 fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Hello everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this, what is it? Wednesday, first day in Iran, trying to do as many shows while on the road as possible. We're here in Zurich right now. We did a show from Zurich yesterday as well. Oh, let's put it on the video. Video, video, video. There I am. Hi everybody. So, yes, I'm still in Zurich. I fly to Budapest. I fly to Budapest tomorrow and then to Sweden on Friday to give talks in both those places and then onto London for a couple of talks and then home finally on Monday. So I'm going to try to do a show tomorrow from Budapest. We'll also try to do a show from Sweden. That might be a little bit more difficult. And then one or two shows from London, Saturday and Sunday, depending on how much we do. There will be no shows on Monday. But then Tuesday, for about three weeks, we'll get back on schedule and then I travel to South America and then who knows what will happen. South America is a whole different story. Alright, just to give you a quick update on where we are. We'll start with the talk I gave yesterday. Nevermind me was there. Nevermind me, I just injected a whole weed. Says he was at the talk yesterday and really enjoyed it. I have to admit, on the topic of the war, it was probably my best talk. So I'm looking forward to getting the video and to uploading it. I gave it at the University of Zurich. It was sponsored by the Liberal Institute of Switzerland, an institute that has spoken for them before several occasions over the years. They have a new CEO. This is the first time I've spoken at an event sponsored by the new CEO. So that's good. Students for Liberty was also sponsored by it. And they got a great attendance. We got over 100 people, I think, were there. The room was packed, standing room lonely. So that was fun. And it was a lot of fun. And I think partially I think I was in top form to some extent because the room was packed. I think you get energy from a packed room and you feel appreciated and you get energy and that's exciting and it's more fun. And then on top of that, there was real opposition. And I could tell there was real opposition the whole time. I mean, this was a room packed with primarily libertarians, a lot of older people, older libertarians, a lot of kind of Rothbardians who, you know, whereas in Poland when they give the talk on the wall, clearly everybody was anti-Putin, everybody basically agreed with my premises. You know, there's some disagreement about the specific causes of war and so on. But everybody basically thought Putin was wrong. Ukraine was better and the West should support Ukraine. Whereas in Zurich, clearly they didn't believe it. And one of the interesting topics, and this is really a topic for a Rothbardian or somebody who follows Mario Rothbard, another time we'll, you know, document what that exactly means. But one of the things that's really interesting and deserving of a longer show is kind of the Marxist influences, the Marxist influence on libertarians and how so many libertarians have the tendency to try to explain everything in the world in terms of economics. So I would say that the biggest argument we got into yesterday was what are the causes of war? And as I think you guys know, I believe history is shaped by ideas. I think the causes of war, one has to look at ideas. Some ideas lead to war, some ideas lead to peace. And their perspective is completely different. I saw this both in Poland, but especially in Zurich. Their perspective is no. Economic reasons lead to war. The war in Iraq in 2004 was completely motivated by the Americans wanting the oil. They wanted to capture the oil fields and they wanted to benefit from the oil. And most wars, they told me, were basically sponsored and encouraged and created and promoted by the military industrial complex. And the Ukraine war was an economic war. It was all about the oil reserves and the natural gas reserves in Ukraine, in southern Ukraine. That's what Putin wants. So it was all about economics. And ideas have no role in it. And indeed, for many of these people, there just isn't any difference between Putin and the West, which is, I think, a real travesty. But yeah, it was really interesting. It got heated. The Q&A got heated. I got excited. You know me? I get passionate. I don't treat ideas as just a game. I don't treat ideas as just whatever. These are life or death. These are important things. And I get excited and I get passionate. And so I think you'll enjoy the Q&A because there's a lot of back and forth and there's a lot of passion and excitement from me and then the response to it. But it is fairly, it is really shocking to me. The extent to which libertarians, if not pro-Putin, neutral, anti-West, and have this bizarre notion of what was about, of what was about. So almost all was in my view. All was in my view motivated by ideas, by bad ideas, by false ideas. But they're all motivated by ideas. The ideas about the destiny of the state, mystical ideas, often anti-individualistic ideas. So I think that is the cause of wars, mysticism, individualism, and zero-sum thinking. Those are the three causes of war. I think ultimately pretty much every war is motivated by those three. I did make it into a local newspaper. I don't know, I don't know how big this newspaper is, but Nebel Spalter. Anyway, Nebel Spalter, it came out in German, but you can use Google Translate to translate it. And the title of it. So first of all it says, Iran broken Zurich. It has a picture of me speaking. And I don't know where he downloaded that picture from. And from Wikimedia Commons. It's