 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, welcome everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday night. Everybody's having a great time and having a great week. So we're here on, I guess, the third day in a row for Iran Book Shows. The last one for the year will be on Thursday. And Thursday we'll do kind of a wrap-up of the year. And then on Saturday we'll do a show kind of looking forward, looking forward both for the world, the economy, politics, but also for the Iran Book Show and what it has installed for us. Today we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, none of these are huge stories, so I'm open, of course, to your super chat questions, but we're going to talk a little bit about China and just popping up problems and troubles that they're having all over the place, which I think does not bode well for them going into the future. Here we'll talk about the military spending bill that Congress just passed, inflation adjusted, dollar-wise the largest we've ever had, with the exception of thing of 2011. And finally, yeah, I'm going to tell you what I think about West Side Story. I saw West Side Story the other day, Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake. And I'll tell you what I thought about that. And then, of course, as you know, I will be answering your super chat questions. Thomas Schubbottom has already gotten us going with a $25 question. We need quite a few of those to get our goal today, but there comes the master with a good $20 question. So yeah, we need $30, $20 questions to get our goal of $600 raised during the show. But of course, one of the ways we can get this is just everybody give, contribute, support, something, and we can get to even buy with a bunch of small dollar amounts. So yes, I think Annalise is here to kind of keep track and to motivate you and incentivize you to try to get to the $600 goal. We'll see how we go today. And then, of course, we'll have the big year-end celebration show on December 30th in a couple of days where we do a review. Of everything, just OK, so let's jump in with China. Maybe China, the first story out of China, is the whole issue of COVID. China took on a policy of trying to establish zero COVID. I think to a logic stand, the US has originally, we talked about in the US, we're going to flatten the curve. The only thing we're doing is lockdowns in order to help the hospitals. So we're going to flatten the curve. But then slowly, that policy evolved into not flattening the curve for hospitals, flattening the curve overall. And it seemed to have evolved to kind of a zero COVID policy. Let's just not have COVID. But COVID is a respiratory disease that travels by air. Amish had been telling us from day one that zero COVID is not a possibility. Now, there was some hope that the vaccines would stop COVID transmission. I think as COVID evolved and we got Delta, that went out the window, it turns out that even, and certainly now with the current variant, it seems like vaccinated people certainly get the disease. It is a huge benefit in terms of hospitalization and deaths. But in terms of actual spitting the disease, it's spitting like wildfire right now in New York. I saw an estimate that 2% of New Yorkers already have it and it might be, people are getting it anywhere between maybe potentially five to 10%. A week, we will have the whole city of New York soon having COVID. It also appears, some early stories suggest, that if you get the Army Corps variant of COVID, which is fairly mild for almost everybody, it gives you immunity against Delta. And that'll be huge because that will be the end. So our zero COVID policy failed. And we're going for herd immunity and herd immunity was not achieved through vaccines. What vaccines really achieved is reduced the mortality and the hospitalizations, so they flatten the curve in terms of hospitals. But what we're really getting, getting get is herd immunity as a consequence of pretty much everybody getting COVID and having natural immunity as a consequence of that. Natural immunity, of course, doesn't protect you either from variants. We know this because Thessie, who's not here today, yeah, she stayed up very late last night, so I guess she couldn't make today's show. Thessie had the original COVID, had two vaccines and then got Army Corps. So even natural immunity won't guarantee, but it looks like COVID is gonna become endemic. It looks like COVID is gonna become like a cold, a flu, a mild thing that we get every winter or seasonally or whatever. It's not gonna be the deadly disease. It's not gonna be overwhelmed hospitals. It's just gonna be there. And that's because we're gaining this natural immunity and the virus is getting weekend, weekend, weekend, which seems to be what's happening and one can expect that that will continue to happen as we move into 2022. China, on the other hand, has taken a very different path. China has stuck to a zero COVID methodology. Now the upside of that is that it could be that it could be that China through the zero COVID policy will manage to hold out while COVID in the rest of the world slowly evolves into something weak and by the time China opens up, COVID will be so weak that it won't be an issue for the Chinese. But right now, China has the zero COVID policy which is unreportedly, unreported, but looks like it is slowly crippling its economy. Slowly crippling China's economy. So for example, right now, there's a city of 13 million people, Qixi'an. Qixi'an is the city with the famous terracotta warriors. I think I told you yesterday or the day before that Qixi'an is a city that I gave a talk at. Historically it is the capital of the Chinese ancient empire. 13 million people, it's shut down. People are not allowed to leave home unless they get special permits, Qixi'an is a delivered Qixi'an workers and all essential workers are working with N-95 masks and with gloves, it's as if they're in hospitals. And they keep going city by city, shutting everything down. So what you have is the zero and of course the Chinese vaccine was very inefficient very ineffective from the beginning. And China is in a real mess because they, let's see, let me just do something here. Because they will continue. They will not get natural immunity. They will not get vaccine immunity. They will continue COVID will continue to attack. And as a consequence, this is gonna be a continuing problem for China. So in spite of the fact that everybody hailed China for its success, suppose its success in shutting down Wuhan and in avoiding large numbers of deaths as a consequence of COVID. These rolling lockdowns of cities, of whole neighborhoods, of whole areas are doing damage to the Chinese economy, doing damage to the Chinese people and there's no end to it, there's no end to it. So it'll be interesting, we will see, we will keep track of COVID's evolution in China but that is not the only problem China is facing. It's not the only problem China is facing. China's facing significant economic problems. It is significantly increasing its regulation and control of the technology industry. Take companies that seemed like they were unerroll, that nothing could stop them on our struggling. Many of those companies, some of those companies have left in New York Stock Exchange but even in Beijing, Chinese technology stocks struggling, having struggling, huge amount of value has been lost. Authoritarianism doesn't work. China is gonna learn this the hard way. Authoritarianism doesn't work. You've got massive problems of real estate investment, real estate companies that are going bankrupt but it's not just the companies, it's a lot of people who've put down money deposits on new apartments, who will never see those apartments, who will never see those real estate projects. There are now a number of skyscrapers that will never be finished, that have been started and never be finished. They are China's facing real economic struggles, real economic