 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 Tuesday. Good afternoon here where I am. I know some of you are in Europe, some of you are on the West Coast, so all kinds of time zones. Hope everybody's having a great week. All right, we will jump into our news roundup. Just to remind you, you can use the Super Chat feature here on YouTube to ask questions and support the show at the same time. All right, let's jump in. So, you know, Elon Musk is in many respects the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, there's always something going on, something crazy going on. Elon Musk, as you know, owns, he is the owner of what used to be called Twitter and is now called X. I have no idea why that change was made. I have no idea what marketing, who the marketing people who decided this are. Now, I know that Elon Musk has a vision of creating this X. X is, I think, the name of the first company he started, but of creating this app that is the Everything app and that Twitter is the platform in which he plans to build the Everything app. But it seems a little premature to change the name, given that it is, everybody refers to this Twitter and everybody tweets and retweets, so it's very difficult. Anyway, part of what he's doing is as he goes along, he's changing the features, the different features in Twitter and one of the features he announced that he wanted to change was to remove the ability to block users. So, like, right now, I can block some people because, you know, I don't have a lot of people block maybe two or three, but people who, you know, just harass and are stupid and a few people have blocked me. You know, famously, what's his name? Robert Reich has blocked me. Anyway, so sometimes it's good to block them to not have to deal with and not have, you not have to deal, but also, I guess, the rest of the people who follow you on the threads just block them. You don't see this stuff. Anyway, Elon Musk said he was considering removing the ability to block users, which, of course, it's his platform. You can do whatever the hell you want. Anyway, James Wood, one of the few Hollywood actors who is a conservative or right-wing, and he wrote that if Musk goes ahead with this, the him, Woods, and I'm quoting, will have to have no choice but to retire from the site. And he said, despite earlier supporting Musk's takeover of Twitter, he's not too happy. He writes, quote, Musk, whom I once championed, is only doing this to protect his advertisers anyway. Users of X are mere pawns to turn the site into an electronic shopping mall. The man I thought was a defender of free speech is just another greedy capitalist, disappointing but not surprising. And notice this conservative, James Wood, talking about greedy capitalists in a derogatory way. I mean, God. This is why conservatives, right-wingers, will never be true champions of freedom. This is why they will never lead us towards more freedom. Musk replied to Woods on Saturday saying, well, then delete your account, right? Because I'm doing this. I'm getting rid of blocking. And then he also said, quote, I'm having a good time blocking people who complain that blocking is going away. How does the medicine taste? And then on Sunday, Musk blocked James Woods. And so Musk is threatened to eliminate blocking from Twitter. And he is blocking people who are complaining about his banning a blocking. Go figure this out. James Wood then replied and said, the recovery theme in your many heartfelt direct messages was a fear that I would leave X. I have now decided I will never leave and will only ever be silent when they find an excuse to remove my account. So James Wood taking a stand. He's never going to leave, even though he opposes. He opposes Musk's move. Anyway, drama continues on X Twitter, whatever you want to call it. Elon Musk is never boring. There's always something and he always some crazy. I still don't quite get the purpose of Twitter. What's it there for? What Musk has it there? Right now, I think the primary thing Musk has to be doing is to generate revenue because he's taken on a lot of debt. Twitter has taken on a huge amount of debt. That debt needs to be serviced. He's cut employees. I think he refuses to pay rent on his San Francisco. Headquarters, but he's reduced costs. Now he has to raise revenue in order to pay the debt. And then I think what's probably happening in the background is he's got programmers working on the future iteration of X, which is this all-in-one personal assistant do everything app driven by a AI algorithm. So we will see. Hey, Elon is being Elon unpredictable and all over the place as always. I did check Twitter to make sure that he literally did block James Wood because I was afraid this is one of those crazy scare things. But nope, it's true. It actually happened. All right, it turns out that you guys didn't get the memo, but that the actual threat of the end of humanity because of overpopulation, it's not been proven wrong as it turns out. You know, if you remember, there was a book in 1968, I think it was 1968, Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich that predicted hundreds of millions of people dying of starvation because of overpopulation and lack of resources and so on, and hundreds of millions of people dying in Europe and elsewhere around the world so the population of Europe shrinking dramatically. And that book was a massive success and had a huge impact. Ultimately, that book inspired together with, together with what do you call it, something of Rome, but a number of intellectuals have picked up on this book, the environmental damage, the resource damage, the fact that humanity could not sustain as many people as were being born and ultimately that whole line of reasoning started by Ehrlich, or really started by Methosda in 1800, but picked up on Ehrlich and was behind the decision in China, the club of Rome, thank you, the decision of China to have a one-child policy. So one-child policy was in response to the panic overpopulation and the inability, our