 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rocks. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Monday night. Hope everybody is having a great week. Don't you like this week, this week between Christmas and New Year? It's kind of a relaxing time. Nobody's really back at work, but you know, it's not, it's a complete vacation. It's kind of somewhere in between, between all those things. I find it relaxing, a time to do to do work and also do kind of personal planning, prepare for those New Year's resolutions and everything like that. So hopefully you guys are taking advantage of the week as well and are enjoying it. I've got a lot of comments on the new lens and wide angle. And I don't think it's, it distorts my hands when I go out there, but I don't think it, right where I am. It looks pretty good. Jeffrey's back at work, restaurant is open Monday, Monday. Are you open on Monday? Anyway, if not actually serving customers, then prepping, I'm sure. So thank you for all of you who commented on the new lens, on the look. We'll keep improving it. There will be at some point a painting hanging over here above David. Maybe, maybe I'll put something up there. You know, maybe we'll put some kind of poster painting up there. So we'll add to the decor of the room as we go along. So, but I'm glad that you guys like the look. The only disadvantage of this look, and I apologize for those of you in the podcast who can't see this, is that I actually have to close my top button now because you can see, you know, I usually would do the podcast like that. But now that's not a good look for professional podcast like mine. All right. Let's see. We are going to be talking about quickly. We're going to talk about crime a little bit and about defunding the police. So we're going to keep track of that phenomena just generally over the next months, years, you know, coming out of kind of last year and all the defunding the police. We're going to keep track of what's actually happening out there in the world. We're then going to talk about Elizabeth Wan's attacks, both in her lawn musk and on reality. And you could argue, you know, she has an interesting new theory about the source of inflation. So we'll talk about Elizabeth Wan's theory about the source of inflation. And we'll talk about exchange of tweets with a lawn musk and exchange of tweets that I think she won. So I think that is probably very different than what most people think. But I think she won that exchange because I think he basically capitulated in the end because she has them all high ground and he doesn't. And until people understand that that's what it's about, we keep losing. And then we'll end with, you know, the conflict between Trump and his supporters over vaccines, which has to be one of the funniest stories of 2021. It's a great way to end the year. And so we'll cover some of that and what happened and why why Trump is reluctant to criticize Biden now. We'll talk about that as well. So yeah, so got a bunch of stuff. Of course, we also answered your super chat questions. We'll do that at the end. So feel free to jump in with super chat questions. I see I already have three, but the focus should be on $20 questions. We do have a goal of $600, a show which we didn't make on on the day after Christmas. So we didn't make it there. So we will we'll see if we can make it today. So remember to pitch in $20 as for questions 20, 50, 300, 500. We can get there very quickly if some of you do some of the large gifts that you have done in the past. All right. Let's just quickly. Brian asks, what are you having? Harry been swaying on. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. How are you? How are you will be on a week from tomorrow to be on a week for tomorrow? I think that is January 4th. It'll be 7 p.m. East Coast time. And we will talk all things of histomology. But you can also ask him about iron hand. I mean, he's the first person to be on the show that actually knew iron hand and you'll be able to ask him about iron hand. You'll be able to ask him about free will, about how we know about anything in epistemology or anything in objectivism. It'll be completely open. So I will have a series of questions and push him a little bit on free will because I want to get us. I want us to get a good handle on this issue of free will. I also want to give him an opportunity to promote his YouTube show, which he has. Harry been sway TV. So we're going to do that as well. And so that is a week from tomorrow. I'm excited about it. I think you should be too. And hopefully you'll bring a lot of the questions you might have about epistemology, about philosophy that maybe I don't always give the best answers for. Or you don't even ask me because I'm not a philosopher. You can bring and ask Harry been swinging. So that'll be a week from tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll do a show not sure yet on the topic. We'll come up with something, but so we'll get that. I'll advertise that tomorrow and then Thursday. The show will be dedicated to a review of twenty twenty one highlights and lowlights of the year. And and yeah, so we'll do we'll do twenty twenty one, the good, the bad and the ugly for twenty twenty one. And then Saturday show will be devoted to twenty twenty two. So New Year New Year's resolutions, predictions about the coming year. I will answer any questions you have about anything about next year from policy, domestic policy, economics, objectivism, the Iran book show, whatever you guys want to talk about in terms of twenty twenty two. We'll do that on Saturday and then we'll get back to kind of a normal schedule. Like my plan is for next year to do probably two interviews a month and and and we'll go for the. Scott asks is Robert Biedler religious. I can't tell I can't tell why you asking curious why Scott is asking Alex. Thank you. That is that is very generous. I really appreciate that Scott Alex just forty nine ninety nine and Liam is getting us back on track with a twenty dollar question. So that is that is excellent. So and there's Jonathan Honing, who is almost always makes an appearance. Hey, Jonathan, it's good to see you. All right, let's jump in with with really just a quick update on the state of police defunding in America. So one of the cities most affected by BLM last year in the city may be most affected by a spike in crime over the last two years. Has been the city of Chicago. This is a city where we saw a significant cause for cutting police budgets. Significant cause for for reducing the power of police, the influence of police, the the reach of police in in our cities. And of course, in twenty twenty during when crime was going through the roof and BLM was out in the streets. And the police will be chased by BLM should be the other way around. But it wasn't looting was all over Michigan Avenue. If you remember, BLM then said looting is just a form of redistribution of wealth. This is reparations. This is a good thing. Completely. The mayor of Chicago, Lightfoot, proposed at the time, cutting the police budget by eighty million dollars, eighty million dollars. Well, now as murders have hit a twenty seven year high. Twenty seven year high. Where would that put us in terms of nineteen ninety nineteen ninety something, right? So yeah, nineteen ninety four. So nineteen ninety four murders actually peaked in Chicago, I think in ninety one. But since nineteen ninety four, they've been steadily in decline. It's been a phenomena. It has been amazing, the reduction in crime all over the United States, and particularly in the big cities like New York and Chicago. And for twenty five years, approximately, crime was declining when when Trump was elected and announced there was carnage in the streets of America. Some of the most peaceful, peaceful, less violent times in all of American history. Anyway, as Chicago is hitting right now, a twenty seven year high, erasing, erasing twenty seven years of achievement, of reduction, systematic reduction in crime, generally, and in particular in motorways. Mayor Lightfoot is panicking and running to the feds and asking attorney general Mary Garland to send additional federal law enforcement officials to the city. We can't she says we can't continue to endure the level of violence that we are now experiencing. Oh, my God, the world is crazy. This is nuts. What's going to happen? And she's actually, actually, actually asking for a for federal aid. You remember when Trump was pilloried by by Democratic mayors for for suggesting federal aid during the BLM riots and during the crime waves that followed, preceded and followed? Well, now the same Democratic mayors are requesting aid because they realize that it's out of control and now there's no politics to play. Now it's all about just trying to reduce crime. It truly is one of the last two years will go down as one of the true tragedy where at least in parts of the United States, again, these record achievements of lowering crime that we have experienced for 25 years or more than 25 years, really, since 1981, so for 30 years, have now been reversed. And we're seeing an uptick in many cities around the country, an uptick on and generally in property crime and other forms of crime, and in particular in motor. We are returning to the 1970s and 80s where crime was out of control in this country. Just, you know, one of the example of this is New York, which again has seen a dramatic increase in crime. And as a consequence, I think of that, just elected a Democratic mayor who is very much a centrist and a law and order Democrat and is committed to increasing police budgets and increasing the, you know, the presence of police. And he was a former policeman, Eric Adams, a former Republican, and he's just been elected to New York's mayor. And you can see that the electorate is rebelling against kind of the far left agenda as expressed last year in particular of defunding the police, shutting them down, eliminating them. I mean, as you know, even in Minnesota, the electorate voted against doing away with the police force in Minneapolis, even though, you know, a year ago, it looked like two, a year and a half ago, it looked like that was for certain going to pass. And yet the election in November, people don't actually want to live in crime-ridden neighborhoods. And most people, most, including people who live in those neighborhoods, realize the crucial importance, importance of the police and the value the police actually had. In San Francisco, you know, San Francisco, God, what a tragedy. I mean, San Francisco is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The whole Bay Area is just beautiful, the views, the scenery, the Golden Gate Bridge, the sky-wise skyline in downtown San Francisco, the hills, driving the windy roads. It's just, if you've never been to San Francisco, it's definitely a place to go, it's beautiful, it's inspiring. And of course, in the last few years, in the last 10, 15 years, it's been a mecca for high tech. It used to be Silicon Valley, but a lot of the high tech companies have moved north to San Francisco, Twitter, and many other companies have their headquarters there, a lot of startups, it's a gorgeous place. And yet, even