 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Friday, August 25th. I hope everybody is having a fantastic week, having I guess today still part of the week. Looking forward to the weekend and yeah, should be a great weekend. And although I am this afternoon going against advice of Robert F. Kennedy, I am going to get a vaccine this afternoon so I expect to be a little out tomorrow. Not the COVID vaccine. I'm going to get a shingles vaccine today and they say it kind of knocks you out for a day or two. My wife was knocked out for two days when she got it, but it's time to get that. I've seen people that get shingles. It is like horrible and it can last a long time and it completely debilitates you, debilitates you. So getting a shingle vaccine today because I had chicken pox as a kid. I know that virus is somewhere up here just waiting, waiting to get me. And I intend to preempt it. So beauty of vaccines. So my weekend is going to be not that great. We'll see how I do tomorrow on the show. We've got a, we've got a AMA ask me anything show tomorrow. If you could you be $25 a more month on one of the monthly programs. You should have received a link to be able to do the show on zoom with me. If not, let us know you run at your own book show.com. You run at your own book show.com. Let me know if you haven't got the link, but you should have gotten the link. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the AMA tomorrow, 3pm Eastern time. Join us. The only way it doesn't happen is if I'm really, really feeling sick and can't handle it. So we'll see. Hopefully it's not too bad and a couple of adverts will take care of it, but we will see. All right. Vaccine. Not fun. Let's see. Yeah. Kind of interesting how yesterday we had a huge spike in viewership of yesterday's news roundup. Why? Because I talked to the debate and I talked about politics and I talked about politicians. God, I mean. All right. Yes. The more I talk about politicians, the more people view the show, the better we do in Super Chat. You know, that's the market giving me feedback. I should talk more about Vivek. He's my ticket to making more money. But okay. So it is election season. So we will be talking more about it. I'll talk a little bit about Trump today, but I've already figured nobody actually wants to hear me talk about Trump, except people agree with me. So I don't broaden the audience much when I talk about Trump. All right. Let's start with today's insane insanity. We've got a few stories today that are just nuts. Some more nuts than others and some more nuts, deadly nuts than others, but just nuts. This is not, no positives today. No positive stories today. I don't know why. I wanted to put a positive story, but nothing came to me. All right. Oh, reminder, just you can ask questions in the Super Chat. You can use the Super Chat to ask questions. Please do so. It's an opportunity for you to shape the show. Get me to talk about what you want me to talk about. You have a hard stop at two. So if we're going to make a goal, please consider doing a $20 or above question. All right. Justice Department. U.S. Justice Department. That bastion of Lady Justice assuing SpaceX for allegedly, take this, the suing SpaceX, for allegedly discriminating against asylum recipients and refugees in hiring. The lawsuit alleges, and according Reuters piece here, the lawsuit alleges that from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged assailees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them because of their citizenship status and violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. What? I mean, I don't know how many asylum seekers are there who have, you know, an article engineering or engineering skills to work at SpaceX. Who else is applying for jobs at SpaceX out of the refugee? And I mean, I don't know. Maybe I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to speculate. It doesn't say it says in job posting and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as export controllers, SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as green card holders, the Justice Department said. I mean, this is stupid on multiple levels. A, it's none of the government's business who you hire and who you don't and who you discriminate against and who you don't. And the constant expansion of anti-discrimination laws, a very, very bad sign for American labor law and for American economy and for American relations. It's just the government intervening more and more in our lives. Get us out of there. SpaceX does not have rational hiring practices. Over time they will lose from that. They will suffer from it. Secondly, yeah, I mean, it's difficult to hire people who don't have green cards in the United States. You know, I remember when I was looking for a job out of MBA with a master's degree from a U.S. university. A lot of companies told me, look, you know, we'd love to hire you, but we're not going to spend the time, the resources, the effort to sponsor you for an H1B or for whatever visa would get you hired. So we would just hire an American. It's