inability to feed this massively growing population. We all know how the one-child policy ended up in China. Anyway, it turns out that many of us thought, okay, well, now that it actually hasn't happened, now that the predictions are all false, maybe we could put that particular issue to rest. It turns out, no, no, no, no. It turns out that we are still on the road to what they're now calling population correction, population correction, which basically means massive reduction, massive implosion, people dying of starvation and lack of resources by their tens of hundreds of millions. The new author who is predicting this is a guy named Rhys. He is a, he just published in the Journal World. He is from the University of British Columbia. Now Rhys is not going to make the same mistake Oelich made. He's not going to make predictions about the next few years. He's going to make predictions about the next 80 years that way he might not live to see the fact that he was wrong, completely, utterly wrong. Anyway, here's a quote from Rhys. Homo sapiens have, has evolved to reproduce exponentially. Where do these people live? I mean, you should tell this to the South Koreans and the Japanese and the Europeans and the Russians and the Americans and pretty much everybody who's, has a semblance of wealth. We don't reproduce exponentially. Anyway, this is again, Homo sapiens have evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically and consume all available resources. That's what Homo sapiens do. For most of humanity's evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been counted by negative feedback. Do you know what negative feedback is? Negative feedback is like the black death. Negative feedback is like hurricanes and earthquakes. Negative feedback is like famines and massive destruction and death. So human beings expand and then there's massive negative feedback and they, they die and then they expand again and they, they, they shrink and they expand and shrink and expand and shrink. And he says this is of course healthy. This is how nature intended it to be. Can you believe this stuff? However, he says, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduce many forms of negative feedback. So he recognizes the fact that we're now dying less because of all this stuff. Reduce many forms of negative feedback enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth. So the problem in the world today is that we become so technologically advanced. We use so much of our self fuels because of the other true evolution. Now the negative feedback, i.e. mass death, you know, famines, again, diseases, all this stuff, we've managed through technology to reject that. So now we have the full potential of exponential growth. Again, completely evading, completely evading in the world in which we live right now. Almost all of the developed world, no, all of the developed world is shrinking with the exception of Israel. All of the developed world is shrinking. He says humanity has already exceeded the long-term human carrying capacity of the Earth. Climate change is just one symptom of this overshoot along with the disruptions of the planet's nutrient cycles and excessive waste buildup. And he says unaddressed, these trends may well precipitate both global economic contraction and a significant human population correction, i.e. civilizational collapse, later this century. He's projecting out to later in the century. He writes, he concludes, the one-off, one-off, notice, population boom is destined to bust, Homo sapiens innate expansionist tendencies have become maladaptive. However, far from acknowledging and overriding our disadvantages, it disadvantages natural predispositions, contemporary cultural norms reinforced. Arguably, in these circumstances, white-spread society collapse cannot be averted, collapse is not a problem to be solved, but rather the final stage of a cycle to be endured. Just suck it up, people. In the best of all possible worlds, the whole transition might actually be managed, maybe we'll kill people off ourselves, managed in ways that prevent unnecessary suffering of millions, billions of people. But this is not happening and cannot happen in a world blind to its own predicament. I mean, unbelievable how these bogus, horrific ideas keep getting recycled and keep getting back. And what is at the core of all of them? What is at the core of them? It's a lack of understanding what Homo sapiens are. It is a lack of understanding what Homo sapiens means of survival is. It is a lack of understanding of how Homo sapiens actually survive and thrive. And that is, it's a lack of understanding that Homo sapiens actually have reason. We shape our environment. Resources are infinite. There's no limit, literally no limit to our ability to use the resources of the earth because we constantly reshape them. We constantly discover new uses. We constantly find alternatives for them. I mean, this notion that resources are limited with Julian Simon so brilliantly eviscerated as an idea and I ran philosophically eviscerated by showing that man's basic means of survival is his reason and reason is unlimited. But this is what drives them. We survive as a species by changing the environment. And we'll change the environment. And billions and billions and billions of more people can survive on this earth with that. And if not, then we'll go to Mars. But this idea that we'll just, we'll just, you know, widespread society collapse cannot be avoided and that we should endure it. It's just a cycle takes out exactly what makes us human, our ability to not endure it, ability to change the world around us, ability to adapt the world to meet our needs. It is, ugh, this view is so prevalent out there and notice this millennial cultism. You know, it's both on the left and the right. This is typically, this is the left, right? It's environmental collapse. We're going to kill ourselves. But it's all based on original sin. We as human beings are endowed with this faculty that leads us to destroy the