 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday beginning of afternoon here in Puerto Rico. But I know we have listeners in a variety of different time zones listening to the show every morning. So thanks for joining me. All right, let's just jump into the news. Zelensky is on a plane. Maybe he's already here, but he's on the way to the United States. This will be his first trip outside of Ukraine since the war began. He is going to probably, well, he would bite in, but he's probably going to speak at a joint session of Congress either today or tomorrow, and then he'll fly probably quickly back to Ukraine. At least that's what it seems like right now. Of course, those kind of plans can change. Why is Zelensky coming? What's going on? I think basically he's coming because his allies and he are afraid that the United States might not continue its support of Ukraine's war effort. He is desperate in particular to get patriot missile systems to try to knock down the missiles that the Russians are using to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, electricity, power all over Ukraine is dramatically crippled, heating is dramatically crippled, the ability to produce heating. So he is coming to, I think, show up support in the United States, both the left wing of the Democratic Party and the elements within the Republican Party are opposed to U.S. support, U.S. providing military equipment to the Ukrainians. And I think the view is that, and I think this is right, that politicians speak, they can talk, talk, talk, but when actually confronted by a world leader who's famous and they get to shake his hand and they get to schmooze with him a little bit and he actually makes an appeal in person, they cave. They're just not going to stick by their things. So I think he's coming, he's coming to schmooze, he's coming to shake hands, he's coming to present the case for why this is in the United States of interest to support Ukraine. I happen to agree with him. I think it is in the U.S. self-interest to support the Ukrainians. I think Putin is, given his attack on Ukraine, made himself clearly an enemy of the U.S. and a threat. And this is a relatively cheap way to handle him and to deal with him. I think there is significant American interest now in seeing Putin's regime toppled and having Ukrainians fight the fight for us and just providing them with sophisticated weapons is a relatively inexpensive way to deal with something that could be very, very expensive. And if Putin's regime did fall and if we got a friendlier regime, that's a lot of ifs there, then you would get a significant benefit for the United States. Yeah, and I think it was so free, it cost money to provide weapons. So nothing is free, but the upside, it's an investment because the upside of seeing Putin defeated is huge. It would take Russia off the map in terms of a strategic threat to the United States. It would take, if Putin ultimately is replaced with a more friendly regime, you could actually see more investment in Russian natural resources, which would lower natural resource prices. You can see a lot of dramatic improvement globally if this nationalist trend, this nationalist BS in Russia was crushed. So the good news is Putin is losing. Putin is not losing the war. He is losing the economy. He is losing on every front. NATO will come out of this dramatically stronger with Sweden and Finland added to it and potentially Ukraine. And in every dimension, Putin will lose, ultimately, if the world, I mean, think about one of the most interesting things about what's happened is how creative the Europeans have become, have gotten in diversifying their natural gas supplies so that whatever happens in the future, Europe is going to be a lot less dependent on Russian natural gas and therefore Putin's market for natural gas is going to shrink significantly. He's going to have to build new pipelines maybe to India, which is very difficult, or to China, which has its own risk. The reality is that the Russian energy industry is being crushed by what's happening. There was this explosion in Russia that destroyed a pipeline that ships natural gas to Europe through Ukraine. That means Europe is getting even less natural gas from Russia and yet Europe will survive this winter. And Europe will survive this winter to a large extent because it has now more LNG ports now than it did at the beginning of the war. Many, many more ships are transporting natural gas to Europe from all over the Middle East, from the United States, from Norway has increased the amount of natural gas that it's pumping out and supplying to a variety of different countries. And of course, don't forget the fact that a number of countries, including Germany, have delayed shutting down the nuclear energy plants. So Europe is in a much better position. Russia has been dramatically weakened. And whatever happens in the next year or so of this war, Russia is in deep, deep trouble economically, energy-wise, and militarily, it basically will end this war with no military capacity. No non-nuclear military capacity. All that I'll have is a nuclear arsenal, but no conventional weapons. The weapons are basically