just, you're too expensive. You're too much, you're too much of a burden. So I can understand why companies don't want to do that. Again, they did that to me. And, you know, there is also an issue, I guess, with security. SpaceX deals a lot with. So I don't know. I don't want to give excuses. It could very well be that SpaceX is a discriminating organization for a variety of reasons. Again, my guess is primarily because they don't want the hassle of what if you're an asylum seeker and don't get asylum? What if you're a refugee and then the government decides to kick you out of the country and they don't want that uncertainty? So I understand it. I think it's sad, but I understand it. Anyway, the Justice Department pointed to online posts from the company. They keep, the word of the story keeps bringing in Elon Musk's name. Everywhere Elon Musk's name. Why? Because clickbait, right? It's not SpaceX. It's Elon Musk's SpaceX because that's how you get people out there. Anyway, this is ridiculous. This is, you know, this is the regulatory state. This is the state getting involved in all our decisions. All discrimination law should be scrapped, all of it, even discriminating that is the most offensive, the most irrational, the most stupid, the most racist, the most disgusting. Let the market deal with it. Let people deal with it. Let individuals deal with it. Let, you know, let the marketplace deal with it. Get government out of our lives. And one big way to get government out of our lives is to eradicate completely from the books all remnants of discrimination law. This is silly. It's a waste of time. The only people who benefit from this lawsuit, only people who benefit from this lawsuit are lawyers. And of course, lawyers are the one interest group that doesn't want the regulatory state to go away, doesn't want discrimination law to go away, doesn't want complexity, immigration to go away. I mean, it would be great if we simplified immigration and we got rid of discrimination law. That would be a killer combination. We contribute immediately, immediately to the U.S. economy. All right. Let's see. A Trump, a number of Trump stories. Are you also the mugshot? God, what a mugshot. So appropriate. So appropriate. I mean, he looks like a bulldog, angry, tough. I'm going to get them kind of attitude. You know, just playing to his followers, playing to the vision of a fighter, of a bulldog, of somebody who will not let go. Ridiculous. He looks horrible. But so be it. This is what got him elected. So, you know, Trump knows what image sells, not who he is and what he is. Because at the end of the day, this guy's a pussycat. I mean, remember him groveling before the dictator of North Korea? This little nothing squeaky, nothing. Remember him demurring before Vladimir Putin? Remember him praising Xi? Again, this guy, this guy is a pussycat, but in his mugshot, he's got the tough look. Anyway, Trump, policy-wise, has just offered us a glimpse into what his administration will look like. And one of his main proposals, one of his big proposals that he mentioned on Taken, his interview, that is now circulating is the fact that Donald Trump would increase all of our taxes on day one, if he could, all of our taxes dramatically through a 10% tariff. He wants a 10% tariff on all, all, not just Chinese, not just enemy, all imports. Now, you could say I've got Trump derangement syndrome, but isn't this true? Didn't he say this? Isn't this his intention? Raise tariffs by 10% on all imports. That is a direct tax on American consumers of 10%. That is a wealth-destroying tax. It is a standard of living quality of life-destroying tax. I was against tariffs way before I knew who Donald Trump was. I'm against tariffs because I'm pro-freedom. I'm against tariffs because I'm pro-liberty. I'm against tariffs because I'm pro-America. I'm against tariffs because I'm anti-taxes. Not because I hate Donald Trump, although I do, but not because of that. It's a punitive tax. It destroys people's income and quality of life and standard of living. No economist, literally no economists, out there, believes that tariffs are a good tax. And it's not like we're getting rid of income taxes and it's not like a sales tax because it's a discriminatory tax. It discriminates against imports, which is mercantilism 101, which is primitivism and economic ignorance. And the fact that people who support Trump are willing to defend his tariffs. I could get it when you say, no, no, we want Trump. Yeah, we get it. He's stupid on economics. Okay, we get it. But no, like they will support the dumbest policy possible because it doesn't matter what he proposes. As he said, he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue. They'd still vote for him. This tells you the mentality. This is why I despise Trump because he brings out the worst in many of you. A 10% tariff would cost the economy enormously. Indeed, the tariffs passed under Trump, on Chinese goods, but also on lots of other goods, cost Americans in terms of direct income. $1.4 billion a month. It costs Americans jobs, significant