planet, right? And on the right, it's more religious millennialism. You know, Jesus is going to come back and we're all going to go to hell. Some of you will go to heaven, but most of us, me leading the pack, I guess, going to hell. But this need of human beings to believe that the world is going to come to an end any day now, it's just collapsing. It truly psychologically, truly stunning and truly shows how messed up people's thinking is. And again, a lot of this is driven by a Garden of Eden. We talked about the Garden of Eden phenomena, the Garden of Eden view of man and original sin. Original sin is just, original sin is just so destructive. It's so destructive here, right? You know, and everybody has it. Everybody wants to view the end is here right around the corner. All right. Let's see. All right. So Dick's sporting goods today, today revealed last night revealed earnings and it showed a dramatic profit drop and indeed shares have fallen 24%. There's a consequence of that this morning. But what's interesting about it is that one of the reason, by the way, slash outlook for the future in terms of revenue, one of the reasons that it notes for this decline in sales is theft. It's the idea of not necessarily just shoplifting, but shoplifting, but even more so like fraudulent returns and all kinds of other, you know, gift card fraud and all kinds of other ways in which quote, what's happening is organized, organized retail theft. And what's interesting, if it was just Dick's sports, we'd say, okay, that's kind of weird. But what's interesting is this is, this is a phenomenon among retailers. Target, Foot Locker and others have overported this idea of organized retail crime as responsible for the fact that they are seeing a decline in profits that it is really hurting them. Now for a long time, retailers have had this thing called shrink. Shrink is where the inventories have shrunk and they don't know why, right? Stuff has just disappeared. They don't know why. You know, a lot of it could be supplier fraud. Some of it could be error in counting. Some of it could be theft by their own employees, you know, misplacing stuff. A lot of it's incompetence. But recently this idea of organized retail theft has risen as one of the reasons given. Now, there are people who argue that this is just an excuse, that it really is a way for these retailers to hide systemic problems that they have within the company. It's a way for them to use this, to lobby states, to increase penalties on shoplifting and to increase, to pass new laws against shoplifters, which is happening. But the reality is that this is new. Since 2020, really, this has come to the forefront and really only in the last two years has it become a real issue. Again, there's a long series of articles on this on CNBC, the business network, mostly trying to explain this away as saying what's really going on here. And they give some evidence of this is that companies are using this to kind of hide or just focus people's attention elsewhere because, you know, away from real problems that they're having that are much more systemic. But it is a fact. It's just that it today, as I said, other retailers have done it and it's growing. And it does coincide with what we saw as, you know, these gangs that shoplift, it does coincide with shoplifting in Chicago during BLM, shoplifting in Chicago as, quote, redistribution of wealth or reparations as I think the mayor of Chicago at the time will find it. It does seem that there really is a phenomena. Certainly in San Francisco, we know a number of retailers are leaving the city, have left the city already. Because of shoplifting, this really does seem like it is a real issue. Maybe it's exaggerated wouldn't surprise me, but it is a real issue. And of course, retailers are taking a beating as a consequence. And again, it's not just the mass shoplifting of a mass of people running in and stealing all the stuff and running out, but also a variety of other ways. And I think this is really, you know, of all the indications of American decline, this one is big. I mean, America was the land of, to a large extent of an, oh, by the way, one of the areas in which this fraud is self-checkout. People are committing fraud in the self-checkout line. But this is it. This is, I mean, America was very much the kind of country where you believed in the honor system. Where people for the most part didn't cheat, particularly not retailers and shops and restaurants. And people paid their bills. And I always used to give an example of America as the place where, even if you can get away with it, people don't want. They want to pay for the lunch they've eaten. They want to pay for the goods that they purchased. And to the extent that that has changed, and to the extent that that is tolerated, and to the extent that that is not just tolerated, but in some areas even encouraged. You know, to that extent, this is really a decline in America. And it's not just, I don't think this is just a BLM phenomenon, a post-BLM phenomenon. I think this goes wider in our culture. There's just less respect across the board in American culture today. Less respect for property rights. There's less respect for earning, for the idea that somebody's wealth and income is earned and it's theirs. It's on mine. There's just less, and there's just less respect for, yeah, property rights. And for the idea of dessert, dessert not what you eat, but dessert in the sense that you deserve this. And I think it's across the board. I think it's definitely across the board. You see it everywhere. You see it in the resentment of the rich. You see it in the fact that, I'll give you an example if you want from the right, the unwillingness of people, you know, the hatred and the targeted towards businesses who said, voluntarily, not because the state coerced them, that they want people to mask up when they entered the store. Suddenly, people on the right had no respect for property rights. When those property rights, when people use those property