 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to the Iran Brookshow on this Friday afternoon here in Puerto Rico. Hopefully, everybody's having a great Friday and ready for the weekend. They had a great week. It's been super hectic over here. I spent a morning at a crypto conference. There's a conference here with a lot of crypto entrepreneurs. And I spent a morning over there giving a talk on really doing a Q&A on my views on crypto and my views on the world and technology and so on. It was fun. It was fun. I was the contrarian in the room. So clearly, a lot of people came up afterwards and said they really enjoyed it and really agreed with me, which was surprising because they, given what it was, Alicia says we need a crypto show. Yeah, I did a little bit of an FTX. Maybe I can do a more broader crypto show, my views on crypto. We could do that. We could do that. That could be fun. OK, let's see. We are doing our usual news roundup today. As always, I'll try to do this quickly. I want to try to figure out a way to get it down to half an hour. Feel free to jump in with questions. I take questions on anything. It doesn't have to be in the topics that we're covering here. And of course, what Croatia just scored? Really? How did that happen? So it's 1-1. God. I was so happy I was going to begin the show with, Brazil is up 1-0. This is great. And I don't know why there was a different stream that ended after 11 seconds. Some glitch in YouTube started a different stream instead of the right one. So I apologize for that. I'll have to go back and delete it afterwards. But it did start that. All right, so they go to penalty kicks. I mean, Brazil should win this game. But they should go on. Yeah. All right, let's see. In the news today, Brittany Greiner lands in the United States. I was happy to see that there was more and more opposition to the exchange that was done. Sadly, a lot of that opposition is just coming from the right, which doesn't like that Brittany Greiner is a leftist. I'd hate to see our prison exchange programs, whatever it happens to be. I'd hate to see it become a partisan issue where we exchange prisoners if they have the right opinion. And if we don't, rather than a principled issue, a lot of commentators, though, are pointing out that there are a couple of Americans that were left in Russia that were originally, we were trying to negotiate to get them released. And that the Russians wouldn't budge. They would only do a one-for-one deal. And why do we pick Brittany and not these others? And so on. But I think the bigger question is, once you agree to these kind of deals, and we did these deals with the Taliban, we do these deals all the time. And they almost always come back to bite us. And of course, as I said yesterday, this provides the Russians with a strong incentive to kidnap Americans and to imprison Americans anytime the United States captures one of their spies or captures a arms dealer or anybody else that the Russians would like released. So I'm not in favor of these kind of deals. I think there are other ways that we could deal with this. And again, partially, I would tell Americans, don't go to Russia. Don't go to Russia. I'm often asked if the crypto event was recorded. Yes, it was. I don't know if they'll release it. Sometimes they release these in the past. Sometimes they haven't. I've spoken to these events in the past. It's just not very predictable what they will do. If they release it, I will definitely let you know. OK, political news. In the United States, Senator Sinema, Democratic Senator from Arizona has left the Democratic Party or is leaving the Democratic Party. She will register as an independent. And while she will probably continue to caucus with the Democrats, that is continue to be supportive generally of the Democrats. She will no longer be an official member of the Democratic Party. She will be an independent. And she's not going to go to meetings of the Democratic Party. She's not going to be affiliated in any way with the Democratic Party. But she's not joining the Republican Party either. So she is an independent. Not clear exactly why she did this. Notice she did it after the Georgia election. So the Democratic majority is solid even without her. Maybe she did this to run as an independent in Arizona when she's up for election, I think, in two years. Maybe she did it to switch ultimately to Republican Party and then running Arizona. I don't know why she did it. Maybe she's not running for reelection. She did it out of a sense of integrity that she didn't feel like she belonged in the Democratic Party and doesn't really belong in the Republican Party either. But it is interesting. It'll be interesting to see how this impacts things coming down the pipe from the Senate. I don't know that it will impact anything. But it's got at least a shake to Democrats up a little bit that she left. I think the more progressive winner of the party is probably relieved and probably is happy to see her go, particularly given, again, that Democrats already have a majority no matter what. Cinema is one of the last kind of more what you'd call conservative Republicans. Lieberman did the same thing. It was a long, long time ago. And of course, a Republican, I forget the name of the Republican, also did it the other way. So it happens periodically. It hasn't happened in a while. I think in at least a decade. But it is politically interesting. And her political future now is going to be interesting. So we will see. We will see. Wes, thank you. So Wes jumped in with not a question, but just a support of the show at $50. So thank you, Wes. Get us on the road to 250. All right. So cinema, we'll see. I mean, I don't really like much what she stands for. She resists the very, what do you call it, woke stuff on the left. She definitely resists the worst of the worst. But she endorsed certain tax increases. She lobbied for certain tax cuts. She's very crony in that sense. She's very influenced by the people who fund her campaign. She's very influenced by the powers to be who she thinks are the powers to be in