being destroyed on the battlefield. It's so pathetic. I mean, just think about pathetic as a country you are when you are relying for your military equipment on Iran and North Korea. All right. So Zelensky, so it's going to be interesting. It'll be interesting to watch. It'll be interesting to see his presentation. He is an incredibly impressive war leader. He's good on his feet. He's good present. He's an actor, after all, who tend to be good public speakers. It should be an interesting speech tonight. And I think the schmoozing will work. I think you'll see a lot more Republicans and left Democrats who suddenly will find them in them to allocate a significant amount of, in the military budget, a significant amount to supporting. And in this actually temporary budget, the $1.7 trillion that Congress is going to pass any day now as a budget, they're going to find a little bit of a few crumbs to send over to Ukraine to help defeat, help withstand the winter and hopefully continue defeating Putin. OK, so that is Zelensky in the United States. The Congress has decided, I guess a committee in the House of Representatives has this authority, has decided to release Donald Trump's tax records to the public. They're going to be redacted, so there'll be different personal items that will be blocked out, but we'll get to see the actual numbers after people are being very curious. This is after the Supreme Court said that the IRS had to hand over the records to Congress, to this subcommittee in Congress. I don't know if the Supreme Court had in mind that these would be made public, but I assume it did because there's no reason once Congress has access to these records that they're not available to everybody. It is interesting that Congress has the ability to take an individual, now granted he was president, tax records and just make them public. I don't know what I think about that. It doesn't seem completely right. On the other hand, Donald Trump was president, is running for president. Things like tax records should be something that we see as part of our decision to vote for him or not. It'll be interesting, I think, to see what the tax records say about Trump, the fact that he'll have a bunch of deductions to try to avoid taxes, I think, is a virtue, not a vice. But it will be interesting to see how much incoming he actually is reporting. We've already seen that the Trump businesses were found guilty of fraud and 17 different counts of fraud. So we know the business has been doing all kinds of things to finangling in order to minimize taxes and in order to get the best loan conditions out of the banks possible, defrauding both the tax authorities and the banks in the process. But it'll be interesting to see what Trump has been doing with his taxes and the source for some of the money flowing in. So we'll see. It is going to be interesting. It is going to be interesting to see what's on those. I'm sure more will be made of it that is justified, particularly this will be a good opportunity for Republicans to make all kinds of accusations about the rich and how the rich don't pay taxes, nonsense like that. Of course, the system of deductions, the system of loopholes is a system created by Congress. If Congress wants to fix it, they can easily fix it. I would say the easiest way to fix it, the best way to fix it, flat tax, no deductions, no exclusions, nothing. Just everybody pay everybody. But everybody, that would include everybody, would pay 15% of income, ideally 5% of income. But let's say for now, 15% of income slowly going down to 5 over the next. Let's start with just 15 flat tax, no deductions, no exclusions. And everybody pays. They'll increase the tax base. And it would use the ability of people to hire tax accountants to screw the system. It would also force tax accountants to actually engage in economic value-added activities versus right now, they're basically engaged in zero-sum activities. I still value them a huge amount. But simplifying taxes would make them really, really easy. What was a Steve Forbes idea? Postcard, you'd fill out a postcard, and that was it. That would be your taxes. That is one of the best, easiest ways to collapse the bureaucracy and simplify our lives and reduce government involvement in our lives, just postcard taxes. And if you did that for corporations as well, corporate tax, flat tax at 10%, 15%, no exclusions, no deductions, no nothing, you'd have to work it out, you'd have to figure it out exactly, but I think it really is doable. And yeah, and I think life would be, we would be a lot freer under a system like that. So if Congress really cared, that's what they would do. Anyway, Trump tax is going to be made public. You'll see a lot of that in the press. You'll see a lot of commentators, and you'll see the left try to make as much of it as they can. They'll try to make hate of it to the extent that they can. All right, finally, well, not finally. I've got a bunch of different stories, but this is kind of an interesting story I caught off last night. You're not going to see this publicized very many places. But I didn't know this, but it turns out that the cocaine industry right now is experiencing an historic boom. Your guys might have thought that the peak of cocaine was during the 1980s. There's that series called NACO, Pablo Escobar, Medellin, Cartel, all of that. That was the time where cocaine consumption peaked, and the power of the cartels was at its highest. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Today, the industry produces 2,000 tons of cocaine per year. The amount of land planted with coca is about 200,000 hectares, 500,000 acres, half a million acres. That's five times more, five times more than it was when Escobar was gunned down in 1993. So the industry is five times bigger than it was in its supposed heyday. What you're seeing as a result is, well, it's hard to tell what the cause and what the effect is. But what you're seeing at the same time is consumption of cocaine skyrocketing. It's grown dramatically in South America. It's grown dramatically in wealthier countries now in Asia, and it's skyrocketed in Europe. So cocaine consumption is through the roof. Cocaine prices have actually declined because there's so much supply of it. Arrests for cocaine possession in Australia have quadrupled since 2010. US overdoses that involve cocaine have quintupled, quintupled over the past decades as dealers took to mix cocaine with synthetic opioids. Ecuador has imposed a state of emergency on its large port in Guayaquil. I've been in Guayaquil. I've spoken at universities in Guayaquil. This year because of the cocaine trafficking through the port, car bombs, explosions, contract killings, gang violence. While the US market has always been the traditional market for cocaine, Europe, seizes have tripled in just the last five years in Europe. In Africa, cocaine seizes have increased 10 fold from 2015 to 2019 to a large extent because Africa not only is now consuming cocaine but is also, you know, the cocaine often travels from Columbia and other areas, primarily Columbia to Africa and then from Africa it smuggled into Europe. That's one of the main paths into Europe. In Asia, cocaine sees in Asia as increased 15 fold over the last five years, 15 fold. My guess is that's because consumption among the middle class and the wealthy in places like East Asia where there now is a massive middle class and a massive number of people who can afford the cocaine has probably increased dramatically. So I'm sure that you're seeing a huge spike in cocaine use in place like China but also in other parts of Asia that have over the last 40 years become wealthy. Great volumes, huge volumes of the drugs that are seized in ports of Turkey, Eastern Europe which are some of the new roots for bringing cocaine into the heart of Europe. The purity of the cocaine, the quality has gone up. So the purity of cocaine in the streets of Europe is now 60% that's up from 37 in 2010. And if you look, if you study the wastewater of cities you can tell what people are using because there's remnant there. And over the last decade, cocaine reminence residue in wastewater of major cities in Europe has more than doubled. Anyway, the consequence of this other than people using all over the world is a massive increase in violence associated with cocaine. Massive increase in violence in Columbia where most of the cocaine of the world is still produced but that of course affects other countries in their region like Bolivia and Ecuador which also produce quite a bit of cocaine. I was surprised, you're not seeing huge quantities of cocaine coming from Venezuela. I would have expected that and I'm surprised it hasn't happened. One kilo of cocaine, it's interesting how the differences are between countries. A kilo of cocaine costs very little to produce, very little to produce, right? The workers making this get about $1.9 for every 25 kilograms of the leaves they harvest. But let's say it costs, it costs to produce a kilo of cocaine about in its final form about $630. That kilo of cocaine, wholesale, not retail, wholesale, in the United States for $30,000. It wholesale in Germany for $50,000 and in Australia, it wholesale for $160,000 and that's all reflective of the difficulty and the risk of getting it into those particular countries and the penalties that you as a trafficker would suffer if you got caught by bringing it in. It's a function of the risk, risk return, right? So, wow, look at those profit margins. Those profit margins means that more and more organized crime is centered around the shipment of cocaine. They find more and more sophistication in shipping it without getting detected. You put it in a container with bananas. Port inspectors are not gonna delay banana shipments in order to search for drugs because bananas were rot in the container so they clear it out. So they travel with food. They become super efficient at this but also on the production side, it turns out that farming cocaine has become super efficient because of the profit margins because the Columbia government and the US government, oh, this was interesting. It used to be that the Colombian government used to spray cocaine fields with pesticides but then in 2015 they stopped. Because the United, the WHO, the World Health Organization said that the pesticide was probably