challenges. Walmart, Western companies, going to China right now, are facing the challenge of boycotts. What's happening is because of the Biden administration saying that they would, all right, if companies are doing a business in, what's the, what's that district in China? Xinjiang, that is the district in Western China where the Uighurs are being put in concentration camps and where they are accused massive violations of human rights against the Muslim occupants of these regions. Many companies, many countries, including the United States, are putting sanctions on entities that trade with companies that produce in the Xinjiang area as a consequence. Walmart, for example, in China has said that it will start buying products from Chinese companies based or doing business in or producing product in Xinjiang. As a consequence, Walmart is being boycotted. So business for these American entities is not good in China because of these, pronounce Xin, Xinxiang, Xinxiang. All right, it doesn't look like, okay, I believe one of the female, all right, it's pronounced Xinxiang, Xinxiang. And you've got Walmart thinking of leaving China, Walmart reducing its investments in China. And in general, Walmart is struggling in China not just because of that, but also because consumption, Chinese consumers, have not seen a full recovery, have not seen a real recovery as a consequence of, right, as a consequence of COVID. And of course, that's only gonna be hampered even more with lockdowns like what we're seeing Xi'an and other parts of China. So China is starting to be, a bit of an economic mass. The Chinese are gonna loosen monetary policy going into next year. That could suggest inflation in China, which would create all kinds of internal problems in China. And then the question is, what are the Chinese people, how are they gonna respond to economic problems? How are they gonna respond to less freedom, more and more encroachment on their privacy and on their freedoms? And very little economic growth. We haven't seen that combination in modern China ever before. And if there's going to be an uprising, if there's gonna be a backlash against this regime, it's going to come from the Chinese middle class who are used to at least some level of freedom that they definitely use to ever increasing opportunities to get wealthy. And suddenly they're seeing all of these being constraints. You're seeing stories, for example, from the Guardian, this is just a headline from economic miracle to mirage. Will China's GDP ever overtake the US? Didn't see those kind of headlines, particularly in the Guardian. Guardian's a very left-wing newspaper. Two, three years ago, when everybody was just, was just going gaga over the supposed miracle of state capitalism, state capitalism, capitalism in quotes. What the left viewed as proof that you can get massive economic growth and have central planning and have a big government. You're seeing China starting to restrict its companies from doing overseas IPOs. You're seeing over and over again. You're seeing, oh, it was the funny story this week, the China complain to the United Nations that it had to shift the location of one of its satellites because of Elon Musk's satellites, that the satellites were not one of its satellites. The space station, the Chinese have a space station. They had a shift because it was gonna collide with one of Elon Musk's SpaceX's satellites. So it had a complaint to the United Nations about that. You go on and on about the worst of a relationship with China has with the U.S., the worst of a relationship China has with the West more broadly, the more difficult it is for this administration to hide the low economic growth, the economic struggles, the stagnant living wages, the stagnant quality and standard of living that the Chinese engaged in. So, you know, everybody's so afraid of China. I just saw an op-ed in the Washington Post by Hugh Hewitt. You know, Hugh Hewitt, I guess he's a radio commentator on radio, at least in California. I think he's national syndicated, conservative. And it's all about China's this massive threat to America. It's not, China's poor as compared to us. We'll talk about military spending in a second. But China is not a military threat to the United States. China's not, quote, an economic threat to the United States. China's a country struggling. China's a country struggling to keep up. People say China's ahead of us on certain technologies. Maybe they are right now. It won't last. China's crackdown on technology companies won't allow that to happen. Yes, they have a lot of scientists. Yes, they have many, many more engineers than we do. Many multiples of the engineers we do. But they can't innovate. They can be creative. They can't think out of the box because the Chinese government won't let them. So, China is no threat to the U.S. Not because we don't import. Indeed, we only seem to be importing more and more Chinese goods. We only seem to have a greater and greater appetite to buy Chinese goods. That was true during the Trump years when he put tariffs and yet trade deficit, which don't mean anything, only grew with China. We became more dependent on Chinese imports, not less dependent on Chinese imports under Trump. And that's continued to increase under Biden. That's not the issue. The issue is internally in China. The economy is collapsing. Not because of anything we're doing. Not because of anything we've done. Just look at the numbers. Which brings us, of course, to the perception that people have of China as this military threat. And as a consequence of that, people, Democrats and Republicans, have just voted for one of the largest, at least in dollar terms, maybe the second largest, something like that, defense spending bill we've ever had, bigger than the Korean Wars, bigger than Vietnam, in dollar terms. We'll get to GDP per cent of GDP in a minute. 768 billion dollars. Biden just signed a bill. And for those worried, the Democrats are gonna weaken our defenses and spend less money. The only year in which defense spending was higher than this in terms of dollars was 2011 under Obama. And this bill, 768 billion, is 30 billion more than Donald Trump's last defense budget. 768 billion dollars are being spent by the United States on defense. In a year where you would have thought, given that we just left, given that we just left Afghanistan, you would have thought that defense spending would have gone down. And yet, defense spending is going up. The one thing, again, that it seems like Democrats and Republicans agree on, is let's spend money. They love spending money. Whether it's on defense or whether it's redistribution, it doesn't matter. Politicians cannot, cannot help themselves. But spend money. Now, how does this compare to China? Because China is this massive threat, right? How does it compare to China? Well, the United States, as I said, 768 billion. How much does China spend? Well, we don't know exactly. They're not quite as transparent as we are. But estimates are that they spend less than a third than we do. Somewhere, probably around 200 billion, maybe 250 billion. But less than a third of what the United States spends is spent by the Chinese government. So, just gives you a sense of this, right? We already have the strongest, biggest, most powerful military of any country in human history. We're spending at a rate nobody in the world comes even close to matching. Our biggest rival, China spends less than a third of what we spend annually on a defense budget. The United States actually spends 39% of all military spending worldwide globally. We spend about 39% of that amount. So almost 40% of all the money spent on defense in the entire globe, 40% of that, then that is just the United States. If you take the 11 countries that spend the most on the military outside of the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia spends a lot of money on defense. I have no idea what they're spinning it on exactly, but Saudi