 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran-Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran-Brook Show on this 4-2. A fantastic weekend that you had a great weekend and ready for more Iran-Brooks shows and news roundup. So we're going to go at it. We're going to start today for the week. I expect to be doing these shows every day this week. And as something comes up, I expect to have news roundup every day this week. All right, let's jump in. I'll just remind you, you can use the Super Chat feature here to ask questions. And of course, support the show, but to ask questions. So I see James has already got a question in. The more questions, the more fun we have. All right, let's see. First up is, yes, BRICS. A lot of talk about BRICS. A lot of, I think, confusion about BRICS. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, China, sorry, India, China. It was originally BRICS when it was coined BRICS in 2001 by an analyst or an analyst called Sax in a paper that expressed the potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China and kind of predicted that these economies had the potential to overtake the West and to overtake kind of the United States and Europe in terms of economic activity and become dominant players. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that they have significant natural resources. China was growing enormously during this period. Russia had just been liberated from communism and seemed to be poised for a significant period of growth, which it experienced and then didn't. And of course, Brazil has the natural resources. Again, it seemed like this was the beginning of an era where they were going to be incredibly successful. And India, of course, today the largest population in the world at the time, second largest after China, again recently liberalized. India was liberalized in the early 1990s and therefore seemed like this amazing economic growth, a potential economic growth story. A year later in 2010, the first summit, the first BRIC summit, was held in 2009 during the global financial crisis. And again, it looked like the U.S. was in decline, Europe was in decline, they were in recession, the next few years didn't make that seem any better Europe went into its own financial crisis with Greece and the whole sovereign debt crisis. And in 2010, so BRICs again seemed like the future, seemed like strong, seemed like they were the economic future of the world. In 2010, South Africa joined the BRIC and it became BRICs. And South Africa did so on the basis of natural resources. And again, what everybody believed was this untapped capacity for economic growth and wealth creation and a relatively educated population and a system of law that was kind of based on a British system of law, property rights, so there was a lot of promise it seemed and there was around South Africa. So BRICs were hailed as kind of the economic future. The reason of course this is in the news right now is because BRICs are having their 15th summit when it starts tomorrow in Johannesburg, Johannesburg, a city I've been to three times, which is the largest city in South Africa. And it's holding the summit. The president of South Africa will be there as well. The prime minister of India, Modi, as Lula, the president of Brazil and even Xi. Xi Jinping will be traveling from China. The only BRICs leader who will not be in Johannesburg is Vladimir Putin, who if he came to Johannesburg, came to South Africa, would actually be arrested. I find this so entertaining. It turns out South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court and is obliged to act on the arrest warrant that the International Criminal Court has issued against Vladimir Putin. Putin is home. He sent his foreign minister, Lavarov, who is not yet being indicted, yet being indicted by the International Criminal Court while Putin stays home for this get-together in Johannesburg. You know, the last 20-something years of not being that favorable to the BRICs while it's true that the share of GDP that the BRICs represents have significantly increased from close to, I don't know, close to 8% maybe in 2000, to over 20% today. Indeed, BRICs today represent a greater percentage of global GDP than the European Union does. But that's cheating, right? That's a bit of a joke because that's basically China. I mean, China is that increase in global GDP in a percent of global GDP. Russia has not increased. Brazil has not increased. South Africa has not increased. India's increased somewhat, so it's a little bit of India. A little bit of India and a lot of China. Indeed, on average, GDP of Brazil, Russia and South Africa has grown less than 1% over the last 10 years while China and India both grown 6% a year. So there's no BRICs here. There's China and maybe India as growing economies, as significant global players from an economic perspective. And that's it. The rest of the other three members, Brazil, Russia and South Africa, insignificant to global GDP. So this is not a significant challenge. The G7, which are the big seven economies of the West, if you will, represent 40% of global GDP, still significantly larger than BRICs. And again, BRICs has dominated by China. Of course, the G7 has dominated by the United States. The United States economy has grown significantly faster than Brazil, Russia and South Africa's economies have grown. So the group exists. There's a big move by China. China wants to really establish this as an alternative to the West. The big move by China is to increase membership. Increase membership in BRICs and to accept a bunch of other countries. There are 40 different countries that have applied. These are all going to be developing countries. These are not going to be European countries or North American countries, but they are developing countries potentially Mexico, Argentina, or anybody would want to admit Argentina into anything. Egypt, Saudi Arabia. I think I'm looking at a map here and I'm trying to figure out what these countries are. But you've got Libya. Libya? Really? Oh, no, not Libya. Sorry, Algeria, not Libya. God, I should know that. Nigeria, which is of course the largest country by population in Africa. So significant countries would like to join BRICs. I think Indonesia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, just south of Russia. Some countries don't. So China is trying to push