not a great picture. Anyway, the title of the article is the idea of individualism prevents war. And I like that. I like that title. I like that emphasis on individualism. I think cultures that celebrate individualism, cultures that respect individualism and individual life are cultures that try to avoid war. And war in a sense is a last resort for them because individuals die, you know, and individuals suffer. And he, I think, does a pretty good job of summarizing my arguments about capitalism and why capitalism prevents wars of aggression, about why Putin was not threatened by NATO, and that wasn't the reason for the war. So he does a pretty good job. It's a short article. So, you know, I talk for a lot more than just that, but it's nice to see something in print reflecting my thinking. It gives us a little bit of publicity. And again, I hope you all watch the video when I put it up because I think that's, I think it's a good talk. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's so far, I think, the best talk I've given on the war. It's the most cohesive. The Polish one was really good. So I encourage you to watch the Polish one, but I think this one is more cohesive. It just gelled better. Adam says, did you find out what happened at the University of Warsaw? I don't think anything exciting happened there. My suspicion is that some professor raised some doubts about me and my position about NATO. But at the end of the day, I think what probably happened at the University of Warsaw and at the University in Warsaw. But I don't have, again, I don't have final confirmation on this because I'm getting a lot of contradictory stories. Is that I think some of the students there just didn't have their act together. They didn't have it ready. The organizers, the student organizers at the University didn't get a room in time. They didn't advertise. Anyway, the advertisement was all on social media and stuff. But I think locally they didn't get the administration's permission. So from what I understand, the administration did not have any problem with me speaking at the University. So this is not an issue of me being cancelled. It was more of an issue of somebody's incompetence somewhere. And so it's sad. I still gave the talk in Poland. We still videotaped it. It's up on my channel. Please watch it. I think you'll get value out of it. I think the Q&A is incredibly valuable, but also the talk itself. It's different than the talk I did yesterday in Zurich. Every time I reshape them, I do them a little differently, partially because the title is a little different. The description is a little different and partially is because I'm differently motivated and I hate to just repeat exactly the same thing. Particularly when I'm not perfectly happy with my talk. Like the morality of capitalism, I've got that talk down. It's a good talk. It structures right. Everything about it is right. And I might tweak elements of it here and there, but basically I give the same talk every time. But the talk on war I'm still playing around with, I'm still changing it. Again, I think the one in Zurich was good. So I hope you'll watch both the Polish one and the Zurich one. They're in the playlist on Iran lectures. They're all available up there. Let's see. Shazibat says, you inadvertently mentioned that mysticism, individualism and Zurich, I'm thinking was responsible for war. Thanks Shazibat for pointing that out. Of course, I'm sorry. I misspoke. Individualism, collectivism and Zurich, I'm thinking are responsible for war. So if I said that individualism, individualism is what is the cause of peace, right? It's a reason, individualism and a realization of win-win relationships. Although, no, this is the way to think about it. Reason, individualism and the trader principle, the idea of trade being win-win. Those are the principles responsible for peace. All right, DWN Logic, I'll get to your answer after. Let's cover these topics quickly. This is like a news roundup show. I don't want it to go too long because it's already, God, recorded 11 here p.m. at night. I need to get some sleep. I've got a flight tomorrow to Budapest. Tomorrow would be interesting. I'm giving a talk on objectivism in Budapest in the land of Orban to a group that I think is pretty favorable towards Orban. So it'll be interesting. I hope I get lots of opportunities to criticize Orban. All right, quickly, I want to update you news-wise. You know, one of the things making the news today was the fact that Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago was knocked out of the reelection campaign. Basically, she failed. There will be a runoff with two other candidates to determine who the mayor of Chicago is. This is pretty shocking for, I think, many Democrats. Lightfoot was a rising star in the Democratic Party. She was considered the first African-American woman to be the mayor of, I think, a major city. She was considered one of the progressive stars, and she won, I think, by fairly comfortable margin when she ran for mayor four years ago. But she was mayor of Chicago during COVID and made a lot of bad decisions during COVID lockdowns. But I think what really made Lightfoot not acceptable to voters is the fact that during COVID she was so, and really during the BLM riots, she was so forgiving of BLM, of the damage that they did, of the stealing that was going on, of the destruction of property. She refused to prosecute. I don't know that she had a say, but she vocally supported the rioters, including when they broke into stores and stole things. She encouraged the police not to prosecute them. I think she was very, very, very friendly to the worst