rights to do something that they thought was irrational. And now you're seeing it in just straight out theft, straight out looting, straight out just complete disregard. Now people, they're always thieves, but one has a sense that this is more widespread and more tolerated. Now, it is true a number of states are passing, a number of states are passing laws to restrictors, both red and blue states, passing laws to make, to increase fines on shoplifters, particularly to prosecute the people organizing. So this is organized retail theft. So they want to go after the organized part, the people at the head, that, you know, when a whole group goes in and steals jewelry from a jewelry store, you've seen probably videos of this, somebody there is getting all the jewelry and then hocking it, right, and then selling it somewhere in the market. They want to get the originators. So they're passing laws that make this, give the police tools to do this. I don't know the specific of the laws, but that is a trend that retailers are supporting, retailers are supporting. There are also increasing fines on companies like Amazon for selling stolen goods. So what happens is people steal this stuff and then they go on Amazon and they sell it. And again, it's organized. It's through particular venues, it's particular entities that have been set up to do this. So I think it's a sad state where we tolerate this stuff. It's good that laws are being passed to change that toleration. This is something that needs to be addressed and needs to be atop of mind when people just feel like shoplifting is just okay. As so many attorneys, district attorneys in crazy, leftist cities argue in San Francisco, in Portland, in New York, at least the one attorney general, it's not America anymore. It's not America anymore. America is about property rights and protecting property rights and government's responsibility to protect property rights. Alright, quick story out of Canada. We talked about this. Canada passed a law that basically says that Facebook, anytime somebody posts a link to a news article from a Canadian media source, Facebook has to pay that media source a certain amount. So it places the button on Facebook to pay for the use of media by users of Facebook and the links and the sharing and all of that. And what Facebook did in response to this law and it warned everybody in advance, it told them it was going to do this. Basically what Facebook did in advance of this law is it's basically blocking Canadian news sources on Facebook and Instagram platform for users in Canada. So Canadians cannot link to Canadian news sources in their posts because anytime they do link to it, it places a financial liability on Facebook. And Facebook says we don't want that financial liability so we're not, you know, it's their company. We're not going to allow our users to link to news. You know, and Metta has said this is what was going to happen. It's called the Online News Act. And they are going to implement this in advance of the law actually going into place, which is at the end of the year, so that everybody knows that this is how it's going to be in the future. Well, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada is super upset about this. I mean, he is not happy. Quote, Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of people's safety. And this is inconceivable, he says. Now, why? Well, because right now, top news in Canada are the fires. And Facebook is not allowing people to link to stories about the fires and to share them and to let people know about the fires. Because if the source of that story is a news media, now it's fine to link to, you know, government organizations and emergency services that Canadians can still do. They just cannot link to Canadian news sources on the fires. Justin Trudeau, of course, once is K-Kanada too. These are people, of course, who want the benefits of a Facebook, the benefits of the network, the benefits that somebody else built. They want the benefits of all that, but they want to be able to rule it like it's their little fiefdom. So it's inconceivable that Facebook is doing this. It's putting people's safety at jeopardy because, you know, people are not finding out about the fires. Yeah, that's right. But Facebook told you they would do this. You insisted on passing a law that makes no sense. Facebook and the news sources could negotiate. They could sue Facebook to say you're using our news without, I mean, there is a market solution for this. You insisted on a government solution. You insisted on imposing something. Well, now you're paying the cost and the cost, yeah, the cost is often when government intervenes in private companies, businesses, the cost is often, often, lives. Trudeau said it's time for us to expect more from corporations like Facebook that are making billions of dollars off of Canadians. They're not making billions of dollars off of Canadians. They're making billions of dollars from providing Canadians with a service that they cannot get anywhere else that Canadians obviously value because they sign up for these services. And by the way, Facebook, for the most part, is free. So they're not making it off of Canadians. They may be making it off of advertisers, but those are just other businesses that just care about profits. Why do you care, Justin Trudeau? The leftist argument about these things is completely shallow. It means nothing. It is self-contradictory. Basically, they're like little children whining that they want their cake and to eat it too. They've just eaten the cake and they want it back. They want their toys, but they don't want to pay for them because kids don't know that you have to pay for toys. And Trudeau is just a mouthpiece for the worst kind of subjectivist, emotionalist, leftist that they are out there. And while Canada is experiencing the worst wildfire season on record, we could debate why that is. But it's not Facebook's responsibility to violate their own policies, to do something that's not in their self-interest, because