 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Monday, September 4th, it is Labor Day. Hopefully everybody's having a fantastic long weekend. The best thing about Labor Day, the American Labor Day, is that it's not on May 1st. So it's not concede that. Whoops, I should put it on the video, right? It doesn't concede that to the socialists and the communists. So yeah, happy Labor Day to everybody and hopefully having a great time. It is unfortunately the end of summer, which is good in Puerto Rico. Although we're entering right now, we're entering the height of hurricane season. So the next four weeks, really four weeks till the kind of very beginning of October is intense. Like you check the weather channel every morning. What storms are heading this way from Africa? What's going on? There's an echo? Echo, what the hell? Alright, wait one second. Let's see. Echo. Alright. Let's see. It shouldn't be an echo. Alright. Anybody want to, it's metallic. Metallic. Alright, so let's do this. Tell me if that's better. Is that any better? Or is there some kind of sound effect? A tiny echo but there shouldn't be any echo. God. How about now? Does this make any difference? No, it's okay. Just a little reverb. What if I return it to the way it was before? Let's do that. Alright, let me know if that's any better. If that makes any difference. Alright. Is that better? That should be the same as it was last time I did the show. Alright, no, not better. John says not better. No different. You're still getting the reverb. Should be no echo, no reverb. That should be echo. No, it's off. Echo is off. That's not sure what's going on. Nothing else really changed. That should be back up there. No, that should be there. That should be down. Alright, something wrong. It sounds robotic. So it sounds robotic even now. Even though I've set the settings back to where they were. You're saying it still sounds robotic. Alright, we'll have to deal with, I guess, offline. Because otherwise, this is going to take way too much of our time. Alright. Some people are saying, Sevio says it'll fix itself. I don't think so. There's no reason for it to fix itself. Anyway, let me know if it's any better. Let me put the mic a little further away from me. We'll just go on. Jennifer says we'll live with it. The only way to fix it is give me as much information as possible. In terms of how it sounds, that'll give me the ability to play around with it and try to get it right. Alright, Savanos, thank you for the support. I appreciate it. Okay, what was I saying? I was saying, hurricane season. Watching for hurricanes pretty much every morning. And looking at what's happening daily. There's a hurricane on its way. But it looks like it's going to just miss Puerto Rico. So that's good. That'll be next weekend. Alright, one announcement I want to make, particularly for those of you who are not in the US, maybe you're Europe all the way. And that is that, let me just try this, that I'm thinking of doing a seminar on public speaking. I know there's been demand in the past for public speaking and for me doing public speaking and me, you know, presenting, kind of helping you guys become better, significantly better public speakers. So I'm going to offer a, to do a seminar in London on October 18th. It'll be a full day, full day seminar. You will actually get to speak and I will be, I will critique it. And, you know, we will, I'll give you all the input that I give to students at the University where teach the public speaking course, both beginners and advanced students, you'll get a practice, you'll get to present, I'll get a critique. We're going to keep it really small. I don't want probably 10 people, 10 people or fewer. So it'll be a small, intimate, lots of time to get feedback, lots of time to get to really practice and work on it. So, you know, let's, so if you're interested, bottom line, if you, it's not going to be cheap. It's not going to be cheap. But if you're interested, then drop an email, youron at youronbrookshow.com, youron at youronbrookshow.com. If you live in London, if you live in the UK, you're willing to travel from Europe or you willing to travel from the US. If you're interested in a day-long seminar in London on public speaking from me at a significant lower rate than what a public speaking coach would typically charge you, which can be, you know, easily in several thousand dollars for the day. So, yeah, if that's something that would interest you, let me know, I will start a list of names. As I said, very limited number of people. I do not want more than 10. So, you know, hopefully we'll have lots of people who want to do it and we'll do more than one session. But if you're interested at all, please drop me an email at youronbrookshow.com for a very interactive hands-on public speaking seminar. All right, enough of that. Let's jump in to the actual news. All right, you probably all heard about this horrific fire in Johannesburg in South Africa. This was at the Central Business District. So, in downtown, very rundown, very dilapidated, lots of abandoned buildings. In downtown Johannesburg, 76 people died. Many more dozens were injured. It basically took down one building in 80 Albert Street, you know, wherever that is, but it's in the center of Johannesburg. And, you know, a lot of these, a lot of the people who died, almost all the people who died, are poor. Many of them immigrants. There's a large illegal immigration into South Africa from poor African countries. South Africa is relatively speaking to the rest of Africa, a land of opportunity. Anyway, so there's been some investigation about what happened and why the buildings were so badly maintained and why they were dilapidated and why so many people were trapped in there when the fire occurred and why there were no exits and ways to get out and everything else. I mean, just think of the horror of the number of people dying, being burnt alive. Well, it turns out that South Africa 25 years ago passed a law called the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act. And it's pretty straightforward. It's a law that basically says you cannot remove a person from their home without a corridor. And that indeed, if you do remove somebody from their home, you, the remover, are responsible for housing them, for putting them in alternative housing. Now, this of course makes evicting anybody super expensive, super expensive because you have to find them alternative accommodation and you have to get a corridor. So what has happened is that in these older buildings in downtown Johannesburg, a lot of these buildings have basically been abandoned. You can't fix them up. It's not profitable to fix them up. Some of these buildings indeed are owned by the city. And what's interesting is once they're abandoned, gangs move in. The gangs move in and then the gangs rent out all the apartments in the building to people, often many people per apartment, to desperate people who are looking for cheap housing and they rent all the space out to them. Once they're rented, nobody can evict them. So the city can't repossess the homes. The city can't go back and take the homes of these buildings because they can't evict the people who live there. The people who live there are paying court illegal rent to the gangs, but the fiction law doesn't say you can't evict people if they're legally. It just says you can't evict people. Once they're paying rent, you can't evict them. So what you have is gangs in Johannesburg taking over buildings and there are many of these buildings now where I think there's 57 buildings that have been what's called hijacked by gangs in the inner city. They rent them out. They cannot be evicted. They cannot be cleared out of there. And the gangs maintain them. And of course the gangs