when I lived in the Bay Area in the 1990s, it was a haven for the homeless, and the homeless were particularly aggressive in San Francisco, particularly aggressive towards passerbys, and particularly, I don't know, offensive in just their attitude and their behavior. But it's only gotten worse. And a few years ago, I was in San Francisco, and I was attending an event at the Tenderloin District, and at theater there was a comedy show. My son was in, and I was attending the comedy show. And it just was unbelievable. I'd never seen it like this. Basically, this is two blocks away from Union Square. The heart of San Francisco is just an encampment, the filth, hundreds of homeless people, again, aggressive, shooting up on the streets, dozens and dozens and dozens of them in this area of, I don't know, four blocks, and I had to walk through in order to get to this theater. It was not particularly fun, but even driving in the streets, they run into the streets. Some of them are obviously mentally out of it. Some of them are just on drugs. You're afraid you're going to run one of them over. It's just horrible. It's just horrible. And business owners, forget it. Nobody wants to go to that district and buy anything and shop or anything like that. Businesses are collapsing in the area because of just a mass of homelessness. Anyway, the mayor of San Francisco, again a Democrat, but more of a, probably more of a moderate Democrat by the name of London Breed, and she is, she's declared a state of emergency in the city's Tenderloin District. That is this area where all the homeless are. And she basically is encouraging the police to go and clean it up and basically get, move the drug addicts, I guess, to an area where they can be treated and they can dealt with, clean it up, prevent people from defecating and from sleeping right there in the street. That's the other thing. You had to walk around all the human poop all over the place. And it's one thing to try to evade dog poop, but human poop. And it's, so finally, finally, maybe San Francisco is going to do something about some of its homeless problem. It's still not a long-term solution. It's still not a sustainable solution. That will only come when affordable housing is actually built, real affordable housing. And that will only happen when people in the street expect it to work and expect it to do something in order to get that housing. But it's interesting. Now, in San Francisco, the progressive prosecutor who famously is not prosecuting shoplifting, and as a consequence, in San Francisco, there's this epidemic, if you will, of shoplifting. So in San Francisco, the reason this epidemic is that the district attorney has basically declared shoplifting not a crime. Anyway, the district attorney came out and he denounced the mayor's declaration, right? So he opposes the state of emergency. And the tenderloin, I guess he wants people there, you know, he wants them just to live there and just to destroy the place. He said, yelling people who have mental health struggles, putting who are vending hot dogs and other people in cages will not solve the problem cages, right? They're only, right? And so it's still a struggle in San Francisco, even though the mayor might be a little bit better. It is still a struggle given the district, you know, the attorney general of San Francisco, who is the guy who is supposed to prosecute people, is, I guess, really refusing to act. So it's going to be interesting. We'll watch what happens in San Francisco, whether anything positive comes of this. But it is interesting, this conflict in the left between the moderates who actually want to win and who actually want, I think in some way, honestly, want to create a better quality of life, but who are just dominated by altruism. And the fall left, who is completely wacky, nihilistic, doesn't care what I wrote about quality of life, is completely bought into altruism all the way to its nihilistic conclusion. That struggle among the Democrats is fascinating. And we'll see it play out in New York. We'll see it play out in Chicago. We'll see it play out in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. Many of our cities will experience this dichotomy of people who get elected, who are going to be the more moderate, but the grassroots who are far more extreme and nutty and nihilistic. And that will determine to a large extent the fate of the Democratic Party. The other thing that will determine the fate of the Democratic Party is, of course, the Republican Party. All right, so that was a quick update on that. I thought you'd find it interesting. You know, I am going to keep track of that. All right, Elizabeth Juan, the honorable, or actually no, the dishonorable senator from the great state of Massachusetts, a great state that will elect a woman like this is something else. Elizabeth Juan stinks out a unique, I think, position in American politics. She posits herself as a defender of capitalism. She differentiates herself from Bernie Sanders by saying she is not a socialist, but a defender of capitalism, but a humane capitalism, a proper capitalism, a capitalism of competition, a capitalism where the government plays a big role. Maybe she's a proponent of a Chinese-style state capitalism. I don't know. But in the election, she always says, no, no, I'm a capitalist. I'm not anti-capitalism. I just want everything regulated. She doesn't say this. But she just wants everything regulated, everything in control from the government. She says she is the fascist to Bernie Sanders as socialist. I mean, she really is a definition of fascist. She wants you all to believe you have private property. She wants you all to be having incentives as if you have private property. She wants you all to make a lot of money so she can tax it. She wants you all to innovate so that she will take credit for it, for the economic growth to generate from that. She wants the pretense of private property, the pretense of capitalism, the pretense of markets, while the property, the businesses, the markets are completely controlled by the government, by who? That's Elizabeth Warren. Very popular among Democrats, particularly, I'd say, among the sophisticated class, the class that doesn't quite like Bernie Sanders because he's too in their face socialist. But among the policy geeks, you remember when she ran for president, she had like 555 different plans. She had a plan for everything. She was going to fix everything. She had a plan, a fascist plan to address every single issue that possibly could occur. So one is very, very respected among the elites, the elite, the economists, the policy wonks, the people in the Democratic Party who want control and who want to control over pretty much everything. Well, Elizabeth Warren is worried about inflation because, as is everybody else, inflation, as we all know, is at another more than 27-year high. I mean, I guess inflation is tracking crime. It's at a over 30-year high. We haven't seen this kind of inflation since the 1980s. And arguably, it could very well get worse. We'll see how much it gets worse. Leave the projection about inflation to our Sean Saturday. But at least for now, at least for now, she is wide about inflation. And we are seeing inflation seriously increased. We're seeing inflation go up across the board. Chips, automobiles, we're seeing it in grocery stores. We're seeing it in pretty much everywhere, really. And Elizabeth Warren is riling against this. And of course, what does Elizabeth Warren believe that the problem is? What is the issue? Why do we have inflation? Now, there are a lot of theories about this. There's the monetary theory of inflation that basically says it comes from printing money. There is the basically printing money, increasing the supply of money. There is the physical theory of inflation which says that it comes from government deficits and the belief in the marketplace that the government will never pay back its debt, that that's where inflation comes from. The world of inflation expectations is debated. How do we measure money exactly is debated? I mean, there's a lot of economic theory. A lot of people have written, a lot of people won Nobel prizes in economics over this. This is a rich area of economics. But Elizabeth Warren will have none of that. I mean, all of those theories, all of those theories refute the popular theory of economics on the left today, which is the modern monetary theory, which suggests that the government could spend as much as it wants. The government's spending is never the problem, so they clearly do not hold the physical theory of inflation that money printing is not the issue. That government could spend and will, and that is behind the Democrats' attempt to pass spending bill after spending bill after spending bill with the idea that it doesn't cause inflation. Government spending, government borrowing, doesn't cause it. So what we need is another explanation. And Elizabeth Warren has the perfect explanation. The explanation is consistent with everything else she believes in. It's an explanation that serves the purpose of promoting her ideas about the economy, her ideas about, quote, capitalism. And that is that all of this inflation we're seeing right now is caused by monopolies, by monopolies. The problem in the world today is not the supply chain. The problem in the world today is not too much artificial demand because we gave people checks. The problem in the world today is not supply constraints because we lock people at home and wouldn't let them work, including in China. China, by the way, just locked down Qixion, the ancient capital of China. Qixion is an interesting city. It's got the terracotta warriors. It actually gave a terrific talk at the University of Qixion years ago. Fantastic. On the morality of capitalism. Biggest posters that anybody's ever made for one of my talks. They put them all over campus. The morality of capitalism. I had 300 people there. It was great. Anyway, Qixion has just been locked down. 13 million people have locked in their homes because of COVID. Anyway, it's none of that. It's not lock downs. It's not checks in the mail. It's not helicopter money. It's not any of these things. The actual problem in inflation is greedy businesses. I'm serious, guys. So the problem is, for example, grossistos. Grossistos, according to Elizabeth Warren, are putting, quote, corporate profits over consumers and workers. So Kroger and Albertson and Publix, there are probably a few other grocery stores, right? Small ones, big ones, HEB in Texas. They're just putting corporate profits above consumers and workers. And they're just increasing prices and increasing and increasing and increasing. And there's no competition because, I don't know, why is there no competition? Wait a minute. I don't know. There are many grocery stores. Now, there are a few big ones. But even the big ones, there are at least three. Some places more than that. I lived in Orange County. There were quite a few. And this doesn't take into account the Trader Joe's, the Whole Foods. It also doesn't take into account the Walmart grocery, the Target. Target is huge in groceries, huge in groceries, right? At least in California, they're