elements within BLM. And then, of course, I think that the BLM riots and the demonstrations took a city that was already pretty bad in terms of homicide rates and violent crime. If you remember, Donald Trump had said that he's going to send federal troops into Chicago to clean up Chicago before COVID because of violence. Well, I think her response and her weakness and the response, and just generally the weakness of the response to BLM, I think ultimately encouraged a dramatic spike in violence in Chicago. Chicago has been dealing with a huge increase in violent crime over the last since COVID. It was already high before COVID. Now 2022 was a slight reduction over 2021, but still very high rates of crime. And I think people just fed up with crime. In addition to that, Chicago schools are notoriously bad, notoriously particularly bad for low income residents, for the minority populations within Chicago. She did nothing to change that. Indeed, she was aligned with the teachers union, teachers union that I think betrayed children, betrayed their profession, betrayed everything that they're supposed to be as educated during COVID. But betray children really every single day in Chicago. Chicago schools are just horrible. And again, particularly the low income in the low income areas. And so everything in Chicago was a lot of some of the major corporations that had operations in Chicago have recently relocated. They will live in Chicago. Chicago really gives the sense under Lightfoot, but it started well before her, of a city that is dying. So basically the two candidates that did win the race, that got the most votes and will run in a runoff in a few weeks. One candidate, all of them Democrats by the way, but it's a non-partisan race so anybody can run. But the candidate who won the most votes is actually a guy who was accused throughout the campaign of being a Republican, even though he is a lifelong Democrat. But the reason he was blamed for being a Republican was that he emphasized law and order. And he ran the campaign on, I will stop the violence. I will increase the police budget. I will increase the number of policemen in the streets. I will not tolerate Chicago as this unbelievably violent place. So I think that's a very positive sign. He's not the first. I mean, Adams in New York is another mayor who's committed to reducing violence in the city, even though he's a Democrat. I think that many of the, many if not all of the defund the police candidates, whether defund the police candidates for mayor or defund the police candidates for district attorneys have lost. The country overwhelmingly is not supporting defund the police agendas. The country overwhelmingly is not a progressive country. Even in some of these cities that vote Democratic, they're not open to the crazy left ideas. So we're seeing a pattern in city after city, in school district after school district, where the most crazy of the left are being voted out. I'm sure not everywhere. Suddenly, I would like to see a different outcome in the mayor race in Los Angeles. There was a candidate that was far better, a businessman who lost the mayoral candidacy to a woman who was quite progressive in Los Angeles. But in many cases, we're seeing the progressive lose out in elections. I think this is a positive trend. And it shows that America is just not ready for the craziness, for the craziness that is the radical left. Let's see. Alright, so that's Chicago. Let me quickly give you an update from Iran. There's a lot going on in Iran. There's a lot going on both economically. Well, there's a lot going on in terms of protests. There's a lot going on in terms of the nuclear program. There's a lot going on in terms of Israel and what Israel is trying to do there and Israeli attacks on them. I'm going to give you a quick rundown. Again, we'll keep track of this. But it looks like over the last few days, the number of protests has accelerated in Iran. So January was a relatively quiet month and February was a relatively, early February was a relatively quiet month. But since the last few days in February, protests have increased dramatically. On February 28 alone, there were 20 protests around the country and demonstrations all over the place. Many of these demonstrations are now shifting focus away from the hijab to demonstrations centered on economic issues. Iran's economy is a disaster. You've got very high inflation. People are struggling economically. The local currency has gone, hit a record low on February 26. 600,000 Riyals was $1. 600,000 Riyals was $1. Central Bank of Iran is trying to stabilize the currency, but this is very difficult because also the economy is basically a mini-depression. People are upset and the thing is that the government doesn't know what to do. The various center of powers keep blaming each other for the economic mayhem that is going on. You've got ultimately the different ministers blaming each other and then everybody blaming the Revolutionary God, the Iranian Revolutionary God, which in a sense owns many of the big government enterprises in Iran, although it looks like the Revolutionary God is going to take over more responsibility for the economy, not less. But there's a lot of infighting. There's a lot of angst. There's a lot more angst around the economy at the top levels of the Iranian regime than there is about the demonstrations of the hijab. They think they could control that, but the economy is only heading in one direction and that is heading towards disaster. So we will see what happens. Khomeini, the supreme leader, has designated a new person to run the economy as of January 30. But again, these are