maintain them not maintained up to code. They're not maintained up to any kind of human standards. They maintain to the lowest standards possible. There's no, you know, these buildings are falling apart. The gangs have no incentive to invest anything in the buildings because they don't own them. And the consequence are you get thousands of people living in these complexes. And it doesn't take much for them to burn down and for a lot of people to die. So here you have a law passed, I'm sure, for so-called pretend, pretend, you know, what do you call it, you know, good intentions, although I don't believe them. And these are the consequences. Maybe these are not the intended consequences. But these are the consequences that every economic text would tell you are going to arise from bills like this. When control, laws against eviction, always the people who suffer the most are the people who actually have to live in these homes. So beware of rental control, beware of anti-eviction laws. They always have horrific consequences. Really as horrific as they are in Johannesburg, along these lines, always. We're getting numbers now of what the expected U.S. deficit is going to be this year. And the budget here ends at the end of September. So we've got a good clue on what the government deficit is going to be this year. That is the amount of money they spend minus the amount of money the government takes in. And, you know, the economy by standard measures is doing quite well. Unemployment is way down. The economy has grown probably over the last 12 months at a 2.1%, 2.2% rate, which is not great. But it's not horrific. We're not in a recession. We're not in a depression. And yet the deficit is exploding. Last year, the U.S. government ran a deficit of around $1 trillion. That is down from around $3 trillion, $3 trillion under Trump in 2020, and $3 trillion under Biden in 2021, all generated from all the different, you know, COVID stimuli. It was at $1 trillion in 2019 under Trump. So it was already increasing dramatically during the Trump administration after being relatively flat under Obama. It increased a little bit in 2018. Dramatically in 2019, of course, it imploded in 2020. Anyway, so $1 trillion seems to be like that's what it was in 2019, that's what it was in 2022. That seems to be kind of the rate for this economy in terms of deficit. And actually, given that the economy is growing, given that we're not in a recession, given that they're not massive stimuli, given that there's not a lot of increase in welfare, there's not a lot of unemployment insurance to pay out, there's not a lot of stuff that the federal government is doing in order to pay for bailouts of everybody like they do during the sessions, like they did during COVID, you'd expect the government deficit to decline. And yet, while the deficit last year was a trillion, this year it's going to be $2 trillion. I'll let that sink in. In one year, it has doubled. This is truly unprecedented. Never seen this before. It's doubled before during war. It's doubled before during major crisis like the great recession and like COVID. But it's never come close to doubling during relative economic growth and during relative very, very low unemployment. So what is going on? Somebody says it was $1.4 trillion in 2022. My graph here taken from the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget is at $1 trillion. So not sure why it's at $1.4, but maybe slight differences in how it's measured might be, who knows, right? But this is a Committee for Responsible Federal Budget which usually is not incentivized to show a smaller budget but a higher one. So not sure why the discrepancy. Anyway, doubling. Now why would it double? Why would it go from $1 trillion to $2 trillion? Right? By the way, this is fiscal year, not calendar year, maybe that's it, I don't know. And it excludes student debt cancellation. Maybe that's the difference. The .4 maybe included the student debt cancellation. So this excludes student debt cancellation for some reason. So it takes out the whole issue of student debt. Why did it go from $1 trillion to $2 trillion? Well, a couple of factors are involved. One, increased government spending. The, you know, Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIP Act, Bipod as in Acts that increased significantly, government spending. Just programmatic government spending. Second, massive increases, dramatic increases in the amount of money spent on debt, on debt repayment. That is interest on the debt. As interest rates have gone up, the government owes more and more interest payments that it has to pay monthly to the people who hold that debt. And that is exploded. You know, the government was borrowing very close to zero, not that long ago. And today it has to borrow at four, five percent. That is an enormous increase. And it's, that's going to get worse because debt continues to get repriced and refinanced and it's only going to go up. The amount of money the government is spending on financing the debt. Three, inflation caused things like so security to be repriced. That is for the, for, for payments for, so security went up. They went up because of, you know, automatic adjustments for inflation. Now, that's on the spending side, on the spending side. Right? You know, if you look at, if you look at the income side, and this is where it gets kind of amusing, right? Last year there was a bonanza in terms of income for the government. Why? Because there was a lot of capital gains. So there was a lot of capital gains the year before, right? In 2021, stock market went through the roof, generated a lot of capital gains income, which generated a lot of tax revenue for the government. Last year, stocks didn't go up. They went down. And as a consequence, a lot less capital gains income. And therefore, you know, revenue down dramatically. So when you have less income and more spending, you have greater deficits. Now this is not sustainable. Now granted, you know, revenue might increase a little bit next year because stock market did go up for now. But for how long? Who knows what will happen? What happens if we do get a recession? And then the government starts spending money to boost the economy. Then what happens in terms of, in what happens in terms of the deficit? It will explode even further. So the US deficit is a disaster, getting worse, likely to get much worse. This is why we should look for real problems economically. And I just don't see anybody talking about it. Republicans talked a little bit about it in the debate. The only person who was decent on it was actually Nikki Haley, who blamed both Democrats and Republicans for the massive increases in government spending. There was a little, there was a lot of hand waving, though a lot of promises was nothing real. And of course you cannot deal with this deficit unless you deal with Social Security and Medicare. There's just no way to do it. No way to do it. You can't. President cannot reduce the interest rates, so he cannot reduce the amount of money paid on interest on the debt. Defense spending, I don't think anybody really wants to cut, although you could. The one thing that has to be reformed, the one thing that's going nonstop, is Medicare primarily and Social Security to some extent. And nobody wants to talk about those. All right. We've talked a lot about China's economic difficulties and everybody's talking about it and China's talking about it and the economic difficulties continued. And yet, and China's engaging in a bunch of different attempts at reform and lowering interest rates and trying to stimulate. Nothing dramatic, but a lot of small actions. Anyway, I read this line. I thought it was somewhat entertaining and worth mentioning. Maybe the Chinese are listening to you on Brookshire. Who knows? But saying that Monday they added to a series of policy measures in recent months to resolve the economic problem. So this morning, they added and what they did in order to try to deal with the economic problems that they're facing, is that they have approved the creation of a special bureau. In other words, they formed the committee to promote the development and growth of the private economy. So it created a government entity to help promote the private economy. That's pretty funny. So what you have here is a realization by the Chinese authorities that the private economy is crucial to their economic growth and their economic success. 