everywhere, Target, Fresh. There's Amazon Fresh, or at least there was. That's some way they might be closing. I mean, how do markets work? If Kroger raises prices, particularly if it raises prices overall, what a grocery store customer is going to do? They're going to go to Albertson's. Or they're going to go to Publix, or they're going to go to Walmart, or they're going to go to Target. And let's say they all collude, and they get together, and they all raise prices. Well, one of them is going to cheat. One of them is going to cheat and lower prices. Customers are going to go there. They're going to make more money. Everybody else will have to match their prices. So no, competition drives prices down. Isn't it weird? That when we keep government out of our affairs, when they don't send us checks in the mail, when they don't lock us up in our homes, that when that happens, prices actually go down, not up. As productivity increases, prices go down, not up. Chip shortage is not caused by a lack of corporate competition. There's plenty of corporate competition. The cost of milk, the cost of eggs, this is what we're experiencing in a way is classical inflation. It is a consequence of artificial demand, chasing fewer goods, because we haven't managed to catch up with the production of goods to fit the artificial demand. Where did the artificial demand come from? From the fact that we printed checks and sent them to everybody in their mailbox. This is what traditionally has been called helicopter money and isn't interesting. Isn't interesting that whoever gets the money first, this money that the government hands out, they're the ones who drive our prices. So for example, when financial institutions get the money first, when it's done through the Federal Reserve buying mortgage-backed securities and things like that, what is that money flow? It flows into assets. It flows into the stock market. It flows into the bond market. It flows maybe sometimes into real estate. But when we actually send that common guy checks, where does the money flow? It flows into groceries. It flows into automobiles. It flows into other things. The prices go up. This is not rocket science. It's completely empirically observable. Apollo asked, do you go to the corner shop to buy a pint of milk and six eggs? I do not, because I don't drink milk. And my wife buys most of our groceries. I sometimes go, but usually my wife is responsible for that. So I don't know what to do with eggs. I wouldn't know what an egg looked like and what to do with it. What would you do with eggs? Oh, you eat them. But then I get to find a product. And I don't get the process. Inflation occurs when you have a high artificial demand across the board, across the entire economy. And that can only happen with suddenly, out of nowhere, people have more money than they had before. And that can happen when the government hands it over. But so me as a theory of inflation, I think, is very consistent with what I just said, Alex. It is the idea that whoever touches the money first has the greatest impact on prices, that it is a monetary phenomena. It is caused by the Federal Reserve. It's caused by the central bank. John Cochran's theory of inflation is more focused on government deficits and expectations regarding the ability of the government to pay back its debt. Cochran has a book coming out on his fiscal theory. I think it's interesting. I don't have a final statement about who I think is right here. But my guess is, you could probably integrate Mises's theory with Cochran's theory, and you would get closest to the truth. You like even a wider lens? I don't think we can go much wider than this. This is like an 18 millimeter, so it's already ultra wide angle lens. I think wider than this, we'd start getting distortions in my face and stuff. So pay attention to this, guys, because what is Elizabeth Juan really trying to do here? What she's trying to do is provide more justification for a much more robust antitrust agenda. And we've never seen, so she's going to argue that any time we see prices go up, that is a sign of monopoly power. And that is a sign that we should sicken the antitrust division on those companies. So this is a trial balloon to see if we can expand the definition of antitrust, if we can expand the role of the antitrust authorities, if we can go off the businesses in a much more systematic, much greater way. And this is, again, her fascist-like attempts to expand the role of government, control businesses more, break them up. She's, remember, she's pro-capitalist. She wants more competition, not less. She took those classes about perfect competition, those bogus economic classes on perfect competition seriously. And what she wants to do is take away any kind of market power, any kind of size. She wants to destroy the winners in competition. So that we constantly get every business of size broken up into a tiny little bit of pieces so that we can get as close as we can to perfect competition. If you remember, perfect competition is the theory that the capitalist ideal, this is, again, why she's capitalist. This is the distortion that the capitalist ideal is lots of companies competing perfectly, all having the same information, all having the same knowledge, all having the same productivity level, all innovating at the same rate, all exactly the same. The world isn't like that. There's nothing in the world like that. Nobody has perfect information, perfect knowledge. Nobody wants to be the same. Why do you start a business? Not because you want to be the same. You want to be better. You want to be different. So this is part of this broad agenda of control, control, control, and using antitrust, which your Democrats have, using antitrust to control our businesses to beat them up. They're getting more and more support, unfortunately, from Republicans. Whoever is in control of the Senate, Republicans, and Democrats, antitrust is on the rise. It's likely that a Republican president in the future is going to support antitrust, increase use of antitrust to go after. His favorite enemies, let's say it's big tech or something like that. Thank you, John. Really appreciate that. Really appreciate the support. John gave $25 and says, he always enjoys this show. He thanks me. And Alex just rounded all his questions up to $100 for the holidays. Thank you, Alex. But that wasn't, I mean, Elizabeth Warren's been busy. She's trying to raise her profile. I think she's sensing that maybe, just maybe, Biden won't be in a position to run for president in two years. And maybe there'll be a primary in the Democratic Party. And given how old she is, this will be her last shot at trying to go for the presidency. And I think she's trying to raise her profile. Because not only is she advocating for robust antitrust in order to cure us from inflation, but she is going after the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. And in particular, she's doing that in the context of advocating for wealth tax and advocating for increased wealth taxes. So what's going on with Elizabeth Warren and Elon Musk? Well, I think it all started when a pro-publica reports in November came out saying that Elon Musk paid no taxes in 2018. And that, indeed, I can't remember the exact number. You know, the Musk's wealth went from 2014 to 2018 from $14 billion to $455 billion. It increased by $14 billion. But he only paid $455 million in taxes. And in 2018, he paid no taxes. And what Elizabeth Warren is saying, yeah, I mean, he didn't pay taxes because he had no income. So my solution to that is let's tax wealth. And when people like Elon Musk, their wealth increases, they'd have to pay a lot of taxes. So she tweeted, according to the support, Elon Musk didn't pay any federal tax in 2018. Neither did Jeff Bezos in 2007. From 2014 to 18, the 25 richest Americans got $401 billion richer. But only paid 3.4% of that in federal income taxes. Yeah, because that wasn't their income. That was their wealth increase. Now, you know, this guy, Rick Macron-Taco, I guess, wrote, for US citizens opposed to the unrealized capital gains tax, which is a form of a wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren was supporting, here's an example of a tax file and diplomatic letter template I made. You can use it and send it to your elected officials. And what it said was, I'm just opening this thing up, what the letter said was, I expect you to oppose the widened proposal to tax unrealized capital gains. Although the proposal targets billionaires and not myself, the government of elected representatives have a track record of scope creep when writing new taxes. I anticipate that any new unrealized capital gains tax will slowly make its way down to middle-class retirement investments over the next several years. It will start with billionaires, then eventually millionaires, then the modest investments will get hit possibly within a decade. Although principal residences and holding 401k plans apparently will be excluded, the widened proposal takes new tax sites a further a step closer to opposing unrealized capital gains tax on the average investor. So he wrote that. Musk, Elon Musk, get response to that. He says, exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you. So the argument here is not a moral argument against taxing billionaires, not an argument about how productive they are and how much, in a sense, they have already given to all of us to quote society. It's not an argument about it's their property. It's an argument about don't tax them. If you tax them, they're ultimately going to go after you. Now, then Musk gets named person of the year. And of course, Elizabeth Warren doesn't like that. So she writes in Twitter, let's change the weak tax code so the person of the year will eventually pay taxes and stop freeloading off of everyone else. And what is Musk's response? He says, stop projecting. And he attaches an article with the title of Elizabeth Warren as a fraud who lies about being a Native American or whatever. And then he says, you remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason. And then he says, please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen. And then he goes back to the original thread and he posts. And if you open your eyes for two seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year. Now, everybody went wild. He called Senator Karen. The internet was hugely supportive of Elon Musk. They got excited. Musk is this amazing person. Wow, this is incredible. This is returning fire, as Scott says. This is amazing. But who won that exchange? Who won that short exchange? Well, Elizabeth Warren won it by a mile. By a mile. No argument was made against the wealth tax. Musk almost did was go straight to add harm in him. All he did was troll her. There was no argument other than, what's his argument? This year, I'm going to pay more taxes than any American has ever paid in history. And you know why he's doing that? Because in a Twitter poll, more people wrote that he should sell stock so he could pay taxes than people said don't sell stock. Say sold stock so he could pay taxes, less legitimizing her claim, legitimizing the idea that he should be paying taxes on his