Arizona. So I'm not a huge cinema enthusiast, but she certainly does beat many of the left-leaning Democrats. And she certainly wasn't an obvious vote for the Democrats, which was always good. Now she's not a Democrat anymore. We'll see what role that plays. One of the things cinema is involved in is a bipartisan bill that she's working with. I think tell us from North Carolina, the Republican from North Carolina, it's interesting now you read these articles with cinema in them and it says I from Arizona instead of D from Arizona. So that's a change. Her and tell us are working on a bipartisan immigration framework. It's an immigration bill. They hope to get past the Congress in this lame duck session, so before January when the new Congress comes in because they know they can't get it passed then. This framework will attempt to kind of solve kind of the border crisis and also the dreamers. So it is kind of a compromise between Democrats and Republicans where the border patrol agents get a hike. The budget for border patrol goes from $25 billion, or increases by what is it? No, it's going to be $25 up to $40 billion of increasing for the border patrol in terms of money. And at the same time, it's going to involve a pathway to citizenship for 2 million illegal immigrants protected by DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival Program. It will also supposedly keep in place what's called Title 42, which is how to deal with refugees or people crossing over the border and the ability to kick them out or return them to Mexico. But that's only for a year. So that would keep Title 42 in for a year. But generally, this is that compromise that they've always talked about. We'll give the dreamers citizenship, we'll put them in the path to citizenship, and on the other hand increase funding for border patrol. I think both of those, I think overall, that kind of compromise is probably inevitable. It's sad that we cannot come up with a comprehensive program for immigration. We cannot come up with a comprehensive program to increase legal immigration at the expense of illegal. We can't come up with a comprehensive guest worker program or comprehensive increase in dramatic increase in H1B visas. Just generally, a system by which we increase legal immigration, which I think just having that will decrease illegal immigration and a way to at least the DACA kids get them legal status. And it shocks me that we can't come into some agreement about giving legal status to people who've lived here 20, 30, 40 years and who are illegal and can't, without giving them citizenship, can't get them some kind of work permit and some kind of way in order to live legally. So I think that immigration policy is just one big massive failure. I, of course, would like to see much more open borders, much more free immigration. Even if you want to restrict immigration, I think it would be the only way to restrict it is restricted maybe on the basis of jobs that provide legal entry to anybody who has a job who can get a job in the United States. So a much, much more liberal immigration policy. Instead, they're tinkering at the edges. They're wasting a lot of money. They're wasting a lot of resources. The United States is still in a position where there is a shortage of workers. There is a massive shortage of workers in particular fields. And yet we have massive numbers of illegals. We should be converting the illegals into legal. We should be opening up immigration status for more people to come in. So it's a mess. A little tinkering at the edges is better than nothing, but it is a mess. And it's only better than nothing. Let's see. Yesterday we talked about the president of Peru being arrested and basically being impeached. He is under custody in Peru. He is applying for, he is asking for what do you call it, for asylum in Mexico. The Peruvian government would have to agree to that because he is in custody. So it's going to be interesting if they actually try him and put him in jail or whether they just hand him over to the Mexicans and let him go live in Mexico. Obviously given how corrupt everybody seems to think he is, he should be tried and he should be persecuted in Peru. That is only just that our politicians get treated the same as regular citizens. Would a regular citizen be allowed asylum? God, it looks like the Brazilians are going to lose, which is unbelievable that that would happen. But it certainly looks like that is what's happening. All right, let's see. Britain, we all know about this government in Britain. God, run by Rishi Sunak, which is like a compromised government in the middle of the road, government is staying for nothing, government. It has proposed a windfall taxes on the oil and gas sector. That's a good way to solve your gas shortages. That's a good way to solve all your problems. Unbelievable, but there is a windfall tax on oil and gas sector going to be imposed. There was some talk about lifting that and not passing that, but it sounds like the British finance minister, Geoff Jeremy Hunt, is committed to it in spite of executives up in the North Sea oil and gas fields, lobbying against it, trying to get rid of it, explaining to him why this is detrimental, indeed a disaster for UK energy long term. He is committed to this windfall tax and it looks like it's going to pass. It's truly astounding how the Conservative Party has gone from Margaret Thatcher and people who claim to be the inheritors of Margaret Thatcher's legacy of privatization and moving towards a freer market, of turning to the private sector to solve problems. And now what we get is a British government, this new generation that is just willing to increase government, increase taxes, increase spending and cut out the private sector. It's tragic and unfortunate and shocking, but this is where we are. Just a few months ago, I was super optimistic about the UK and now I've become super pessimistic and of course I think I embrace this idea that we're heading towards a lost decade for Britain, we're heading towards a period in which Britain, the UK, is not going to grow significantly