Justin Trudeau thinks that people should be able to use Facebook in order to do it. It's such a violation, again, of property rights, such a disregard for business, and the essence of business, again, the way he talks about making billions of dollars off of Canadians, i.e. exploiting Canadians. Remember, you use Facebook, you pay exactly zero. I mean, and if you paid, it still wouldn't be dollars off of you, it would be a trade. Nobody's forcing you to use it. Alright, I'm not going to spend a lot of time in the economy because we're out of time, really, for what I... But I will say interest rates keep going up. I'll just remind you, I've said this before, when interest rates go up, generally stock prices go down, real estate prices go down. So as interest rates go up, the value of other assets, pretty much all other assets, everything else held constant, goes down. So the fact that stock market is suffering over the last few weeks, not a surprise, given that interest rates are going up. And the interesting thing about interest rates right now, going up, is that these are not the interest rates that the Fed directly controls. These are not the interest rates that the Fed is manipulating. These are not the short-term rates that you hear the Fed is going to increase, the Fed is going to decrease. They've already done their increase. Now it is the marketplace saying, what do we think interest rates are going to be long-term? This is the 10 and 30-year rates. And what the market is indicating is that they expect interest rates to stay high, which is not what they were expecting a couple of months ago. They were expecting, at that point, for the U.S. to go into a recession and the Fed to cut interest rates. What they're expecting, and therefore for interest rates to go back to being low, what they're expecting right now is that interest rates stay high for the foreseeable future over the next 10 years, some balance between the 10 years. And that is a change. That's a real change. That has definite implications on the value of other fixed assets or the assets generally. It lowers their values, all else constant. It now makes more permanent, if you will, the reality of higher interest rates for corporate borrowing. So this issue of zombie companies is now sustained for a longer period of time. Companies are going to have to refinance at higher interest rates. We're already seeing commercial real estate sales in some cases for fractions of what the original owners bought the properties for, both primarily on the office space but other space as well. There's a lot of, while the economy, everybody's hailing the economy doing so well and it is. It's pretty amazing the flexibility and the resilience of the U.S. economy. There's just a lot of unhealthiness in the U.S. economy. A lot of investments that were made at 0% that don't make sense now at 4%, 5%. A lot of decisions, a lot of changes are going to have to be made. This is not going to be painless where we're heading to. We might not get technically a recession, but we will be in for a prolonged period, I think. And by the way, indications are that the number that they're going to say, the third quarter economic growth is through the roof. So short term, you might see some astounding numbers on how well the U.S. economy is doing. But there is real what. There are real problems at the heart of the American system and how it plays out and over what period of time it plays out and how exactly it plays out and how much pain do we all feel as a consequence of playing out. I don't know exactly. It's not going to happen anytime soon, but we are going to feel the pain of all of this. Interest rates are high now because they need to be high. And look, they're high now, but they're high in a sense that they're more normal now than they used to be. Not a great time to borrow money, but it's probably not going to be a great time to borrow money relative to 0% interest rates for a long time. These interest rates are probably here to stay for a while. At least that's what the market's indicating. We will see where this economy is really going to be heading. A lot of moving parts, but interest rates at least indicating that the market at least at this point believes that the Fed is not going to be cutting interest rates anytime soon. That we are probably not heading into a recession that the Fed has to respond to by cutting interest rates. Of course, all of that reasoning is not necessarily logical and rational from an economic perspective, but that's for another time. All right, let's jump into your questions. Remember, Super Chat is here for you to ask questions about anything, in particular about the topics we've covered today, but you can ask about anything that you want to. So we're going to jump in. We'll start with, and we have got some stickers. So thank you, Savanos. Thank you, Fred Harper. And I know Jonathan Honing started us off, Gentry, John Parker, and Jonathan started us off. So thank you, Jonathan Honing. So thank you. Thank you all of that. All of that. All right, Wes, for $50. Thank you, Wes. The stereo of overpopulation is a prime example of how determinism corrupts the mind. There is no evidence that overpopulation is happening now or that it is inevitable because of evolution. But more than that, there's no evidence that it can indeed ever happen. That is, the more people we have, the more brains they are, the more resources they are to solve problems because the ultimate resource, the only resource that counts, is the human brain. So given that their ultimate resource is human reason, human ingenuity, human innovation, the more people they are, the more resources we have. And therefore, the more people we can sustain, the more we have, the more we can sustain. There is literally no limit to the number of people who can, the number of homocipians who can survive, whether it's here on Earth or in the planetary system. We will go to space one day. We will colonize space. And there's just no limit to any of that because