wealth. So what he did was he turned his wealth into income so he could pay taxes. He basically completely fell into Elizabeth Warren's trap and has for months. He accepts the idea that it's legitimate for them to take our money. He says things like, I allocate capital better than they do, which is true. But that's what he should be pushing. It's my money. But instead, you see, to win on Twitter is to insult the other side. If you insult the other side, you win. But that's not who wins in life. It's not who wins in politics. You win if you can capture the maw high ground. And Musk did not capture the maw high ground. He gave in to the maw high ground. Oh, I do pay my taxes. Oh, I'll pay more taxes this year than anybody has ever paid in American history. Oh, so it's legitimate to demand that you pay a lot of taxes. Yeah, he should have refused to pay. He should have not sold his stock unless he wanted to sell it for other reasons. He should have not sold his stock. And he should not have paid. He should have said, I follow the law. The law does not demand me paying taxes when I have no income. In 2018, I had no income, paid no taxes. This year, I had X income, I'll pay my taxes. By the way, he should have said, I pay way too much taxes. You should leave the money in my hands because I am actually productive. When you send it to Elizabeth Wan, she's unproductive, she squanders it, she wastes it, she destroys it. And by the way, I have, look how I've changed the world. What has Elizabeth Wan done? What is the last thing she invented? Who was the last person she employed? What part of the world did she make a better place to live? Where, where, where are all the values that Elizabeth Wan has brought to the world? I can point to the values I brought to the world. I can show you the wealth I created for others and for myself. And my wealth is in my stock. And that stock, as he says sometimes in interviews, is not determined by me, it's value, it's determined by the market. The market says, this is what I'm, this is the value I created. I don't know where Elizabeth Wan, anything. And I don't know the American government, anything. And I don't know society, anything. I produced, could I enjoy producing? I produced the values I believed were good. And the only reason they're valuable is because you guys buy them because it makes your life better. That is a moral defense. Not, oh stop bitching and complaining Elizabeth Wan, stop being such a bitch, stop being this, stop being that. And by the way, I pay all the taxes. I pay 11 billion in taxes this year. More than anybody's ever paid into. Okay, who cares? Why is any of that relevant? But you see, we're conditioned by Twitter to view any exchange, the winner of an exchange is the one who insults the most, the one who trolls the most. That's the winner. Alex, thank you. All right, that was my Elizabeth Wan versus Elon Musk. Okay, final segment for today before we go to our super chat questions. And that has to do with my favorite president, my favorite former president now, the loser in chief, Donald Trump. So Donald Trump and Bill O'Reilly, another one of my favorite human beings on the planet who banned me from his show in 2003. So Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump doing these live events, I hear they're not even sold out, but anyway, they did a live event last week. And during the live event, like Bill O'Reilly is like, I got vaccine and I got the vaccine. And Donald Trump said, I did too, and they get booed in the audience. And then Donald Trump said, and I got the booster. And then there's real booze in the audience and people really freak out over that. And then a few days later, Donald Trump goes on Candace Owen's show, Candace Owen, the person who many people told me was like the future, the great future of the rights. Anyway, he's on Candace Owen's show and Candace is challenging vaccines. She's an anti-vaxxer when it comes to COVID vaccines. She's worse than anti-vaxxer. She's a hater of big pharma. Anyway, in an interview with Candace Owen, he says, Trump says, quote, I came up with a vaccine with three vaccines. All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than a month. It was supposed to take five to 12 years. So Owen cuts in and she says, and yet more people have died under COVID-19 this year, by the way, under Joe Biden than under you. And more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how, and he cuts her off and he said, oh no, the vaccines work. Right, finally, I agree with Donald Trump on something. But some people aren't taking them. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospitals are the ones who don't take the vaccine. And then he continues, but it's their choice, still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you're protected. Look, the results of the vaccine are very, very good. And if you get it, it's a very minor form, I guess he means in terms of the risk. People aren't dying when they take the vaccine, he says. I agree with Donald Trump, scary idea. But many, many people on the right do not agree. The right flipped out, flipped out. Stopped to steal organizer Ali Alexander wrote, remember what Trump said? You would be playing right in the Democrats' hands by mocking the rushed, ineffective shot. Yeah, Joe Biden praised him and his booster shot. Trump, stop, just stop. Have your position backed by Fauci and allow us to have ours, which is backed by science, by the way. This losing is getting boomer level annoying. Yeah, he's losing. This is the guy who organized, stopped to steal. Maybe he's coming to realization that Trump is indeed a loser. Conservative cartoonist Ben Garrison, who has been a strong supporter of Trump, caused some surprise by releasing a new cartoon criticizing the former president for his position of vaccines that depict the Trump on a vaccine bandwagon. While people wearing red make America great again, hats booed him. And of course, the defining voice today of the right, Alex Jones, just flipped out, just flipped out. He says, this is an emergency Christmas day and I'm warning to President Trump. You're either completely ignorant about the so-called vaccine gene therapy that you helped ram through with operation warp speed or you're one of the most evil men that was ever lived. You're one of the most evil men who has ever lived. I mean, I for one think it's a second, but. What you said, Jones goes on to say, what you told Candace Owen is nothing but a raft of dirty lies. Candace Owen, of course, later on went on to say, I have no issue with any person who wants to get the vaccine, Owens wrote. I just will never, ever let that vaccine into my body. I believe firmly that Big Pharma is, listen to this, I believe firmly, firmly that Big Pharma is the greatest evil on the face of the planet. I am healthy, young in shape and simply unafraid of COVID-19. Good for the greatest evil, greatest evil on the face of the planet is Big Pharma. This is Candace Owen. This is the woman many, many people out there considered the rising voice of the Republican Party of the right. She was this brilliant black female who was gonna shake things up. Now she, from the right, declaring Big Pharma, an industry responsible for life extending life, curing diseases, improving quality of life for millions, hundreds of millions, billions of people around the world. They, these companies who do this, they are the greatest evil on the face of the planet. And you wonder why I get so angry with the right because they are supposed to be better than this. I'd expect that from Elizabeth Warren. I'd expect that from OEC. I'd expect that from Bernie Sanders. But this is now from Candace Owen, from the right. Now it's just to give you a flavor of Trump. So Biden went, Biden's press secretary and Biden thanked Trump for advocating for that scene, thanked him for doing warp speed, you know, giving credit, giving credit for producing the vaccines, right? He said, you know, he said, this is from Biden. Thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, America is one of the first countries to get the vaccine. Of course, he doesn't mention the pharma companies, God forbid, just the scientific community, right? So then Trump is interviewed the same day that Biden has said this. He's such a narcissist, it's funny because what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do, right? He says, Trump says that he was most surprised and appreciative of Biden's acknowledgement. And he said, quote, it's a little tough to be overcritical now, Biden, because he just thanked us for the vaccine and thanked me for what I did. You know, that's the first. So it's very tough for me to be overly critical of Biden now. He continued to say, you know, Biden's around to a terrific thing. They make a lot of people happy. I think he did something very good. You know, it has to be a process of healing in this country and now we'll hope a lot. Oh my God. Donald Trump, ladies and gentlemen, the analysisist of unimaginable, unimaginable too, that somebody like that could have occupied the White House. This is the man who you want to be president again. You know, he loves Biden now, why? Because Biden complimented him. He loved everybody in his administration when they were nice to him, when they said nice things about him. He hated them when they criticized them, when they opposed his policies, when they challenged him. That's exactly the opposite mindset that you should have as president of the United States. You should want people to challenge you. You should want people to question you. God help us. If there was a God, we should all be praying daily that Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee in 2024. Anybody, almost, but Trump. Yeah, at this point, I'll take DeSantis. I'm not excited about DeSantis. I don't like DeSantis, but I'll take DeSantis over Trump. Absolutely. But I'm not excited about DeSantis, unfortunately. Unfortunately. All right, we will now turn our attention to the super chat questions. Oh, one more thing I have to do. Sorry. One more thing. I promise Shahzabat. You're gonna give me 10 minutes. I'm gonna get a quick review of a TV show. So I was, Shahzabat contributed $250 to the Iran Book Show to review a season two, episode nine of the Star Trek The Next Generation, a episode called Measure of a Man. Now, I don't know how many of you have watched Star Trek The Next Generation. I have not, particularly, but I did watch this episode and I know a little bit about Star Trek The Next Generation. I watched a few episodes in the past. I'm a fan of the original Star Trek. Anyway, in this episode, Data, who is a cyborg, he's a computer, he's a robot, right? In this episode, a scientist wants to take Data, who is this robot, who has been working on the Enterprise and has been a valued member of the Enterprise's crew. They want to take him apart and they want to figure out how he works because he's a unique robot. He's like one of a kind. There's only one like him as far as we know in the universe. The scientist who built him has died and the other knowledge about how to make him has gone and the scientist wants to take him apart and figure out how he works so he can create more of him. And Data