Arabia, so Russia, Saudi Arabia, UK. The United States spends more than the next 11 countries combined, next 11 countries combined. There is no threat that if the United States wanted to, it couldn't deal with from military perspective. It is this fear mongering around China, around Russia is absurd and ridiculous. And of course, neither one of those countries is suicidal enough, crazy enough to actually attack the United States because of this. Ragnar of the Desert, thank you. Really appreciate that. That's very generous. Thank you for that. Gets us a little closer to the goal. As of 2019, the United States spent about 3.4% of US gross domestic product, GDP, right? Now, that is less as a percentage of GDP than countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia. But that's because Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia have very, very small GDPs. And you can understand Saudi Arabia and Israel spending a lot of money, particularly Israel, Saudi Arabia primarily because of the Iranian threat. Russia, it's purely for offensive measures. And because it views the whole West as a threat to itself. But there's just no threat out there. And it's ever growing. So we withdraw to Afghanistan, you would think that that would mean that defense spending would go down. And it doesn't. The only time defense spending has really gone down is after the fall of the Bill and Wall, after 1991, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, you saw the Bush administration first, Bush senior, and then the Clinton administration actually cut government spending. And if you look at a chart of government spending per GDP, that has gone down significantly over the years. It peaked in the early 1980s as Ronald Reagan beefed up spending to combat the Soviet Union. It actually was higher than that during the Vietnam War. It was over 7% of GDP was military spending. Then of course, it peaked again after 9-11. 9-11 was like the bottom in terms of percent of GDP. It was under 3%, it looks like. And then it peaked again in 2011 at over, I don't know, 4. Something percent, 4.5%, 4.6% of GDP. Since then, it's been slowly coming down. And then now, over the last two years, it's heading back up again because we're so worried about China, even though we're spending three times more in terms of dollars than they are. Is this fear, or is this what Eisenhower called the, what did they call it, the military industrial complex that won't let go of the dollars that continuously demands more and more? Again, we've talked about this in the past. Why do we have troops all over Europe? Why do we have troops all over Asia? Why do we have troops all over Africa? Why do we have troops all over the Middle East? How much is that costing us? What about all the bureaucracy that keeps all that afloat? All the infrastructure that keeps all that afloat? Imagine if you actually shrunk the US military to what was actually necessary to defend the United States from Russia, China, Iran, whatever. If you actually invested in an efficient deterrent, an efficient, super efficient, would be ideal, super efficient, missile defense system, rapid deployment forces, and shrunk everything else. What if we invested in technology instead of in deploying thousands and thousands, well not thousands, tens of thousands of troops all over the world? But even in a time of inflation, inflation's about six, seven percent these days, of growing government deficits and growing government debt, the United States feels rich enough to keep spending and both the right and the left keep beating the drama of, we've got an enemy, we've got an enemy, we've got to spend, we've got to spend, we've got to spend. Well, we can't afford to spend, guys. This country's already over 100% of GDP in terms of its debt. The debt is only increasing. Defense spending is, I can't say, 40% of all discretionary spending, something like that in the United States. Non-discretionary spending is so security, Medicare, things that Congress can't adjust from year to year, they adjust automatically. If you're gonna cut anyway, you're gonna have to cut defense. If you're gonna cut the budget, you're gonna have to cut defense. If you're gonna get spending out of control, you're gonna have to cut defense. Now you're also gonna have to completely change, modify, shrink entitlements, voucherize maybe, privatize maybe. But in the meantime, we're writing bigger and bigger and bigger checks to the military to cope with unknown threats. I found this interesting. You know, China has two aircraft carriers, two aircraft carriers. One that it bought from Ukraine. It's an old Russian aircraft carrier. And one I think it produced itself. And it's got, it's building too. So I don't know when they'll be done, but the two that it's building will give China four aircraft carriers. China has, you'll see some people who are fear mongering tell you that China has the largest Navy in the world. It does. A lot of the little boats, a lot of small boats with very little military offensive capabilities. Two aircraft carriers, two being built right now. The United States on the other hand has 11 aircraft carriers. Half the aircraft carriers in the world are in the U.S. Navy. It is also building two new aircraft carriers. These new aircraft carriers are gonna be stunning phenomena's indeed they're late in terms of being deployed because they've tried to do too much and in a sense put too much technology into these things. But they are gonna be way ahead of anything the Chinese can produce. American superiority in terms of weapon systems is just unmatched in the world. For many years during the Soviet Union times people used to think the Soviet Union had great weapon systems. I remember the T-72 tank and the MiG, the MiG-27 I think it was, the MiG aircraft aircraft. All duds when it came to actual real world, I mean if you wanted to test your weapon systems you put them in the Middle East and put them against the Israelis. The Israelis using American weapon systems and in 1967 using French and British and German weapon systems completely crushed the Arab forces using Soviet weapon systems. I remember being trained in a tank corps and we were very worried about the T-72, the latest, greatest, amazing, stunning Russian tank. And it had for the first time in history it had an automatic loader. You know how the projectiles that a tank shoots out are loaded in one by one. And most tanks suddenly in those days had manual loaders you would pull out a shell, you would put it into the whatever it's called and you would shoot it out, right? And then you would get another one. And it would be tricky, tanks are very cramped spaces, it's dangerous, these are big explosive things, you know, they're heavy, they're difficult, they're complicated, I was in a tank, I shot these things, I know what it's like, not pleasant. Well the Russians came up with the idea of automatizing it. So they put this automatic system that took out the shell, put it into the cannon and boom and wow, we were terrified of this thing. Plus the T-72 had these very, very, this profile was very slick. So it was very difficult to hit if you were shooting at it with your own tank, your shells. It turned out though, this was turned out in the 1982 war in Lebanon, which the Syrians participated in a little bit, they stopped once they realized what was gonna happen to them. That the nice thing about, for our perspective, the T-72 was, you didn't have to hit it. If you managed to explode a shell anywhere close to the T-72, the impact of the shell would cause the automatic loader to completely malfunction and the tank to become useless, useless. That's Russian weapon systems. No thinking about how they actually used in the field, no thinking about the actual consequences. And therefore, I'm not worried about Russians, I'm not worried about Chinese systems. I'm worried about how we're spending our dollars. I'm worried about our capabilities and our capacities and