there's no limit to ingenuity. Ingenuity is what drives the ability of the human species to survive. And yes, you're absolutely right. There's determinism. There's anti-reason, anti-free will, anti-agency. This idea that everything is just given and we're just given and we're just automatons. It's always wrong. We'll always be wrong. Always be wrong. So, you know, Balamba says the book Super Abundance. Yes, but it's more than just the book Super Abundance. Super Abundance is a great book, but that's feeding off of work that's being done forever. I mean, this is a great book, The State of Humanity by Julian Simon. But everything by Julian Simon. And this was written years ago. This was 1995. This was written in the 90s. But then there's this one, the Ultimate Resource. I mean, these show, these books show that, and these are must reads, right? That there is no limit. There is no limit. All right. Valcon says that's the first time I've seen Iran's pants. Well, it's good that I wore pants today. All right. Colleen Colleen. This population idea completely neglects innovation. Absolutely. These people must also believe innovators are on the decline, maybe because of our educational system. They don't conceive of innovation. They don't see innovation. Innovation is just something that happens, but it's limited by resources out there. It's not, they don't understand. They have no conception of what innovation is, what it requires, how it works, how it functions. It really is stunning how concrete bound they are. All they see is the stuff, the stuff. And they really think that innovation pops out of nowhere. But then it depended on the stuff. And once we run out of stuff, the innovation stops. But innovation, as long as men are free to think, innovation continues. The only obstacle to innovation is freedom, is lack of freedom. That's the obstacle is lack of freedom. Andrew says, if emotionalism is proper, then if people feel like stealing, they should. And despite that it's morally despicable, we have no right to judge the reactions. Is that about right? Absolutely. If emotionalism is right, then anything you do is right, but that throws out all of morality and it throws out all of criminal conduct, criminal code. This is why, to a large extent, this goes back to who's so, this is why, to a large extent, they want to throw out the criminal code. This is defund the police, get rid of laws. The only reason we have so many people in jail is because we have the laws. If we didn't have laws, there wouldn't be a jail. Yeah, that's a tautology. But it is, it's emotionalism driving the whole thing. And who are we to judge them? That's, you know, this judgment is a rational thing. Just you got to feel for them. These are people hungry or suffering or they just want stuff that they don't have. What's your problem? Taze, he says, musk versus woods. Do you think this is proof that boys can be more sensitive than girls? No, I still think girls are more sensitive than boys, generally speaking. I do think that musk seems to have a very, very low threshold for disagreement and to being challenged, which I find really weird because it can be the case that he succeeded in business all these years without being challenged, without being questioned. He must have some kind of compartmentalization between business and the rest of his life because he certainly seems to be super hypersensitive and emotionalist, non-rational when it comes to some of these issues versus his business dealings where he has to be super rational, otherwise he would not be anywhere near as successful as he is. Okay, just to remind you, we have five questions still. We have five final questions. You can use the super chat to ask me questions. Any amount, $20 gets priority. Colleen says, it seems like there is more disconnect between corporations and people. People are willing, willfully not seeing the connection between large companies and the individual people they employ. Yeah, sell to but also own. People, individuals own it, own the companies in management or employees. They have no sense of corporations having property rights because the property is owned by somebody. So yes, I think corporations are viewed as this external entity outside of like outside of our reach and that normal moral behavior doesn't apply to that thing. We behave to it differently than how we behave to one another. Gale says, the buzzword tolerance of the victims and the loss of the word justice is an obvious result of more blatant theft. Yes, and of emotionalism, you know, tolerance is like from the emotion of a pity and the emotion of, you know, it's just applying an emotional state to people. And justice is reason and rationality and objectivity applied to a situation and that's what we rejected. So we can go back to the whole emotionalism is on the rise theme that brings us to the musk versus wood. Yeah, to the shoplifting, to the meta in Canada, and even to the population thing. This is all just, you know, rampant emotionalism and an rejection of reason. Richard said, I heard original sin and greedy capitalist in this show. Why has expecting the worst of humanity become so popular? What happened to in the name of the best within us? I think as, as we become a collectivist, as we become as a mixed economy takes over, collectivism and the mixed economy turned man against man. That benevolence of in the name of the best within us that benevolence of, you know, the American dream and a beautiful future and and progress, the idea of progress. That benevolence rests on an in on a individualistic premise. It rests on the idea of individuals pursuing their own happiness, their own success, their own lives. And the idea that that is possible and that is virtuous and that is good. That's where that benevolence comes from. It comes on the valuing individuals as themselves and getting out of the way of individuals. But once we start setting up world blocks and once we start setting up this group of individuals against that group of individuals against that