80% of new urban jobs are created by the private economy. And it's very hard to attract investments to the private economy when it's so heavily regulated, which she expresses such hostility. She, the supreme leader of China, expresses such hostility towards the private economy when more and more controls, more and more regulations and more and more entrepreneurs are being penalized. And where, as we've discussed previously, you can't go bankrupt. You know, if you fail in your debt, you could go to jail. There are just so many things that inhibit entrepreneurship because they inhibit failure and they make it very, very difficult. To actually run a business these days, much harder today than 10 years ago. So the solution is a bureau, a government agency, that's going to promote the development of growth in the private economy. You get a sense that they don't get it. They don't get it. But maybe this bureau's sole responsibility is going to be deregulate, get out of the way. Maybe that's what it's going to do. Maybe it's going to be a super agency that basically just encourages every other government agency to get out of the way. One can hope. I think praying is probably better, but probably delusional. Alex says, if I said a super chat, what are the odds Dr. Book will read it? I mean, pretty much 100%. I don't know who you are. Is there any reason to believe this is going to be bad? But I basically read all the super chats. All of them. Now, the more money you put behind it, the more earlier I read it, right? And yeah, I will read it sometime during the show, but I only do the super chats after I finish everything else. So if you want to make a comment, if you want to ask a question, the super chat is there. All right, talk about regulation and government controls and government inhibiting economic economy. I came across this story in the Financial Times, which I thought was pretty funny, but quite insightful. And the headline of the story is, I think some of you will like this. Why isn't Canada an economic giant? Why isn't Canada an economic giant? Now, I know the answer to that. I think it's pretty simple and it's pretty obvious, except to people like, I don't know, who live in Canada and maybe some people like Jennifer. The reason Canada is an economic giant is it's just too cold. It's just too cold to engage in economic activity in Canada. So seriously, why is Canada not an economic giant? And they go through all the reasons why it should be. It's got both ports on the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean like the United States. It has the potential for massive trade. It has a border with the largest economy in the world. It has just an abundance of natural resources. The third largest reserves of fossil fuels. But it also has a lot of things like copper and other minerals that are crucial for the whole battery alternative energy market. It has vast amounts of land. Now, it does have a small population because of the cold, ultimately. But that's not an explanation because the reality is that on a GDP per capita basis, Canada is way below the United States and actually lower than much of Europe and the UK. Really at the heart of... Now, the population is an issue and certainly a way to compensate for the other problems. And as a consequence, what you're seeing today is Canada has one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. And Canada had the highest growth rate per capita in terms of immigration last year than I think any country. And in its history, at least in its modern history, so Canada saw a massive increase. I think well over a million immigrants came into Canada last year and they're asking for more. That is, there's a massive push in Canada to increase the amount of immigrants coming in. And I think part of the reason is they're hoping that that will spur and help with economic growth. More people, more people working basically is the story. But that's not the real reason. And that doesn't explain the GDP per capita. It doesn't explain the real missed opportunity given the resources, given the highly educated population and, you know, that Canada has and given its amazing geographic location again on the board of the United States and with access both to the Pacific and Atlantic. The real reason is poor productivity. Canadian workers produce about 70% of what an American does in an hour of work. This is, of course, on average. That's below Europe. That's below the UK. So Canadians are not productive. I know that I'm sorry Canadians say no, no, no, don't take this personally. And the question is why? And the number of reasons. I mean, one, I mean, you could say the cold, that would be my temptation, right? But the real reason is that regulations, controls, in spite of the fact that Canada, for example, assign free trade deals with lots of countries, the reality is that those free trade deals are not exactly free. Most of the free trade deals have actually put up barriers to protect the local Canadian industry. And those barriers that are protecting local Canadian industry, you can see that with NAFTA, NAFTA is full of exclusions, both to protect the American industry and to protect the Canadian industry from each other and, of course, from the Mexicans. Those have created a situation where Canada has relatively uncompetitive, unproductive industries that are shielded from global competition. And therefore, there's no penalty or no obvious penalty. The penalty is there. No obvious penalty, no immediate penalty for being unproductive. In addition, Canada has massive regulations, including regulations that inhibit trade between the different provinces in Canada. Instead of trade barriers within Canada, which reduces competition, reduces efficiency, increases costs. But then there are all the other regulations that I think Canada and Europe are well known for, labor regulations, environmental regulations, and all the other stuff that just makes, and just business regulations that just makes Canada very, very, very difficult to do business. It lacks entrepreneurs. It lacks the innovation that you get in the United States. It lacks the kind of ambition and progress. Now, maybe that'll change with the new bunch of immigrants coming into Canada. But the fear is that those immigrants will come and find a shortage of jobs. You know, a lack of ability to start entrepreneurial ventures because of all the regulations and all the controls. So Canada on the Northern border is a good illustration of what happens when, you know, in a sense, geography has given you all the upsides, all the upsides of potential success. And yet you're failing. The Canadian industry cannot compete globally. And it doesn't have the competition, investment, or innovation. And all of this, I believe, is driven by government regulations, government controls, government trade barriers of all sorts. So. And by the way, with climate change, Canada will get a little warmer, which is good for Canadians. They'll have another trading route through the north as the ice melts in the north. There'll be another passage between Atlantic and the Pacific. Also, access to natural