the waste and fraud and corruption that is involved in military spending in the United States. But in terms of the quality of the weapons, once they're built, it takes forever to build them, they're super expensive. But once they're built, once they're in the program, there's no weapon system in the world that can match them. So really nothing to fear. I'm more worried about the economic consequences of our government spending like there's no tomorrow, spending on everything, not thinking, this is Republicans and Democrats, not thinking deficits matter, not thinking debt matters. Well, it does matter. And the inflation we're experiencing right now is a consequence of, I think, partially the fact that these deficits and this debt is out of control. And people have realized that we will never be able to pay it back. So, stop worrying about China. I kept saying this during the Trump years. Stop worrying about China. Stop worrying about America. China is not the enemy. The enemy are universities. The enemy are politicians. The enemy is our intellectual elites. That's the enemy. The Chinese, we can take care of them easily. All right, let me see. I think there were some relevant questions. I'll take any questions that were relevant. Tom, Shubhara has a question. Given the devastation they'd cause and the similar retaliation they'd bring on the US in a war with, say, China, is the purpose of having nukes merely to the two war actually using them is still a real option. So suddenly a big part of why you have them is to deter, right? It's mutually assured destruction which deter the other side from launching an attack on you. And that is a hugely important, hugely important, you know, function of the nukes that we have. It just deters the bad guys from deploying them against us. But that of course is not all. Nuclear weapons can be used. They could be used in tactical theaters. There are such things as tactical nuclear warheads where the damage is isolated. It's not expansive as just dropping a bomb and boom, but you can actually make it much more limited and constrained. Jason, thank you. I'll get to the question next. It's very generous. So you could use tactical nuclear weapons in certain contexts. You could also use nuclear weapons to destroy the capacity of smaller players to deploy their nuclear weapons. For example, Iran. If Iran ever developed a nuclear weapon and you thought they were gonna use them, you could deploy your own nuclear weapon to destroy their capabilities and to teach them a lesson. You might also be able to do that in North Korea, although unlikely because of its proximity to South Korea and the danger of radiation impacting your own ally. But Pakistan is a real threat. Pakistan could not destroy the United States with nuclear weapons. It probably couldn't even launch against the United States. But we could destroy their nuclear capabilities with the nuclear bombs. So you can't rule out ever using it. It's unlikely we would ever use it against Russia or China because they would come after us. Now, the flip side of that is if we develop the kind of missile defense systems that I hope we are developing and I think we are capable of developing, then we could knock their missiles out of the sky and still hit them. Not that I'm advocating for that. I know it's gonna come out that I am advocating for attacking China. All right, Jason asked. Jason, thank you. Just Invitek Techvich, I'm not trying to pronounce it, sorry. But Jason asked a $100 question. This is great. Moves us ever so closer to our elusive goal, well, not so elusive most days, of $600. So cyber actions in ransomware are a big threat to government and industry and criminals are enabled and funded by crypto currencies. They would not be so successful using legit currency. Thoughts on banning modifying crypto, it seems to largely fund criminal act is not legit trade. No, I don't think that one should ban it because I think, look, most stuff that is banned, most stuff that is illegal trade should be legal. Primarily I'm thinking of drugs, money laundering, all of that should be legal, right? I don't have problem using crypto to do those things. Now ransomware is an issue, although somehow the US did manage to figure out how to get some of the ransomware back from the power company when the power company was blackmailed into giving them, I think it was bitcoins and they found a way to get the money back, the crypto currency back. But no, I don't think it should be banned, but I think what should be is that the United States should take a much, much, much more aggressive stance, much more aggressive stance vis-a-vis cyber actions and ransomware by players overseas, most of the players overseas, for example. We know of this network in Russia which keeps attacking us. Well, you tell the Russians that they need to arrest these people, they need to shut down their operations, or we will launch a massive cyber attack on Russia and wipe their computers out. I think we have that capabilities and that's exactly what we should do. So I think we should do the same with China. I don't think we should just sit back. I think we should take the offensive and if we know an attack originating of China, if it's the Chinese government doing it, we just blast all the Chinese government computers and we cook them, we fry them. I assume you can do that, you make a mess of them. If it's an organized crime unit in China, we contact the Chinese government, we tell them, look, here they are, you've got 48 hours to take care of it, otherwise, beware. So I think we just have to enforce the laws and we have to be super aggressive about going after the players and I have no doubt in my mind that it's possible if we're actually willing to take a stand, have self-esteem, and you know, this is the wall of government. The wall of government is to protect the individual rights of American citizens. Ransomware and cyber attacks are violation of American citizens' rights. This is where the government needs to step in and make sure it stops and use its military capabilities to make it stop, to make it stop. So Jason, thanks for the question, good question. Let's see, any other China questions or military spending? JJ Jigby's, you know, yes. Despite the obvious issues, do you think it's worth to move to China or Hong Kong if one enjoys the culture? I would really think twice about it. It's not a good time to be in China. I mean, you might wanna go there for a couple of years, have an exit strategy, have a way out, but you're going to a place that clearly is unfree and moving towards less freedom. If you like the culture, you should consider going to Singapore. You can consider going to South Korea, although that's a slightly different culture. But China and Hong Kong are moving away from freedom. Beware of living in places that are moving away from freedom. It's a real challenge. And you're taking a risk. I'm not saying don't do it, but really think it through. Adam asks, China dismissed official in charge of the Uighurs. His replacement is a longtime governor of Xinjiang, who is China's most experienced guy in handling foreign companies and foreign media. It'll be interesting to see what they actually do. That's a great PR play, but will they find ways to eliminate this issue around these camps, around, you know, basically prison labor and around the so-called reeducation concentration camps. And maybe this new governor, maybe the fact is experienced with Xinjiang, which is the freest of all the states, I guess, provinces in China. Maybe he will build being a little freedom to Western China and that'll be a good thing. But I'll believe it when I see it. So let's wait and see. Let's see. Daniel says, you seem to know about military hardware and foreign policy. What sources do you use to keep it formed? I don't know. I mean, I don't know that much about hardware. Today, I know a lot more about hardware from 30, 40 years ago when I was in the military. And while