group of individuals. Now we're setting man against man. Now we're setting people against one another. And it is what leads to this, to this, you know, pessimism and, and, and what leads to real darkness. It's what real leads to real negative outcomes. It's what I talked about in the show on decline of America. I think this is a big part of it as you embrace more and more of the mixed economy. The existential manifestation of that is gang warfare. You're setting up gang against gang and what the manifestation of that is individual versus individual. Not individuals as people I could cooperate with or just stay out of their way. But now individuals are threats to me. They're consuming resources I could consume. If you hold the population correction view, anything you consume takes something away from me. Every resources you use, the air you breathe, the water you drink is taking away air and water from me. I hate you. You are killing me. That's the mentality. It's the zero some mentality that comes from collectivism and zero some thinking and, and, and mixed economy thinking. It's a zero some mindset which, which, you know, sets into people and just becomes horrific. And it's, it's again across the board. You see it across your board. It's all about what are they going to grab versus what I can grab. And, and it's all zero some thinking left, right, center. People are now grouped into tribes and we attack them as members of tribes and individuals don't matter. And our ability to deal with individuals doesn't matter. And, and that's all comes down from a philosophy of collectivism, but more important, but, but existentially in terms of the way it manifests itself in reality is from the, the mixed economy. The mixed economy turns us each against another, you know, rich men north of rich rich men north of Richmond. That's it. Right. It's them against me. Rich men. People who've got money, them against me. So it's across, it's across the political spectrum. It's not unique to any one group and it's inevitable because of the mixed economy. It has to be across the political spectrum. Once you have a mixed economy. Charlie says just chipping in and I was wondering if you can cover more videos in the future, like a day, like a day if video coverage similar to Thursday interviews. What do you mean by videos? Which, what, what do you mean? Like review a video, like critique a particular video. Is that what you mean? So let me know. Also, if that's what you mean, then it would be great if you guys send me videos you want to critique, but don't make them 20 minute hour of a long video. Make them short or give me a segment that you want me to deal with because otherwise there's not enough time to do it. So I'm happy to do a day of the week where critique videos, but then I don't see enough of them to find the ones that are offensive or defines the ones that are interesting. But if you send me a flood of them on a regular basis, then then I will be happy to comment on videos in a, in a, on a regular basis. I assume that's what you mean by video coverage, but let me know if that isn't. All right. Wesley says the daily wire has grown exponentially since it was founding in 2015. Do you think there are positive influence overall in the culture? No. No, not at all. I think they're definitely a negative influence on the culture. I mean, they have the form of reactionary, I would say almost barbaric conservatism is definitely a negative in the world. I think that people like Matt Walsh and Knowles are basically, basically, you know, disgusting and, and, and, and, you know, just, just horrible, horrible and bad for the world. You know, you could argue Ben Shapiro was better. I think he was when he focused on capitalism and on liberty and on freedom. But he too is, you know, he's gone where the audience is. They've all gone where the audience is. And again, he, he was better on, you know, he, he hated Trump, but he didn't say anything because he wanted to piece his audience. And when Trump was out of office, he was better at going after Trump. And then he's reversed on that because he, he, he again, he sees, he sees where things are heading. He sees, he sees what's happening, right. And what's happening is Trump is going to win, at least unless he goes to jail or something. But, you know, so he is again pro Trump. No, I think it's a very bad, they, they, they're focused on all the wrong, on mostly the wrong things. And they, they elevate as a positive while they're sometimes good as attack dogs. They, they, they are in terms of the negative. It is the negative. Maybe they're good sometimes. But the positive is so offensive, so disgusting that it, it should. And I think it does turn away the best people away from what they can see of his right wing. And unfortunately they lump capitalism with that. So it does us damage. It does us real damage because capitalism is associated with these people. All right, Sylvanas, thank you. And friend Harper, thank you. Let's see. Michael, I've been noticing vivid quotes. Alex Epstein, very quotes Alex Epstein all the time. Yeah. I mean, he certainly talked to Alex a lot. He certainly in touch with Alex. He is, he has read Alex's book. And he definitely is using Alex's terminology. He thinks it's a winning strategy. That's a good thing. But that ultimately is drive seems to be driving Vivek. It's what he thinks his audience in some sense wants to hear. That worries me a little bit. But yeah, in terms of his energy policy, right in line with Alex and given that he's got a relationship with Alex or somebody like Vivek one, you could see Alex being involved in some way in a new administration in terms of energy policy. I think that's true of a number of the Republican candidates could potentially involve Alex or people close to Alex in their energy policy. So, yeah, you know, it's Alex is gaining significant influence within the realm of the Republicans or Republican politics. He hasn't gained much influence on the right, but he's gained influence among Republicans. Sylvanas