a carcinogen and therefore shouldn't be sprayed so they stopped spraying. So since 2015, the cocaine farmers now don't have to deal with these pesticides, have invested heavily in increasing productivity of the land using fertilizers, using more efficient methods and that has grown. Anyway, violence has exploded. More people are dying, more, more people are using. Profit margins have gone through the roof of the cartels so more violence is involved, more risk taking is involved. And this just shows you what would happen if it was legalized. If we legalized a $650 pound of cocaine or kilo of cocaine, sorry, would not sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would sell for maybe thousands of dollars. The profit margins would be small. There would be less cocaine. There would probably be a lot, there would be a dramatic decrease in violence. The violence would all go away. The price of cocaine at the retail market would drop dramatically. People would not have to be violent in order to get the money in order to buy the cocaine. It's true that in the short run, cocaine use would probably rise, particularly among the poor who now could afford it. But then once the coolness of it would disappear, cocaine use would decline. A whole industry would arise to get us off of cocaine addiction. There would be many, many tools to reduce addiction. But think of the tens of thousands, maybe more of lives saved as a consequence of the reduction in violence. Think of the fact that these cartels would be decimated. And again, they would have to resort to productive activity. It's not clear how you, if cocaine production might increase, but profit margins would decrease dramatically. It's likely the Colombian government would actually regain authority over the land in which cocaine produced. Today, they don't have that. The cartels run all that part of Colombia. Basically, it's anarchy there. It's run by cartels that constantly fighting with each other, these areas that are super violent. Think about the decline in the Mexican cartels and the ability of law and order to actually be instituted in vast areas in Mexico, which now have no law and order because the cartels are running things. You know, the benefits of drug legalization are astronomical. They really, truly are astronomical in terms of just human life. If you value human life, you have to be for drug legalization as a major policy action. And if you look at the country like Portugal, that is basically decriminalized drugs, drug use has not exploded about young people in Portugal. Drug use is not a major problem in Portugal. They have normalized it and that normalization has actually resulted in deathless crime and fewer problems. What we need is a global effort, a global effort to decriminalize cocaine, heroin, and other drugs. You know, heroin, of course, is produced in Afghanistan, much of it is, and that funds much of the Taliban's effort to basically suppress their own population. Speaking about the Taliban, just a quick story out of Afghanistan, not to anybody's surprise, certainly not to mine. You know, when Biden left, when Trump signed a peace agreement with the Taliban, let's not forget, Trump signed a peace agreement with the Taliban. The Taliban, in a peace agreement, committed to treating women fairly, to respecting women's rights, to not abusing them, not doing anything, and to allow, which was important, I think, to allow for women's education. They made the same commitments to Biden as Biden shamelessly left Afghanistan without a plan and sacrificed the lives of Americans and many, many, many Afghans for the stupid way in which he retreated. We should have left Afghanistan, but that wasn't the way to do it. Anyway, the Afghans, of course, immediately retreated from those commitments around women, but in the latest offense in that regard, the Taliban now has banned women from all universities, all universities, and they were allowing women to study certain fields, and now they've just banned them completely. So women cannot attend universities and Afghanistan were back to the old. The Taliban has always been, you know, Stone Age, barbaric, horrific, Sharia law inspired. It's just a question of time now, before terrorists who want to attack the United States set up shop again in Afghanistan. They probably have already and start training for a future attack on the US. So, you know, the Taliban is committed to that kind of a policy and nothing is going to really change that. All right, quickly, you know, one of the real, and I could spend a lot of time on this story, but I'll make it really quick. One of the real horrors of Socialized Medicine is that everybody in Socialized Medicine becomes a government employee, and therefore, and you get unions, you get doctors unions, you get nurses unions, you get EMT emergency medical services unions. And in London today, please don't have a heart attack today in London. Please don't get sick today in London. Don't need an ambulance today in London because today in London, I think it's today, all ambulances are on strike. One day strike Wednesday. Yes, so it is today. I guess the day is almost over in London, but there is a