resources further up north. And also, more land in Canada becomes, you know, becomes, you can grow stuff on it because it's not frozen all the time. So a lot of things going for Canada. And yet it's government policy that is inhibiting this. And you could blame it all on Trudeau. And suddenly I'm happy to do that. Let's blame it all on Trudeau. But the reality is that this is not a new phenomena. This is just not now. This has been going on in this gap between Canada and the U.S. has been going on for a long time. And it has to do with the fact that Canada is much more European in its regulatory big government attitude and always has been and as a consequence, right or left, you don't see significant reforms when it comes to business regulations. All right. Let's see. That was Canada. We've got food costs. This is just a really interesting graph that I saw. This is just worth talking about. It's in a tweet, but then I went and checked it out. And this is for real. So in 1901, the average family assumed this was, yeah, this is in America. The average family in the United States spent $327 on food. Average manufacturing wage was 14 cents. So it took over 2,300 hours, 2,300 hours of work to buy food. Now, 2,300 hours is much more than what well over 10% of what we on average work a year today. So it took much more than, you know, 2,000 is about what people, you know, if you work eight hours a day, you know, 50, you know, I don't know, 50 weeks a year do that calculation rate. That's about 2,000. So it took us a lot more than that. A lot more than that, right? Today, or in 2021, average American family spent $8,289 on food. By the way, smaller family, but put that aside. And the manufacturing wages were $24. That's about 350 work hours, hours of work. So today to feed a family on average is about two months worth of work. In two months, average American feeds family. This is manufacturing wage. So this is, you know, median wage or, you know, I don't know how it compares to the average wage through the US economy, but it's somewhere close to the medium I average. So we've gone for well over a year to two months. That gives you a little bit of a sense of the kind of progress we have made. And by the way, that number goes down every decade. The only decade it looks like it was flat in terms of, so this is the percent of family income spent on food. In 1901, it was 44%. People worked a lot. Today it's 9%. It doesn't really add up to two months. Anyway, let's go with this. Assume this is, the only time where it's flat is in the 70s. 14%. And this again tells you something a little bit about the fact that no things are getting better in spite of the fact that everybody complains. All right. Yeah, you can get a lot of this from, yeah, the number of, the Fed dots, the St. Louis Fed publishes a lot of this kind of data, so you can get a lot of this data from them. I don't think that's even, I don't think, I don't think it's true that housing has become more expensive. Not when you're taking accounts, number of people per square foot in the house. Right. And of course, the housing has only become really expensive over the last couple of decades. And most of that is a consequence of lack of supply. But before that, what you saw is a cost of housing per square foot of housing per person declined dramatically during this period. Not to mention the quality of housing has gone up dramatically. All right. Okay, last story quickly. If you want to buy a diamond, if you want to buy a diamond, engagement ring, something like that, if you want to buy a diamond, now is the time to do it. It turns out that Americans have finally got smart, not just Americans, but globally. People have finally gotten smart. And people are starting to buy man made diamonds. You can't tell the difference between a man made diamond and a natural diamond. Maybe the only difference is that the man made diamonds can achieve perfection, whereas nature doesn't make them perfect. So man made diamonds, people are buying them as engagement rings. So in the one to two carat, which is typical of an engagement ring, people are buying diamonds that are basically made in microwaves. These diamonds are significantly cheaper than the diamonds produced in mines. The diamonds produced in mines cost a lot more money. They're controlled basically by a monopoly for the most part. It's the one industry where we come close to a monopoly, which is the beers, which is the South African company. As a consequence of this, over the last few months, the beers has aggressively reduced the price of diamonds. Now, in the past diamond prices have come down after a bubble, but there's been no bubble. The reason for the cuts in the diamond prices are, have everything to do with the fact that the, you know, people are buying diamonds that are being grown. And the price cuts have been dramatic. So raw diamonds, the two to four carat, raw diamonds are being cut in price by 40%, 40%. So if you want to buy a diamond, now's the time, you might want to wait a little bit because there's a chance they're going to go down even further as a competition between artificial and non-artificial diamonds accelerates. So I thought those of you who are thinking of buying an engagement ring or something like that would be interested. Okay, I'm going to do this one story partially because I don't have a hard stop so we can go a little over. Don't forget to ask questions in the super chat. Given that we're going to go over, maybe we can increase the target. But anyway, feel free to ask more questions. $20 will get priority, but all questions are answered. All questions, all super chats are read for those of you concerned. Alright, so cultural critic. There's a Twitter account called cultural critic that I think I follow. I'm pretty sure I follow. Anyway, he's often critical about modern art and modern cultural phenomena, which I am somewhat sympathetic to. But he also has a real deep love of Gothic architecture and again Middle Ages cathedrals as the epitome of beauty in architecture, which just drives me nuts. Anyway, he put up a picture of the Notre Dame de Rimes, not the famous Notre Dame in Paris, but the Juan de Rimes, which is just this massive Gothic building. It's quite spectacular for Gothic building. It's one of the most famous cathedrals in the world. It has over 2,000 sculptures on its walls. It has all this ornamentation. It's just squiggly, you know, like a Gothic cathedral, but on steroids. And he writes, 800 years ago, we built things with such impossible detail that you could spend days staring at them. Does modern man have the patience to build something like this today? You know, where does one start? Have you ever looked at the microchip under a microscope? Have you ever looked at the details, at the size, and how much is put on one of these tiny little microchips? Have you looked at a wafer of microchips? Have you ever looked at that? You know, what these scientists are doing with DNA and with CRISPR with slicing DNA and the detail that that requires, I mean, patience and details, the modern world is filled with that, this idea that we're short-term and the previous generation long-term is absurd. Now, the only reason Gothic cathedrals are perceived as kind of long-term endeavors is because it took many generations to build them. It often took well over 100 years to build a cathedral. And a lot of people died building them. The aesthetic of the cathedral was not driven by the marketplace or by anybody's desires, but it was determined by religious leaders. It's sole purpose was not to enhance human war being but to make, to glory God and to make you as a human being feel small. And yeah, it took hundreds of years, not hundreds of years, it took generations to build because of how primitive the technology