I was in Israel, when in Israel you kept track of these things very closely. I keep a little bit of track because I watch what's going on. In Israel, I read up a little bit about weapon systems in the United States. No specialized, but foreign policy, I just read a lot. Whether it's foreign policy magazine to books, to newspaper articles, to I just constantly have my finger on the pulse. I have had since 9-11, I think even before that because I think being raised in Israel just makes you very, very sensitive to issues of foreign policy. You make you attuned to those kind of issues. So, yeah, I mean, foreign policy has been an area of expertise for me and I've tried to stay on top of it. And just like with everything else, you can't read one source. You have to read lots of sources. And I do that with the big key foreign policy issues. Foreign policy is not that hard. It's not that difficult once you know some of the principles involved. So it doesn't take me a long time to figure out like what's going on with Russia and Ukraine or what's going on. And I don't buy into conspiracy theories. So I look at what's going on in the ground, what I understand about the players, who the players are, what is their leading characteristics, what is the ideas driving them. And you can pretty much figure it out from there in terms of what is likely to happen and what is likely to go on. I try to read as much as I can about China not knowing as much as I should because China is obviously the second most important country in the world today after the United States, mainly for ill, but it is important and you have to know what's going on there. But everything I read suggests that it's becoming less and less and less of a threat, not more of a threat. Let's see. Ian asks, would love to see more on the importance of immigration. Trump was bad on it. Terrible on it. Bad is an understatement. Biden is bad on it and fewer people are coming to the US. Yes, and COVID is just an excuse to bring in fewer and fewer people. Greatest weapon against Chinese government should be taking their best people. Absolutely. I mean, we should offer green cards from anybody who China wants to come to the US. But of course, we have restricted Chinese immigration to this country. They were the first group of immigrants that we restricted entry into this country in the 1890s because of racism. And it would be shocking if suddenly we opened up our doors to Chinese immigrants. But yes, I mean, think of all the PhDs, Chinese PhDs that we sent back to China to work on their weapons systems or to work on their tech industry. Think of all the Chinese entrepreneurs that have gone back to China after being trained in our engineering schools. If you're basically a graduate of an American university, you should get a green card stamped to your passport and immediately upon with your graduation diploma. Immigration is so absurd. Trump was horrible in immigration. Biden is horrible in immigration. They're all horrible immigration. Trump was the worst because under him, we saw dramatic shrinkage of legal immigration. And Biden is unfortunately continuing that partially because of the exclusive COVID. But Democrats have never been pro-immigration because the unions are anti-immigration. The unions think that immigrants drive down wages. So unions have always been anti-immigration. Boaz asked, in an interview released earlier today between Lex Friedman and Elon Musk, Elon said that it's easier to do business in China than business in certain states in the United States like California. Does that make sense? Yes, I mean, I've heard that many times. I've heard that Steve Nguyen, the casino operator who owns Nguyen casinos in Vegas, one of the great entrepreneurs in the casino business, Steve Nguyen said that over 10 years ago. And in many respects, China in some industries in some areas is less regulated, less controlling, lower taxes than the United States. So it absolutely makes sense and has made sense for a long time. Now, China's clamping down on the very successful but they're not super successful. They're not, you know, big companies just like the United States wants to climb down on them at the lower levels, at the mid-size, at the small level. It's easier to do business in China. There are fewer regulations. The United States has one of the most regulated economies in the world. Let's see. Let's see. Daniel says, you should have Keith Lockidge on, your viewers want to pick his brain on physics, aliens, et cetera. Yeah, that would be fun to have Keith on. I'll definitely do that. As I said, I'm gonna do two interviews a month starting in January, with the first one being Harry Binswanger a week from today. Don't miss that. That's gonna be all the epistemology, free will, all the philosophical questions that maybe I've punted on or maybe I've given social answers on. You can ask Harry and get much better answers for. Let's see. All right, let me give you, I saw over the weekend, I saw West Side Story, the movie. And this is a movie that is directed by Steven Spielberg. The actors are basically, most of the people you probably don't know. Callan, thank you. Wow, that's great. I'll get to your question. Well, let's do it now because I see it has China in it. What is your favorite scene from Atlas? Okay. I now picture Gold's Valley with a statue of Bitcoin and the end of Atlas with Gold tracing the sign of Bitcoin rather than the dollar to better represent free markets. Thoughts on Bitcoin and China. So my favorite scene in Atlas Shrugged is the scene where the Gold, Gold's line, the John Gold line has just been opened in Dagonie and Reardon in the train, riding the train along the line towards Wyatt, who's waiting on the other side. And it is a scene where the line runs, the line works. It's a magnificent, unmitigated success. It's a huge triumph. But one of the things is, you really get in the scene as the beauty of Invan's writing because one of the things that's happening on this train is the way she's describing Dagonie walking through the engine. It's filled with sexual tension and a real eroticism. Throughout that scene, there's this profound love that she has for Reardon's metal, for the engine, for the railroad, for everything the railroad represents, for everything the metal represents, for the bridge that they're riding across. And of course, that all gets expressed later on at the end of that scene when her and Reardon have sex. But it's building from that scene in the engine. And that to me is as she's walking along the train. In the engine room, that is incredibly, incredibly powerful. And think about how triumph. Everybody said she'd fail. Her brother said she'd fail. The media said she'd fail. Everybody was eager to see her fail. And they tried to destroy it in every way possible. The train engine, the train engine. I don't know what page it is. It's the running of the John Gold Line. It's a great, great scene. And it's this triumph of overcoming all the odds. Everything. It's the one part of Atlas Shrugged where it's unmitigated joy, where it's, they have won. We don't know yet that they're maybe going to lose. But at this point, they have won. Wyatt hasn't gone on strike yet. I shouldn't be saying, giving you spoilers, but it looks like they won. When you read it for the first time, yeah. This is, and it's really the only time, other than Gold's Gulch, that you get that sense of triumph, success. I don't know what page number it is. So that's my favorite scene in Atlas. I don't see Bitcoin as replacing the sign of the dollar. Because to me, the dollar, I still hold the dollar as representing what I think real money is, which is gold. I still think of the dollar as representing gold. Now, I know it's not, but I think it will one day. And I think that that's a day in which we are free banks. And I think in a competition between, in a free market, between the dollar and Bitcoin, I think, between gold and Bitcoin, I think gold wins. And