this. India doesn't really want more people in here. Russia will do whatever China tells it because Russia is in trouble because of the war. And the consequences here are that BRICs is just a game. They've got 18 candidates that are possible, candidates 40 that have applied, but 18 that are possible. They might add these members in. It is hard to tell. I guess you want to know why BRICs have grown so slowly. I mean primarily because of rotten economic policies. South Africa is a complete disaster in spite of its huge potential, in spite of the massive amount of natural resources. It is run by a kleptocracy, a complete corrupt regime. It is a one-party state, unfortunately, for the most part. Since Pothide has disappeared, nobody, the ANC has won every single election. The ANC is thoroughly corrupt. And instead of cultivating private property, instead of cultivating business and education, they have been too involved in redistribution of wealth and in their own corruption. So South Africa is an insignificant economic power in spite of the fact that it could be. It has all the pieces to make it a dramatic, significant economic player. It just needs free markets. It just needs economic freedom and it needs to provide the right kind of... That will provide the right kind of incentives to see South Africa grow dramatically. Russia, we all know the story in Russia. Russia is the kleptocracy in the world. It is run by a clique of oligarchs. It has no free markets. It has basically not done anything but emphasize natural resources. So in spite of the fact that Russia has a very educated population, it is not invested in high-tech. It is not invested in business. It is basically focused wealth creation on natural resources. And finally, Brazil corrupt and ridiculous economic policies. Bolsonaro had slightly better economic policies than the leftists who have run Brazil for most of the last 20 years, but they're only slightly better. China and India have both dramatically liberalized economically over the last 30 years, although China, of course, as we know, was heading in the wrong direction. Quickly, Bricks, a story of the past though, the reality is that as we talked about on Saturday, China is in decline. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. China is in decline. China's economy is not doing well. And of course, demographically, it is imploding. India is growing. India has this massive economic potential. But again, India is badly managed, badly run, focused on nationalism rather than economic growth, focused on nationalism and mercantilism and too many mercantilist policies, too many regulatory central government policies to allow India to actually take advantage of, again, the British educational system, the British court system, and a significant proportion of the population, highly educated, a massive amount of people for workforce and as consumers. India is not nowhere near to exploiting all that to become an economic power. Okay, finally, there is talk about Bricks adopting an alternative currency to the dollar. Yeah, that's a joke. It ain't happening. They can't agree on anything, these people. It's a bunch of authoritarian thugs who can't agree with one another on anything. They're all bunch of statists. The idea of adopting a currency to replace the dollar will not be raised at this meeting. The foreign minister of South Africa has stated, so that is not an issue. The idea of de-dollarizing that is getting off the dollar will not even be raised in this meeting, because they know it's impossible and they know they don't have what it takes to do it. They will talk about increasing trade in local currencies. There'll be a lot of talk about that. They'll declare their independence. They'll declare the evil of the West. They'll declare the evil of Europe and America. But nothing will change because the reality is that nobody actually in the world wants to trade using local currencies. It's too risky. It's too risky. Really, really risky. Why would you want to trade in yuan or rubles or South African rand when you don't know what the value is going to be tomorrow and the potential for crashes and the potential for instability. Who the hell wants to be stuck with a bunch of bazillion? Bazillion what? God. Whatever the currency is in Brazil. I mean, nobody wants that. So no, trade globally will be in dollars for the foreseeable future. And this meeting by the BRICS is not going to change that significantly. All right, I'm talking too much. So let's talk about F-16s. F-16s are an American fighter jet. They are a generation behind the most advanced fighter jets in the world, which are the F-35s. But they are still a particularly modified F-16s, updated F-16s, are one of the best fighter planes in the world. The reality is that in spite of the fact that the Russians claim to have fifth generation fighters, so the equivalent of F-35s, the Russians have no, they really don't. And we've seen that in Ukraine. The fact is that Russia still doesn't have a superiority over far, far, far, far, far inferior Ukrainian efforts. You know, maybe the Chinese have something that can come close to the F-35, but probably not. The F-35 just dominates the skies, but the F-16 is a close second. And two NATO countries, Denmark and the Netherlands have just agreed to give Ukraine F-16s. This will allow Ukraine to establish, I think, a superiority. It will allow, you know, F-16s are very good at evading Russian defense systems. This will allow the Ukrainians to dominate the skies and therefore to dominate the front lines. So while these F-16s are not going to make any difference to the war anytime soon, because the soonest the Ukraine would get them is probably January, maybe late December, but probably January. They have the potential to completely change the way this war is fought and change the balance of power to make it far more realistic for the Russians to throw out, toward the Ukrainians to throw out the Russians from Ukraine. The Su-35 is not a dominant airplane, as we've seen, right? The fact is that in spite of the fact that the Russians have Su-35s, they do not have a superiority, whereas F-16s, I'll take an updated F-16 over an Su-35 any day. And I'll certainly take an F-35E over any one of these planes any day. Denmark and Netherlands are gifting these planes to Ukraine. Notice here that probably the F-22 is a second, yes, the F-22 