was, anybody was, you know, had the foresight. Why would you build things today for hundreds of years when we can so easily, quickly change them, rebuild them, make them better, improve them? I mean, this glorification of the cathedral of all of the things that human beings have built throughout the centuries is just, is bizarre to me. And, you know, again, compare this to Rand's glorification of skyscraper. It tells you everything. A skyscraper is not to glorify God, it's to glorify man. His work, his life, his living. Skyscrapers are for living in or for working in. They're not empty spaces created in order to make you feel small and to make you revere the other world. Skyscrapers, they're not meant to revere, but you should revere the skill, the ability, the audacity of human beings to build it. I mean, what they hate about the skyscrapers is the skyscrapers, towers of Babylon, right? Remember the story of the tower of Babylon in the Old Testament where they built it, trying to reach the skies and God looked at them and said, those men with hubris, they think they can match my glory. They think they can reach the sky. Who the hell do they think they are? And he made it impossible for them to communicate. He basically created hundreds of languages. Everybody spoke a different language so nobody could actually not babble and babble. Thanks, Frank. It couldn't communicate with one another. And of course, that destroyed. But it also tells you a lot about the story that in order to build one needs communication, one needs to be able to conceptualize, one needs to be able to explain, one needs to be able to work together. But that requires conceptualization. And if you think of the sculptures on these cathedrals, they're ugly. Many of them are gargoyles. But even the ones of Jesus and Mary and all of that are horrible, badly done, no respect for human anatomy, no respect for nature and reality, suffering, just horrible. Now, if you want to see a cathedral that represents this perfectly, and that is modern, that is being built today, indeed it is still not finished, it's being built, it's over 100 years now since it began, and it's still in the process of being built. You've got to go see Gaudi's cathedral in Barcelona, which was started over 100 years ago, and it's still in progress. And what Gaudi did in this cathedral is he took the Gothic, and he took it to its nutty extreme. Look it up, Gaudi's cathedral, you can see pictures of it online. It is insane. It's got all kind of squiggly lines all over the place. It is the epitome of ugliness. And yes, it is massive, it is big, and lots of detail, and it's thought through. It's thought through in its ugliness. But check that out. That is to me the epitome of what this style of architecture brought into modern times would be. But here, you know, this guy's got little, you know, little snippets of the pictures of all the sculptures, parts of the 2000 sculptures. They're now very good. Now very good. Not Renaissance sculptures anyway. All right. All right. So, reminder, we have goals for these shows. Let's make sure September is rolling. We've got over 100 people watching the show right now, so it should be easy to get. The $100 were short of our goal, so please consider doing a sticker. We've had a number of stickers asking a question. It's a great way to get your questions answered. Make a comment. Use the super chat to make a comment. I read those comments. So thank you, Rand. Thank you, Steven. And thank you, Jonathan, for the stickers. And I'm going to jump in to some of the questions. We've got, I don't know, we've got about eight questions. So plenty of time for you to ask yours or make a comment or tell me I'm full of it. You know, use this to express yourself. It's an opportunity. Michael, Adolf Eichmann said just before you was hanged that he regretted nothing. Do you think he really believed that? I think on some level, every evil person knows they're wrong. Well, but what is, I mean, it's some level. Yeah. But what is that level? That level is particularly for an evil person like this is buried deep, deep inside of him because to acknowledge the kind of evil that Eichmann perpetrated for him to acknowledge it in himself, to him to acknowledge the kind of monster that he was, he would go nuts. He would go completely crazy. I mean, think of the scene in Alashogu where James Kit Taggart comes to that realization and he has done nothing as compared a fraction as compared to what Eichmann did. And yet he goes, and I think correctly in the, it's a novel, granted, but I think correctly he goes crazy. I don't think Eichmann could face and therefore evades and buries as much as he can the reality of his own evil. And so while he knows deep down in some way that he is evading, he cannot face it and he does not face it. And his whole life is miserable as a consequence because he's constantly fighting the reality of his own self. He doesn't know himself. He's not connected to his own character, his own emotions, his own reality. But he's in constant battle with himself and with the world. So he's constantly miserable. Andrew, your weekend show in Western civilization made me more rationally optimistic. One wrench country to, we have time to make things better. Is government debt? Don't we actually have a debt crisis that rationally risks national bankruptcy? It does. But again, it seems like we somehow managed to constantly push it out into the future. I'm not saying we always will be able to because obviously we won't always be able to. But at some point it'll happen exactly when is not clear. The United States has the great advantage of having the strongest currency in the world. And the fact that everybody wants to hold dollars means they all want to buy out debt. And that reduces both interest rates at home but also provides our government with the ability to sell their debt. And one of the things that allows us to overcome this debt is the fact that while the rest of the world economically right now is struggling, our economy is growing. It's not going fast. It's not going great. Let's not be polyannish about it, but it's growing. People employed in America. And as a consequence, if they get things in line even just a little bit, then as a percent of GDP, you can get debt stabilization. It does look like in the fall we'll have a government shutdown. It does look like some Republicans are going to hold a lot of the legislature hostage to their demands. Some of their demands around spending cuts, but most of the demands are not. That is always good. I'm thumbs up on government shutdowns. They spend less money during the shutdown. Sometimes they make it up afterwards, but there's no real harm done during the shutdown other than to convince most Americans that we can survive without the massive, bloated, ridiculous size of the American government bureaucracy. Mike says, thank you for keeping us up to date by looking deep into these stories. My pleasure. Thank you for the support. We're still about 70 bucks short, 110 people watching. Shouldn't be that difficult to get us there. Consider doing $5 as a trade value for value, just with the sticker. You don't even have to ask a question if you don't want to. But just some of you doing $5 and $10, and even not all of you, would get us to our goal quite easily. Jennifer says it's true. I assume this is about Canada. We flew over Saskatchewan. I think I got it, Saskatchewan. On the way back from Alaska, there was so much land and fresh water. It could go lots of food if it warmed up. Yeah, I mean, it's empty. Canada is just empty, cold space. Jennifer has a quote from Neil Put. In a world where I feel so small, I can't stop thinking big. Mickey meant even though we are small physically compared to the universe, our minds make