central planners and economic disaster is bound to inflict them even worse. So you've got the economic disaster, a lot of protests around the economy are kind of added on to the protest around the hijab, and I think many of those protests are won. I'm also seeing stories out of Iran and it's really hard to tell what exactly is going on, but these are very, very disturbing stories coming out of Iran about chemical gas attacks that the Iranian regime is using against the kids, against schools. So schools were demonstrating supposedly they are gassing the schools, not killing the students, but making them sick. Supposedly there have been a number of students that have been hospitalized with all kinds of basically poisoning. So the regime is trying to find a variety of different ways to inflict pain on the people who are protesting, on the students that are protesting. This is from what I understand, this is primarily happening in Tehran. There's some shocking videos of this and shocking videos of still continues of regime thugs beating up innocent people. A lot of that, you can see at Twitter, I retweet a lot of those. So if you go to my Twitter feed, you can see those videos, truly horrific. And again, I will say this, I actually say this in all my talks now when I talk about, particularly with libertarians, I think one of the most shocking things that I'm experiencing right now is just the silence, the silence. You know, people who claim to care about liberty, it turns out they don't really care about liberty. They don't seem to care one iota about liberty. They hate the American government, they track every little thing Biden does, they check every little, everything that's happening around them, but they completely ignore, don't care about people in other countries who are fighting for their freedom and fighting for their liberty and about a regime that is just crushing their people, devastating them and murdering them and killing them and doing horrific, horrific things. I actually am pleased by this development of now those who oppose the regime vis-à-vis economic issues also joining the demonstrations. I think this expands the base of the demonstrations. It has the potential to accelerate the decline of the Iranian regime. I think the Iranians are panicking with regard to this. I think the Biden administration, I mean this would be a devastating blow for liberty, is if the Biden administration comes to some kind of nuclear deal with the Iranians and does away with the sanctions and does away with the sanctions. This would be truly horrific. This would bail out the economy just when the economy becomes a real issue for people in the street. It would be a huge win for the Iranian regime. And long-term we'll do nothing to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. I think the Biden administration is moving in that direction. Certainly I think the Iranians are going to present a more flexible approach, flexible in quotes, to negotiating around the nuclear treaty because they want sanctions eliminated. They want a lifeline. They need money. They need trade. And why do I think the Biden administration is likely to do this? Because this week, I think yesterday, the Under Secretary of Defense for policy, who is the number three guy in the Department of Defense, basically commented to the House of Representatives that now he believes that it would take 12 days for the Iranians to assemble enough nuclear material, fissile it's called, for one nuclear bomb, 12 days. It used to be 12 months. Suddenly it's 12 days. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the kind of stuff they do in order to panic all of us so that we support a deal, anything, but the Iranians getting a bomb. I would suspect that Israel thought that the Iranians are 12 days away from being able to put together enough nuclear material to make a bomb. They would be a lot more active in Iran and you would see a lot more bombings and a lot more killings and a lot more disruption in Iran instigated by the Israelis. I suspect that this is the Biden administration trying to raise alarm as to prepare the ground for a deal with Iranians. Because the idea was one of the things he said is when we had the deal under the Obama administration until 2018, when Trump got us out of that deal, the Iranians were always 12 months away. They kept it at 12 months away and since we got out of the deal in 2018, they have accelerated the production of uranium and are now only 12 days. There has been discoveries supposedly that reinforce this of some nuclear material in Iran that suggest that they are actively pursuing developing nuclear material for a bomb. I don't think that comes as a surprise to anybody, but this new estimate of 12 days seems to be suspicious and seems to be scamming towards cutting a deal. Alright, so that's a quick update on Iran. We'll keep following of course what's going on there and what happens and I will let you know. Finally, let's talk quickly. Again, we don't have a lot of time, so let's talk quickly about, you know, there are two I think major Supreme Court cases that have been discussed in front of the justices over the last few days. I think this is going to be a very, very interesting session of the Supreme Court. I think there's some big cases that could either be ruled in a very positive way and enhance liberty and can be ruled in very bad ways and destabilize a lot of what we take for granted. You know, we've already talked about the CFPB case. I think that's going to be a super interesting case in terms of where the budget of the CFPB come from. I think we talked about that yesterday. Two other cases that are