is an amazing plane, although it costs a gazillion, gazillion dollars. Notice that Denmark and Netherlands are gifting these planes to Ukraine. This is costing the United States zero. The reason the Biden administration was in play here or had any say in this is because, because in order for Denmark and Netherlands to gift or to sell their planes, they have to get U.S. approval. So the U.S. allows its military, what do you call it, military manufacturers to sell military equipment to other countries if approved by the U.S. government. And then those countries sign that they will not give or sell this equipment to any country without approval of the United States. So a lot of the talk about, oh, the United States is spending a gazillion dollars on Ukraine. I've talked about it before why those numbers are all false. But in addition to that, the reality is that the Biden administration has been holding up A to Ukraine, holding up European A to Ukraine. That is, these F-16s could have been delivered a year ago. The U.S. could have approved it a year ago and it would have cost zero dollars. I wonder how many Republican candidates are willing to come up and say, look, we don't like the fact that the United States is spending money to supply the Ukrainians, but we are willing to give our European allies a complete 100% green light to give the Ukrainians whatever weapon systems they want in order to defeat the Russians. I mean, at least I have some respect for somebody like that who said it like that. But I don't see any Republican doing that because, God, I mean, they might share the same policy as the Biden administration. You can't do that. You'd be labeled a leftist or a leftist lover. So these planes are going to be given to Ukraine. It is a major step, it will be a major step once they get them. Imagine if the United States had said much earlier that they could have gotten the planes. Imagine if they had said much earlier that they could have gotten the tanks. Remember, even Abrams tanks need permission from the U.S. in order for Europeans to give it to the Ukrainians. They didn't get that permission for a long time and Ukrainians still do not have any Abrams tanks. They won't get them until the fall, which is coming up, but fall. So good for the Ukrainians. They'll have a world-class jet on their side. They'll be able to ground their MiG-29s or those awful MiG air planes and put up a real plane, a real plane. All right. So this is going to make a huge difference, as I said, because the F-16s can evade Russian defense systems, as the Israelis have shown over and over and over again. Ukraine is going to win this in a sense of expelling the Russians. Russia has already lost the war. Ukraine hasn't won it yet. I've explained why Russia has lost the war. It's lost it strategically. It's lost it in every dimension. It's lost it credibility-wide. It's lost it internally. And it's lost it morale-wise, but it's certainly lost it strategically. It will also lose it on the ground, ultimately. It's just a matter of time. The only thing that can stop Russia from losing it on the ground is if the West stops supplying Ukraine with aid. Or if the West forces Ukraine to cut some kind of compromise with Russia. But Russia has already lost, no matter what the rest of the outcome is. Russia's lost big time, which I've explained over and over again. All right. Saudi Arabia has an illegal immigration problem. Saudi Arabia has a legal immigration problem. It has immigrants flooding in from Ethiopia, crossing the border. I want to show you a map. Well, let's see if I can show you a map. I didn't actually set this up. Let's see if I can put this up for you, this map. Because, you know, this says something about, I think, maybe it says something about, oops, that's not it. It says something about illegal immigration, I guess. There we go. It's this one. I need to shrink this. Sorry, we'll get there once and... Right. That's good enough. So let's look at this map. This is Ethiopia, which is, you know, significant civil war. And, you know, challenges and problems. A massive refugee crisis in Ethiopia, which is driving millions of people into poverty and into starvation. So a number of those people are trying to get out of Ethiopia. One route for them to get out is through Djibouti and then crossing the Gulf of Eden to Yemen and then hiking through Yemen. Yemen is a war-ridden zone, by the way. Up into the mountains and then crossing the mountains into Saudi Arabia, where they hope to find jobs. I mean, I want you for a minute, and I know most of you don't care about this, but I want you for a minute to imagine yourself a poor Ethiopian with no prospects in life. Maybe you're a young family. Maybe you're just a young woman or a young man. I mean, imagine taking on a trek like this. This is all desert. There is nothing here. Much of this is war-ridden. You climb the mountains into Saudi Arabia and you start heading into Saudi Arabia with the hope that maybe, I mean, think about this, Saudi Arabia, I mean, one of the least free countries in the world, maybe at least you can get some break over there. And then what happens as you start coming down from those mountains in Saudi Arabia is the Saudis have found an original and powerful way to restrict illegal immigration, and that is they start shooting at them. So on the way down, you will be hit by mortars. You will be hit with gunfire. Hundreds, maybe thousands of, quote, illegal migrants have crossed over the Saudi border and been murdered. In spite of that, there are now 750,000 Ethiopian migrants in Saudi Arabia. Most of them they're illegally undocumented, as some of you likes to call it. And yeah, I mean, it's tragic and sad and this idea that you just shoot people. Why? Because they're crossing your border because they're coming to work, because they're coming to try to establish a better life for themselves. You just shoot them, you just murder them. It is insanity. It is horrific. It is evil. And but on the other hand, you're only going to see more of this. The only continent in the world right now that is seeing significant population growth is Africa. And Africa is going to grow significantly in terms of population over the next 10 years, 15, 20 years. We know that the ability of Africa because of the lack of freedom in Africa to sustain such population growth is very low. It's going to be very