going to think about it from that perspective. All right, OMG puppies podcast with malice and Lex was a delight. Thanks for an hour was not too long. I'm glad. Man, I, it seems like I'm surprised so many people are engaged with it and watching it given how long it is but I'm happy you enjoyed it. Brian as social psychology teachers that minds are changed when an individual goes through transformative experiences caused by independent choice. Minds are changed when the individual goes through transformative experience caused by independent choice. Atlas drug is one form BLM protests protests or another. How can we become more effective. Well, I think that by, you know, it's not like we're going to create transformative experiences that are going to be more effective than an Atlas drug. I think that is the ultimate transformative experience. And what we need to be better at is leveraging transformative experiences that people have in a sense anyway, that they're going through moments in their life that are, you know, the cause them to question they believe to cause them to what they think about the world and and better point them in the right direction when that happens to give them the answers that they might be looking for at that point in time. So BLM protest might be a point in which people are what's going on why is this happening. What does this all stand for what does it mean what are the explanations. And I think having good explanations and being able to point people in the direction of good explanations not just for the, you know, this protest or that protest of this event of that. But the driving forces behind the whole culture, the whole phenomena, the whole experience of what is going on. That is how we can use those transformative experiences to get them to rethink their belief system I think 9 11 was such an experience. I think the financial crisis was such an experience. I think to some extent BLM I think the Trump presidency was so much such an experience. I think anything that causes people to really question their fundamental beliefs in any kind of sense is an opportunity for us to get them to question it even deeper and to point them in the direction of good answers to point them in the direction of the answers to the fundamental questions they should be asking, rather than the question they might be asking. So for example point you know a landlord who might be going through. Wait a minute I can't evict people I mean this is not this is crazy. What is going on. You know how that is a that is a experience that can become transformative, potentially, if they are open to explanations about what is driving this phenomenon in the culture because it's unintelligible to most of them. They don't understand what the hell. I mean don't people get it that after make a living. Don't people get it that I'm providing a value. Don't people get it that there should be an exchange here that it's not all one sided that I'm not a sacrificial lamb. But no people don't get it and the explanation for that is altruism so you know giving somebody like that the tools might be or giving them out of shrug. And it might be the moment it happens this is why gold goes into the offices of different CEOs in Atlas and granted this is spoiler alert. When certain things happen to them when they're ready. Right. The president is not ready. So, Francisco does give him the full speech until he thinks he's ready, until he has that transformative existential, you know crisis. So it's having gold speech ready at the right time in the right place for the right people. Right. All right. We are going to go back to the questions okay Phil. We have a follow up on Jonathan's question with respect to real estate and land value. It seems to me that even in a free market that land prices and land value would increase along with economic growth, you know, generally kind of in the aggregate, because there's, you know, limited supply obviously. I think to the extent that there's limited supply that's true. I don't know that there is limited supply or that we've got to the point where there's limited supply now again some land will excel it will increase in value because it's better positioned it's next to railroad it's next to you know some it has some characteristic that makes it more valuable than it was in the past, because, you know, the real now has a new station and it's close to it or, or, or things like that. Is this I mean there's so much land. If you fly over this country, there's so much empty space that I don't know and there's so much unused land right so obviously we don't need it now. There are a lot of questions of what would happen in a free market and I don't have a good good answer to that right. What would happen if the highways were privatized and the railroad was privatized what roads would be built what roads wouldn't be built. Would we have the same kind of cities we have today would they be different. Would we use more land or would we use less land, would we consolidate into kind of mixed use downtown so would we expand at the suburbs. There's a cost of being in suburbs you'd have to build the roads and infrastructure. And now you don't have a central authority bearing that cost so we developers move us in that direction. Oh, would they move us into a downtown it's not clear to me what the answer to that is that's a beauty of the market. We don't know exactly what would happen if we truly had a market to get rid of zoning, and we just let it fly I mean you look at Houston, Texas, where there's no zoning. It's gone all over the place it's spread out and housing prices don't go up much in Houston and land prices haven't gone up in Houston, because there seems to be almost no end to the amount of land around Houston, it just grows suburbia, you know, look at places where they run out of land so they, they, they, they turn the ocean into land right I mean, if you've ever been to Boston, most of downtown Boston is, is landfill, most of downtown is landfill. So if you look at the historical pictures of Boston, most of that is the river and the ocean and they kind of swamps that intersect between the two and swamps are dry landfill and they build downtown Boston on it and. So, that is a, you know, you can spend that money when there's a seems to be a shortage of land so you, you can you can do landfill this. Now again, you couldn't do couldn't do that today. I mean what about the, I mean, that's changing nature how do you write there's probably some sea worm that got damaged when they filled in the land to build in, I don't know. A free market, it would be interesting how it evolved, but yeah, you could imagine a situation where you had a shortage of land. I just don't see it. Given how much land there is in the United States. And again, they might be periods of land increasing, because it was too expensive to develop land because it's in the desert. Okay, but land prices would then reach a point where it was cheaper to go develop the land in the desert than to build you know once the land developers develop then the prices might come down. There are periods in which it goes up and down and up and down. But over time. I don't think prices would go up that much until there was a real shortage and it's not clear when that would happen. I mean look at Las Vegas. I mean imagine that in other places around the desert. I mean it's just random that it's there it's there because the highway went through the 66 I think went through Vegas. So it was a convenient