big. One is Gonzales versus Google. This is a Section 230 case. Section 230 is part of the 1996, I think, telecommunications bill that basically allows social media companies not just social media companies, it allows the New York Times, it allows everybody on the Internet to basically not be liable for material posted on their website by third parties by other people. So, for example, the New York Times is liable for what it publishes in its articles, but it's not liable for the comments section. It's not liable for your comments that you put in the comments section under those. YouTube is not liable for the user generated. If I say something that is viewed as defamation, you can't say it's YouTube. You can sue me, but you can't sue YouTube for it. User generated content that the producer, the creator of the content is liable, not the provider of the platform. Now, generally, I think this is eminently reasonable. Certainly it could have, Section 230 could probably be improved. I've talked about this in the past, but I believe at this point nobody should touch it, primarily because right now if they touch it, they're going to make it worse. There's no way they're going to make it better. So they're going to make it worse. They're going to do something really, really bad. And it's interesting that again with regards to Section 230, the crazy left and the crazy right agree. So the progressive left, one Section 230 gone. And the right, a lot of the right, once Section 230 gone. And they want to be able to sue YouTube and they want to be able to sue Twitter and they want to be able to sue Facebook. So this is going to be an important case. It's a case where a family of an American student who was killed in an ISIS attack in Paris in 2015 is suing Google claiming that its algorithms violated the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act by recommending ISIS propaganda to users. So by recommending ISIS propaganda to users, it increases the number of members in ISIS, which they would claim is partially responsible for the death of, I guess, their, I don't know, if it's a son or a daughter, Naomi, sounds like a girl's name, Gonzalez. But I think that's a real reach. There's also a case, by the way, that also is going after Twitter where they're claiming Twitter is liable for ISIS recruiting efforts on its site. I find it bizarre that these platforms allow ISIS to put on this content. I don't think suing them is the right approach. I'm not sure why the reality is, I don't know why the U.S. government doesn't stop them. ISIS is an enemy. The enemy is using American websites to accrues and to incite violence. It just seems bizarre to me that it's being allowed to do that. Again, if we declared war on organizations like ISIS, I don't think it would be allowed. But we're afraid to declare war on any Islamist group. Anyway, so the court is going to discuss 230. It's not clear from the debate where they're leaning. I think ultimately they'll keep 230. I don't think they're quite ready to be in a position of doing away with it and without replacing or changing it. I'm pretty sure Judge Thomas is going to rule, Clarence Thomas will rule to abolish 230. He'll rule 230 as unconstitutional wrong. I don't know what the pretense will be to ruling, but I'm pretty sure Thomas in the past has said that social media companies need to be reigned in and the way to rein them in is by getting rid of 230. So I think that is likely to happen. But I don't think the rest of the court will agree with him. So I expect, I don't know, hard to tell, but I expect a 6372 ruling in favor of keeping 230. But we'll see. It could be a nuanced argument that they make. The other case that was argued I think today in front of the Supreme Court was over Biden's executive order that basically provides debt relief to students. The Supreme Court, the Conservatives on the Supreme Court, definitely seemed reluctant to say that this was okay. They had a number of issues. One is executive privilege. And does the executive branch have the authority to do this? Or is this a congressional matter? So it isn't a principal thing that you can't forgive debt. You can. It's just a question of who can do it. Can the president do it or does Congress have to do it? So it's more of a separation of powers issue. I think that's absolutely true if you're going to do something like this. Since the plan to provide debt for students was provided by Congress, it seems like Congress should be the one to put a lot together that says, okay, you don't have to pay it back. It doesn't seem like a president could just sign it away and buy votes that way. There's also some questions about Biden's use of COVID emergency powers in order to do this and pretend that this has something to do with COVID. I think that the court seemed really skeptical about that and what the secretary of education knew, what relevance he had to COVID, why he was getting involved in COVID policy and how student debt was related to COVID. So it was a lot of skepticism. Whether there's an emergency anymore, there clearly isn't. There's also a question of the fairness of the plan. I don't know under what section of the Constitution you could rule that the plan is unfair. Maybe there is. I hope there is. That would be great if clearly the plan does not comport to equal before the law, equality before the law. And then finally, on the flip side, arguing that this will be thrown out or that they will side with the Biden administration, there is a question of standing. To bring a lawsuit, you have to have standing. It has to be reason why you can sue the government for this. And here, red states of