says, do you have a rate for video game reviews? I can think of several games with enough cultural impact to critique. I'd have to play them. And I don't know that that you could pay me enough to play video games. I'm just, it would, it's too time consuming. I wouldn't be any good at it because I've never played video games. So it wouldn't be any good at it. That would make it even more time consuming because just get through the game. I'd have to really practice and get decently good at it. And, you know, that would just be horrible. So, no, I'm not going to review video games. And, you know, if somebody else wants to play, I guess if I had somebody in my house who played video games and I could just watch, maybe I'd review them. But no, I mean, you have to be able to play the game and and and I don't play and I don't want to start playing. And I just don't want to stop playing. I'm too busy, too many things that interest me a lot more. You know, if you send me to watch a movie, even a movie, don't like, I'm interested in movies generally. If you send me to read a book, I read a huge amount of books anyway. So, but I don't, I don't play video games. Period. And I have no interest in it. Anyway, but thanks for the thanks for the thought and thanks for the support. I'm Mikat, gut feeling Vivek would probably support Ukraine once in office. On the other hand, Trump made me permanent distrust for DHS plays. I think you're probably right in the end. I think Vivek is much better than some of his more worse statements. I think that's probably right. But look, the reality is, and I'm going to say it, I think Vivek's chances to win the Republican nomination are, I don't know, less than one in a hundred. So you could, it could be wrong. And so the polls right now give him a much higher probability. And even the betting, it gives him a much higher probability. But I do not believe that Vivek, what is he, a Buddhist, he claims to be a Buddhist. An Indian immigrant can win the Republican primaries as good as he is. And I think he might be the best candidate out there in terms of charisma and in terms of some new ideas. Certainly in terms of charisma, I think he'll probably turn out to be the best debater. I think he's Hindu. I think he's head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, not necessarily on policy issues. I still think I prefer Nikki Haley, although I don't hear anything from her and she's kind of disappeared into the muck. And she's latching onto conventional ideas. The thing I respect about Vivek is that he's willing to be unconventional. Not in the Trumpian emotionalist lashing out sense, but in kind of a more thoughtful sense. So Vivek is potentially somebody I would support, but I think the chances are almost a zero. I mean, we'll see what happens in Iowa. But the Iowa latest poll that is the most accurate basically has Trump winning in the landslide in Iowa. And the Santa second and then conventional candidates in Vivek not really in the top there. So at the end of the day, people might like him, people respect him. I don't think he'll be a VP candidate. There's no way in hell that Trump takes Vivek as a VP candidate because Vivek will outshine him. He's smarter than him, he's richer than him, arguably richer than him, and he's certainly more charismatic than him. So I just don't, I don't know who other voters are going to vote for Vivek. Who they are. I don't think it's the evangelical middle of America types. I don't think he wins Iowa. I don't think he wins New Hampshire, though. He probably has the best shot in New Hampshire. That's probably his best state. He certainly doesn't win in South Carolina. All right. Frank says Billy Bragg wrote a pro-union response to Richmond. Yeah. I mean, I think, yes, you've got to tell him to join a union. That's the answer. That's when his wages will be more meaningful. I mean, how more meaning in his job is if he joins the union. But the left's not going to disagree with him about the essence of his complaints. They're only going to disagree with him about the solution to them. All right. Philip, can government be trusted with the power to declare emergencies that require a limitation of rights? How can an emergency be identified objectively? Well, it can be identified objectively. And there's nobody else other than government to identify it. A government today cannot be trusted because a government today doesn't know what rights are. Governments today have no conception of rights. They don't view their role as defending rights. They don't have a definition, a conception, never mind a definition, of what rights really are. So no, no government today could be trusted. But any group of people today cannot be trusted. But the objective identification of an emergency is an emergency to rights. That is a terrorist rampaging through your neighborhood. He's killing people objectively. People are dying and he's rampaging. He's continuing to do that. That you declare an emergency. You tell people not to leave their homes and you hunt him down and you kill him. An emergency of over a disease that is truly infectious and truly a killer. But a killer, you know, at a much higher rate than anything COVID or anything, the flu or anything like that. So, you know, Uncle Garte wrote an excellent piece, excellent, excellent white paper on how you would, how a rational government would deal with a pandemic and the kind of laws you would have to have in advance and a kind of threshold you would have to define in advance and all of those kind of things. That's what you need. You need real objectivity to the law, the law that sets up the emergency powers of the government that clearly defines when they get used. And that's not hard to do. And Uncle gives a really, really good illustration of what that looks like. You can find his article on the AROI website. All right, guys. Whoa, another two. I'm late for another meeting. Thanks, everybody. I will see you all tonight. We got a show tonight. And I'll see you then. Bye, everybody.