hard. And it is quite clear, quite clear that it can't. And as a consequence, you're going to see mass migration out of Africa into Europe, into Saudi Arabia, and crossing the Pacific, sorry, the Atlantic to South America and maybe to North America. There's going to be a lot of geopolitical stresses that are going to be caused by this large mass migration out of here. All right. If you're interested in why I think Russia has already lost a war that it's done for already, I've talked about it a gazillion times and it's in my latest talk. It's in my latest talk that I gave it Ocon on the Ukraine war. So you don't need any secret sources of information to find this out. It's quite obvious to anybody with a mind that Russia strategically is fundamentally lost. And this is the beginning of a long decline in everything to do with Russia. All right. Quickly. God, I'm running out of time. Okay. Quickly, China. We talked on Saturday about the decline of China, China's economy. This is probably the most important story right now in the world. The reality is that China is the only significant economy in the world other than the United States. I mean, you've got Japan, South Korea and Europe, but that's about it. Russia is insignificant. India is rising, but yet to achieve real significance. But China is this massive economy, hugely significant, huge trading partner of the rest of the world, and it is in decline. And that affects all of us. I mean, people would like to pretend that it doesn't. But the reality is that China is exporting less by exporting less. It means it's getting fewer dollars, which means it is demanding less US treasuries. There's generally globally less demand for US treasuries, which is raising interest rates in the United States. Most people have never understood the fact that the more we import from China, the lower interest rates often in the United States, because the more those dollars are funneled back into the US in terms of demand for US assets, including US bonds. Put all that aside, the collapse of China is the main story out there. And Xi has a big decision to make, and I want to highlight this because there's a lot of talk about what you're trying to do right now. And the biggest decision Xi has to make right now is that the biggest decision Xi has to make right now is what to do about the sagging economy. And he could do what he's done and what others have done in China in the last 15 years. And that is try to reinflate the real estate market. The real estate market is in freefall, is in collapse in China. And it's real estate that has sustained economic growth in China over the last 15 years. He could try to reinflate that. And if he does that, it's, I think, a massive long-term disaster for China. He could, on the other hand, try to manage the decline of real estate. He could actually allow China to go into recession and allow kind of the real estate, the excesses in the real estate market to be washed out. And then, so take a big hit, which will take a lot of political coverage. Take a big hit and we'll see if Xi can survive it. And let this bubble, one of the largest bubbles in human history, let it implode. And in the meantime, start shifting resources within the Chinese economy to the private sector. And let the private sector grow the Chinese economy out of whatever recession they're heading into, whatever real estate driven recession they're heading into. You know, that's what he needs to do. He needs to focus on the private sector, liberalize, deregulate, and sell off the government-owned industries that, again, have helped fuel this massive bubble. Will he do that? No. But it does look like he's taking some kind of middle road. It does look like he is going to let the real estate sector implode. And that's going to be really interesting to watch as it happens. The reality is that a lot of Western economists, God, don't listen to Western economists, are urging Xi to reinflate, to inflate the bubble, to invest heavily, to stimulate the economy. That is the code names for reinflating the bubble. A lot of economists are stressing that so far. Xi has resisted that. And that is, of course, a good thing. And that is going to be interesting to watch. There was more news out of China today. They lowered interest rates again, which means that Yuan is going to go even further down relative to the dollar. The dollar is only going to strengthen, going to make imports even cheaper. But the markets didn't like the fact that interest rates went down or didn't go down enough, or the stimulus is not big enough. And I think that's a good thing. I think the fact that China is not rushing to reinflate this bubble, maybe it can't, maybe it just knows it can't do it, is a good sign for the Russian economy. Anyway, I don't think I talked about that on Saturday, and I thought it was worth mentioning that. Finally, this is an amazing story that I wanted to talk about to end on good news, based on good news. And this is the establishment of a company called Rainmaker Technology Corporation by a guy named Augustus Dorico. And this is what Augustus had to say. It is, I think, in man's nature to take dominion over creation and order it in a way that is generative and good. And so when you look at the fact that we don't have enough precipitation, and we have these huge precipitation events and hurricanes that destroy our towns, and we just lay down and take it, that seems anti-human. Like, it is this destructive force that needs to be dealt with in the same way that we built erosion barriers for folks that live on coasts, or the levees in Louisiana to hold the ocean back. It is the same sort of endeavor that I think is for the sake of mankind, that motivates me to work on this problem. So he has created Rainmaker Technology Corp. And the purpose of Rainmaker Technology Corp, the mission statement, if you will, is to control the weather and fix all this. Like, why should there be droughts? Let's fix it. Why should there be hurricanes? We can divert them. We can stop them. Why should there be fires? We can make it rain in those areas that are prone to fires enough as to suppress the fuel for the fires. And this is not just gibberish. This guy actually has a plan, and he's raised capital. And for example, we broadly know how to seed rain, how to get clouds to produce rain. You know, you introduce silver iodide into the cloud, above