sued, so I think in this case it's in Nebraska, red states of sued. It's not clear why state governments have a standing in the case, why it's relevant. Another lawsuit where there might be better standing is students who their debt will not be relieved or only partially relieved of suing on the basis that it's not fair. That debt is being discriminated against. There are going to be a lot of other important cases here. We will see. I think this court is an interesting court. It's a court that's willing to overturn precedent. We've seen that with Rovers' weight, obviously, so that could be good and can be bad. But it makes it not boring. It makes it interesting and it makes it potentially incredibly influential for the future of law and business and culture in America. So I'm looking forward to monitoring the court and staying, you know, filling you guys in on the interesting cases and maybe bringing on some lawyers when we have really difficult cases, really difficult cases. Jeremy says another interesting case right now is Axon Enterprises, Inc. versus the Federal Trade Commission. I really don't know anything about that case, so I'm going to have to look it up. Thank you, Jeremy. I'll take a look and see. All right, let's see. All right, so we will turn to Super Chat quickly. DWNLogic said, you mentioned that Fox News bought you in the 2012 election. What were the reasons? Well, I mean, explicitly the reasons were never provided to me, but I was told that I was on a shortlist of people being barred from appearing on Fox. And I was told by three different independent sources. I was told by Judge Napolitano. I was told by John Stossel. And I was told by, I forget his name, but by a third producer, a producer of one of the shows on Fox. And the story basically was that I was too critical of Republicans. I was too critical of Romney, even though ultimately I voted for Romney. I was too critical of Romney. I was too critical of Republicans. I didn't tow the party line. And basically, there was a ban on using me on Fox for the six months before the elections. I think a really interesting question that a lot of you should think about is this idea that, you know, this idea that government influences media and government, you know, influence Twitter. They told them who to delist and what they could put and what they couldn't. Twitter sometimes listened and sometimes didn't. But isn't that censorship? Well, what do you make of this incredibly close-knit relationship between the Democratic Party and let's say MSNBC and to some extent CNN and the Republican Party's very close relationship with Fox News and the fact that Fox News basically carries water for the Republican Party and let's say MSNBC carries the water for the Democratic Party. And is that legit? And is that a violation of the First Amendment? And when Trump was president, when he would make requests from Fox, is that the same thing as people making requests of Twitter? Is there really a difference? We have today a very, very, very problematic relationship between a political establishment and the media that clearly borders on First Amendment violations. I'll give you a quick example from the news right now. Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, he has control over all the footage, all the video footage from January 6th, from the January 6th break-in into the capital, footage from all the security cameras around the capital. He was planning, I think he changed his mind today, but he was planning to release that video, not to the general public, not to the media in general, but he was going to release it only to Tucker Carlson on Fox, give him an exclusive, and release it to the rest of the media only after Tucker Carlson got to exactly what he was going to do with it, manipulate it, edit it, distort it and show that this group of vandals and insurrectionists really were just patriotic Americans roaming around the capital and had no ill intent. That's what Tucker Carlson would have done for this. But by what standard can a political party, somebody in power, give exclusive content like that to one network? You know, it's bizarre. You know, there really is also a question of whether... Anyway, so it's... I think he reneged today because a lot of people were criticizing it and many people criticized it on First Amendment grounds. I'm not sure you can, but it would be interesting. So, here we are. So, this is a state of free speech. This is a state of kind of the... In America, of all places, the real... Not exactly merger, but the real influence of politics over our media is truly horrific. Luckily, we have a variety of different media sources and that provides some ability for all of us not to only get one party's specific propaganda. You have more variety in media today than ever in human history. In American history. Well, Jeremy says the case challenges the internal administrative law judges of the executive branch agencies being unreviewable by federal courts until they finish their often lengthy process and have a final ruling. That is interesting. I mean, and there's a good chance that the ruling will be against the regulatory agency because at least Gorsuch and Thomas are two very strong voices that want to rein in the administrative state, they want to rein in the regulatory agencies. I don't know if they can convince the other conservative judges to support them, but I hope they do. But any way we can limit the power, the arbitrary, to a large extent arbitrary power of the regulatory agencies, it's going to be super important. So they already did that with the EPA. Last term, this sounds like another case where that would be an