place and it was not too far from Colorado River and ultimately the dam, the Boulder Dam, but lots of other places you could do the same thing in a, in a different world. Okay, so you're basically like subsidy you're like providing more supply like you're saying like Battery Park or downtown Boston, but also you're like substituting like worse land in some cases to kind of drive the price back down. Yes. So land that's more expensive to develop but often it's more expensive to develop initially because the infrastructure is harder to build it. But once it reaches a certain like Vegas once it reaches some scale. It's easy to grow it. And therefore that would drive down prices in adjacent cities in California let's say because Californians can move now to Vegas, whereas it was unthinkable to move to Vegas earlier so now it's actual competition. Now it's it's true that you could argue that so that would put a cap on how far prices would go up so you could say look California is always going to have better weather. So people are going to want to live in California now even in California there's plenty of land, which is not being used right now but but let's let's assume you reach the point where land was scarce. Prices would go up but they'd be a ceiling on how much prices would go up and that ceiling would be determined on how much people really willing to willing to pay in order not to be in somewhere like Vegas or for the weather, if you will. Matt. I love that we're on this topic of housing and I actually have what started with Jonathan and Phil and building their kind of a unifying theory for all of that which so often I never here brought up but it really is at the foundations of everything. Productivity is at the base of rental housing and what prices are and and in in homes where people live, you know, the consumption item, and I just, I even disagree that the prices are higher, but the values are still tremendous are still excellent. And, and that's the beauty of the market that still exists in housing is that's a choice that individuals can make for themselves. Sure I may be maybe you pay $800,000 for a, you know, two bedroom house or you know what other where would other what in a different location would cost much much less but by nature of doing that and making that market transaction you have the ability to pay that and so that must come from an income source, which income is derived from productivity and and serving customer and serving customers and delivering value to others. And, and that person has made the determination that the the benefits of because you get more than a box in a house you get the you get the weather and the lifestyle and the natural beauty and you know, all the things that come with with being in that location. And around other productive people who can afford this right I mean that means something to. Yeah, and, and the other side of that coin that we never hear about, you know, there's so much emphasis on low income housing, but you know, another one could call that low productivity housing if income is a reflection of productivity and there's, you know, we don't live in there's so there are some distortions but overall you know I employ people and highly highly productive people get voluntarily compensated more by their employers and then they can go out and consume more because prior to being able to go out and consume more they produced more. So there's not a lot of highly productive people who are also low income. So let me challenge that in this sense. Okay, so if you're a highly productive person in Houston, Texas, versus a highly productive person in California, you could be just as productive in both places. And yet, the percentage of your income that goes for housing is going to be far lower for the same quality home far lower in Houston that it is in California. And that is for two reasons right one. Houston doesn't have zoning it doesn't have regulation it doesn't have controls. So supply can match demand. So that home prices don't have to go up. They can stay stable. And you can get a great for $800,000 you can get a mansion, whereas in California you can just get a two bedroom place. And that is that for a variety of reasons, whether being one of them. There's a greater demand to live in California is in Houston although that's not clear because the fact is that Houston is growing faster than California right California generally is right now shrinking in population, Houston is growing into population. And the major factor between California and Houston is not the average productivity of labor in those cities. It's the extent to which the government is controlling the supply. It's definitely true that supply is highly constrained in, you know, in in California and there's a huge, you mentioned that you know there is a lot of land still available in California and but that land is is different you know on the other on the side of the mountain ranges where their climate is very different than you know the western like you know Orange County San Diego County LA, where those are very those markets you know west in the more desirable climate zones. That is you know a fixed supply and even the even the IRS like you know your original argument the IRS even acknowledges that you have to distinguish between land value which is held constant and improvements on you know a fixed state which then depreciate over time so they're really you make one purchase but you're getting two different assets you're getting land and you know physical structure. Yeah, but I get to push back a little bit again right, even in Orange County for example so where I lived was a little, you know in the beautiful in the in the hills kind of Orange County and there's a highway there private tow roads, the 70 the 241. And there was a lot of talk about expanding the 241 all the way down so you could, you could reach the five and ultimately go to San Diego, and there was going to be massive development of both sides of it. If they expanded it and for years they couldn't do anything about it because the environmentalists wouldn't let them and all that development never happened and of course, while that didn't happen prices and Orange County kept going up because it was demand and there was no supply. They built a section of it and there's some housing going out, you know, but it's still not the full highway because they, you know the courts never allowed the highway to be built because of environmental constraints so again I really do wonder if you open this up. What would actually happen and it could be the cow that there's a shortage of land in California that what you're saying is really, there's so much demand to live there. But there really is a shortage of land, and therefore prices would go up but at some point that has to end because at some point, people are not going to move there because prices are so high right so I still think on average in the United States, real estate prices shouldn't go up because I don't think there's a shortage of land overall in the United States again they could be pockets that are particularly attractive. Another problem is you can't build high right there almost no condo buildings, tall condo buildings in Orange County, almost none. And they never used to be many in LA and over the last few years they built quite a few in downtown, but only in downtown not outside of downtown because they won't let them build them. Miami on the other hand is all condos tall buildings with condos all