strike of ambulances. They are, there's a disagreement between the ambulance unions and the government over, you know, I don't know, over pay, over whatever. And the three ambulance unions were striking for either 12 or 24 hours. They weren't going to commit. It was going to be a surprise. They were, they pledged to respond to life-threatening calls, but officials said they couldn't guarantee anyone who needed an ambulance would get one. I remember, and I'll end with this, I remember when my dad was, my dad was a doctor in Israel, in the doctor's union went on strike. This is a long, long time ago before cell phones. And they basically, all the doctors in Israel, literally all the doctors in Israel got on buses and went to an undisclosed location. And it was undisclosed because if they got an emergency call, they, because of the oath they took, they would have to respond to the emergency call. So they went somewhere where there were no telephones. And it was undisclosed. You couldn't get ahold of a doctor in Israel for days, because they had a conflict with the government overpaid. The government ultimately folded. And I remember, my dad just went away for a few days. That's socially medicine. That's the kind of stuff that happens in socially medicine. Because it's unionized and it's one entity. All the doctors are government employees. Can you imagine that? I think people in America can't imagine doctors or nurses striking, all of them, not one hospital. All of them. All right, that is my quick thing of news. Somebody said, no Musk today. No, not really, Musk has said basically, for those of you who said that this was all 4D chess and he already had his replacement in line, Musk basically said that he will resign as soon as he finds a qualified CEO, but he doesn't think anybody qualified would actually want to be CEO. So Musk is not going anywhere. The poll was a sham. I don't think he expected the result that he got. I mean, Musk is not what many of you think he is, unfortunately. I wish he was. So Musk is still CEO, will stay CEO for a while at least. And we'll see, maybe he'll find somebody, but it was always true in the long run that he was going to find a CEO for Twitter, but it doesn't seem like he's any hurry in particular to find a CEO right now. All right, so I mean, I can say a lot more about Musk, but I'm sure it'll come up. I mean, the stuff I'm arguing with people about the Twitter papers on Twitter is pretty pathetic. I mean, people are comparing Twitter to the Nazis, violating rights and basically saying we just followed orders with the government involvement. There's a big difference between a company saying you can't use my platform because the government has told them to drop you or something, where you don't have a right to that platform and between people saying, oh, the Nazi party has said that I have to shoot you, sorry, and you shoot somebody. One is a clear violation of rights and the other is not a violation of rights for Twitter to de-platform you. It's not a violation of rights for Twitter to shadow ban you. It might be a violation of the terms of service and you should be able to sue about that, but it's not a violation of rights. The real rights violation is the pressure that the government puts on Twitter. That is the government censoring Twitter. Instead of Twitter being able to make a free speech decision about who to shadow ban and who not, who to drop from the platform and who not, the government is now dictating that or threatening or influencing that. That is the rights violation between Twitter, the government and Twitter, not between Twitter and you. This is not censorship by proxy. This is just straight censorship of the government censoring Twitter. Anyway, I'm sure that argument is going to continue. Marcelina, Marcelina, thank you, really, really generous, 120 pounds or euros, really, really, really appreciate it. You've basically almost gotten us to the goal for today. So thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you to all the superchats. Okay, let's answer superchat questions. We still got $15 to get to our goal, so somebody asked us $20 questions and we can be done with it. Wes says, listening in as I finish morning workout, thanks for the show. Ooh, I finished my morning workout quite a while ago. Thank you, Wes. Roland, hi from Gibraltar. It's 5.30 p.m. here, thanks, Roland. Michael says, I miss those Sunday long shows. Also, doing interviews every Thursday is good if it's someone new. Having Don, Greg, and Tara on over and over again won't raise viewership. On and on again. When was the last time I had Don, Greg, and Tara on? I don't get it, Michael, thanks. Michael has a bunch of questions here. Michael says, why didn't they give you tenure because you kept spreading objectivism to your classes? To a large extent because of my teaching, I won teaching award after teaching award after teaching award, but I was, the content they didn't like, I was teaching a class in finance and ethics, and I was teaching the class that making money is ethical, and they read Iron Rand and stuff like that, and this was at a gesture at university and the gesture did not like it. I probably