excellent ruling. I don't know the particulars, I don't know on what basis they would rule it, but I think particularly Gorsuch, this is why I actually was happy when Gorsuch was appointed to the Supreme Court and I thought he would do a good job on some issues. This is the kind of issue where he's going to do a good job. He's very, very opposed to the regulatory state, and you know, that's great. Anyway, so that was the reasoning they gave me. I was too critical of Republicans, and then they banned me before 2016 because I was too critical of Trump and I've never been back. Adam Campbell asks, $100, thank you Adam, that's great. Where's the line between one being labeled a pragmatist versus an objective simply trying to function day to day in a society filled with altruist intersectionality, collectivism, etc. It is more of an individual's evaluation of each scenario we are facing with. Is it more of an individual's evaluation? Look, first of all, you shouldn't be concerned about what other people think. I mean, the fundamental question is whether you think you're acting pragmatically or based as an objectivist. It is a challenge, but you always have to hold principles. And yes, because your rights are potentially violated, sometimes you have to do things that in a free society you wouldn't do. And that's not inconsistent with being an objectivist because ultimately the governing principle of everything is you. It's your long-term success and your long-term success sometimes involves doing things that in a free society you wouldn't do but you have to do today because you have to survive. And you have to survive the mixed economy. You have to survive the kind of people that live out there. So you have to hold your principles. You have to try to hold context of what is going on. And you have to make sure that you're applying the principles, all the principles, and the proper hierarchy of principles to the decisions that you make. But, you know, I would look at Ayn Rand's essay, How to Live a Rational Life in an Irrational Society. I think that's an important essay that really addresses your question. The Godfather says, hey YB, I think a great movie for you to review is Taka, a movie about innovation and corruption in the automotive industry, post-World War II, would you mind? I'd love to review it. You know, review reviews are $500. So if you want to pitch in $500, I will review it. I've seen Taka. I've probably seen Taka. I've probably watched Taka three times. I'd be happy to watch it again and do a review. And as I said, movie reviews are $500. And I am behind on movie reviews. I do two movie reviews, one to Shazabat and one to another one. I will get to them. Put some boots and princess something. James G. says, you mentioned all the cities in the U.S. are blue. What makes them all become bankrupt or vote for bad policies that ruin their lives? All cities are in debt. Majority of small areas have neither wealth or debt stuck in time. Why? Well, I mean, that's a complex question and there's a lot that could be said. But at the end of the day, first of all, not all cities are blue. I'm sure there's some that are not. I can't remember which ones, but I'm sure not all cities are blue. Certainly in the Deep South, there are many cities that are not blue. But I'd say most of the major cities in the U.S. are blue. I think the reason for that, a few. One is because of the movement of the middle class out of the cities. The cities are primarily low income. For whatever reason, the Republican Party has not been able to capture those votes. Lots of reasons why they haven't. The Democratic Party has done a good job on capturing those votes and securing those votes and making those cities blue. Some Democratic mayors have been more effective at running the cities and others have been less effective at running them. But overall, the Democratic Party dominates the inner city because they dominate generally the votes of poor city folks. Part of that is minorities. The Democratic Party has a big majority in terms of getting votes for blacks and Hispanics, but I don't think that's the only thing I also think it is poverty. But it's also true that cities are being gentrified and a lot of people are moving back and there's a lot of middle class and upper middle class people in the cities. But the reality is that in America today, a lot of the middle class and upper middle class are Democrats. The Democrats, I think to a large extent because they were pulsed by the Republican Party, I don't think that Democrats necessarily because they truly believe in Democratic ideals, at least some of them. But some of them are progressives. Many of them are progressives and many of them are progressives because they went to college and they bought into the ideas that the left presents. They're more intellectual and the left tends to be more intellectual than the right. Look, there's a real gap between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats attract the people who went to college. Democrats attract people who generally hold positions that require more education and just more smarts, if you will, more intelligence. And those people live in the cities. So, you know, I think the Republican Party maybe has not put an emphasis on cities, does not have the right message for cities. And has not managed to appeal to both the educated and the inner city. And until the Republican Party shapes up and starts doing that and embraces culture. You know, the reality is that culture is not something, culture, i.e. arts and things related to art is not something Republicans are strong at. And country music is about it, right? And