of it right, and that is kept prices this so high if you're on the water but relatively low, even though there's a high demand to live there then California so a lot of fact is going to but I would say a big chunk of it is government regulation government control. The lack of condos in California like pretty much any perception of you know, market failures can always be traced back to the mixed economy and government policy we have different builders defect laws in California and then Florida so in what condos are built are usually built as condos and then operated as apartments for a minimum of 10 years and then maybe later can be sold as condos because if you build condos now and you sell them there's almost there's a cottage industry of specialized lawyers who you know go to the HOA you immediately sue the developer and you shake them down and then everyone caught wind of that and then became a difficult to ensure, and if you can't ensure then you can't get loans for you can't finance and if you can't finance you can't build. So, you know that the condos and we know there should be so many condos developed the numbers would work in California, but it doesn't happen because, you know, government doesn't have that policy. I agree. I agree. Yeah and it's so hard to tell what the world would be look like if we didn't have all these regulations and all these distortions. If we don't have that parallel universe where we can try this all out. Unfortunately. Alright, Jonathan. Thank you so much I was enjoying an interview you did a couple days ago where someone introduced you as a Israeli American philosopher who that remember that. And you said, No, I'm either you said you're an objectivist or a student of objectivism and I said that was really classy and I enjoyed that and I guess my only comment and I wanted to say, you know, ran talked about that or student of objectivism and how much work there's been done that people don't know about. It seems like everyone has an opinion about Rand or seems to know what she would say, and very few of them have even read Atlas, let alone, you know, I mean, and even your own you talked about how now and then you, you will regularly pick up an old work of something to get the kind of a little nugget of something. So I just encourage people to do that I mean so much of what you've done with your book in pursuit of wealth like these are fairly short, easily accessible, you know really nuggets and then two others like books of hands like, you know, philosophy needs are like the iron ran letter. Yeah, people know. Yeah, there's there was great work that was done in the 60s and 70s and 80s and a lot of the objectivist newsletter Matt is holding up like there was so much great work that's not expensive to get that people should go back and check out from that Absolutely. I mean, I think I said on a show but once you know just pick up a you know pick up a random essay once a week and just read an essay a week. It'll really help your thinking it'll help your sense of life it'll help your attitude. You'll look at the world differently it'll help reshape in a sense your sake up some more I mean it really is amazing how you know phenomenal she was and the insight she has and it'll help it'll help you. It'll help you be a better thinker and in bed. So Jonathan, everybody on the chat is in suspense about when those columns of books behind you are going to fall down I mean the leaning tower piece of there. You know what is happening over back there is that if we can if we can, let's say we forget if we can raise $500 I will top of them all on this on your and your right now. Yes, $500. $500. Jonathan is going to go like that and I will topple them all we'll just leave it at that but we want to. We're going to fall down anyway right if we got to keep watching to find out you got to keep watching to find out to the right anyway, but $500 will get you a an exclusive a one of a kind Jonathan. Yeah. All right. Thanks Jonathan. And yes, read, read Iron Man, read Iron Man and and be inspired her nonfiction essays there's so many of them that almost nobody reads, which is a diamond letter for example, there's a lot of stuff that was never published elsewhere. And there's some there's some gems there that are not available I'm waiting for my copies to arrive from California. They missed the boat talk about you know there's such a shortage of containers right now and trucks and stuff like that that they missed the boat to Puerto Rico so it's going to take them another few weeks to get him. All right, Emmanuel. Just just a quick comment following that I, I picked up the journals of iron rands a few months ago and holy cow there are two books that she was going to write the for Lauren Deedering and math mathematics with histomology or something like that I'm like holy crap I never I've only heard about this. I mean, a couple months ago and I first started reading through the journals of iron rands just mind blowing. Yeah there's always stuff, more stuff to discover about her and about what she was thinking. Is there, I mean I guess given your time at a or I like, is there anything else unpublished that might be who we can expect in five years or is everything really out there that's going to be out there. I'm sure there's still stuff that's unpublished. So, you know I don't think there's anything major, but you know they just discovered in recently they put up iron and letters that we didn't have when the letters came out the first time. So they just I think it's up on a website that they have the new letters translated from Russian and everything and it's up now so. Yes, there's going to be more stuff published over time there is a biography in the works kind of a qualitative biography of everything. Just a volume one in the work that really has all information and details and stuff that a lot of us don't know I don't know that will come out one day. I don't know when she'll be finished with it but it will come out one day, and you'll learn a lot just from that so yes, I don't think there's anything. I don't think there's anything major in the sense of major philosophical works but there is content that will still come out and stories about her life that have not been told many of those the many many stories about her life that they've not been told. Very, very cool can't wait. Good. Naveen. Thanks for joining. So there's a lot of talk going on right now about climate this climate that right you know all the climate change policies and stuff. So, can you talk about is there any evidence that some kind of man made things are cause may cause you know climate catastrophes right like whether that's you know sea levels changing or there was a recent article times article called the climate real estate bubble. Climate change causing a lot of tornadoes and storms and whatnot, and that may, you know, cause a lot of people to get evicted from their homes. So if these things, you know, may happen in 500 years is not such a big deal right it's going to happen slowly you know people will react to the market. But if it's going to happen in the next 20 30 40 years that it's it's you know it's more imminent. So we have to plan for it. Any evidence to that first of all and second thing you know how would how would we handle that how would we want to handle that in a free market or study to that effect. Yes, I don't think I don't think there's evidence of imminent catastrophe. Now what does imminent mean imminent means I think in the next 1020 