gold comes back as a dollar. That's the way it's denominated. The dollar represents a weight of gold. I don't know what I think about Bitcoin. I'm still undecided, if you will. I mean, there's a lot of good in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is interesting. The blockchain built on Bitcoin is interesting. The technologies that are built using the blockchain, using Bitcoin are fascinating. I'm skeptical about whether Bitcoin will ever become money, even if it becomes this amazing technology that we all use or represents an amazing technology we all use. But whether it becomes money is a completely different story. Again, I think in a completely fair competition, in a totally free market, I think, again, gold wins. And because it has tangible physical value, and I just think that is more attractive as a medium of exchange and store value than is something digital that's not tangible. But the more Bitcoin becomes valuable as the, what do you call it, the building blocks of a technology, the more Bitcoin can become money. And I'm all for competition between monies. I'm all for having it out in a free market and competing. Part of my problem with Bitcoin is I don't think government will allow it to succeed. I just don't think it would be allowed. I think governments will do whatever they can and they have a lot of power to stop it. And of course, China is already starting to do that. Now, we'll see, China wants to deploy its own central bank crypto. The advantage of a central bank crypto is they can keep tabs on everything. There's nothing worse than a central bank crypto. But that's what they want. They don't want that anonymity of Bitcoin. They don't want your ability to move it around. They want to be able to control what you're doing, how you do it, and Bitcoin challenges that. So China is already starting to restrain use of Bitcoin. We'll see what the United States does in five, 10 years when they start, when they think Bitcoin is posing a real challenge to them. You'd be surprised that vicious governments can become when they feel power slipping out of their grip. Slipping out of their grip. So we will see, we will see. But it's an incredibly powerful technology that gives people a lot of autonomy. And for that, I am grateful. And for that, with regard to that, I am happy. I'm happy that that's what it succeeds in doing. Yeah, let me know if you have any more specific questions around Bitcoin or around China. All right, where is Annalise? She was going to keep track of everything and she's disappeared. There she is. Where are we in terms of reaching 600? This is important stuff. I need to know where we are. I mean, I think we picked up, we picked up like 250 bucks. So we should be over 300. We should be 350, 400. I don't know. You tell me. So that we can figure out how do we get to 600. I'm really happy to see the $200 contributions because those are really new and that's terrific. Let's see, what else? Yes, West Side Story. Anyway, I want to see West Side Story. It's directed by Steven Spielberg, music by Leonard Bernstein, the famous conductor of the New York Philharmonic who wrote music for movies, I guess musicals, and then he wrote classical music, what he called serious music, which was lousy, I didn't like it. I don't like almost anything he wrote, but the music of West Side Story is amazing, it's beautiful, it's truly spectacular. I thought the movie was excellent. I really thought the movie was excellent. The direction is Spielberg is at best. The way the camera moves, the close-ups on the actors, the color and the, how would you say it? The stylization was really, it was one of Spielberg's better movies, I'd say. One of Spielberg's, I think one of his better direction, directorial projects, right? So, it was truly beautifully done. It's a tragic story, I don't know if you know the story, I'll try not to give too much away, but it's a tragic story, and he builds up the tension, even though you know how it's gonna end. And Elise, could you tell me where we are in terms of the, how far we are from 600? I see you're there. Again, beautifully shot, excellent acting. So, the lead female, her name in the story is Maria. Rachel Ziegler is just gorgeous. She's beautiful. She's got that combination of sexy and innocent, which I think is perfect for West Side Story. She just does, she pulls it off really, really well, as does everybody else. Rita Moreno, who of course was the actress in the original West Side Story, acts as a much older character, obviously, in this one. She's good. The lead character, Tony Ansel Elgort, is very good. Rachel Ziegler, this is her first movie. First movie. Her first movie was, Jason says, we need a show about this topic and crypto. What is this topic and crypto? So anyway, if you're interested in a show about money and crypto, yes, I'll do a show on money and crypto. By the way, you can sponsor a show on any topic you want. If you want me to do a particular show on a particular topic, it's $1,000. Just let me know and I'll do the show that you want me to do on a topic of your choosing. So we could definitely have somebody sponsor a show on the nature of money, the source of money, and crypto on top of that. But let me, what was the, I was talking about West Side Story. So anyway, the actors are new. I wasn't familiar with them. I thought they all did an excellent job. And look, the story is fantastic. It's a modernized Romeo and Juliet. It's between a gang of, I guess, whites, you would call them, of New York white kids during the 1950s while New York is tearing down the slums to build, the Rockefeller, not to build Rockefeller Senate, to build, oh God, where the opera house is and where the New York Philharmonic plays and the ballet is. It's a tip of my tongue anyway. Somebody will tell me in a minute in the chat. They're knocking the whole neighborhood down and it's about a white gang, the Jets and a Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks. It was actually really, really fun to watch the movie in Puerto Rico and to see the response kind of the audience, the Puerto Rican audience, do it all. So it's about hatred based on ethnic characteristics, hatred for the sake of hatred, the consequences of hatred. It's about the consequences of bigotry. Lincoln Center, thank you, Linda. God, I can't believe I missed that. No, Carnegie is somewhere else. Lincoln Center was the building of Lincoln Center and the whole kind of complex on the Upper West Side, which is today one of the most expensive places in New York to live. So it's this conflict between these two gangs. So it deals with this ethnic animosity between them. It deals with the consequence of that. It deals with what happens when a white guy falls in love with this Puerto Rican girl and how that completely bends everybody out of shape with horrifically tragic consequences, the whole thing. Unfortunately, I think Spielberg makes two kind of concessions to the war crowd. One of which didn't really upset me, but one of which didn't bother me at all, but one of which did and I thought was an artistic aesthetic mistake. The first one was the inclusion of what seems like a transgender character. In the original movie, the character was a tomboy, which I think is much better thematically and in many respects, it just didn't make any sense in this context with these gangs and given the culture of the time and giving everything else, it just didn't make any sense. But the second one, but that didn't make sense. I can live with that. But the second one was that there are the scenes where the Puerto Ricans talk among each other in Spanish, not a lot of scenes, but a few. There is no English subtitles, so you don't know what's going on. I mean, you can tell from the story, you can tell from the context and they quickly say, let's switch to English, we're in America, we should speak English. But so it's just a stupid concession that makes no sense. Subtitles needed to be there, the English