 Let's jump into these questions about happiness. He says, one of my closest friends is a central lefty who believes in the virtues of mixed economies. In debates about politics and political philosophy, he typically brings up the point that more or less all research shows that on average people in the mixed economies of European and Nordic countries in the Netherlands are the happiest with their lives and therefore that the middle of the road systems are the best by test. I reply that with the following points. One, you're making what we call in business a low base comparison. You're comparing versus relatively low values to situations that are even worse. In this case, the countries on hand have traditionally offered relatively high level of civil liberty, which is great, and a moderate level of economic liberty, which is not so great. The civil liberties offered is higher and is pretty much any other area in the world right now. While the economic liberty rates about average versus other Western countries are high versus the rest of the world. These countries actually even do well versus the land of the free, the USA. USA not only does not do better than normal European countries, but it does worse. Consider typically the blue states offer relatively high level of civil freedom, while others typically the red states offer relatively high level of economic freedom. But none of the US states give the people a high level of both civic and economic freedom. And on what's worse, the trend is in both kinds of states. Blue and red are quickly diminishing. B, if those Nordic countries would embrace as a fake capitalism and the principles of objectivism, that people's happiness while being in wealth would drastically increase. Having heard your recent podcast about your proponents of status and create, how proponents of status would create resonance for their ideas through pragmatic arguments in the next debate, I will surely include specific anti-pagmatism arguments and label that thinking and behavior as the philosophy of laziness, which it is, anti-idealism and mediocrity. And even it's most, even of all philosophies, anti-life and anti-reason. Other than that Bob, how else would you argue against the average happiness as the highest in mixed economy argument? What do you think is wrong or can't improve in my reasoning? So a few things. One is, every country in the world today, with exception maybe of North Korea and maybe Cuba, is a mixed economy. All countries are mixed economies. So when you're comparing the happiness of a mixed economy, you're comparing it to what? To other mixed economies. So the first thing to realize is there is no pure laissez-faire. There's no free market anyway. There's the mixed economy here and there's a mixed economy here and they're mixed in different ways. We can measure economic freedom, we can measure other types of freedom and liberty. All of them are mixed. Mixed to have socialism, capitalism, mixed to have freedom in the social sphere and lack of freedom in the social sphere, depending on the issues, depending on the place. So you're comparing a bunch of grays. There's no black and white here. And I think that's the point you're trying to get to an A. But it's much stalker than that. It's not that the countries that have mixed economies are better. Everybody has a mixed economy. So now take the famous studies that show that Scandinavian countries are the happiest in the world. Finland, for example, is the happiest country in the world. I don't know if you've met any Finns ever. I don't think they're the happiest people in the world. Anyway, but every study shows that they're the happiest people in the world. Okay, what can we learn from that? Well, one, how do the studies define happiness? What does happiness actually mean in the studies? Are the studies studies that just ask people if they're happy? Are the studies trying to find proxies for happiness? Are the proxies for happiness that they're finding any good? Do they correspond to the kind of happiness that I would consider happiness? My view is on all those constant says no, no, no, no, no. Most of these studies are measuring life satisfaction. Are you satisfied with your life? Now, one of the reasons Scandinavians are satisfied with their lives is because they're not very ambitious. So life's okay if you don't have big expectations. If you don't want to, I don't know, change the world, make a lot of money, buy a beautiful home, have a great life. I don't know, from whatever. If you're not ambitious, then whatever life throws at you is fine. As long as I have food on the table, decent job, I can bicycle to work when it's not too cold to bicycle. And, you know, everything's good. Everything's good. The heating's on. God-heating, that's good. I know Finland's not a Scandinavian country. It's a Nordic one. I know, but it's kind of Scandinavian. So we're going to include in Scandinavia. Denmark. Same thing, Denmark. Happiest people in the world. Well, generally, Danes in America are pretty happy. But in America, people, Danes are dramatically richer. And in America, so people say, why are the Nordic countries more happy than Americans? Because Americans are ambitious. Americans want more out of life. They buy self-help books all the time and they want to achieve. And as a consequence of that desire to achieve when they don't achieve, they're not as happy. And even what they do achieve, then they want to achieve more. Which is good. Which is actually what builds real happiness. Maybe not life contentment and satisfaction in the moment. And that's what you find in Denmark with all, I love Danes, but what you find in Denmark and in Scandinavia is mediocrity. Settling for the average. Settling for just okay. Americans don't settle. Some Americans are not quote happy. They're not quote satisfied. They always want more. Scandinavians are less anxious because they have a safety net, so for example, economically. They're less anxious because they've got a safety net and everything's taken care of. Free education, free healthcare, free this, free that. Americans are more anxious, yeah? But that's because Americans are risk takers. They're willing to take on risk because they know that with risk comes reward. It's part of what it means to be ambitious. So again, they self-report greater anxiety because they have greater anxiety, but it's not anxiety you want to not have. It's anxiety that is a consequence of more freedom, more choices, more ambition, more upside. Americans are dramatically richer than Europeans, including Scandinavians and non-Scandinavians like Finland. And Americans with similar genes to those Nordic states have similar life expectancies. Americans are more successful. They have more entrepreneurial enterprises. They are more startups. They are more, I mean, on every level of economic success, America just blows these countries away. So, I mean, that to me, I'm suspicious of economic, of happiness studies, period. And then even if you, and then if you figure out what exactly they're measuring, they're not actually measuring happiness, not in the sense that we mean it. And what they are measuring is something that, yes, if you're not ambitious to go up the ladder, if you're ambitious stops at just okay, then you're satisfied and just okay. Americans, do they credit or not? And that doesn't say anything about freedom because Americans are not freer in any dramatic way than Scandinavians. So the margins they are, we have a little bit more economic freedom, a little bit. In some ways, we have less economic freedom. And if you look at the economic freedom indexes, Denmark is often freer than the US, listed as freer than the US. If you look at social freedoms, we're pretty free even in the red states as compared to, you know, one of the things that Europeans don't have is they don't have a First Amendment, so they have hate speech laws. So, you know, so all of that. So don't dismiss the Americas being free, but it's not that much freer than. So people think of America as lots of fin, those countries as status, and status is happy. No, we're all just mixtures of, we regulate our businesses. Scandinavia regulates less, taxes more, America taxes less, regulates more. And if you add up all the taxes we pay, federal, state, local, payroll, all of that, we don't pay that much less than the Scandinavians or the Europeans do. So, all right, that's my answer. Hopefully, Jim, that helps you with your friend and, yeah. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to youronbrookshow.com. I go to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. Those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.