years of catastrophic catastrophe right now that doesn't mean temperatures won't change they probably will. I mean, it is systematically they probably will. And it could be man made. I just, I've never delved into the science. I don't trust the people in this movement. So I have a hard time even delving into the science and try to figure it out I'm not a scientist and I don't trust the people doing it, primarily at the intellectuals that deal with it. But the little I've looked at it, and the, the, the, I get a lot of my permission from people I do trust like Alex Epstein, right, who has delved into this and has looked at it carefully, and scientists I know who looked at it. I don't know of any evidence to suggest that there's anything imminent catastrophic the other piece of this I think is interesting is. Let's say there was. Let's say it looked like in the next 10 years, some places are going to flood. Some places are going to get blown away. Homes are going to be destroyed lives of millions and millions of people would be disrupted. Where would you see it in the marketplace insurance. Yeah, insurance places would be going through right. I live in Puerto Rico. If the expectation was, we're going to have many, many more hurricanes, like, and stronger and more vicious and sea levels are going to rise. There's no way I would have been able to get insurance on a condo right on the ocean in the path of these hurricanes. It just the insurance company would be irrational for doing that this competition. They would be wiped out for doing that so I look at insurance markets as a good proxy now insurance rates have crept up in certain areas. So this is not to say that they don't expect more severe weather in certain places under certain circumstances, but it doesn't look like it's systemic. It doesn't doesn't look like it's catastrophic to the point where now, even there there's some distortion, because in the United States coastal areas like in Louisiana Mississippi. I think even in the Carolinas. The government provides hurricane insurance and flood insurance. So it's subsidized. So we don't have a market value so it's there it's harder to tell. And the same is true in certain flood zones, the government is subsidizing them now. So what would happen in a real market in a marketplace well in advance of the current if there was real science involved insurance prices would start going up real estate prices would start going down. It would become a strong incentive for people to move or to band together to find solutions like building dikes or reinforcing their homes for hurricanes, so that they could get insurance or whatever, you know, protecting themselves from floods or whatever would be required right. The market would send a strong signal that that is worth that that is something that needs to be done. Right. And then people would act on it. So that's one way in which the market would respond. You see prices going up, and then you'd see people acting whether they would be moving, which is completely rational or fixing their places up. The Amsterdam is underwater. Right. Amsterdam is a city underwater. Why because a few hundred years ago they built a dike to keep the Atlantic Ocean out, and it works, and it still works right. And within the 21st century, we, you think we could build dikes if we needed to right to for a few feet of water, but you need an incentive to do that and incentive would be provided by insurance costs and real estate prices going down. Okay, makes sense. And then on other areas, you could imagine philanthropist investing in, in technology that sucks CO2 out of the air and you know, all kinds of other technical mechanisms by which they could try to mitigate the effects of whatever it is that we were doing that was bad. Right. But then again, even on that front, there's no clear evidence. Do we need less CO2 or do we need more CO2, right? No, there's some. Not for the sake of a climate or anything else like we need more CO2 for greening, you know, for green plants love CO2. But do we need, but maybe, maybe it's warming maybe it's warming catastrophically and therefore we need less CO2. It's, it's really hard to tell. Right. It's really hard to tell. And, and the problem is that it's very difficult to get objective information from anybody because it's so politicized and so dramatically politicized. Let's do some super chats quickly. And then we'll do another round and I've got three questions from a contributor who sent them in by mail. And then we'll wrap it up. Okay, what is your history with Michael, Michael malice before the Lex interview and did your opinion change after. Not much of a history. I don't remember ever meeting Michael before the interview, but it turns out I had, which was a little embarrassing because he remembered. So it turns out I've met Michael at some point obviously for whatever reason it didn't leave much of an impression one way the other on me because I didn't remember it. I came in thinking, he definitely impressed me positively put it that way in that. First of all, he was on his best behavior I'd say with regard to I man, I've heard him say pretty negative things. I don't think he said anything negative about her. His standing of her life in particular, I thought was extraordinary. His understanding of the philosophy. I thought was weak, but that didn't surprise me but he had more respect for at least he showed more specter in my presence than I expected. And his is understanding and integrating her into like the things that he cares about, like his anti communism work was was positive he's very smart. He's very quick. He's very sharp. He's funny. Sometimes inappropriately funny in my view, making fun of things that I don't think appropriate. So a view of humor is definitely different. A view about what is funny is definitely different. But I have to say, generally, it was more positive meeting him face to face than it was just seeing him online. The little I've seen him but I haven't seen him much and as I said I'd only met him once which he remembers he says I mean his book in the first chapter of his book on the on the new right that he has a positive statement there about me. You know, but based on our meeting but I haven't read the book either I want to look it up just to see what it is all right. What do you think of coke of knock off industry. Is it proper expression of capitalism. Customers should know if an item is a Gucci or Gucci. Well if knock off means that it's intellectual property theft. If knock off means that you're taking somebody else's property and pretending like it's yours like you're labeling a bad Gucci when it's not Gucci when you haven't got a permission to use Gucci, it's illegal and you should go to jail for doing it. It's a violation of intellectual property rights and they should we stop so I very much opposed to knock off industry to the extent that it is selling itself as the original. That's fraud. It's just plain fraud and intellectual property theft, and the government should stop it I think they make some effort to stop it but they should stop it completely. What do you think about George, George is him. I don't know that I know what George is him is and land tax any objective is literature on it that you know of no. And I'm not a big fan of land tax and and I don't know what's unique about land that it should be tax so if George is him is to say it's it goes back to feudalism. It's inconsistent with capitalism and I don't really understand it. I