says, no, I don't want you to take me apart. And then there's a whole debate, which goes in front of a trial court about the fundamental question. Is Data this robot? Is it property? And the scientist constantly calls Data it. The crew members all call him he. This is before pronouns were an issue, right? Is Data human being? Or, well, he's not a human being. The real question is, does Data have rights? Does Data have rights? In other words, is he property or is he an autonomous, right-bearing being? Not human, but a being. And the question comes up in this trial. In a sense, implicitly, where do rights come from? Where do rights come from? So it's a fascinating episode. And indeed, I think one of the great strengths of Star Trek, both original and the next generation, is the fact that a lot of the episodes, not all of them, but a lot of them, deal with fundamental philosophical issues. They ask fundamental philosophical questions. And they often present alternative viewpoints about these issues. So, you know, when the prosecution has to prosecute, and it's interesting because they create a little drama because the prosecutor is a friend of Data's who's worked with him on the ship, who thinks he actually has rights, but is forced to be the prosecutor through, I guess, the law, and is required to do the best job he can as a prosecutor. Basically, what he does is, he starts taking Data a little apart and shows that Data is a machine. He's a computer, a robot, a machine. And it seems like he's won the day, that's it. But the question still is, what gives us rights? Now, they don't get the answer quite right. They don't get the answer quite right because they don't actually, they miss a couple of things. They don't actually conceptualize reason. But what I found fascinating was that they did conceptualize, is values. Machines don't value. Machines don't want. Machines just do. It has shown that Data values. He doesn't just do what his program says to do. He actually values things. He makes choices. He chooses between values. He has favorites. And of course, what they almost get to, but don't, is the idea that Data has free will. And the Data can actually reason, not just compute, not just do statistical analysis, but can actually reason. Because that is the existence of free will. The existence of reason, which necessitates free will. And if you're curious about that, you can ask Harry Benz wearing it next week, a week from tomorrow who will be on the show for an interview. But it is this reasoning capability. It's free will that makes a human being a human being in a biological sense, but makes an entity, no matter whether they're human or not, an entity that has rights. It is true that for Data, and it's implied in the storyline, but it's true for Data that the enemy of Data, and he has enemies because he has values. He's concerned about his own existence. He doesn't want to be taken apart because he values his own life. Again, all characteristics of a being with rights is that forces the enemy. And forces the enemy because forces the enemy of the mind, but to have a mind means a reasoning mind. And that means you have rights. So it's a fascinating presentation. It doesn't quite get to the core of it. It doesn't quite get to the idea of reason of free will. But implicitly it does, because it talks about choices, it talks about values, it talks about his mind. And the very fact that you need a trial, the very fact that Data won't just follow orders, the very fact that Data's willing to say, no, I don't want that. Suggest that he has a consciousness. Now, yes, I know in life, consciousness is a biological phenomenon. This isn't life. This is a physical phenomenon. This is a physical phenomenon. This is a physical phenomenon. This isn't life. This is a TV show. So in a TV show, you can create a consciousness that is not biological because the essence is not the biology. The essence is a consciousness with will, values and a drive for life. Alex asks, can Data have values if he's technically immortal? He's not immortal. Or anti-mortal robot is the reference. He's not immortal. That's the whole point. The whole point is, for example, you can turn him off. You can go up to him and flip a button and he's off. You can dismantle him. You can break him to shreds. The whole point about an immortal robot in Rand's example is it's immortal. You can't destroy him. You can't kill him. No matter what you do to him, he will continue living. So no, Data is not immortal. And the episode shows that because why doesn't he want to be dismantled? Because once he's dismantled, they might not be able to put it back together again. He might cease to exist. All right, we are... Shows about, I hope you enjoyed that. I hope that was of value. I'm not sure if you're on right now. I haven't seen you, so you're probably not there. Action Jackson maybe make my review of this a short video. That way shows about can get value directly from it without listening to the whole show necessarily. All right, well basically half way to where we need to be. Last few shows have been difficult to get you guys to get to our $600 goal. We have a lot of people watching live now. I hope some of you who are watching live will consider supporting the Iran Book Show. You can support the Iran Book Show by Super Chat. You can go right now and give a contribution through the Super Chat feature. You can just contribute or you can use that to ask a question. We've got $300 to go. $20 questions get priority. And if we do like Anthony just did a $20 question, so we can do a bunch of $20 questions like Anthony just did, 15 of those will get us to 300 bucks. If there's some of you on right now who are not monthly supporters, this is a great way to support the show, value for value. Show you appreciation for what I do. Four shows a week, two hours pretty much. Every show to have a feeling today might go over two hours. We'll see. We're trying to get a 600, so I might have to stay on here until we get there and talk your ears off until we get to the number. Maybe you're saving up for the New Year's Eve show on the 30th. Don't just save it all up. You know, let's get every show at 600. Let's make it predictable. That'd be great. High low review will be coming. I've not had an opportunity yet to watch it, but I will be watching it the next, hopefully this week or next week. I've got a couple of movies I've got. High Low, I've got, I've got, what was the other one? Kiki's Delivery Service, and I've got a third movie, whose name I don't have with me right now, but I will get to it. So just an inducement, guys. It's the contributions you make in the Super Chat. It is the contributions you make on the monthly contributors in your on bookshelter.com slash support, Patreon, subscribe star that make this show possible, that supply me the income to be able to put the time and effort into doing these shows. You can show the appreciation for that by doing it here. All right, I will leave you alone for a little bit while I answer some of these questions. Okay, Liam asks, you really believe most people are shellacked by altruism? It's not an issue of belief, it's an absolutely fact. I think most people are self-sensitive narcissists who would let you die in the street, most people on thinking about the needs and feelings of others. Yes, they are. Even if they reject them, they are. And they feel like they should care about them. And because they don't, because they are most of them narcissists, they feel guilty for not taking care of the people in the streets. That's why they vote for higher taxes on themselves. That's, what do you think we regulate everybody? So whether they know it or not, they're all altruists. The altruism doesn't manifest itself by sacrificing their life for every bomb in the street. The altruism manifests itself by supporting every proposal that anybody ever proposes to help the bomb on the street. The fact that they can never muster an argument, even alone mosque, can never muster an argument against stealing his money to support every bomb on the street. It comes from the fact that they feel guilty for not supporting every bomb on the street and therefore give to charity huge amounts of money in America, not because they believe in the charities, but because they feel guilty for not supporting the bomb on the street. It causes millions of people to go out to the soup kitchens even though they hate them. It changes behavior. And most importantly, what altruism which infuses everybody in the culture does is it prevents people from actually pursuing self-interest. So the narcissists, but they won't actually acknowledge the need of self-interest. They won't actually pursue a proper view of self-interest because that's not moral. And they don't like people who pursue their self-interest. Why do we regulate businesses? Why don't we trust businessmen to do the right thing? Because everybody knows businessmen are selfish. We hate selfishness because we're altruists whether we acknowledge it or not. And therefore we know that since selfishness as the altruists have taught us is about lying, stealing, and cheating, we have to control the businesses. And I've met so many businessmen who tell me I would never cheat. I would never lie. I would never steal. But that other industry, that other businessmen, those guys, they would all the time. So regulate every other industry except mine because we're better. That's the narcissism. But even that narcissism is a product of altruism. It shrinks the scope of people's thinking about their life. So it's absolutely permeates the culture. It's everywhere. It's what movies people like, right? We love the superheroes who don't have a life. And we expect them to sacrifice whatever it takes to save us. And if they don't kill anybody, that's even better. Even the good guys, the bad guys, they shouldn't kill. So yes, people are narcissists, but their narcissism is effused with altruism. Dave Goodman says, are CEOs having the courage to stand up enough to change the culture or our intellectuals are more fundamental in necessity? We need both. We need both. And certainly we need the intellectuals. That is a fundamental necessity because it's the intellectuals that give the ammunition to the businessman. But no, businessmen are not standing up for their rights. We still don't have that in the world. Maybe in 20 years, it's still not. We still don't have it. Michael says, the male failure of the objective movement is not being able to reach along Musk and Joe Rogan. God, why you put those two in the same category? I have no idea. Joe Rogan's Musk is a, with all the criticism and everything, he's brilliant and Joe Rogan's very good at interviewing and he found a little niche that's neither right nor left. Sometimes it left, sometimes it's right. It's eclectic. It's neither here nor there. But it's non-intellectual and it's anti-science and a lot of other things. He says, Michael says, I believe Lex Friedman can get you sit down with Elon Musk. The fact that you believe something, Michael, does not make it reality. I doubt that Lex Friedman can get me and sit down with Elon Musk. We will certainly try. And if I got to sit down, I would take it and I also don't