economically, a lot of social upheaval. I think you'll see a backlash against Brexit. I think we're heading towards really hard times in the UK and that's very, very sad for me to say because of what is going on. All right, it looks like Croatia beat Brazil, which is very disappointing. I was hoping Brazil would go all the way to the finals. I don't think Croatia will win because I think France or England will probably win now and I think Argentina has a good chance of winning this afternoon and beating Croatia, but we'll see. We'll see Croatia surprised so far. It is clearly the underdog. All right, so there we go. We're going to see Britain in real trouble and in real challenge. All right, let's see. Let's see. Let's see what else that I want to talk about or maybe we just go to questions now. You know, FTX founder Sam Beckman-Feed is still out there. I mean, he's still not been in arrest. I think the complexity of the situation is such that the authorities don't know exactly what happened and don't know exactly how to charge him or what to charge him on. He's out there speaking a lot, which is exactly the opposite of what his lawyers are probably recommending. It's going to be really interesting, I think, to see what actually happens. It's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out. Of course, the jurisdiction really has a lot to do with this is the Bahamas and he's not been arrested in the Bahamas either. So kind of waiting to see what is going to happen over there. And then I will note that China is seeing a spike in COVID cases. We'll see what happens. We'll see how they deal with it. We'll see whether they'll stick to the opening up and the rejection of zero COVID as this happens. We'll see if the public mood changes and embraces zero COVID again if infections rise. Also, it depends on how severe the infections are. If the infections are mild, which is almost all infections are, then maybe they can stick with this, we will see. All right, we managed to make it quicker. This was only 20 minutes. That's good. All right, let's see. Matt, we've got a couple of super chats. Maybe we can get all of this under 30 minutes. Matthew Stroud says, blackmail seems to be obviously moral, but not all morally is controlled by law. Is there a right violation and threatening to expose someone that a person once kept secret? I mean, I think there is. I think extortion is a legitimate, that's not blackmail. Blackmail is literally kidnapping somebody, which is obviously illegal. But I think extorting somebody should be illegal. You know, unless the only way you would get that kind of information is probably by stealing it somehow. You know, the people do have privacy and there is some legitimacy to privacy. Now, and using that information to extort money to get a value out of somebody. It's not yours. You're not trading value for value. You're, you know, you're extorting somebody to get money so that you don't do something negative. I suspect that wouldn't be legal in a free society. I mean, I'm open to argument about it, but I suspect it's not. Oh, which reminds me, I do want to say something about something I said yesterday. So I did the spiel yesterday about about sex being taught in schools and should sex be taught in schools and so on. And I did get a pushback on that and which I think is legit. And I think at the end of the day, what I missed my main issue, which I missed yesterday, was that, look, if we truly had a free market in education, we truly had schools, private schools, then a lot of this goes away. You don't want your kids to get sex education in school. You don't send them to school. You send them to school that doesn't have sex education. You do or you don't care. You send them to school that offers sex education. Do I think it's the right institution to be delivering that kind of information? I'm not convinced that it is. Although I understand why parents might not be the ideal. But again, we live in such a Christian society today that I don't know how that would reflect a world in which schools are really private in terms of kids, in terms of the attitude of parents, in terms of general attitudes towards sex. But also I worry whether particularly today, now again, maybe in a more rational society, this would be different, allowing teachers to deal with something so intimate and something so personal. Given the philosophy towards sex that is prevalent in our society, I just find questionable. And I think the choices this teacher made in this private school in Chicago are indicative of that. And it'll be interesting to see what kind of the parents, maybe the parents don't care and then fine. But if the parents do something and what's the school response and how this plays out in terms of the school-parent interaction, do parents pull their kids out of the school? Don't they? Does he keep teaching the same course the same way? That'll tell us a lot about parent preferences. The government, and this is the important point, the government should have no role in this. And of course, the problem with government schools is you get certain standardization and you get a certain view of sex imposed on people because they don't have choices, that we don't have the ability to choose your own school and to influence the curriculum in your own school. So the real problem is government education, as always. But the deeper problem is a culture that has a very, very, I think, bad philosophical view of sex, which like all their bad philosophical views about all the other things is going to manifest itself in one way or the other in the curriculum. So that's what you get. And that's why it's so important to focus on philosophical change. And at the same time of all the markets we want to liberate the market that is most important to liberate and where we get the most bang for the buck in terms of liberating is the education market and give parents the ability to control through their choice of school and through the input into the administration of the school. They get to have some say into the kind of education that kids want. And if