don't understand its appeal. I'm not for any course of taxation and I don't think land is different than any other asset class. Okay, inside baseball question. Did you see the sand Craig better after his appearance with him. Did you encourage coordinator sanction that what can scenes involved. How is Don Watkins involved there's no way Watkins is involved. Is this a new schism. No, I mean HPL is a private entity run by have you been swinging he does what he wants. I did not encourage it or discourage it or I support it. I think it's the right thing to do. But I didn't encourage it is this a new schism. Yeah. When when somebody comes up and attacks you and attacks you and attacks you and attacks you lies about it uses stolen material in order to do it distorts reality distorts facts. Confidential information constantly with no stop. What you're supposed to just say, okay, well, I don't want schisms. God forbid we have a schism. God forbid I do anything let them just I mean, I'm not an altruist not none of us should be altruistic. Or, you know, I'm not Jesus on a cross yet. Yeah, just whip me. Just attack me. Just, just try to destroy me. Try to, you know, try to try to make stuff up about me and I'm just going to. I'm just going to be a sacrificial animal. Give me a break. There are consequences to actions. If you, if you attack me, I don't want to have to deal with you. I'm not going to deal with you if you're tackling, particularly if I think the attacks are just a long dishonest and unfounded. And I think they are. Now, that's my judgment. I haven't, I don't expect you to understand. I haven't presented my case. I think they're dishonest and so on but I haven't given you the facts to make an evaluation of them dishonest although if you read the things that are being published about the lately that Craig Biddle supports, I think you can find the inconsistency, the dishonesty embedded in them. I don't think you need all the facts that I have, you know, so I'm not asking you to make a judgment, but you expect me not to make a judgment. I mean, I don't get this. I don't expect that in the name of can't we all get along. We all just be friends. No, we can't. Some of us cannot be friends, and I've said this before. Right. If I think you're irrational, if I think you're attacking a value of mine or if I think you're attacking me, my biggest value, I'm not going to be your friend. I'm not going to cooperate with you. I'm not going to work together with you. I'm going to skism from you or whatever you want to call it. As long as I don't provide you with enough facts to make your own determination, I'm not expecting you to make your own determination. You do what you want to do with regard to Craig and everybody else. And I will do what I think I should do. If I were running HBL, I would have banned him a long time ago. I don't want HBL, Harry did. He decided you're going to have to ask him why he did it now. But from my perspective, is there a new schism for me? Yes, I'm schismed from Craig Biddle and the people associated with him. But again, that's because I've made my assessment and you should make yours and read the stuff and decide until, if and until I provide you with my evaluation, complete with facts and evidence and so on. And then hopefully you can weigh the two. But even then I'm hesitant to do it because I'll say something and he'll say something and I'll say something and he'll say something and you'll never have all the information. So I think you're going to have to make your decision based on whatever information you have, and based on the consistency of all that, all the stuff that you read and what you know about the people and you make a decision. You know, it's not, it's your decision. It's in a sense your, you know, I've made my decision and I haven't asked you to make your decision. I'm going to leave that up to you. And if I do ask you to make a decision, I'm going to have to provide you with a lot more information than I have. I grant that is granted. Yeah, and if you don't know what this is all about. Great. You're better off. Why would you want to know, right? Alright, I financially depended and I discovered objectives and three years ago and my son was born. Why is it wrong to make raising your child, not your career, your life's central purpose. It's not wrong. Indeed, I ran says in one of, I can't remember where it's not wrong. If you do it appropriately. Oh, Jennifer, Jennifer's on the phone. I see you on the phone. So I definitely will get to you, Jennifer. Thanks for joining us. I was getting worried about you. So I'm glad you're here. So it's not wrong to take as your career, if you will, for the next 18 years, the proper and appropriate and rational raising of your child that can certainly be your central purpose. You have to realize it's not going to be there forever. And you have to figure out what that means exactly in the context of your life because you're raising another human being, they have free will and everything. I mean, where does you have to, you have to, you have to do it right, which is not easy. But yeah, it can definitely be your central purpose. It is for many, for many, for many parents it is their central purpose. And I went view it as an appropriate central purpose. If you take it, she said, if you take it seriously, like you would a job, right? It's not, it can't be a central purpose, it's a side job. If you do it sometimes, you have to be rational, you have to be ambitious, you have to be serious about it and put all the resources you would put into, like you were starting a business, like you were taking, doing a job properly, right? So, if you do it like that, absolutely can be a central purpose. So, yes. All right, before we go on, I want to make a couple of pictures. First, if you'd like to show, please press the like button. We're way behind on the likes. No, thank you for the contribution. So we should be over 100 likes, but the like button doesn't cost you anything and it helps the algorithms bring this to the forefront. The people here on video are all $100 a month or more supporters of the Iran Book Show. Most of the funds generated to support Iran Book Show come from people who supported $100 or more, there are quite a few of them represented here by some, but there are many in the three levels, there's $100 level, $250 level and $500 level. 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And of course, thank you to everybody supports the show more broadly. I'm trying to get to, I think I've said to a thousand supporters, you can do that at $2 that counts a month or you could do it at $500 both count. But in particular, I want to encourage people today, those of you can afford to do $100 or more and see value enough. I want this to be a value to you in doing it in supporting what I'm trying to do here. Then please go to you on bookshow.com slash support to Patreon or subscribe star and subscribe. All right. Oh, one more one other announcement I want to make tomorrow at 6pm Eastern time. I will be doing a, I guess it's a conversation. I don't think it's quite a debate on Bitcoin and crypto with supposedly a world expert on crypto and Bitcoin from Australia. So look that up. It's being hosted by the Polish Objectives Group. I'll try to stream it on my channel. So I'll find out if I can stream it on my channel, but I'll try to stream it on my channel. And I think it'll be fun. I'm looking forward to it, because I'm right now at a point where I'm trying to learn as much as I