should have also published more papers, so I gave them an opening. They didn't give me tenure because of what I was teaching, but I gave them an opening by not publishing more than I actually did publish. I should have published more. Thank you, John. John got us that goal. Really appreciate it. Michael says, does having superheroes with moral codes of not killing the bad guys come from altruism? Yes, very much so. It comes from the idea of sacrifice. Are both of the movements against a death penalty in general motivated by altruism? I don't think so. I think you can be against the death penalty without being altruistic. It's not the same. But the idea of putting yourself at risk so that you don't kill a bad guy, that's pure altruism. That's sacrificing, self-sacrifice yourself for the sake of what? For the sake of someone who is evil, who we've already identified as evil, he's the bad guy. It's not the same as the position on death penalty where death penalty is problematic because you can easily make a mistake and you kill an innocent person, it's not clear. And the death penalty you've already excluded this person so they're in jail, so they're no longer threats. You don't have to kill them in order to survive. You just have to put them away, unlock them away to protect yourself. James says, did the 1990s see such good quality movies because it was the most free market decade since the New Deal? I don't think so. I'm not sure the 90s were that good movies. I mean, maybe you could send me a list of great 1990s movies and I'd give you my estimation. I can't recall the 1990s being particularly good. We can see, but yeah, send me a list. That would be interesting. Tzvika, thank you. Happy Christmas, happy Hanukkah. What about all the other holidays that happen and happen around now? I mean, if you're gonna start a list, you should make a list, make it comprehensive. Thank you, Tzvika. That takes us up to significantly over our targets. So that is fantastic. Happy Merry Christmas to everybody. I guess it's what's a second night or third night of Hanukkah today, something like that. So happy Hanukkah for those of you who celebrate. Michael says, psychologists say children and young adults try on different personalities to see what fits them like trying on clothes is the second handed or the genuine practice. No, and I don't remember ever trying on personality, certainly not as an adult, but even as a kid. You suddenly experiment with different things, attitudes to how to approach other people, asking girls on dates, you experiment, but I wouldn't say that's personalities. So I guess I don't buy it and I don't know what they mean by personality. I mean, psychology is a tricky field and most psychologists I think don't quite get it. Daniel, how is the increasing quality possible without a government agencies? Crazy, I was told business owners take shortcuts. No, it turns out shockingly that even in the drug trade, when you leave them free of regulations, they innovate and they become more productive and it's just stunning. Although there's a limit to it because at the end of the day, the whole industry is guided by a gun, maybe not the government's gun, but still a gun. All right, Wes says, but remember, free market in health care is a real danger. Yes, I mean, yes, ambulances will demand payment before they take you. And of course, you won't have insurance. Why won't you have insurance? I don't know, because in a free market, insurance prices go up all the time and quality goes down or something like that. I don't know. We just know that free market in health care is a real danger. That's all we know. You can't actually concretize that for a reason. It's an abstraction with no truth to it. All right, quick reminder, on December 31st, I will be doing a show, a year-end show, summarizing what we learned in 2022 and looking forward to 2023. It'll be a long show and we will have a super chat challenge. We have an anonymous donor who is going to contribute $10,000 in matching funds. For every dollar we raise, they will match it up to $10,000. So I won't say save up your money because we still have to get to the 31st, but save up your money. And please join that day, even if it's for a few minutes, just to say hello. It'll be our wrap-up for the year. Hopefully we can get live views way up. I'll go for as long as necessary, three plus hours. And hopefully we can make it fun as well and maybe some nice interaction. I will also be announcing a members-only show, a members-only live show that will happen maybe this weekend. I'll figure it out tomorrow. I'll let you know tomorrow. A members-only show, and that'll be maybe this weekend or early next week. And that will be that, and also a topic for that. And if anybody has ideas on what you'd like as a topic for the members-only show, let me know. All right, everybody, have a great Wednesday. Have a great rest of your week. I hope you're enjoying it. And I will see you all, year-end review will be on December 31st. That will be the December 31st show. That'll be a 2 p.m. east coast time. All right, thank you. Thanks for all the super chatters. This was terrific. I will see you all tomorrow.