jobs. Raising income taxes is much better than raising tariffs. But what you want, much better. What you want is to eliminate tariffs completely and then start reducing taxes on everything else. Tariffs are one of the worst forms of taxation possible. The only other worst form of taxation is taxation on capital. There is, again, no economist, certainly no decent economist, no semi-decent economist who supports this. So why does Trump present this? Because Trump doesn't care about what works or what doesn't. Trump doesn't care about what's economically sound or what doesn't. Everything about Trump is about the image. Everything about Trump is about smoke and mirrors. Trump cares about seeming tough on foreigners, tough on the Chinese, tough on other countries. America, which means raising tariffs, more jobs in America, which is complete nonsense, right? Complete and utter nonsense. Even unions, if they're smart enough for tariffs, because unions realize that many, many union jobs are going to be lost because of tariffs and rural loss because of Trump's steel tariffs. Steel union benefit, but auto union lost. Anybody who uses steel lost. So unions in the using materials lost. A 10% of tariff would increase the cost of American produced goods and we do export quite a bit. Those unions would lose because it would drive up the cost of those exports. Not to mention the fact that other countries would retaliate. They always do. China retaliated. A lot of people suffer because of the Chinese retaliation. And then, you know, again, there are no winners, except Trump, except his image, except this tough guy image. And again, Trump does not care about whether it works or doesn't work. The only thing he cares about is that the people out there love him, that he gets the attention he wants. That's all he cares about. Tariffs, of course, tariffs dis-encourage production. And tariffs dis-encourage, you know, they make the cost of production in the United States much more expensive because we import a lot of stuff that is used for production. This is just stupid. This is just anti-economics. It's all about Trump's image. It's all about being against the other. This whole campaign has always been about I'm against the other, the other being foreigners, other countries, immigrants, people who don't look like you, and the elites. It's all about the other. And this whole campaign, it doesn't matter. There's no American interest here. There's no America first here. There's no American national interest. There's no economic interest, none of these things. It's all about the image of being tough on the other. And it is a disgusting campaign. He is a disgusting human being, of course. It's a disgusting campaign. It is an offensive campaign. And the fact that any of you, any of you, supporters, suggests that this poll, there was a poll that was just out by CBS and YouGov poll, it says that Trump supporters trust him more than they trust their families, more than they trust religious leaders, pretty much more than they trust anybody. Basically, Trump can do no wrong. This is all about loving Trump. It's all about personality worship. And it is the precursor for authoritarianism. It is the precursor for where this country is heading. And God help us if there was a God because we certainly need help. All right. I don't know how much you guys have read about the Maui fire, the fire in Maui in Hawaii. Unbelievable, just unbelievable. Now, granted, this fire was started because of a combination of things that kind of were out of control, out of anybody's control, whether it was the dry winds, high winds because of how it came passing by, whether it was because of the dry conditions, whether it had not been rain in quite a while, whether it was the fact that a lot of the firefighters were over on the east side of the island fighting an existing fire. But the incompetence displayed by the authorities in this part of Maui during this fire, in which, I don't know, they're assuming what, a thousand people died? Just unbelievable. It truly is, it's staggering, the level and depth of the incompetency. You probably all heard about the fact that they didn't do the warning sirens of a natural disaster and they've got all kinds of excuses, people would have run the wrong way. Probably not. People would have seen the smoke in the fires, they wouldn't run the other way. They didn't release water. And they're still defending, not releasing water to hydrants to be able to fight the fire for a variety of different reasons. You know, something to do with, I don't know, indigenous people, right? Something to do with who owns the water, right? It might upset indigenous people if they released water. Didn't sound alarm. And then what I just read about was, they literally blocked the route of escape. So there was very, the fire was everywhere, the ocean is one side, the fire is coming, and there's only basically one road to get out. And they blocked the road. They basically funneled the cars back into where the fire was raging. Dozens, dozens if not hundreds of people, died in