can about crypto. Well, not as much as I can, but I'm trying to learn more about crypto, right? Given the time constraints I have, I'm trying to learn as much as I can. And so I'm looking forward to tomorrow because I think I'll learn a lot, even if I land up disagreeing, I'll learn a lot because the guy supposedly is very smart and very knowledgeable. Not particularly about Bitcoin, but more broadly about crypto. So join us at 6 o'clock. And of course, you can participate there on my channel at least if I, you can support that through Super Chat or you can support it with your monthly contributions. So the kind of things that your money is going to support is all my lecturing online or all my conversations, like nobody paid me to do Lex, right? So your finances were made that Lex interview possible. So thank you, everybody. All right, last round, and I'm going to start with Jennifer. She arrived late. So Jennifer, you get the first question in the last round. Hi, I saw a thing on Facebook a little bit ago where it was a quote from Walter Williams and he said that capitalism was a good thing because it was the only system where you can serve your fellow man and still and make yourself do good for yourself as well. And I understood what he's saying, but I made a comment that I think using the word trade is better than serve. You know, serve has like altruistic connotations to what I think. And I just got a lot of pushback. People are like, oh, you're just being materialistic and all that. It's like, why do you think people, they understand trade and material goods, but not in spiritual? Well, because the altruists, right? Because very hard to get around altruism. I mean, so many people altruistic in so many different ways. So you get a lot of libertarians who, okay, they get, they get the trade stuff, but they still want to, they still want to say, but it's more than just that. It's more. I really am, you know, I'm really am doing this in order to benefit the consumer and they don't want to attribute any self-interest to it. I'm benefiting, but just don't really why I'm doing it. I'm doing it out of, you know, a sense that I have to do it. My duty is to consume it. You get that a little bit from Mackie. You get that even a little bit from Valmises who says, you know, consumers, King and it's all about the King. No, I mean, at the end of the day, it is producers producing, it is producers pursuing their own self-interest, pursuing their passion, they love for the thing that they are producing. They create the demand from consumers for the things that ultimately people consume and they're doing it because they love doing it because they want to make money doing it. And to admit that would be to admit to self-interest and to admit to self-interest is to reject altruism and so many people have a hard time doing that. So Walter Williams as great as he was was part of that. He was part of this trying to explain and defend capitalism on the basis of other people rather than the basis of it's good for the individual. It's good for the producer because he serves in quotes other people, but it's good for him and don't run away from that. Yeah, that makes sense. And I made a point of saying I thought he was a great guy and stuff, but they still were mad at me for saying that. Alright, thank you. Sure. Thanks, Jennifer. Alright, Phil. Yeah, so my question is actually about Bitcoin. So, you know, you've talked in the past that, you know, it's not backed by anything. So it's not really a good currency because of that. But I'm curious, like, in order to be a viable currency, it doesn't seem like it needs to be an objectively good currency. It just needs to be better than the next best alternative, which, you know, right now would be the US dollar. So I'm just kind of curious on your thoughts on that and then whether, I mean, is it actually better than the US dollar would be kind of the next question, right? So that would be my question. Is it better than US dollars? Certainly right now, right? Now for me, I'd rather use the US dollar than Bitcoin. Why? I can get ahold of it easily. I get paid with it. I almost every vendor out there in the world will accept US dollars. I can send it overseas at almost zero cost, right? I can use wire transfers, maybe it cost me 30 bucks to send it anywhere. I can use ACH and it's free for my bank. I can use Venmo, PayPal, all using dollars. And what's the cost of using Venmo? Zero, right? So there's no transaction cost. I can't think of, you know, it's an amazing currency. Now you say, oh, but the government is printing a lot of it and the value is going down. Okay, maybe. I mean, it is. But in terms of purchasing power, it seems to be going down fairly slowly. It's still true that, you know, I still buy almost everything I buy with it. And it's incredibly, again, simple straightforward. If we get inflation, income is probably going to rise as well. So, you know, I'm somewhat protected from that. But yes, the dollars in the bank depreciate at 2% over the long run. That's bad. But what do I get? And that's bad. And I'd rather have gold. But let's say I have Bitcoin now. What's Bitcoin worth? Can I go buy anything with Bitcoin? Very few things. More and more stuff, yes. But do I want to buy stuff with Bitcoin? If I'm a vendor, do I want to sell stuff with Bitcoin? Now, I've often said, I'll take Bitcoin contributions, but I'm turning it into dollars immediately. Why? Because I don't know what Bitcoin is worth. Is it worth 30,000? 60,000? What is it now? 50 or around 50? Is it worth, yeah, exactly. Who knows? Is it worth a million? Some people claim it's actually going to go to a million. I don't know. Now, if it's going to be worth a million, should you buy anything with it? No, you should hold on to it. No incentive to transact. It's not a good medium of exchange if its value is going to go like this. It's not a good medium of exchange if its value is going to go like this. It's not a good medium of exchange if the value goes like this, day to day. So Bitcoin is not a good medium of exchange because it's too volatile. Its purchasing power is not constant. The whole thing about, the whole thing about gold is its stability. It's purchasing power stability. Now even there in a fiat economy like we have today, it's not clear to me that it's stable. So you want to hold gold for the case of hyphen inflation. The other problem, so I don't think Bitcoin is money today. It doesn't qualify as money. It's not a medium of exchange. It's too volatile. And it's not backed by anything. So maybe it's an asset. It's an asset that has value because it facilitates illegal activity. And I'm all for illegal activity. So don't get me wrong. I'm not. This is not a way of criticizing Bitcoin. It's just identifying its use and its uses to move money out of countries that have capital controls. It uses to buy drugs and weapons. The more legal an economy becomes, the freer an economy becomes, the lower the value of Bitcoin. Indeed, in a free market, in a totally free market, if the government stopped having a monopoly over money, Bitcoin I believe would be a zero. If you'd have gold, which basically would be back, you would have money substitute, which were crypto, they were backed by gold. But gold would be the ultimate money. Now, somebody said, what if you could turn, what if you could turn other, what if you do alchemy? What if you could create gold? Well, then gold would stop being money and we'd have to figure out a different money. If