believe much would happen from a sit down, but I would take it just on an off chance that something did. John says, I really enjoyed your sad dish show, although it was unable to catch it live. Excellent. Thank you, John, for the $20. Somebody else gave some apple jacks at Happy New Year, Iran, with $20. Thank you, guys. We're, I think, up to, what, $400 now. So all we need now is 10 questions with $20. We got five. So we got five out of the 15. We need now another 10 and we are there. So keep the $20 questions flowing. And by the way, on December 30th, I'm hoping we can go above 1,000. I don't know if you remember, but in last year, January 31st, we raised $6,000. Vice-superchair, $6,000. So I don't know if we can make $6,000 again, but we certainly should go well over $1,000. I'm very hopeful that happens. On my review, we don't have a match this year, but we're still gonna push to make it a significant fundraising event and to get kind of 2022 off to a great start. I'm not doing New Year's Eve, because as it turns out, I've got a wedding to attend as somebody's getting married on New Year's Eve, and then I've got dinner with friends, but I will do the day before. I'll do December 30th. We'll do our equivalent of the New Year's Eve show, and we will, if we can make $6,000, that'd be amazing, but it'd be great if we can shoot and get over $1,000. We wanna make it a significant event in terms of fundraising. We wanna really get 2022 off there. We wanna end 2021 with a bang. Let's see, more $20 questions. James asks, in the last election, 23% of Cali Hispanics voted Trump, while 41% did so in Texas. Why did so many Texas Hispanics vote for anti-immigration, immigrant Republicans? Do they just not care about the racism against them? This has been a long time phenomena of the fact that in Texas, Hispanics have voted Republican in much greater numbers than in California, and this has, I think, pretty deep and obvious roots. In California, the Republican Party has been explicitly antagonistic to the Hispanic community. It has been viciously anti-immigrant. It has been viciously anti-Hispanics. California, which has as a percentage, just as many of them are more Hispanics than California has, sorry, Texas. Texas, Republicans in Texas just don't behave in such a horrible way towards Hispanics. They have not made, at least historically, have not made immigration as big of an issue as California has. They have not made, going after Hispanics, a big deal. If you remember George W. when he was governor of Texas, got a significant number of Texans voting for him, Hispanics in Texas voting for him. He was very friendly towards the Hispanic community, and indeed, as president proposed significant immigration reform, which would allow more legal immigrants to come across the border, a bill that was stopped by the Democrats, who were traditionally the anti-immigration party. So Hispanics are very much responding to the attitude of the Republican party in the particular states to them. They are treated really, really badly in California, and they're treated much better in Texas by the Republicans. Still not well, but better. Hispanics, both in California and in Texas, are conservatives. Certainly when it comes to things like family, and when it comes to social issues, but also when it comes to economics, Hispanics are not socialists. They're not typically big government, Democrat type socialists. You don't see a lot of Hispanics going for Bernie Sanders. They voted for Biden, but they're not Bernie Sanders fans. So that would be my explanation for what happened. I also wonder whether the, what do you call it, the turnout rates in California among Hispanics were low because the ones who would have voted for Trump, what's the point, if you're gonna vote for Trump, what's the point of voting in California? It's obvious California is gonna go for Biden. So you stay home. So California numbers, because it votes so late, by the time it votes, everybody knows who's won, and because it's so obviously democratic, it's hard to break down the results. It's hard to analyze them. But Hispanics all over the country, maybe with the exception of California, voted in favor of Trump much more than they did in other places because I think that they, they don't actually like the Democrats and they know that Democrats deep down anti-immigration to a large extent just like the Republicans. Okay, Stephen asks, you've said that you believe existence is infinite and that animals have no souls. Existence is infinite. I don't think I ever said that. Is that coming from your experience to Judaism or Objectivism? I don't think existence is infinite. I don't know what you mean by existence is infinite. Time exists within existence, right? Within the universe. So existence is, the universe is finite, but what that means exactly from a physics perspective, I don't know, it's a good question for Harry Binsway. Animals have no souls. No, they don't have any souls because they have no free will, because they have no conceptual ability. I don't consider a soul some mystical thing that lives inside of us. I think our soul is our unique consciousness. It's a soul only human beings have because only human beings can think, only human beings can conceptualize. Only human beings can experience art, for example, which is a phenomena of the soul. So no, that is my view of Objectivism. I think the view of animals having no soul is I think a position in Objectivism. As I understand what soul means. Soul being human consciousness, the feature of human consciousness, the way human consciousness functions in response. Anthony asks over under on the Supreme Court breaking Biden's mandate. I think there's a, I think it's 70, 30 that they overturn the mandate, that they vote against the mandate. I think it's 70, 30 based on a technicality. They won't, I don't think they will come out against mandates but they'll say doing it through OSHA that wasn't the intent of the law. If you're going to have a mandate, you could have to have to do it through Congress. There won't be anti mandates. There'll be anti this mandate and the way it was applied, the way it was initiated through OSHA, through Jennifer asks, even if you were immortal, wouldn't you still need values for your life to be flourishing and not just existing? I think the point that Rand is making is even flourishing is in the context of an alternative. An alternative ultimately for flourishing is death. And not, it could be slow death but it's death. That is happiness, flourishing, success, achievement would mean nothing. So for example, it's not, we have pain and pleasure and they're there on purpose. It's not that, unless you experience pain you can't appreciate pleasure but unless there's the potential for playing. Unless there's the potential for death. Unless there's the potential for going out of existence. The values are not real. The values are not meaningful. But that is a good question because for Rand, existence and flourishing are the same. There is no existence without flourishing. Non-existent, non-flourishing is the same as dying. Non-flourishing is the same as dying. It's the same as moving away from existence, hurting yourself, destroying yourself. That is again, a good question for Harry, Ben's weighing it to the question about the robot. Cause he teaches classes on the meta-ethics and Rand's theory of ethics, so it's a great question for him. All right, before we go on, let's get a roundup of where we are. We're $130 short of our goal. It's not that much money. Sometimes one person comes in and just does it and we get there. That would be great if somebody did that and we didn't have to go for three hours today in order to get there. Jacob, thank you. And also, let's stop with the, I'll take Jacob's question, but let's stop with $5 questions just cause I'm not gonna have time to answer them. So let's stick with $20 questions and or more. And if somebody out there is interesting in supporting the show at the $100 level or $200 level or the $125 level, that would be amazing cause that would get us very quickly to our goal. And we could all go, yeah, we could, I know some of you want me to do three hours. Maybe you're holding back the money, so I do three hours. But that's kind of a borderline cool and unusual punishment. Jeffrey writes, the term atheist has been bothering me lately. It makes it sound as if theism is the default for humans. So atheism needs to differentiate themselves. Shouldn't the reverse be true? I don't define myself relative to others. True, and that's why you shouldn't make a big deal about the fact that you're an atheist. The atheism is not a defining characteristic, right? Reason is defining characteristic. Your values are defining characteristic. Atheism is just an absence of belief. The only reason it gains significance and only reason people talk about it and it has rises to the level of something important is because so many human beings, all of our majority of human beings are not. They believe. So to contrast yourself with the majority of human beings out there, there is a term called atheism, but it shouldn't be at the forefront of who you are, what you are, and let it define you. And this is how you introduce yourself to the world. Thessie, you really should go to bed. It is 1.30 in the morning. You are exhausted. It's the beginning of the week. You've just recovered from COVID. I don't want to sound like your dad or like your doctor, but you should get some sleep and stay strong so you can watch tomorrow's show, which will be in the same hours and you'll be up late again tomorrow. So go to sleep. Michael, what gives evil people the fuel to keep going? Why don't they just off themselves? Well, because offing themselves would require them to recognize that they're evil. What keeps them going is the idea that they are doing, quote, good, that they are some of them in a sick way, get energy out of the evil that they do, sadists. So it's very rare that evil people know that they're evil, face the fact that they're evil, recognize their own evil. So what keeps them going is the desire to do whatever they want to do, desire to destroy, the desire to see the world born. It's desire, it's pure emotion. John asks, would you rather see Rod Steiger in the porn brokers or Dr. Givago? I'd rather see Rod Steiger in the porn brokers. I'm not a big fan of Dr. Givago. I never enjoyed that movie. I don't know, there's something about the movie that I really didn't like. I can't remember it now. It's so many years ago. And I like Rod Steiger pretty much in anything. I don't ask a $20 question. What do you think of the negative effects on children's mental health when exposed to the COVID pandemic in the eyes of the media? I think it's horrible. I think it's the exposure to the stereo of the media and the irrationality of adults and irrationality of teachers and masks and all of that for children, for all of us, I think is terrible for our mental health. And for children in particular, they have not had a normal childhood. It has been completely irrational from day one from the beginning of last year from the first sign of this virus. Irrationality is ruled. That is not a way to raise children and