the cloud, these super cold water droplets in the uttermost portion of the cloud, then freeze to the silver iodide, it gets heavier against the fall, catching the humidity on the way down, and creating rain. We know how to do this. Very difficult to deliver at the right time, at the right place, and in the right quantity. They are using advanced technology, I don't know if it's AI, but obviously computer models, probably AI-driven, they're using drones to, with precision, deliver and create rain wherever it is needed. Ultimately, they expect to use different chemicals and different drone technologies and different other technologies to be able to disrupt hurricanes and so on. I mean, these guys are serious about playing God, right? He says hubris. Hubris is not necessarily bad, the fact that he's going to be accused of hubris. In controlling the weather, there's a lot to gain, right? This is from the article that describes it. What if rainmaker could alleviate droughts by ensuring that water-stressed regions would see consistent rainfall? What if the company could de-risk areas prone to forest fires by preventing prolonged dry periods in those areas? What if rainmaker could transform deserts into cultivatable lands by providing them with consistent rain? This is again the article itself. We should more often celebrate tremendous acts of will over nature and successes that arise from first principle thinking. Rainmaker has big ideas and I think they'll have to go to war to pull them off, but I'm in their corner and I hope you are too. Absolutely, I'm in their corner. This is from White Pill. It's called The White Pill, which is a substack. It is a pro-science, pro-technology substack by Pirate Wire. Pirate Wire, I've recommended Pirate Wire in the past out of the Founders Fund, kind of out of the people around Peter Thiel. I don't always agree with what they write in Pirate Wire or in White Pill, but it's always interesting, always fascinating. So I encourage you to become subscribers and support it, or at least go there and read the stuff because it's just good stuff. I've used a lot of their substacks in the past for episodes of The Iran Book Show, so I am a supporter. Alright, let's see. Yeah, if you want to ask me any questions, if you want to get my commentary on anything, you can use the Super Chat feature to ask questions, including why I think X. Don't use the chat. I don't answer questions from the chat. I do answer questions, all of them, every single one of them that I ask in the Super Chat. Alright, Silvanus asks, $50. Thank you, Silvanus. That is very generous. Silvanus says, love the coverage on bricks. I have a relative who loves to push conspiracy videos covering them. I'd share your videos, but they're too far down the rabbit hole. Yeah, probably, but yes, a bricks is a big source of conspiracy theory nuttiness that's out there. So is the whole idea that Russia is this amazing place and Russia is succeeding. And yeah, I mean, there's a whole rabbit hole about how Russia is really winning and Russia is this great place and Russian technology is amazing and Russian weapons systems are fantastic and everything else. There's a massive rabbit hole around that. And of course, most of people who push bricks don't really like China that much. They're more, you know, Russia, South Africa, Brazil, they're more anti US than anything else. But it is fascinating to see all these rabbit holes out there as, you know, as the power of the bricks declines, as Russia loses, and as, you know, the one country that I think has some real, I've proven the rabbit hole wrong many, many, many times. Repeating doesn't matter. And I've also learned, Ken, from you, and from others like you, that it doesn't matter facts don't matter to you. Reality doesn't matter to you. Truth doesn't matter to you. You're stuck in a particular position, a particular opinion and nothing will matter. So why debate? Why argue? So yeah, I think the bricks is a conspiracy theory around dollarization and around all of it. And people who buy into these kinds of conspiracy theories will become dedicated almost religious like to these things. Reality doesn't matter to them. So the fact that the dollar is stronger than ever doesn't matter to the people who hate the dollar. The fact that the bricks are, you know, have been an economic disaster except for China over the last two decades. That reality doesn't matter to them. You know, reality is not the question. It's more about affirming or not affirming your particular conspiracy theory, your particular view of the world. James, I see a lot of entrepreneurs moving to the Middle East, from the West, many going to UAE, Qatar and Israel. Do you think the trend will continue? Do you think economic freedoms are more important than personal freedoms? You know, I do not think the trend will continue. I think it might continue for a while, but I don't think long term they will continue because the reality is that the UAE and Qatar have nothing much to offer the very wealthy other than a playground. And maybe they'll keep moving there as a playground, but they are not places in which they have big markets, they're not places in which you can find talent, they're not places in which you can really produce. They're not places in which you can have the kind of freedom that you actually want to talk. You know, if you actually want to talk. So it is probably temporary. It's during times of crisis. UAE, Qatar, Dubai, those places have become play pens of the rich. They become places where people go to raise capital but they don't stay. The people who stay are people who want to just, you know, eat caviar, drink. They've already made it. They've made a lot of money and they're not interested. They're interested primarily in consumption. And UAE and Qatar for a while will provide that and ultimately these people will get bored. Israel is different. Israel people go there to escape if they're Jewish and there's some reason to escape there. I don't see many American entrepreneurs going to Israel. You mainly see Russian oligarchs want to escape the sinking ship going to places like Israel. They also go to UAE and Dubai. They all have homes there. And then when Pro-Gozin was heading towards Moscow, there are people who track the oligarchs' planes and all the planes were taking up and heading over to Qatar and primarily to Dubai. Do you think