you could arbitrarily create gold out of nothing, out of other metals. So we'd have to figure out a different money. But the beauty of a capitalism is, if the government didn't have a monopoly over money, we'd have competition. And we'd see you'd win. I just doubt strongly that Bitcoin would be the winner. Does that answer the question, Phil? Yeah, it just seems like, I don't know, I feel like I have the same view that you do, but I feel like I've been wrong and wrong and wrong again because Bitcoin just keeps going up and it seems crazy. So I'm just wondering if it just needs to be a little bit better than the dollar to beat the dollar. So maybe when it is, we can have discussion, but I don't see that happening because I don't see what anchors its value. And so you're saying what anchors the dollar today is like the backing of the US government? Yeah, I mean two things anchor it. One is you can pay your taxes with it. And second, and you have to pay your taxes, otherwise you go to jail. And second, it's legal tender. So if you want to use dollars to pay off a contract, the other party of the contract has to accept your dollars. To pay off debt, dollars is required. You can't demand something else. So that anchors it, right? And the fact is, even though we don't completely understand it, the fact is that in spite of all the QE or whatever the government does, the purchasing power of the dollar has not changed that much. You know, it just hasn't. You go into the grocery store. Is it that much more expensive than it was 10 years ago? Some things are the things that government touches like education, healthcare and housing. But other stuff is not. So the purchasing power of the dollar is not that much lower. So, you know, you can live in a world, I'd be criticized because I said you can pay your taxes with it. If you want to live in a world where if you can find a way to live in this world without paying taxes, great, good for you. You know, I've minimized the taxes to the max, but I still have to pay taxes and the government takes dollars. They don't take anything else. So at some point I have to convert money into dollars and don't have to pay the taxes or go to jail. And but are you guys going to, you know, as bumble gum, gun, whatever, do you not pay taxes? Are you willing to go to jail? Yeah, fine. All right. And the grocery store takes dollars, right? I got the grocery store. They don't take Bitcoin. So I have to convert my Bitcoin installers and I don't know what it's going to what the exchange rate is going to be. So it's just, it's just until it stabilizes, it can't be money. And I don't see what stabilizes. Navin. Here on. So a couple of quick points on the Bitcoin thing, and then I'll ask my question. So, you know, one thing that people say the creates a value is that there's no middleman involved, but there's no financial institutions involved. That actually is a value because the consensus of the how much it is valued is provided by the marketplace. That's, that's what people are saying. And the stability they're saying will come. It's not stable right now because it's not highly adopted, right? Because it's just being adopted. So once there's high adoption, it will get more stable. That's, and then the inflation part, right? So with Bitcoin, there's only a limit. There's a 21 million limit. So it's always, you know, it encourages hoarding. So the price keeps going up. So now there's alternative currencies like the Dogecoin, it doesn't have a cap. They actually release 5 million every year. So they say that's, that's like a better alternative because, you know, it doesn't encourage hoarding. People actually will spend it to exchange value for value and stuff. So I think in the long run, I think there'll be many of these means of exchanges that you can use including dollar, right? And people will probably choose the thing that they really prefer. And then they can be transferred from one to other very easily, just like you can transfer Bitcoin to dollar, dollar to Bitcoin today, right? Things like that. Actually, the transaction costs quite high to transfer Bitcoin. And that's part of the problem with Bitcoin. But, you know, I just don't know and I don't, I don't get it because I don't see how Bitcoin drives out the middleman. Yeah, it drives out the, I mean, where's the middleman in Venmo, right? I can do a transaction in Venmo and there's no middleman. Venmo is, but they're not charging me anything. So why do I care, right? And there's still exchanges in Bitcoin. So there's still, and there's still wallets and companies that provide. So I'm not sure, I'm not sure the middleman is really gone. And the purpose of a bank is not so much to, you know, it's a middleman between lenders and borrowers and that doesn't change in terms of Bitcoin. So I don't quite get it. Now, Ethereum, the idea with Ethereum is that Ethereum provides the blockchain to be able to. It's not a contract, right? It gets rid of notaries. So there I get that the middleman is gone so you can do transactions cheaper without a middleman. I get that. You know, that's fine. But that's not Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't have that feature. You can't use Bitcoin. The ledger for Bitcoin, as far as I understand it, only provides a ledger for Bitcoin. It's self-referential. It doesn't provide a ledger for other kinds of transactions, only for Bitcoin. So I don't get it. Now, if it's true that you can have lots of cryptos, crypto currencies, that isn't that inflationary? So how do you value any one of them? The only way to value any one of them is how much people are willing to use it. But what's going to drive people to use one over the other? Hype, sexiness? So I don't know. There's no question that there's something there. I just don't know yet what it is. And I think people who are advocates for it are overconfident in terms of what they think they know about how markets work and how this thing will evolve. I think something will come out of it that's valuable. I don't think it's anything like what we're thinking right now, or what people are presenting right now. I said this on a show the other day. My airline miles are money. They're in a sense cryptos, right? They're pieces of electronic money, right? So as my hotel mouse, I can't exchange them for money, but I can exchange them for the money equivalent that is for services, right? Limited, it's like somebody said it's like company, it's like the company store. You remember the old days of capitalism, where the company paid you in a particular form of money that you could only use at the company store? Oh yeah. So miles are like company store. Is that a bad thing? A good thing? It's a great thing. I mean, I'm using this. I'm using it as money and I've got thousands of dollars worth of these things, right? So I think if we had a free market, the evolution of financial transactions would be really fascinating and interesting. I don't think it would be static, but I don't know that it would take the shape of Bitcoin or any of these particular cryptos. I don't know. The other thing that's really getting popular right now is Helium. You've heard of it. They're creating a Helium cloud. Basically, it's another cryptocurrency. You can buy specific miners to mine it. And they're paying people to stand up this Helium network, which will power all the IoT devices basically. What's an IoT device? The Internet of Things devices to all the little dog collars or little controllers or whatnot. So it's a