it's not good for them and it's not healthy for them. So I think it's had horrible effects but it's not just the media. It's the media, it's our politicians, it's their parents, it's teachers, it's their neighbors, it's their friends who they can't see because everybody's wearing masks. It's the whole thing is destructive for the psychology of young children. All right, that was the last $20 question. So now guys, it's up to you whether you're gonna help us make the goal today or not. We're short, what are we short? Katherine, you don't wanna disappoint Katherine. Now when Katherine is here today, she took some time off of her busy schedule. You know, we can give five people to do $20 and maybe one of them do 25 and we're done. We're done. I won't bug you anymore. We can make 600, there's no reason to stop where you are. There you go, Jacob is putting in $10 and aim all pancake is asking a $20 question. We can do this, we'll start with the $20 question. So just four people, $20 each, $20 questions and we're done. Have you heard of anyone specifically naming the system of anarchy when calling out Marble, social justice, vigilante ideation and the delegitimization of law enforcement, do NCAPs, bear some responsibility? Yes, people do call it anarchy. And look, there's always been an element on the left that was pro-anarchy and it's always been the case that libertarian, so-called anarcho-capitalist have been sympathetic to the left. So a lot of libertarians love, a lot of libertarians love, oh God, what's his name? Noam Chomsky, a lot of them, right? They love Noam Chomsky, why do they love Noam Chomsky? Because Chomsky is leftist anarchist and they'd rather have the anarchy even if they get left with it. Anarchy is too much of a value for them. Actually, if everybody listening right now just makes a $2 contribution, that would be really cool. We just do a bunch of $2 and a lot of you can't afford $20, a lot of you can't afford 10 or five. I recognize that and I appreciate that. Most of you, my guess is can afford two bucks. So you can go and super chat and give $2 right now as Ryan did and if all of you do $2, we'll get there. RDF just did $5, but if you do just make a contribution if you don't have a question, $2, $5, that's a great idea. Thank you Ryan. Thank you RDF, thank you Jacob for doing $10 and we'd make the $600 with a huge number of small contributions and that would be super cool. So yes, I think that NCAPs as they're called legitimize anarchy, they don't differentiate between the different anarchists. They all share a big tent and anarchist tent. They're communist anarchists, which is what Norm Chomsky is. Anarchism is an evil ideology and people who try to legitimize it by making it part of the libertarian, so-called libertarian free market movement, you know, do damage to the cause. Lyvan, I think I pronounced that right. Lyvan, thanks Jennifer for $2, Anthony is doing $2. Thank you Anthony. Lyvan asks for $20. Should one boycott evil? How do you decide which evil is to boycott in a mixed economy? It's very difficult. You have to decide both based on your personal values and your hierarchy of values. What things most concern you? How practical is the boycott in the sense that how much do you have to give up in order to boycott? So for example, there's a sense in which we should boycott Chinese goods, but God, I mean, think of the price you would pay for boycotting Chinese goods, not just in dollars, but in time and effort to try to find alternatives. It's just not doable. You would forgo your life to try to boycott Chinese goods. Ian, thank you, another $2. Yeah, I mean, if the $2 keep coming like this, we will get there, but everybody has to do two dollars. We've got 128 watching live. I see a number of people left so that they wouldn't have to do the $2. We've got 130 people watching live right now. If everybody did $2, that would be 260 bucks and we'd be there already. So Ian, thank you, David, thank you. Icepick just did $20, so that gets us even closer. So I think we are gonna get there. So I think it has to be based on your personal values, Lyvin, about based on what you think the extent of the effort. Stefan just did $5. Thank you, Stefan, really appreciate it. And this is your favorite, your own book show. Shirt, cool, MH08 did $2, thank you. And then the degree of evil. And then now the thing is, is there a side benefit from the boycott that you could achieve? So for example, Stephanie, thank you, really appreciate that. And Stephanie rounded it out to $2.50 Canadian so it would come out just above $2 in dollars. Is there any additional good that could be done from the boycott? So like, if there was a racist down the street and I boycotted him and I pointed out to all my neighbors that he was a racist, would I be fighting racism just a little bit? Yeah, I think it would be. And I think you get other people involved and you can create like a coalition and maybe you could use that as an opportunity to educate people, maybe about your particular perspective. All right, Stephen with $20, thank you, Stephen. Do objectivists care about what happens after they die or just not worry about it? I mean, I care. I'll give you my example. I've got kids, so I care about what happens to them. I'd like to think while I'm alive that they have a future and it's a good future. So I care about it in that sense. I care about the future because I care about the world. I care about human life. I like life and I wanna believe that good things will happen. Now, I can't control it after I die. I won't know, it won't affect me. Jeffy says if you sell, well, I'll get to that in a second. So yes, we care about what happens after we, because we care about the world. One of the things that I don't like about the idea of dying is that I won't get to see what happens. I'm curious, I wanna know. I want good things to happen. All right, don't just end of this, right? With $100, don't. That is an interesting, I wish I had a name that I could thank you for that. That's very generous, thank you. He asked the question, will individual stagnation be a downfall? Yeah, you could view it that way. You could think about it that way. There's nothing more, there's nothing sadder, there's nothing more destructive. They're capable individuals stagnating and doing nothing, and not, you know, not doing the best, not living the best life that they could, and not making the world better in the process. So at the end of the day, a culture, a civilization, a society is just the individuals within it. And it is individuals because of the bad incentives, because of the world of government, but also because of education, and because of choices they're making, and a rotten philosophy. It's individual stagnating, and it's individual upon individual upon individual upon individual, all stagnating, that ultimately leads to a society dying. The society dying, and so yes, that's what you have to watch for. That's what you have to look for. Thank you, Don, for the contribution. Thank you for the support, and thank you for the question, good question. Applejack, thank you for the $5, really appreciate that. All right, let's, oh, John has a $20 question. All right, now we're blown through our goal, we're way ahead of it. You see, I think Catherine has lost track. She's not even, she hasn't, she's got an adding machine going, she's converting all these things, and she's trying to figure out where we are, but we should be, yeah, I don't know. I don't know, when was that 500? Yeah, we're probably around 700 easily, maybe a little over 700. All right, John, well, maybe just under 700 actually. I'm not sure, maybe over 700. Anyway, we'll find out. Desmond, John says, Desmond Tutu just died. Do you have any evaluation of him? No, really, I don't know that much about him, but I give him credit that Desmond Tutu fought against apartheid. He was a voice, he was courageous. He didn't cower from confrontation. So it was $704, thank you. So you guys all made $600 and then don't just put the, put the cream on top and got us way over the top, so thank you, don't really appreciate it. So $704, that's fantastic. That compensates a little bit for the fact that we didn't do that well yesterday. So I think he was courageous. I think he was a real fighter for against apartheid. I don't know much about his politics. I don't know much about what he did afterwards, how much did he oppose the ANC, its corruption, its destruction of the South African economy, its bad handling of the COVID. So I don't have an assessment of him. I suspect he wasn't very good. I suspect that his religiosity and I suspect that he tended towards the left and if I, other than his positive role in ending apartheid, I don't want to give him credit for anything else. I don't think he deserves it. As far as I know, I might be wrong, but as far as I know. All right, we've got a bunch of $5 questions. So let's do these quickly. See if we can end by 10 p.m. my time. Liam asks, aren't intellectuals today less nihilistic than they were in the 1930s? Are they just can't get away with what they could back then? No, I think they're just as nihilistic, just as in the 1930s, particularly in the U.S., I don't think intellectuals in the 1930s were quite that nihilistic. I think even the leftist intellectuals in the U.S. in the 1930s were idealistic communists, not the nihilists that we see today. These are much more similar to the kind of vimeo-republic nihilists who ultimately led us towards Hitler. And I fear that that's what we're, the nihilists in the United States are leading us towards. Brian Bonner says, when are you having Harry on? Oh, I said, I answered that already. With regard to your Trump must lose stand, is there any reason to think Leonard Peacock won't vote for Trump again if he is the nominee? I have no idea. And don't ask me questions about what Leonard Peacock's going to do. Ask, you know, Leonard can speak for himself and if he's chosen not to speak, that says something too. But Leonard can speak for himself, Leonard has his views. I shouldn't speak for Leonard Peacock. And I don't know, and even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you because anything Leonard tells me and we've talked about Trump, we've talked extensively about Trump. And I'm not gonna disclose to you what Leonard told me because it was said in a private conversation. If Leonard wanted me to make it public, he would have told me, but I don't think he wants me to. So these are like little digs on me. It's like, you think Trump should lose, but Leonard Peacock thinks he should succeed. So, you know, you must be, you know, who are you? Or you must be wrong because Leonard Peacock, you know, it's an appeal to authority, but it's just a dig on me for what? You know, if you don't agree with me on Trump, disagree with me on Trump. Don't use an appeal to authority for it. Yeah, Leonard Peacock's a very smart man. He's my teacher, considering my teacher and my very close friends. So, you're not gonna teach me much about Leonard Peacock about respecting him, admiring him, respecting his opinion about all things. I've discussed Trump with him. I've discussed immigration with him. I've discussed, I've debated these things with him