us big. I mean, that's a good interpretation. It's probably what he meant, given Neil's very positive view of human ability and his very positive sense of life. That's probably what he meant. But yeah, I mean, cathedrals are there purposefully to make you look small compared to the grandeur of God. And that's an insult. And just for that, I hate it. Okay, Michael says, does freedom come from discipline, delaying? Does freedom come from discipline, delaying gratification? No, why? Why is freedom, how is freedom related to gratification? Freedom is part of what allows you to kind of save, think long term and delay gratification for yourself. So I don't think freedom comes from that. It does come from the ability to think long term, the recognition of reason as man's means of survival, basic means of survival. It comes from, you know, productive product. It comes from the recognition, the value of the individual. It doesn't come from in and of itself delayed gratification. No. Andrew, do you think the majority of your detractors actually comprehend you and genuinely disagree or choose not to comprehend you? Doesn't that distinction make for moral judgment? Yes, I mean, they don't, I mean, they don't comprehend me and you know they don't comprehend me or they purposefully choose not to comprehend me because they've put my ideas into a particular box. And again, I'm not, I don't want to generalize you. There's certainly people who disagree with me because they disagree because you know they're mistaken about certain facts. There's some people who disagree with me because they're still new and they're still trying to figure it all out and again, different context. There's some people who disagree with me because they have very fundamentally different philosophical context but there's some people who disagree with me, particularly those people who call themselves objectives of disagreeing, who have some disagreement that's based, I think, primarily on the emotion of things that has to do, you know, where they've put my views in some kind of a box that they can neatly deal with and then they don't actually hear what I say. They're not interested in what I actually think and what I actually say and they can't, they refuse to comprehend any subtlety and argument. They refuse to comprehend the fact that I've answered their questions. Think about the people who keep saying, well, if you're for immigration, why not in Israel? Why don't we amass migration in Israel? Why don't you support that, Johan? Like, as if I haven't answered that question like 55 times. I mean, you'd have to be pretty ignorant of my views not to have seen me or of me not to have seen me answer that question over and over and over again. So, yeah, that's one example but there are lots of it or calling me a leftist because I disagree with their support for the crazy right or all kinds of stuff like that. Yeah, and to do that, unless they're really innocent, they're brand new, they've never heard anything I've said and now they're asking about Israel because they're really intrigued. That's not almost ever the case. But, yeah, they're being dishonest. They don't want to actually deal with the issues. They don't want to actually engage with the content. They don't want to actually engage with my criticism. They just want to lash out, right? James, $200, thank you. Really appreciate it. Let's see. I did not send the PayPal. Thank you for answering my question. Among those lines of the question, how do you view Singapore versus London? I have an opportunity to do business in both and I am weighing the two choices. Also, how do you think Southeast Asia will counter China economically? So, I mean, Singapore is an amazing place. It's beautiful. It's unbelievably safe. It's clean. It's got amazing architecture. Talk about architecture. Talk about ambition and architecture. It's truly an exciting place. It's overly regulated, overly controlled, overly centrally planned in certain realms, in certain areas of life. Singapore very much has the attitude of nudging people to do the right thing. Not cursing them explicitly, but nudging them, which is often coercion, but doesn't appear quite as bluntly as cursive. London is more of a free fall. It really depends on, you know, London unfortunately seems to be in decay. You know, Brexit was not good for London. It was not good for the UK. The Conservative government has not done the things necessary to make it possible for London to flourish given that Brexit happened. Quite the contrary. They've doubled up on all the bads of the European Union together with all the bads of Brexit make for bad, bad, bad. Singapore is, you know, much freer economically, I think, than the UK is and London is. And if you're in finance, I think Singapore, in particular, is very, you know, very easy to do business in and very free. But London is, you know, London is much more of a, it's one of the great cities of the world, in a sense of culture, in a sense of stuff to do, in a sense of restaurants, in a sense of living. London is an amazing, amazing place. One of my favorites. Singapore is, I'm sure, a great city as well. It just doesn't have quite the cultural depth, partially because it's not in Europe. It's not in, it's of the Chinese culture rather than European culture. And that has some advantages, but it also has certain disadvantages. So it doesn't have the museums and the arts and the classical music that a London does. And it's a small, I don't think it's as big. But it's a great place. So I don't think you can go wrong with either one. Singapore is certainly a great way to diversify out of Europe and out of the United States. And it's certainly a good place to do business in. Living is a different question. You'd have to get comfortable with the degree to which the Singapore government nudges people and uses some force, coercion, in order to get them to behave and whether you are okay with that. I know Americans who are fine with that who will take that over kind of the regulations and controls we have in the U.S. or in Europe. How do you think Southeast Asia will counter China economically? Well, it really depends on how Southeast Asia develops. Unfortunately, you're not seeing the large countries in Southeast Asia, I don't know, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia. It was Singapore's right in the middle of that. You're not seeing them move significantly and dramatically enough in the direction of liberty and the direction of freedom. They're too stuck in old ways of doing things. They're too statused. They have massive populations placed like Indonesia as a massive population, but they don't allow them for the liberty and the freedom, particularly economic liberty and freedom, that even existed in China for a while. So there's a massive potential for that region to be a real counterweight to China. I mean, the Philippines has a huge population and relatively young, I think, so does Indonesia, so does Malaysia. There's massive potential there. There's a problem of Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia, but again, you've got Vietnam, you've got Thailand, you've got Cambodia. I mean, there's massive potential that's uncaptured, that's unutilized, that potential because of statism, government controls, lack of openness. Vietnam is still ruled by an authoritarian regime, what used to be a communist regime. But we're talking about hundreds of millions of people that can clearly counter China, but they need the economic growth that China had. We're getting some stats, right? Indonesia has 278 million people. Philippines have 117 million people. Malaysia probably has a significant number. I'm sure Vietnam has a significant number. We're talking about a population not quite as big as China's, but significant. And if they had, many of these countries have some political liberty, certainly Thailand, certainly to some extent, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines. What they need is economic liberty. What they need is economic opportunities. And if they do, I think a lot of countries, a lot of companies like American companies are looking for places to outsource, you know, to move their factories out of China into these locations where they can have more political freedom and they're not in a place that is under the boot of the Chinese government and in the face of a cold war with the United States. So imagine if all these countries united in a free trade zone that also then reduced regulations, reduced controls and encouraged entrepreneurship and, you know, encouraged people to get rich. Malaysia has 34 million. So you're adding up, you know, just day you've got Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam, you've probably got 500 million people. 