their cars. Not able to escape because authorities blocked the road, not letting them escape. It's unbelievable. There are testimonies of a few people, of the people, some of the people did escape where they literally drove around the police blockades. They drove around cones that were put in the road to stop people from driving. I mean, yes, there were down-pile power lines. But down-pile power line in this direction, fire behind me. Of course I'm going for the down-pile power line. I'll go around it, I'll find a way. But no alternative route was offered. No detour around. Nothing. People stuck, cars, and burnt alive. The Coast Guard, a lot of the people were in the water. It took a long time until the Coast Guard even knew that the fire was happening and that they were needed. They ultimately showed up and rescued many, many people out of the ocean and off of the beach where people were huddling away from the fire. But that was by chance that they even found out. Nobody let them know. And in a sense, the first reports of a fire were at 6.30, 7.00 a.m. They then said it was what do you call it, contained. But it wasn't really contained. It then flayed up again in the early afternoon at around 3.00 o'clock. But then it's spreading by 3.00 or 6.00. At 3.20, there's black smoke everywhere. This moved fast, but the authorities moved slow. And just think about the kids, the hundreds of people who died here, much of it for no good reason, because of sheer incompetence. The police claim that they were driving around the neighborhood knocking on doors and encouraging people to leave. No evidence of this has been shown and no records of exactly when they went and when they were doing this. It took residents of the neighborhood actually who escaped up to higher ground and then had to go down into the town and rescue people. Where were the police, the fire department? Where were the sirens? Where was the water? Why were the roads blocked? There's a lot of reckoning that's going to have to be addressed around this fire. It's just a story of how, if INREND had included a scene like this, given the incompetence of the authorities, given the excuses that they're giving, given the indigenous whatever, if INREND had included a scene like that in Atlas Shrugged, people would have said, oh come on, people are not that bad. It's not that ridiculous. There is no way, this is just a caricature. You're caricaturing bad people. It's the reality. It's the reality in which we live. And, you know, this is all, a lot of this is in the name of, as Andrew says, preserving mother nature. No, mother nature wants to kill you every day trying to kill you. It doesn't want anything. But it's certainly, if you're going to attribute human attributes to it, it's only trying to kill you all the time. It's only human ingenuity. It's only human mind. It's only human innovation that prevents mother nature from killing most of us. Most of us. The number of human beings on the planet without innovation and ingenuity would be, what, a tenth, less than a tenth of what it is today. 95% of humanity would be dead. And yet, we celebrate mother nature. We celebrate, you know, original nature. No, no, I celebrate civilization, concrete asphalt, paved roads, fire-resistant homes, earthquake-resistant skyscrapers. That's what I celebrate, tsunami-resistant towns or shores. That's what I celebrate. To hell with anybody. I mean, to save lives, you better pump those water. You better sound those alarms. And a police better be out there in the streets, guiding people to safety, not back into the fire. People need to lose their jobs in significant ways here. There has to be real consequences. And I don't know, losing your job seems like a small price to pay, given the number of people who died here. And talking about a veneration of nature. In London, you know, London has been an ultra-low emission zone for, since what, 2008, I think? Yeah, for a long time. And, well, no, sorry, not through 2008. 2017. So the scent of the city has been a low emission zone. They have these cameras and only cars that are low emission go in. And if you go in with a relatively high emission, you have to pay a fine. It's 12 pounds, 50, which is about $15, $16 a day for every time, every day that you go into the scent of city with a high emission car. And they define high emissions, you know, I'm sure that definition will change over time regarding that. Anyway, London has recently, again, let's put this... Now, I'm all for reducing the amount of cars that go into central London, primarily for traffic reasons. It's not possible to expand the roads that it's on. So just reduce the number of cars by charging people. That's what would happen if the roads were private. You'd have tolls on those roads. You'd have a toll to get into London. So the government has told London. I'm all for that for congestion. Not so much for low emissions. Anyway, they've got this. They've expanded this now to the suburbs, to the area surrounding London. Whoa, now it's affecting people every day. It's affecting a lot of people. And now