subtitles. It's important for us to know what's being said, know what's going on, so we can follow. All the English were subtitles into Spanish here in Puerto Rico. But with that exception, I think it was absolutely terrific. And it's probably the only movie I'm gonna see in the theaters, I have no interest in seeing Matrix 4, I have no interest in seeing another what do you call it, Spider-Man movie, God, how many Spider-Man movies can you make? But this was terrific. And let me just say, it's worth just going for the music. The music is, I forgot how good the West Side Story music is. The songs are amazing. There's so much fun and they're so lyrical and just enjoyable. And there's a song about how wonderful it is to be in America where the girls all understand America and the guys wanna go back to Puerto Rico. There's a song about how beautiful she is. It's well-stage, it's well-directed. The choreography is fantastic for the dance numbers. As I said, the cinematography, Janosk Kaminski, I'm not sure what other movies he's made, but Janosk Kaminski, excellent cinematography. But again, the choreography is amazing. Spielberg's direction is good. The actors are fantastic, even though the actors are mostly first-timers or young unknowns. But just the dancing and the singing, wow. And then the drama. It's very powerful. It's very powerful, very sad and very powerful. So highly recommended. Go knowing it's a tragedy, so it will be depressed at the end. But the potential, the human potential that you'll see, the beauty and just the artistry of it all. Is definitely, is definitely worth going to see it for. The music, fantastic. See somebody coordinate music, dance, singing, and a story all together in such a beautiful way. Yeah, and again, I think both the music and the direction, superb, superb. So I highly enjoyed, highly enjoyed West Side Story. West Side Story, let's see. Now, the original was good too, but I encourage you to go see this. Theme has to ask, how should one view musicals? I feel stuck in seeing them as movies for kids. I don't know why. Certainly West Side Story is not a movie for kids. The themes are all adult themes. The themes all relate to adult issues. So I don't see it as kids at all. The music is beautiful. Music, it's just like opera is not kids. You know, artistry, it is amazing artistry and has a unique emotional impact when you can integrate music and storyline, acting, music, cinematography. I mean, it's, I don't, you know, the sound of music is also for kids, but it's also just a magnificent movie. It's just a beautiful movie. And the singing just enhances that. Right? So it's not reality. That's the beauty of it. It's not reality. It's a different experience. It's a different experience. And the music is a way to activate your emotions that is very difficult to do without music. And the musical and the singing, they can activate certain parts of your aesthetic response that is not activated when you're just watching a straight movie. And by the way, music is an important, hugely important aspect of movie watching. Try watching your favorite movie with a sound off for the scenes without any dialogue. And you'll see the extent to which music activates emotions even in a visual medium like film. J.J. Jingbeis says, I think the lack of subtitles made the divide between the two contentious cultures more palatable. I thought it was a refreshing choice. You could tell the divide from the story, from the dialogue, from what was going on. You didn't need a gimmick to do it. I view it as a gimmick. And I don't, I think Spielberg is too good of a director to need gimmicks in order to get that divide. The divide comes across from everything that he does, the way he films the two groups, the way they engage with one another, the way, I mean, it's obvious. Yeah, go see Gale, absolutely go see West Side Story. I think you'll really enjoy it. And let me know, let me know after the fact. And go see it in a big theater. I think it's fun. And look, the movie's flopping. The movie doesn't appeal to young people because the music is too good. Young people have no appreciation for good music. I don't know if it's more palatable, palpable. Again, I think it's a gimmick. The contentiousness is already palpable. It's already palpable. It's already right there in your face. Now I'm struggling to understand what they're saying that that is supposed to make me feel like, I don't know, I'm part of the divide, but I'm the audience. I'm not part of the divide. So it's frustrating. Plus I'm sitting in Puerto Rico not knowing a word of Spanish. Believe me, I know what the divide is. What did I, what was I saying? Yeah, so I don't think musicals at all necessarily. I mean, Hamilton is not a movie for kids or play for kids. And certainly West Side Story is not. J.J. Jinx says also, so much fake in my opinion, controversy made about the lack of subtitles in the context of this particular story. I thought it was appropriate. Never was I lost in the narrative. People seem to politicize everything. Well, I think this was a form politicization. I don't think it was necessary. I agree with you that it's not enough to rule out. I mean, it's a minor issue in the big picture of the quality of the movie itself. The movie itself is really good, right? So, you know, in spite of this, I'm not gonna make a big deal out of it. I just thought I'd mention it because it bugged me. It bugged me while I was watching it. Jeffrey writes, two nights in a row, can you explain the meaning of the phrase blank out? As Rand frequently used it. It basically means evade. It means ignore the information coming in from your senses. It means stop integrating. It means stop engaging with reality. It means blanking your mind out, emptying it of content or at least not allowing new content to come in. So blank out isn't just a dramatic way of saying evasion, to evade, to turn away, to ignore reality. Great question, Jeffrey. Thanks for being here for two nights in a row. Wow. Okay, let's see. Theemaster asks, all right, where are we? Just where are we? About $510. So about $90 to get there. So, you know, obviously $520 questions or $420 questions and one $10 question would get us to our goal of 600 bucks. You know, the $10 is just being done. So now we're just looking for $420 questions and we'll get there. And that'd be great if we could do that in the next few minutes. I don't have a lot of questions left. Maybe we can limit the next few questions to only $20. But we're super close to being where we need to be. I don't see Annalise. Valdran is keeping track. I don't see Annalise keeping track for a while now in terms of giving me an update of the money. All right, let's see. Theemaster asked, is it tribal if a person doesn't share objectivism because it would affect their social group? Yeah, well, it's second-handed. You're placing the social group above reality. Doesn't share objectivism. I don't know what you mean by share. Doesn't let other people know that you're an objectivist. It's not tribal. It's a bit cowardly. It's, you know, you have to ask yourself why you're doing it. You have to ask yourself, what are you afraid of? You have to ask yourself, why is this my social group? If an important thing about me is something I don't feel comfortable telling them, I think that's the most important question you wanna ask. If I'm uncomfortable sharing with them something important to me, why are they my social group? Jacob, let's see, it's a $20 question before we get to Jacob. Michael, is it a bad strategy to be a cool boss that all your employees like? Yes, I think it's a bad strategy. Or should your employees be a little afraid of you when you walk in the room? I don't think fear is what you're trying to invoke but what you are trying to invoke is respect and you're not friends, you're the boss. Boss is a particular kind of relationship and you don't have to be their enemy. You don't want them to fear you but they have to respect you