economic freedom are more important than personal freedom? No, I don't. And the interesting thing is if you really were interested more in economic freedom and personal freedom, then the place to go to is Singapore. Singapore is a much more exciting place, much more interesting place in a much more dynamic part of the world where things are really happening and where you can find talent and resources and do things because of its location in that part of Southeast Asia. I mean Southeast Asia still has amazing economic potential. It's only scratched the surface in terms of what can be done there with the right economic policies, which they don't have sadly. But the Middle East has very little... The chance of the Middle East adopting the right economic policies and the right cultural policies vis-a-vis Southeast Asia, it's like night and day. I'd rather be in Southeast Asia or any day. Remo, is it a real problem for Switzerland that UBS are such a big market share in deposits or is it just progressive nonsense? It's mainly progressive nonsense. But the real, really what should happen and what won't happen but should happen is banking liberalization throughout Europe and allowing European banks to enter into Switzerland and allowing all the major European banks to have branches in Switzerland and take in deposits in Switzerland and allow UBS into Europe. I mean if you allowed real bank, cross-border banking, if you allowed real harmonization of banking, I mean it's... And I know Switzerland's not part of the EU but still Switzerland's part of Europe and there's no reason not to harmonize banking across that border. But if you had that kind of harmonization of banking, you would not have the kind of crisis you had in Greece and you would not have the kind of potential crisis in Spain and Italy. Most of the world, most of the economic problems in the West, I'd say not most of the economic problems. A lot of the manifestations of the economic problems in the West occur through an unproductive, inefficient, hyper-regulated and just dramatically distorted banking system. We could get so much juice, economic juice, economic benefits from just deregulating banking in Europe and the United States. It is truly unbelievable how much benefit you would get just from that. Alright, James, another $20 question. Thank you, James. Have you done a show about 100 years of humiliation of China? It appears that China is doing its payback to Russia coming the West and other Asian countries. Will China actually get revenge for the economic faltering? I don't think... There's a sense in which part of what motivates China is the humiliation of China from the early part of the 19th century through Mao's rise. And I think much of the legitimacy within... The perceived legitimacy within China of the Chinese Communist Party is that they have brought stability, they have brought unity, and they have brought in more recent times economic progress and they have stood up to the West. So that's a big part of... After the humiliation of 100 years, we've had now, I don't know, 70, 80 years of China standing up on its own, to some extent, less than that, maybe 70 years. But I don't think what drives China right now is recompense for that humiliation. What drives China right now is power. It's establishing itself. China views that 100 years of humiliation as an aberration. They very much believe that they are the center of the universe. That China is the most important country in the world. It was a temporary setback. They will catch up to the West. They will beat the West. And they also want to do it so-called their way because that's part of showing the West. It has to be their way. And that, of course, is what hampering them instead of learning. For 20 years, 30 years, they try to learn from the West. Now they're trying to do it their way again. That's bad. That won't work. So, yeah, they will get the revenge on Russia because Russia is in massive decline. But will they get the revenge in the West? I don't think so. I think the West is far better positioned for the next couple of decades than China is. China is in real trouble because it hasn't learned the lesson from the West. And the real lesson is that you need political liberty, not just economic liberty. And if you want economic liberty, you need real economic liberty, not pseudo economic liberty. You need property rights. You need the institutions of economic liberty and personal liberty. And that's how you really grow. You can grow up to a point as China has shown and probably still grow with authoritarian government, but it's only up to a point. If you really want to take on the West, you have to have political reform in China. And I don't see when that is going to happen. Oban says, Ecuadorian presidential election yesterday resulted in a runoff. Do you have any thoughts on the election and direction of Ecuador general right now? Look, I mean, Ecuador seems to be bucking the trend of not electing a rabid leftist. It does appear that the winner of the Ecuador runoff election will be a non-leftist. I don't know if he's any good. I don't have much opinion about him. A big problem in Ecuador right now is less, you know, it's not just economic, which is always the problem. But it's crime. Crime is through the roof in Ecuador. The gangs are taking over. Violent crime, murder rates are all spiking in Ecuador. That'll be the top priority of a president. You know, one would hope that given that it's not, hopefully it won't be the socialist who wins. But if it's not the socialist, then this entrepreneur who's running against them, hopefully will take on these gangs, will clamp down on crime, will do what is necessary to bring peace to Ecuador and then work to liberate the Ecuadorian economy and provide the rule of law that every country deserves, the kind of rule of law that protects rates. We'll see. I mean, I do see it as a good sign that the socialists didn't win outright, like they have in pretty much every other South American country. We'll see what happens in Argentina in the runoff election. But remember, every South American country now is racing to become Venezuela. They've all elected leaders in the mold of Venezuelan socialist leaders. Ecuador is bucking that trend, and that's good. So I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. Adam says, in Southern California, we have two weeks of big