people have to worry is my car low emission or high emission, because $16 a day adds up. A lot of those neighborhoods in surrounding London are not wealthy neighborhoods, they're not rich neighborhoods. $16 a day adds up. You don't pay it. It's a 180 pound fine per fence where you didn't pay it. And, you know, this thing applies to cars, motorcycles, vans, all specialist vehicles, minibuses. And they've expanded it to, you know, all the neighborhoods surrounding London. And they evaluate whether your car might be high emission or low emission. They take a photo of it. And then they evaluate, is it high or low emission? Partially they evaluate it based on the date, on the year, when it was, you know, year it was registered. Cars before 2005 that are gas cars, gasoline cars are clearly high emissions. Diesel cars before 2015 clearly high emissions. And then they bill you, they send you a bill. It's automated, right? Just like the tolls in a lot of places. Huge amount of resistance to this. Super unpopular. 60 to 70%, probably up to 80% in the suburbs don't agree with this. Yet this has crammed down the residents of London's throat by the mayor and who doesn't care. Doesn't care. These are super unpopular. And what you're seeing in London is that, you know, people are now going up to these cameras and vandalizing them or stealing them or breaking them or whatever. So there is a huge spike in the last few months of vandalism towards the cameras. You got to say it's hard to blame them. This is just a tax that is just being imposed by them that is levied on them and monitored for them by cameras placed everywhere. Automatically. Just horrible. Again, City of London, Centre City, there was no, as far as I know, there was not a lot of vandalism around that because people got it and a lot of it has to do with congestion, right? You got to reduce the number of cars in the city, in the centre city because the roads are too narrow and you just can't cope. So you raised the cost of going into the city. It makes complete sense. Suburbs? That's absurd. That's ridiculous. And it's not based on rush hour traffic and based on when you have congestion or anything like that. It's just a flat thing. And it's just based on the type of car you have. Nutty. But this is where we're going, right? This is where we're going. It's based on, I guess, your carbon footprint. I mean, breathing heavily will be taxed soon versus breathing lightly because you're emitting more CO2, I guess. All right, I want to give you a quick example of just an insane use of a graph. And this is, of all places, this is on the financial times. So this is not some conspiracy theory manipulative trying to have some kind of agenda, anti-vax, whatever thing, right? Where you'd expect that. And the thing is that what I'm going to show you now is something that you see all the time when people show you graphic information or you show you statistics. They're trying to manipulate you. They're lying to you. It's not really lying. They're just manipulating you by not, because you have to now focus to get what's really going on. And this is everywhere. And I'm showing you this primarily just as a warning to be aware of quickly glancing at a graph and thinking you know what it says and what it means. Without looking carefully at what's actually you're being told, what actually is going on. So here's a graph. And by the way, this graph relates to the dollar declining as a foreign exchange. So this is a foreign exchange reserves in the world in a denominator of US dollars. And the graph shows two currencies, the US dollar and the Remini, which is the, whoops, sorry, that's it. The Remini, which is the Chinese currency, right? Renminbi, I like to call it Yuan, but Renminbi, something like that. So you can see here, and what this graph, you look at the graph and you see the dollar, the light blue graph is coming down. It used to be above 70% and now it's around 60%. So yeah, clearly dollar reserves are going down. They're going down slowly. And then you look at the Renminbi and whoa, look how fast they're going up. It looks like they were like basically zero in 2016. And since then, they're going way up to, I don't know, 50, 55%, right? And you're going, wait a minute. First of all, 50, 55% plus 60% is more than 100%. So something's wrong. And then you're going, but just look at the shape of the graph. I mean, obviously, the US dollar is losing dramatically to a Renminbi. Yes, I'm buying into the whole idea that the dollar is not going to be the foreign exchange, you know, foreign currency reserve anymore because look at the Chinese currency. The BRICs have something going for them. What's the problem? Well, the problem is you've got two scales here. The scale on the left is for the dollar. That's the 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75. What it says, US dollar in white blue. And then the dark blue, the scale is on the right. One, two, three, four, seven. The Renminbi has gone from 1% to 2.5%. Literally from 1% to 2.5%. That's it. That's the threat. And look at the title. The dollar