500 million people is a lot of people. That's a lot of people, right? So maybe it's 450 million. Maybe I'm not doing the math right. 450 million is still a lot of people. And if you add Thailand, Cambodia, which are smaller countries into the mix and we haven't even gone to South Korea and Taiwan and Japan, which I consider all part of, you know, Southeast Asia. Yeah, you've got a massive power, economic powerhouse, massive economic powerhouse to stand up for China. But for that they need economic freedom and then they need capital investment. Right. All right. Thank you, James. Yeah, one more thing I want to say about this is that the United States missed an unbelievable opportunity in Trump's first few months when he should have and could have signed the Trans-Pacific TPP, whatever, Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which was not perfect, not ideal, not pure free trade, but went a long way towards free trade, lowering tariffs, lowering restrictions. And at the same time, would have significantly improved the relationship between the United States and all these Pacific countries. And the one party that was not party to the TPP was China. So it would have created a Pacific block of America, even Latin America, into New Zealand, Australia, and all these East Asia countries that we talked about as a block versus China. And the United States chose not to participate because Donald Trump is against trade. It's anti-trade. Another many reasons why I am so anti-Trump. Again, not a perfect treaty, not a perfect deal, but better than nothing, better than nothing. Small movements towards greater freedom, small movements towards greater liberty are worth taking. And this would have been a small step towards more free trade. More free trade is liberty and freedom, is part of what liberty and freedom means. All right, Shazba wants me to review a TV show. So now we have two Shazba TV shows that I'm in hawk for reviewing. And we will have to get right on top of that. And this is from the TV series Community, which I've watched a few episodes, not many, but a few. And it was entertaining. But I guess now I'm going to watch another one. So this is season two, episode 14, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We'll do that. Thank you, Shazba. We really, really appreciate the support. I mean, we have, primarily because of Shazba and James, we've basically beaten out our regular Target of 650 for an evening show. But of course, this show, at this rate, is going to be as long as our evening shows. We're already at an hour and 10 minutes. Liam, let me just remind everybody, because I've got a lot of people on listening right now, let me just say something I said earlier on. I am considering doing, well, not considering, I'm planning on doing a seminar, small group, 10 people, lots of intensive work, lots of attention, a full day seminar on public speaking. So how to be a good public speaking, how to improve your public speaking ability. I'm thinking of doing this in London on October 18th. It'll be, I think it's a Wednesday. It'll be a full day, working out the details still. It's not going to be cheap because it's only 10 people and it's a full day of my time. But you'll get a lot of attention. I guarantee that it will give you a significant, whatever level of public speaking you are, it will significantly give you a bump up in public speaking. If you admire in one way or another my ability to speak in public forums, where I help you speak here constantly, then you've probably got something you could learn. It'll be in London, October 18th. So this is primarily Europeans and Brits. But if you want to come from the US, come on over and participate and enjoy. So that would be, it's going to be fun. You're going to get a lot of personal attention. And first 10 people to sign up will be in, right? So in order to sign up, or at least in turn, let me know that you're interested. Email me at youron at youronbrookshow.com, youron at youronbrookshow.com. The sooner, the quicker you do it, the sooner I will commit to actually doing this seminar and the sooner you do it, you'll be guaranteed a spot in the thing. We're going for 10 people, October 18th, London public speaking seminar. Never been done before. Live, in person, on a stage. All right. Liam asks, email me at youronbrookshow.com. Please do not start taking live calls going forward. It will ruin the show with stupid people like Scott and other trolls clogging up the line. Maybe, maybe, maybe that'll be too cowardly to call. That Doodle Bunny seems, I can't even get my sound right when only I'm speaking to, have now a call in God. I can just imagine. All right. The Doodle Bunny seems the difference in strategy between you and Alex Epstein is Alex looks for allies, you look for differences. That's why Alex is far more influential. Thank you, Doodle Bunny. No, that's not the difference between me and Alex. And it's, and I encourage you, what I suggest you do, because I shouldn't answer this, what I suggest you do is ask Alex why he thinks there's a difference in strategy. And I think he'll give you the right answer. And that is that Alex can stay narrowly focused on one issue, one industry, one issue. He's very good at what he does. I'm not saying he's not better than me in some things. I'm sure he is. I know he is. But he stays very, very focused. Alex can give advice to Vivek and, you know, because that's, he's only interested in, he's only focused on one issue, even as he disagrees with Vivek on other issues. But Vivek's not going to ask you about that. If he does, Alex will probably tell him, but Alex is just one issue. And it's a good, it's a broad issue. It's an important issue. It's a crucial issue. And he sneaks in a lot of implicit philosophy into that issue. And it's crucial what he does. We just need a thousand or a hundred Alex's to really change the world. And also add, you know, just for the hell of it, I'll just add this. One of the reasons I think maybe I'm more influential of Alex is my influence on Alex. Would we have an Alex today? Would Alex be doing what he's doing today, if not for me? I mean, Alex would still be brilliant, and still be doing something. Would he be doing this, if not for me? Ask Alex. But yeah, I cover everything. Oh, by the way, Alex wanted me to tell you guys, I need to find the email. Because I want to represent what he says accurately. Given that you know he is advising several of the Republican candidates on energy issues, not just Vivek, he wanted me to say something about the election. Let me find it. I'm going to paraphrase because... Maybe this is it. Basically, Alex wants me to say that he does not support any of these candidates, necessarily. That he doesn't help them with fundraising. That he is not one of their people. That he is very much