for a certain hierarchy that exists. And if you're too cool and you're too friendly then you lose your ability to be in that hierarchy, to be able to tell somebody something harsh, to be able to guide their behavior or when they're doing something wrong, to chew them out. So yes, I don't think you should be the cool boss who's friends with everybody but I also don't think they should fear you. I think they should have a respect for you and a respect for you qua boss. That is qua a hierarchy that has a position over them in some way. Luke, thank you for the $100, really appreciate that. You're on, I don't have a question right now, just got off work, I'll ask it later. Absolutely, thanks Luke, really appreciate the support. It's great to see you here live. Let's see, all right, we're out of $20 questions. We've reached our $600 goal. Luke got us there in one fell swoop so I'm gonna cover these questions unless others come in, we will call it a night. Jacob asked, given these past donations, what was the funniest donation you have ever gotten? I don't know, I'm not sure what the funniest one would be. When did you realize you loved your wife in a deep sense of life, deep sense of love? When, you know, probably in the first few weeks that we were dating, it happened pretty quickly. And we got married pretty quickly. So yeah, that sense of deep love and in some senses that sense is only intensified and grown and become more substantial over the decades. But yeah, I'd say weeks into the relationship. Michael asked, is Paul Krugman an nihilist or a power luster? He's primarily a power luster. He's primarily a power luster. I don't think he's quite at the point where he gets satisfaction out of watching things burn. I don't think that's what motivates him. He wants to control. There's a sense in which power luster is nihilistic but I think the drive for him is to be accepted, to be respected, to be powerful. Cobb says, I saw some objectivist intellectual vaping at Ocon, should vaping be considered immoral in objectivism? Why? I'm not sure why that is. Why it should be, I don't think cigarettes are even immoral necessarily. Let's say if you smoke a cigarette a day that does not increase your risk of cancer significantly. If you really enjoy that cigarette, why not? I don't, I've never smoked. So, no, I don't see what's vaping, I thought. What's wrong with it, I guess? I don't, I don't, is it a health risk? I don't understand what could cause one to think that vaping would be immoral. Flodernick, did you know that GB News had Uri Geller on? No, Uri Geller, the guy who bends spoons with his mind. That's pretty funny. I didn't know he was still around. Liam asked, did intellectuals in the 1930s Germany have an easier time imposing their will than the nihilist intellectuals of today? Yeah, in a sense because of the different character of the people. Americans are gonna be much more resistant to those nihilists than were the Germans. Partially because Kantian philosophy is not quite as embedded into the psyche of Americans. We still have a kind of an American sense of life, less and less of it, but we still have a little bit of it left. All right, Jeremy Wates, your shirt is strobing. The stripes in the shirt pattern flicker when you move because of the density and contrast of the platform is too high for the camera. Solid color shirts would be better. All right, sorry guys. Now that you're seeing more of my shirts, I guess it makes more of a difference. So I will try to wear more solid, I don't think I have solid shirts. So I'll try to wear more solid shirts in the future. All right, thank you guys. This was fun and I appreciate you guys getting us to the goal of $600. I will try on future shows always to end with something like West Side Story with a positive aesthetic recommendations. I used to do that in the old days and I should go back to that. So that would be a plus. All right, Andrew says, devil's advocate, given the scrupulousness of governments, why dismiss conspiracy theories? Governments are not above the lying, double dealing and psychological gaming of the population of which conspiracies are made. Well, conspiracies are rarely conspiracies of government and conspiracies usually assume the exact opposite of government. That is, conspiracies assume governments are incredibly competent and able. You know, think about the 9-11, the truth of conspiracy. I mean, wow, that would have made the CIA and George Bush so efficacious, so able to destroy and not only to destroy, to do pull off the whole 9-11 stick, but then to convince everybody that it wasn't a conspiracy. Conspiracy theories on the one hand take for granted that scrupulousness, on the other hand, they assume the government is competent when it's not. Yes, they lie, but their lying is kind of obvious. And there are two conspiracies. I mean, I believed Snowden when he came out of it because it made complete sense, it was completely compatible and reasonable for the government to be able to do what he said that they were able to do. So anyway, you can't dismiss all conspiracies because some conspiracies are true, but the conspiracy theories that are conspiracy theories are first of all, they're typically nutty and they assume a level of competence that the government just doesn't have and they're so convoluted and bizarre and they present no viable evidence. Snowden had, he had a USB drive. With the evidence. Why don't the other conspiracy theory advocates have evidence? You can't take anything presented with no evidence seriously. And of course, most conspiracy theories don't even deal with the government. They deal with the people controlling the government. Which is just, it's just bizarre and it's global. All right, Frank says, please talk more about how Hazone debate, he said the relationships are not voluntary. That segment pissed me off the most. He said it was absurd. Yes, I mean, in that sense, he's a Marxist, right? The employee-employee relationship is not voluntary, he says, because you could fire somebody. Once you're married, it's not voluntary because maybe it's not for him, but for me it is, I could always leave. So yes, I mean, that is a view that the leftists have and that it's sad to see the national conservatives adopt. That fundamentally in a free society relationships are not voluntary. They, you know, and you take on responsibilities, like for the woman who's sick of somebody if I have a sick relative. If you want to, that's voluntary. You don't have to. Voluntary doesn't mean happy inducing. It just means you make a choice. He could have made a choice to walk away from the relative. Legitimate choice that he could have made. He chose not to, that's a voluntary, that's voluntary. So it's just a bad argument. All right, guys, don't forget if you want to support the show monthly, which would be great going into 2022. If we could raise the amount of money we raise from on a monthly basis. You have no idea how much that would help with the production of the show and help sustain the show. So you can do that you're on bookshow.com support Patreon and subscribe star. Thank you for all the people who during December have become monthly supporters. I really appreciate that. I'm hoping we get a few more. You're on bookshow.com slash support best place to do it. But you can also do it on Patreon or subscribe star. And finally, thanks to all the superchatters. Thank you all guys. I will see you in two days. We'll do the summary of 2021. And I very much will also do, we'll make it a fundraiser as well. We'll have a fun time. Hopefully we can raise a lot of money. Last year we did $6,000. $6,000 and it was just a blast. Tons of questions, lots of good questions. So bring your credit card with you and encourage your friends to come and we'll just have a good time. So thanks everybody for joining us. Don't forget to share. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. We should be well over a hundred there on the like section.