is dominant in Fx reserves, but its lead is starting to slip. Really? This doesn't show that. Over what? Because the Renminbi went from 1% to 2.5%. That's a joke. That's ridiculous. And this is the Financial Times. Right? This is the Financial Times reporting this. Now, this is the real graph. At the top, you see the dollar. That's the blue graph. You can see it's gone from about 70% to about 60%. Red is the euro. It's gone from about just under 20% to just above 20%. So it's increased a little bit over time. The yellow here that you can barely see is the yen. Right? The blue down here is the British pound. And then the green is other, and that will include the Renminbi. And you can see, yeah, it's increasing. It's gone from like 2% to 10%, 9% maybe. But look at the differences. I mean, the Renminbi is insignificant as a reserve currency. Completely insignificant. Why you would ever show a graph like this is mind-boggling. It's stupid. It's stupid. And it's manipulative. And most people, most people get caught. And most people buy into it. And most people are easily manipulated. And this is partially why some people become anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists and stupid economics and all of this because people show them these kind of graphs and they can't bother to actually look and actually use their brain even for a second. Now, financial times, I read the financial times. It's definitely one of the better newspapers in the world today. But this is what you get from one of the better newspapers in the world today. And on some issues, financial times is unmatched in terms of coverage. But you really have to read carefully so that they're not conning you. And it's not like the financial times has an agenda. It's not like the financial times is anti-dollar in some way. All right. I think they probably did do it innocently. I just think, you know, they're unthinking. They're ignorant. They're stupid, right? Financial times doesn't have an agenda to promote the yuan against the dollar. There's no agenda at the financial times around that. And it's not trying to do that to the people who read the financial times who are relatively sophisticated in their own minds. It's just silly, right? Just silly. It's just somebody not thinking and everybody not thinking when looking at that graph. It's just a bunch of not thinking people patting each other on, I don't know, whatever. Maybe on the back, maybe on the backside, I don't know. Jason says, in our modern rights disregarding republic. By the way, yes, questions. No more less than $20 questions. Only $20 questions. Let's get a bunch of them because we're way behind on the target, but $20 questions that way I'll answer what is on your mind. In our modern rights disregarding republic with such misaligned democratic representation, who'd best have jurisdiction over whether controlled technology corporations, legislature, military, whether controlling technology? I mean, it's a good question. In the world in which we have today, private corporations, private businesses, but who is best to control the military? I think even in our rights disregarding, I think it's basically the government because we are the government in some sense and that means that if the government goes to war, we pay and we go fight and that provides us with an incentive to rein them in. So, you know, if you have rights disrespecting, there is no good solution to anything and I think we're still better off than with a kind of anarchy where individuals own the military and the legislature. You know, we're gangs basically, own the military and the legislature and we basically have gang warfare. I think that's the worst outcome possible. Michael asked, was gold to meet you under the spell of altruism and second handed us during the 1973 war? She could have done another six day war type preemptive strike, and she put the value of world opinion over her own soldier's life. No, I don't think that's true. I think that's misreading the history. I think what she did was that she was told by the Americans that if she preempted, that the United States would not support Israel and that men would not support it with military equipment, would not support it at arms. Remember, 1973, Israel was almost entirely dependent on the United States for military equipment. The Europeans had embargoed Israel from selling military equipment after the 1967 war. So all Israel had was the United States. And the United States basically told Israel, it seems now, again, this is contested history, that the United States told Israel that if you preempt, we will not support you and we will not send you equipment. And I don't understand it, Israel didn't even call up the reserves. So on that, Golda Meir should be condemned. But the fear was not what the world would think. The fear was that America wouldn't literally provide Israel with arms. Now, why Kissinger, who should go to hell for this and many other things that he did, why Kissinger would take that position, an Nixon administration would take that position, is because they didn't