in private. You have not. All right, but I'm not gonna tell you what he said because he did vote for Trump. You know that, and I confirmed that. Let's see. What do you think of the series, The X-Men's? I'm a big fan of The X-Men's. I really like it. It's a fabulous series. I'll do a review of it at some point. If somebody wants to pay me to do a review of it, you can. I did a review of it a few years ago, now with the season six and it's concluding soon. It'll be a good time to do a review because the whole series is finishing. I have a feeling it's gonna be a little rushed in the end. But I'm a big fan primarily because I like the way it focuses on character. I love shows that are focused on the character of the heroes rather than just on action and other things. Scott asked, did you see Phil Magnus expose emails between Fauci and the CDC Collins conspiring to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration? Isn't this a sign of corruption in the scientific establishment? No, because that's not what I read. I read the emails and it wasn't conspiring to discredit the Great Barrington. It was we should, the people who disagree with the Great Barrington Declaration should speak up and say why we think it's wrong and discredit it because we think it's wrong. Now, whether you agree with the Great Barrington Declaration or not, that's not some conspiracy theory. That's him rallying other scientists to speak up against it because he thought it was wrong. I don't see why that's wrong, why that's a problem. So I know we try to couch, plus it's an email. So people speak very casually in emails as we all do. But it's not space sponsored to discrediting. It's, this is, now I don't think the state should have an opinion about these things. I've said that, but I'm sure the email's out there saying, we should really speak up for the vaccines because all these people discrediting the vaccines, we should discredit them. We should show them that they're wrong and they are wrong about the vaccines. The Great Barrington Declaration is more mixed. It's much better than the vaccine than I is. But yeah, I'm against government and science. But government is in science and you're not gonna avoid the government having, scientists in the government having opinions and expressing those opinions. And when something they think is wrong, saying it's wrong. They believe that is their job. That's not some weird conspiracy. That's just the way the world works. Ray asks, what are the best resources to de-convert a conservative from Trump? Thanks for the excellent commentary. I think, I don't know, my shows. I don't know who else takes on Trump. Some of what Sam Harris says about Trump is very good. I think the dispatch, people like Jonah Goldberg and French and others who I don't agree with on a lot of things are very good on why Trump is bad. So they're all conservatives. He's all conservatives who think Trump is really bad. So use them, maybe they'll accept it from them more than they'll accept it from me. Is it not being altruistic to defend profits on the ground that so much value is created for others? No, because I made money. But I made money for myself by providing values to other people. It's a factual statement. It's not, I'm a good guy because I helped other people. No, I made money by changing the world. That's how you make money. So you're not asking for sacrifice. But the fact is that billionaires make the world a better place for everybody else to live. And that's a source of joy and support. Altruism is not about not helping other people. We all, there's nothing wrong with not helping other people. No one trusts Never Trump has got, I trust Never Trump has. I trust Never Trump has much more than I trust Trump has. And even among the Never Trump has, if you have a mind and you're willing to use it, you can separate the good Never Trump has from the bad Never Trump has, the Never Trump has that have gone left and the Never Trump has that are actually good and actually valuable. And you can separate those kind of things. And anyway, that is, it's mindless, mindless to say, I don't trust that group. It's collectivist and mindless. And particularly when it comes to Trump where I don't trust anybody who supports Trump, supports, advocates for, is a committed accolade of. The dispatch didn't go left. Most Never Trump has didn't go left. I never went left, for example. So I don't trust his cheerleaders, but Jonah Goldberg is a good Never Trumpa who didn't go left. So is David French. So is the whole crew at the dispatch. So are many libertarians who are Never Trumpas who are good libertarian economists who didn't go left. It's a silly, it's just silly. It's lazy. It's collectivist and it's irrational to label people just like that when it's clearly wrong. All right, because you don't wanna be, oh, just on the altruism point, altruism is about sacrifice. It's not about helping other people. We all help other people. Again, accolades. I'm not saying about people who support Trump. I'm talking about people who rally to him, who defend him at every place. Lots of people who voted for Trump. Lots of people who voted for Trump. I am fine with and I trust. But his accolades, the people who support him in everything, who again, the Peacock thing, right? I mean, God, you guys are horrible. The people who will support him no matter what. I don't trust those people. They're always Trumpers. Even if you shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, which you did worse than that, those people, I don't trust. Now, I know I have to qualify my words because if I say, I don't trust people who support Trump, somebody's gonna email Leonard Peacock and says, your aunt doesn't support you because he said he doesn't support anybody who supports Trump, therefore he doesn't support you. And then Leonard gets upset and this is what you do because people who do that are just nasty human beings. Nasty human beings because you know that's not what I mean. You know that's not what I said, but you will do anything, anything. And that's what I'd expect from Trumpers. Truth is out, reality's out, trolling and being willing to do anything to achieve your goal. And in this case, the goal is, I don't know, to humiliate me, to cause me and Leonard Peacock to have a falling out, I don't know what the goal is, but it's pretty despicable and disgusting. This is why I love having a live chat and being able to respond to it, because it's, no, they didn't misunderstand. They didn't misunderstand. Give me a break. I was very clear and I repeated and I explained and I articulated, it's a case of dishonesty and evil motivations. All right, Ryan says, because they don't wanna be only suckers to have their money go to the bum on the street, they vote for others to have to join them by force. I don't believe that. I don't believe that. They all feel a prank of guilt. They all feel guilty. The more successful they are, the more guilty they feel. I've met them, I've sat down with successful businessmen. I know how they are. It is not true that it's just manipulation and narcissism that drives them. Guilt is real and powerful. What would it take for you to accept quantum physics as is and would it mean to objectivism, quasi-physics as currently stand is true? It's not, it's a silly question. Quantum physics as is, I accept. It's again, the explanation for quantum physics that I don't expect, accept. And there's no reason to accept it because it's not true. It violates the basic laws of metaphysics. And there are many other explanations that don't. I don't know if many, there's several others that don't. So I accept the one that does. You don't accept contradictions. If you accept contradictions, then nothing, you don't know anything. It would nullify all of your knowledge. That's what would happen. You know, there is a possibility that I don't understand the current explanation of quantum physics. That's possible. And that it doesn't involve a contradiction, then fine. But if it involves a contradiction, which I think it does, then it would nullify all of knowledge and you can't do it. I said, on several occasions before Peacock came out, that it was okay to vote for Trump. I said that. I said I understood people who voted for Trump. I said what I didn't accept and I didn't understand and I wouldn't tolerate what people who justified everything Trump did, everything Trump said, every action, everything you said, and there are people here who can testify. Plus, there's the evidence. I can go back and find shows from before Peacock said that he was gonna vote for Trump. Where I say, I said it in 2016 and I said it in 2019 and 2020 that I understand why people vote for Trump. I accept that people vote for Trump. I mean, have you been through? I also voted for Trump. Right? Lots of objectivists voted for Trump. What I don't accept is the blind support that people gave Trump, that sometimes you provide Trump, Scott. You never heard it because you didn't wanna hear it and you weren't listening. But I said it over and over and over again in 19, in 18 and in 20. And the proof is right there in the videos. You can go watch my shows from back then. Colt says, I wish I could ask you many more questions, but I only have limited money given that I'm a college student that lives in rural North Carolina. You could have used that $5 to ask me a question, Colt. What's your favorite scene from the Fountainhead? God. I think it's the unveiling of the Stutter Temple, which I thought was incredibly moving. I love sculpture so much as well. But I clearly have a favorite scene that I was shrugged. I don't know that I have one for the Fountainhead or at least not one I can recall right now. If you sell YBS T-shirts, I'll buy several. All right, YBS T-shirts. I'm making a note. I'm making a note. We tried at some point to sell like mugs and T-shirts for the Iran Book Show on this platform and nobody bought any. So I think we stopped because it was just a waste of time. But I can try again. If you have ideas for quotes of Iran Book saying things, of saying things, then that's great. Yep. Jeffrey says, have you watched Succession? No, I haven't watched Succession. Everybody tells me I should. I'm not watching it. And I don't know. I don't find, I don't, it's not appealing to me right now. So is there any value in watching Succession? You'll have to tell me. All right, guys, this was fun. We made our numbers even better, $736. Thank you guys. I really appreciate the support you make the show possible. If you'd like to become a monthly supporter, which is of course immensely valued, IranBookShow.com slash support, Patreon and subscribe star. You can also do locals. And of course, if you have ideas for T-shirt, things to write on the T-shirt, then let me know. I have equal as unfair T-shirts. I had equal as unfair T-shirts. I'll look for them and I'll have to get them, let you know if they're still available for sale. All right, guys. You've got to constantly push your mug if you're going to have any. Yeah, I know. I'm not good at these things, right? Thanks, guys, and I will see you tomorrow. Same time, same place. Eight, what was it? 7 p.m. East Coast time tomorrow. Not sure what the topic will be.