parents want to want to offload the responsibility of talking about sex to teachers, assuming those teachers are qualified and those teachers are professional and able to do it, then so be it. I'm just not convinced that qualified or able, certainly today. And today it horrifies me what they might be saying or what they might be doing, both on the side of some of them a Christian and have a very negative attitude and the others are, oh, sex, yeah, let's just let's just let's just show you how to use butt plugs, kind of attitude that views sex as just whatever, right? And have no standards and no positive vision of sex other than the physical element of it. So and particularly, you know, teenagers are trying to understand sex. They're trying to figure it out. And it's true that the worst institutions right now for figuring that out is porn, which is out there and prevalent and accessible to everybody. Their parents probably don't give them anything or they give them something very shallow. Who knows what their teachers are telling them? Where do you go to learn about sex? And, you know, I would hope that in a rational society, there would be institutions, there would be websites, there would be information available at the right level. There would be counselors, I don't know, but there would be something, information about this at the right level. And maybe I'm open to the idea that it would be at schools. Okay, Jack says, watch die hard. Why weren't Hans Gruben company following their self-interest properly understood when they try to steal 600 million in untraceable bonds? Well, because lots of reasons. One is they didn't earn their money, it's not theirs. So fundamentally implicitly, what they're acknowledging by stealing it is they're acknowledging to themselves that they cannot earn money, that they can only leech, they can only be parasitic off of other people's ability to earn money. And that is destructive to self-esteem. So crooks don't have high self-esteem. They have low self-esteem because they realize that they are functioning not at the human level, which is about wealth creation, about using your mind to create wealth and to trade for it, but they're functioning at the animalistic level where you steal, you use physical force in order to achieve your values. So physical force against others. So one, it's a significant hit on their own self-esteem. And there's some good stories about people who've gotten away with crimes and what that does to their mentality, their self-esteem, their view of life. And there's at least one very famous case in the great British, great English train robbery where years afterwards, after living it up with all the money he made off of the thing and hating life, hating life, one of the bank robbers who got away with it actually returned and gave himself in and went to prison. It's like the bunny made-off story of you're happier in jail having gotten this off your chest than having to live a life that is a lie. And who's at a light too? It's a light to yourself. This is not your money and you know that. So that's one. The other side of this is the practical, existential side of it is you're gonna get caught. You're probably gonna die like they do in Die Hard. You're probably not just gonna steal money. You're probably gonna kill people. Is killing people okay if you can get away with it? Why? What does it do? Do you own mind? What does it do to your own ability to live? What does it do to, again, your self-esteem and your ability to enjoy life? What does it do to the incentive to come and catch you? So I think in every dimension, lying, stealing, cheating, killing doesn't work and it's not good for you and it's destructive. All right, Frank says, did you see the pic I sent to your email of Ayn Rand Anthem with a living mention in a recent Spider-Man comic? I wonder why this happened. I mean, Ayn Rand is part of the popular culture. She's certainly part of the popular culture of young people who both draw, write, and consume comics and television. I mean, Ayn Rand has made appearances in many movies. She's made appearances in many TV shows and in this Spider-Man comic. Of course, Spider-Man was created, its original creator was an objectivist or somebody who loved Ayn Rand, who was very committed to Ayn Rand. His name, of course, right now slips to my mind but one of you will tell me who it was. He was a strange guy and lived kind of in isolation most of his life but he was the creative Spider-Man so it's kind of justice that Ayn Rand does make it into the Spider-Man, Ditko, Steve Ditko was the creative Spider-Man and a huge Ayn Rand fan and tried to write cartoons based on kind of Ayn Rand's philosophy. I don't think very successfully but Spider-Man was obviously a huge success and she's just in the culture and people use her. But that doesn't mean we're winning. I mean, it's good to see, it's nice to see, it's nice that it appears in these places, it enhances our visibility but we're getting it off more than that. All right, everybody, we made it in exactly half an hour. We didn't make the 250 goal but I don't have time to hang around and bug you about that right now. Thank you for listening. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll do a show in the evening. I'll let you know and let's hope the rest of the World Cup goes better and I'll be doing again one of these shows again on Monday. So thank you all for listening. Don't forget to like before you leave. There should be a lot more than 26 likes or like before you leave. Don't forget, we're having trouble with the YouTube algorithms so do what you can to help me out here. Like, comment, share. Like, comment, share. And of course, Super Chat helps with everything but also in the algorithm, I believe. So let's try to get the algorithm to move in our favor. I'm gonna try to do on my end what I can, try to figure out what's going on, try to hire some people to help but it doesn't cost you much to do this. Nothing tonight but tomorrow night we will have a show. All right, everybody, have a great, have a great rest of your day, have a great week.