want to piss off the Arabs, right? They were actually dependent on Arab oil, and they were trying to establish relationship with Arab countries, and they wanted to, USSR did not demand that USSR was not involved in that at that point. Nixon basically wanted to try to sway the Arab countries towards America versus most of them moving towards the USSR. Israel's ultimately victory is what ultimately swayed Egypt and other countries to move towards the U.S. and abandoned the Soviets. But no, this was her mistake, but it's not as bad of a mistake as you present. It's so awful. And she could have at the very least called up the reserves. It was also an intelligence failure. It was also the case that Moshe Dayan, who was a defense secretary and Israeli hero, a legend, actually evaluated the intelligence as wrong and thought that the Arabs would not attack and was confident that the Israeli forces could repel them even if they did, even without calling up the reserves. He turned out to be wrong. It was massive failure of the Israeli government, but it wasn't just second-handed failure around public opinion. I don't think that is a just representation of what actually happened. James, will London rise as a top destination of immigrants in EU, or will it be a place that receives more non-EU immigrants? Do you think money will still flow to the UK? The UK without London is quite poor based on all metrics. Still a great place to live. Yes, the UK without London is as poor as I think Mississippi. It's quite poor. London is the economic engine of the UK, the wealth engine. It's where the wealth is. It's where the wealth has been created. But London is in decline. And London is in decline because of Brexit. The financial industry in London is hurting because it doesn't dominate Europe like the way it used to. It's become less of a financial center as it doesn't have the advantages it used to have when it was part of Europe. So a lot of business has moved to places like Frankfurt in Germany and even Paris in France. London is being flooded by non-EU immigrants. Last year was the largest, so the largest increase in immigration in, I think, in history. And it was mostly non-EU immigrants. It was mostly Indians and Pakistanis and Nigerians. And some Ukrainians because of the war, but not EU immigrants as was happening before when it was Poles and other Eastern Europeans who were coming into the UK. So London continues to be a magnet for immigrants that differ kind of immigrants. There's still a massive shortage of labor in the UK, for example, in spite of being in a recession. For example, at the NIH, nobody, no Brit wants to go work for the NIH because not the NIH, that's the National Institute of Health. The NHS, the National Health Services. Nobody, because the salaries are so low, but immigrants would love to. The doctors and doctors and dentists are coming to the UK to work there and there's still a labor shortage there, but that's what you get when you get socialized medicine and doctor wages plummet as a consequence. Yeah, I mean London is struggling because of Brexit and because the fact that the UK government did not establish the UK as a free trade zone. It did not deregulate massively. It did not do all the things that are necessary in order to compensate for the loss of economic activity as a result of leaving the European Union. Guys, I really have a two o'clock hard stop. So if you want to ask a question and you want it to be answered today, make it a $20 question, because otherwise I don't know if I'll get to it. Remo says, who is your favorite all-time James Bond actor? If you pick Daniel Craig about Pierce Bronson, I have to stop supporting you financially. It's original James Bond. It's what's his name. I forget who it is. Anyway, it's original James Bond whose name is Sean Connery. That is still my favorite. Those are I think the first few James Bond movies are the best James Bond movies. I like Daniel Craig. I like Pierce Bronson. I'm not going to say I like Daniel Craig more than I like Pierce Bronson because I don't want to lose Remo's support. So I'm willing to sell out for money on occasion. Mike says, I knew about the incompleteness of the incompetence of the authorities in Maui, but I hadn't heard all you found. Thank you for making me aware. Yeah, I mean, was it AP? I think it was AP. I've sent a bunch of reporters down there and they've got eyewitness accounts and they're still trying to dig through. They're doing public records requests on the courts and trying to get all the government records to be disclosed. So we're going to find out more in the weeks to come. And this is the thing about mainstream media, right? Without like Reuters and AP and the New York Times and the Washington Post actually sending reporters to places like Maui, you're just not going to find out what is really happening. So even the right wing outlets, they don't have reporters that they send to places around the world to find out what actually happened. They just take what Reuters and AP and these other people produce that might be left as biased and do their spin on it. But actual news, if you want to know what actually is happening out there, you need people boots on the ground and the only organizations that have the resources to put boots on the ground are the big organizations that are called the mainstream media. And like it or not, we're all dependent on it. Even if you get your news from Newsmax, which is one of these right wing news sources, right? Where do they get their news? They don't have people with boots on the ground or very few if they do. So a lot of their news comes from the conventional places, right? I do not like Roger Moore. Remo, sorry, but Roger Moore was not a good James Bond. Way too kind of cynical. All right, I'm here, Kat. Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Donald Trump? Actually, no. Andrew, sorry to vent. We Maui fires, but it's sickening, absolutely. How much death destruction impediments to progress that society accepts at the altar preserving Mother Earth. It really is sickening. And here you got a true manifestation of it, the incompetence and the incompetence. And we don't know if all of it's in the name of Mother Earth, but you get the sense that that's the orientation. And that produces, you know, it puts incompetent people in places where they have authority and where their failure results in the deaths of hundreds of people. Wesley, do you think someone under 18 can take their own life for rational reasons? If so, should the parents help them do so or range for assisted suicide? No, I don't think so. I think, yes, I do think somebody under 18 can be rational about it, but I don't think they are in a position to make that decision. So I would the parents have control. I don't think the parents should be in a position to give them assisted suicide. You know, unless it's so obvious, right, and if the kid is truly in pain, constant pain, then yeah, it would be criminal not to allow them to commit suicide. So I think just the rules about, certainly they need parental approval, but then the rules, or they can go to a judge to declare themselves adult enough to make decisions for themselves, including about suicide. But the standards need to be higher because of the fact that under 18 non-adults have a hard time projecting into the distant future. So there has to be some more higher standard. But certainly kids who are suffering from horrible diseases that involve unbelievable pain should be allowed to commit suicide. Michael asked, I have no respect for smart people who are not objectivists, all right? Michael also said, can anyone be a millionaire in today's mixed economy? Lots of people, all the time, the people becoming millionaires every single day and people doing amazing productive work and people innovating and building and creating wealth and so yes, absolutely you can become a millionaire. Lots of people do. A lot of people stopped being millionaires last year because of the stock market was down. A lot of millionaires were created this year. But think of all the startups, think of all the entrepreneurs, think of all the people building. Think of new people who start businesses every day in America in spite of the mixed economy. Yes, so you can easily, not easily, but you can become a millionaire. Don't use the mixed economy as an excuse. Michael says, have you given up red meat entirely? No, I eat way more red meat than my doctor recommends. Do you like Stephen King? I don't like horror stuff. I like the non-horror stuff that Stephen King has done, like Shoshank redemption. I haven't really read much Stephen King of mostly watched movies. Michael, was Nathaniel Brandon a con man? Was there any good in him? He was mostly a con man. I mean, some good in him. He recognized it's some extent that Rand's philosophy had real value and it was important. And it's what he conned everybody into thinking he understood it and bought into it. But he knew that that's what he should buy into it. So there must be some good in him. He was super smart, no question about that. And as a psychologist, he was, I'm told, quite good. But yeah, he was fundamentally a con man. Michael says, it's a travesty people associate rugged individualism with uneducated, uncultured hicks from the middle of nowhere and altruism and enlightenment educated people in the cities. It is absolutely a travesty. All right, everybody. Thank you. I got to run. I've got a class to teach. I appreciate the support. If anybody wants to jump in and get us over the, over the target, that would be great. But otherwise I will see you all tomorrow at 3 p.m. for ask me anything session. Please join us. Please come and ask me anything. All the stuff you want to ask me, all the people want to get me. Come and get me tomorrow. And don't forget to bring your pocketbook or bring your super chat dollars. And I will see you all tomorrow at 3 p.m. East Coast time might be canceled with possibility being canceled if I'm really, really feeling sick because I'm going a little bit later to get a shingles vaccine and the side effects can be nasty the day after. Talk to you all tomorrow.