focused on providing them with advice on energy. That he will advise any candidate on energy. Any politician who wants Alex's advice, and I guess is willing to pay for it, Alex will provide them with advice on energy. He's not taking sides. He's not endorsing anybody. He does not stand by any particular candidate. He recognizes that he might have an impact on them on energy, but might not on other issues. I don't know where it is. Maybe it's a text. Because he said it well. But I forgot to... Oh, okay. Yeah, here it is. I am not supporting any candidate, and that I have a policy of advising anyone who wants to know my views on pro-freedom energy, pro-freedom energy policy and messaging, which includes several of the leading candidates. I should say that to preserve my independence and avoid conflict of interest, I will no longer publicly support Fundraise 4 or otherwise help political candidates with anything other than messaging and policy. All right, that's a good formulation. All right, so I look for differences. Part of the reasons I look for differences is because that's my job. I view myself as dealing with the entire culture, with the entire philosophy of the culture, with the entire politics of the culture, and particularly issue regarding the culture. So, yes, the reality is that I have differences with lots and lots of people, but how many people have come to objectivism because they've, you know, were inspired by the fact that I do stand up for those differences? I'll let you answer that. All right, Ali, generally, I'm minding my business reading books, exercising and taking care of myself, but I find many people who don't have anything to do in life and they just want to block my way of success, especially leftists, they don't like to see me happy. Yeah, that's right. I mean, seeing you happy is a repudiation. Repudiation of their own lives. Seeing you happy is a repudiation of their own way of life, their own ideas, their own belief systems, and it's a challenge to them. So, minding your own business is the way to live. Focus on your own happiness. Focus on your own well-being. Make your own life the best life that it can be. And unfortunately, the world will put up barriers in your way. That is just the reality with which we live. It's how you deal with those barriers where we determine, A, whether you're successful and B, whatever happens, you can achieve happiness. And that is ultimately dependent upon you. So, I've said this many, many times, focus on the things you can control. Focus your lives on those things that you have direct control over, that you can maximize so that you can achieve your values within those realms. Thank you, Ali. I really, really appreciate the support, 50 bucks, and your continued listenership. So, thank you, Ali. James says, did you know Vivek was the head of the College of Libertarians for many years at Yale? The guy clearly understands free markets. Okay, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. I've known a lot of people who've taken certain positions or been in a particular place, particular points in their life that don't get it. So, I hope he understands free markets. He certainly doesn't express that understanding always when he's up on stage. If you understood free markets, for example, no, anyway. So, yeah, I didn't know he was, but it doesn't surprise me. He's certainly the type. Frank says, Frank Lloyd White built some beautiful places of worship. Yes, he built everything he built is beautiful. Some are very more beautiful than others. Certainly, some have his, I think he's got a Jewish temple and he's got a couple of churches. They're all magnificent. They're all beautiful. Much more beautiful than anything, any cathedral in my view, just inspiring to look at. And not ancient, you know, using modern materials and creating something beautiful out of modern materials. Shay says, given that we have holiday anyway, what should we be celebrating the first Monday in September? I mean, it is Labor Day, so you should be celebrating your own labor, your own ability to work, your own ability to produce, your love of production, your love of your career, focus on that career, your mind and, you know, anything that that production necessitates. And of course, it was celebrating not just your own productive ability, but celebrate the fact that you live in a country that's incredibly productive. And therefore, you're living in an incredible standard of living, which enhances your ability to produce and build and create. So yeah, I mean, that's what every holiday should be about. It should be about celebrating how wonderful life in this particular world is. Spend the rest of the year complaining about all the problems of the existing world. Labor Day, Thanksgiving, days to celebrate your own, you know, the wonders of the world in which we live and your own role in it and the fact that you have the capacity to live well in this world. Daniel says, do you think creator people can be predisposed to being depressed because they're good at imagining an unrealistic world? Maybe, I think creator people are often perfectionists and perfectionists struggle with imperfections in their daily lives, as well as in the culture and the world around them and the work of other people and the fact that they trade with people who are not up to their level. I think creator people have a hard time because of that sense of perfectionism, the ability to imagine what could be and what is possible and the fact that it's not. So, yeah, I think creativity is, you know, it's something you have to overcome because you can't let that pull you down. Life is too short for it. Tessa, why is Europe less religious than the United States? My Danish friends say they have it so good they don't need God. I don't think that's why they're less religious. I think it has to do with history. I think the fact that so much of European history is mired in religious wars. There's so much bloodshed surrounding religion in Europe that Europeans can't forget. In a sense, as part of their culture, it's hard to forget. But I also think, and I'm going to get in trouble for this, but Europe is a more intellectual culture. It's generally a culture that reads more, particularly philosophy and intellectual content. And therefore, it takes arguments against religion against God more seriously. So, Europe spent the 18th, 19th, and 20th century fighting against religion and turning us back against religion. And America maybe spent the 18th century with that and then the 19th century there were two busy building and creating stuff. But I don't think they ever turned towards intellectual pursuits and towards rejecting religion, per se. They kept it going. And in spite of the religion, they succeeded. And sometimes they attribute to the last success to religion. Somehow religion stayed. Maybe it's the fragmentation of religion, of hood theories in America. Because of Superstition State and Church, religion is super fragmented. Maybe that fragmentation and competition have led to its greater resilience in the United States that in Europe, where religion was much more centralized. Daniel, you should have Keith Lockidge on. Your audience could use someone to explain physics to them. Let's get lots of super chats. Thank you, Daniel. Yeah, I should have Keith on. I'll talk to Keith about coming on. Hi, everybody. Thank you. Thanks to all the superchatters. We did phenomenal today. Really, really appreciate it. And thanks to all the listeners. We had a great attendance today as well. And let's see, I will be back on tomorrow with another news roundup. And then tomorrow evening with an evening show. So I will see you tomorrow. Have a fantastic day. Bye, everybody. Oh, don't forget that public speaking seminar thing. And please email.