different thing. That's going to be what's interesting is if you can somehow monetize things that haven't been monetized in the past. If you can start finding cheap and easy ways to monetize services. So just like Uber monetized your car, right? It turned your car into an income generating thing, asset, that didn't happen before. And Airbnb monetized your home, your spare room. Now you can actually make income off of your spare room, which you couldn't before. The potential I think of crypto is to find ways to monetize like your computing capacity and your computer when you're not using it, right? For what do they call it? Whatever, you know. Consensors basically. Yeah, monetize certain services that you provide or monetize things like that or get rid of middlemen. That's where value will come. But that value will not replace money. That value will be on top of money. Just like airline miles are now replacing money. They kind of money substitutes in it. They're on top of money. That's the way I see it. So yeah, I had a question, but I'll skip it. I think I took too much time. Yeah. Did we get everybody? Matt, did we get you, Phil? No, we didn't get Matt. So that's right. Matt has the last question. And then we'll call it a day. Yeah, so the first thing, first little thing is a thank you for standing up in your Earth Day show for nuclear power. I was actually as a teenager, I was briefly the president of my school's environmental club. I don't really remember why I think I just wanted something from my college resume and I was generally against like garbage and pollution. But pretty soon after it came, you know, the thing about carbon destroying the world and then I've nuclear power just seemed like an obvious slam dunk of, okay, like the answer to that. And as soon as I found out that nobody supported it, you know, in the environmentalist movement, I just knew there was something else going on. I dropped it, you know, and never looked back and still won't really take it seriously until, you know, all these people who say it's an existential threat, but you don't support nuclear power, then there's just something that just doesn't add up. So it's done. The other thing is I was watching yesterday the movie Alexander about Alexander the Great, the old movie from the early 2000s and there's a speech in there by Colin Farrell, who looks kind of blonde hair in it so he looks like Brad Pitt, I thought the same thing when I saw him Brad Pitt was in Troy, which is kind of similar. So there's a speech by Aristotle, he is teaching the young Alexander and his young peers back in Macedonia, his dad Philip brought him in to teach the kids. And one of the things he says is, you know, very much a mixed bag speech of the whole movie is, you know, through the lens of, you know, philosophy and morality is very much a mixed bag but there's one thing Aristotle says where he says to love excellence is to truly love the excellence, replace the gods with you know human flourishing or yourself or something like that but but just that he is telling these young leaders to love excellence and to admire excellence. You know really made me feel good and and there's such a disconnect between people I encounter in the real world, seemingly of all you know political things, most people seem to still admire excellence and appreciate it, but in media and politics, it's really despised, pretty much it's I feel like to he has taken you know who's just the nihilist and, you know, the stoddard home and yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's right and of course Aristotle is the great philosopher that he is because he admired excellence and he had that spirit about him and in generally Greek culture admired excellence, beauty and excellence and being good at stuff. And there's still that in the culture we see it through sports right we definitely see an admiration of excellence in sports. And even in admiration for among many for Ellen mosque and the adoration people have for Steve jobs and there's still a little bit of that. It's one of the scary things about our cultures that seems to be declining maybe outside of sports. Particularly sports becomes politicized these days. So, there is the sense in the culture that excellence matters, and that's still the enlightenment that's the enlightenment of a student kind of enlightenment pro life pro kind of Greek that still exists in the culture that we live in today and otherwise it would be completely passed. Otherwise we'd be finished right it's why Americans don't resent wealth quite as much as you'd expect they would. Right, like as much as Europeans for example do they still admire people who make a lot of money. So it's, it's our one saving grace and it's the thing we should leverage we should try to leverage that sense of life that belief that people have that excellence is still good. And it even makes it into a few movies human. Especially in this thing is directed by Oliver stone who's not associated. No, I'm not an objectivist. Yes, yes. They still that stone loves the fountain. It's like his favorite book. I heard that once yeah something about because the the integrity of the artist that's like the element. Yes, maybe that was you who said that that's really an element that he gets after it you know the artist above all else, maybe. That is what I think that's what I said, but yeah so he's complete it's completely subjectivism, but there's a sense in which there's that admiration there for excellence. Yeah. In spite of his Marxism but it's, it's undermined, you know it can be consistent in all this stone and that's why the whole more premise even of the movie Alexander is kind of is mixed because all of us on kind of escape that he can't truly admire excellence. Now Alexander is a mixed character to begin with right why is he conquering the world what's the motivation of that right. Yeah, it's force ultimately but but all of a stone is a is an interesting character, a bad character but an interesting character. It's definitely next. Yeah. Good. Thanks guys. Thanks for the support thank you everybody for being on. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We should be at over 100 we've got well over 100 people watching right now and they've been probably 400 people watching the show overall. So don't forget to press the like button subscribers let's get the subscriber number up. We're shooting to get to 250 20 sorry 25,000. So we're 250 254 short of that and hopefully, hopefully we can get to that number quickly. Don't forget. So don't forget to subscribe don't forget to encourage others to subscribe so we can get to 25,000. And don't forget to support the show you run book show that comes last support. Patreon, subscribe star. I mean I've, I've, I've so many haters this is one of my points of pride that you know I've created so many people who hate me that people come on my chat listen to the show, just in order to spam you and tell you not to support the show. That's that's a sign of success I guess. If you haven't listened to the interview with Lex Fedon go listen. You know, I don't know what it's up to now but it's probably over 80,000 now. It's, it's doing well and hopefully we can encourage a bunch of the people over there to come over it's 82,000 to come over and subscribe and become a part of of what we're doing here. Thanks everybody, particularly thank you guys. Thanks Phil. Thanks Navin. Thanks Matt for sticking around and for supporting me. Really, really appreciate it. Thanks guys.