catastrophic warming warnings for a major tropical storm where I live five miles from the path of the lead storm. All I got is two hours of light drizzle. You're taking fake catastrophic warnings. Well, I mean, it's a difficult situation, right? If you're in government or if you're in the weatherman or whatever, what would you rather do? What is your more in your self-interest in terms of the backlash that you will get? To catastrophize and then it doesn't happen, which everybody's used to already, or to downplay it and then something really bad happens. Government never downplays because they're downplaying not in the short run they might downplay, but in the long run they never downplay because downplay there's clearly a political cost. There's almost no political cost to catastrophizing, to make it seem worse than it is. Now, I have seen pictures out of San Diego County. I don't know if they're real, but of real flooding and cars drifting away in rivers of water and real challenges. So it might be that where you live there isn't a lot of rain, but this was just two days ago a hurricane, a full category hurricane. Now, it was, everybody knew it was going to weaken because of cold water off of the California coast and off the Mexican coast. And because once it hit land, it was going to weaken. How much a weekend? I don't think people knew. And yeah, the incentive is always over. I mean, there have been occasions where they've underestimated weather, like I think Hurricane Maria was not expected to develop as big as it did. And I'm not sure Puerto Rico was quite ready for a category five direct hit from Hurricane Maria, partially because of that. So I think the incentives are all aligned to make it seem worse than it is and then suffer, Adam, complaining about it, rather than make it seem less than it is something really catastrophic happening and then the real consequences and a real political price to pay. I think the incentives are just aligned that way. And you just have to take that into account. Hiram says, believe it or not, Iran, you and Edward Snowden have been the only ones intuitive enough to explain that there's not a deep state, but there is a stay state, so to speak. That's interesting. I'm not, Edward Snowden is a smart guy and I think he understands these things. There is a, what there is is a bureaucracy. There is a bunch of bureaucrats who want to keep their job and have certain preferences and would like to be able to manipulate the system in ways that adhere to their preferences. There's not big conspiracy because more times than not they will disagree and argue with one another. The bureaucracy is vast and it's, it's hierarchical, but it's not super hierarchical. There are not a few people pulling the strings at the top. It is, it is much more, you know, I still think that the best way to describe it was done in the British comedy in the late, I think it was in the late 70s, but certainly in the 1980s called a yes minister, which then became yes prime minister. I think that was the best description ever of the civil servants in, what are called civil servants in the UK and bureaucrats in the United States, of the governments, the people who run the government versus the people, the politicians, the people who actually day-to-day run it and who are never fired and don't lose their job. And it's a great show because it also shows that they're more competent than the politicians but still very incompetent and certainly incredibly valuable show. So yeah, I don't believe the deep state is a conspiracy. I don't think there's somebody pulling the strings. I think it's just a bureaucracy trying to assert itself, trying to manipulate the system in particular ways and in a particular time frame on a particular issues. Yes, they probably all hated Donald Trump and wanted to see, or most of them hated Donald Trump and wanted to see him undermined. There's no question about that, but was it coordinated and so on. It's not even an establishment. An establishment is way too prestigious. It's a bureaucracy. It's just the people who are there. They're not particularly intellectual. They're not particularly philosophical. They just have jobs and they want to maintain those jobs and they want their particular opinion about the world to be manifest and they have controls over many levers at their little bureaucratic position and they will use those levers in order to achieve their goals very hard for politicians unless they're willing to come in and really fire a lot of them to change that. So the only way to really change the system that we have today, and I've said this a gazillion times, is to dramatically shrink government. That means government spending because money is what it's about. Dramatically shrink spending and that will mean laying off hundreds of thousands if not millions of bureaucrats. That's the only way to change the system. You won't change it by changing the people at the top of the bureaucratic agencies by being the head of the regulatory agencies like Trump tried to do. You won't change it by complaining. You won't change it by bitching. You won't change it by, through politics, through passing a particular law. You won't change it by any of those means. The only way to change it is to starve it. And that's why I love government shutdowns. I wish they'd extend them. And what we really, really need is when Rand Paul first came into the Senate, he was like, I can cut $500 billion tomorrow from the federal budget. That's what we need. You need massive, massive, massive cuts that starve these bureaucrats and drive them out of their positions. And until you do that, forget it. If you think, oh, I'm gonna, like the Santas wants to fire them all and put all of his people in instead. So he's just creating another bureaucracy. What you literally need to do is fire them and not replace them with anybody and shrink them out of money going to those causes. You have to starve them. So starve the creepy bureaucrats. I like that. Think about starve the creepy bureaucrats and the starvation here. Stave them of money. Stave them on money. So Rand Paul was very good back then. And then he became a Trumpist and he's been, you know, since then. But when he proposed this, he was four senators voted for, three senators voted for it. Four. No, four. Four senators voted for a budget proposal. Four in the entire Senate, right? And they were the good guys back then, right? These were the Tea Party senators. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Lee, and Johnson from Wisconsin. All four were actually good in the Obama era. And all four were completely corrupted by Trump. Completely corrupted by Trump. So that today there were all different levels of status, right? And that's where we are. And Trump did that. In my view, Trump winning did that. Another reason why I think it will be go down as one of the most horrific things that happen in American politics, the fact that Trump won. All right, Tom, when asked about the poor in relation to capitalism, can you refrain to say that it is only system that cares about the poor? That is the only system that has historically benefited the poor. Yes, I definitely think you can. As long as that doesn't become your sole, you know, justification for capitalism, as long as it doesn't become your moral justification for capitalism, but absolutely reframing it that way is true. And it's not that the system cares about the poor, because the reality is the system doesn't care about the poor. Not one iota. It's just the system. The reality is that it's the only system that has benefited the poor, not because it cares about the poor. And that's the beauty of it. It doesn't require caring in order to actually help, because they help comes from their own trade, from their own self-interest, from work and trade. Tom says their definition of caring about the poor through an entitlement system is all wrong. Sometimes you say, I don't care about the poor, and I get what you're talking, trying to say, but I think you do care. Of course I care, but I don't care about the poor. Nobody should care about the poor. I care about the ambitious poor. I care about individual people who happen to be poor who would like not to be poor, who are willing to put in the work not to be poor. They are better off under capitalism. They are better off under freedom, and they're the only people I care about. But it's not that they're better off under freedom because they care about, because again, capitalism cares about them. It doesn't. Capitalism is the thing that can care. Ike says most people are fine with interracial marriage dating, but how come it's not more common, relatively speaking? It's just tribalism in the culture. Most people are fine with interracial marriage dating until it happens in their family. Is it? Are they fine? How fine are they? Really? Really if you push, if you push. Of course there's this great movie that was made about this. Somebody who came to dinner, the stranger who came to dinner, something who came to dinner. Somebody who came to dinner, maybe somebody can remember the actual name, with Catherine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy, and a young God. The actor played the young black actor. Guess who's coming to dinner? Thank you. Guess who's coming to dinner? And the name of the actor who's on the tip of my tongue, and I can't remember who's really great in it. Anyway, that's a great movie. Sidney Pochette, yes. No, not Sidney Pochette. Not Sidney Pochette. Is it Sidney Pochette in that movie? All right, I'm confused now. Maybe, maybe it's Sidney Pochette. I guess if all these people say it is, then it must be. Anyway, so I'm not sure how many people are actually fine with it. Second, yeah, there's a hell of a lot of tribalism out there. A hell of a lot of tribalism. And also there's not that much opportunity, unfortunately, to interact because our cities, in many respects, kind of segregated, particularly when it comes to blacks and whites, there's significant segregation. I think all that will break down if we actually turn towards what you call a colorblind society, and when we stop holding blacks back and destroying their economic upward mobility and we do that with public education and we do that with a welfare state. So if we actually, you know, once, I think you're going to see more and more of it anyway across all different categories of whatever you want to call it, racial, whatever, however you define race. Nobody knows how to define race anyway. Somebody says, when you say you don't care about the poor, you're giving away the more high ground unjustly and simultaneously losing people on your side. I almost never say I don't care about the poor in mixed company, if you will. I almost never say that. I almost always spin it as the only capitalism cares about the poor. Once in a while I say it, but you know, and I say it and then I explain. And yes, I don't think I'm giving up the more high ground because I don't think the more high ground is caring about the poor. I don't think morality comes from caring. I don't think morality is about caring. That's part of my point. I care about me. And as an extension of me, I care about people who care about themselves and want to make their lives better. Those are the people I care about. I don't care about the poor, but I don't care about the middle class either. I don't care about the rich. I don't care about any grouping like that. To the extent that I care, I care about people who are good, who are moral, who are ambitious, who want to make their life better. And I don't care where they come from, what their color skin is, where they were born geographically. I don't care about anything about them if they are good people. It's all I care about is whether they're virtuous or not. Virtuous as I understand it, not as the culture understands it. And yes, those people, capitalist people, capitalism is built for virtuous people. It is Sidney Poitier. Definitively, I am completely confused. I'm confusing him with the other actor, but yes, it is Sidney Poitier who also played in the Dark of the Night, which was a great movie. But I guess it's coming to dinner is a good movie about that. Anyway, thank you guys. We made our goal. I appreciate that. And I will see you all tomorrow. I think it's the same time, 1 p.m. East Coast time for another news roundup. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We had well over 100 people here for a long time. We should have more thumbs up, more likes. So please like the show before you leave. It really helps with the algorithm. Share, comment, do all the things that you do on social media because that's how we're going to grow the show and expand its impact. Thanks guys. See you all tomorrow. Bye.