cultural institutions are not exactly supported by Republicans. And that is problematic because a lot of people love their cultural institutions and the people who support those institutions are Democrats or people. Talk about these issues with Democrats. The Republicans don't have an agenda for people like that, for people who want that. And anyway, Republicans don't have the messaging. They don't have the ideas that will help them take over the cities. But they should. And of course, what's happening in the cities, they're getting more and more in debt. But so are the states. So are the states getting more and more in debt. And there are problems. Once in a while, a Democratic mayor will come out and clean up the city and reform its finances. If you remember, Mayor Koch, was a Koch in New York, started to do that. And I think Giuliani, who was a Republican, continued that. And once in a while, when things get really, really bad, a Republican gets elected. We will see what happens in the cities. So far, the trend has been to elect better Democrats, more centrist Democrats, to those positions. Look, you're not going to win as a Republican if you're anti-abortion. You're not going to win as a Republican with a lot of the policies, the bad policies that Republicans want to recreate. A lot of people just won't vote for you in those kind of situations. And I think one major city that is governed by a Republican, a mayor Republican in San Diego, I think that might be right. But look, Seattle is in deep, deep trouble. Portland is in deep trouble. San Francisco is in deep trouble. LA is in deep trouble. But the reality is Dallas, Houston, Austin, in spite of having Democratic mayors are doing fine, doing fine. It seems to have more to do with the state being blue or red than the city maybe, I'm not sure. The Godfather says, he gives me a link to a YouTube video, is a clip regarding how private equity works. What are they missing? I thought Pee just invests, is how Pee works in the context model. Well, I don't know what the clip says, and I can't watch it in the middle of the show. I certainly can try to watch it later. But I'd say private equity is unbelievably model. Private equity is one of the things that drives the U.S. economy, that makes the U.S. economy effective and efficient. I think it's one of the more important things. One of the real contributing factors for the U.S. economy in terms of providing the flexibility and the ability of the U.S. economy to thrive and be successful. I'm a huge fan of private equity. We could do a whole show on that, and maybe we should at some point, so remind me. And we could try to do a show, or maybe you could sponsor a show about that. Remember, show sponsorships are $1,000. One of my great criticisms of Mitt Romney was that he did such a poor job defending a profession that was his, i.e. private equity, that he was particularly good at and that was really, really valuable. And contributes enormously to the U.S. economy and definitely model. It's an incredibly productive endeavor, incredibly productive. Jennifer says, our power is back on after gigantic ice storm. So you think it's irrational to have a desire, i.e. be a successful singer even though you know you have no talent. Well, it's a fantasy, right? It's not a value because you can't do it. So it's kind of a fantasy. There's nothing wrong with fantasy if you don't mix it up with reality. So I wouldn't call it a desire because desire is probably something you act to achieve. I think it's more of a fantasy that's out there that you know you can't achieve. It's kind of fun to think about if you could, but not something that you take too seriously. So that's how we would think about it. Thank you, Jennifer. It's good to have you back. Jennifer says, is the culture today pushing loneliness and self-absorption? Conservatives at the daily wire are focusing on loneliness and people lack of ability to enter relationships. Is this a natural consequence of nihilistic philosophy? Yes, yes, and yes, I mean, absolutely the culture today is a loneliness culture. I think there are a lot of things going on and we've talked about some of them. There is the feminist movement combined with nobody really talking about a proper form of masculinity that makes men particularly lonely and not able to communicate with women and intimidated by strong women and expecting to live like Matt Wells, where his wife, I guess, and an apron waits for him every day to make him dinner and make him happy because that's her job after all is to make her husband happy. Men are expecting that and a lot of women are not willing to live that kind of life. They want to have their own career, they want to have their own self-esteem, they want to have their own values, they want to contribute to their partner's happiness, but they want their partner to contribute to their happiness too. So men who expect the walls to be the walls of the 1950s are disappointed, they don't know how to communicate with women, they don't have the self-esteem to deal with it. That produces loneliness. I think loneliness is also produced by the fact that we don't teach people how to take responsibility over their lives, over the choices of their values and how to live, how to value, how to focus their minds, how to develop the skills to be competent and successful in the world out there. The educational system does exactly the opposite, it undermines all of that. So nihilism, incompetence, lack of self-esteem, the welfare state which teaches people that they can just stay home, they don't have to go to work, eliminates, you know, destroys self-esteem and also, you know, takes away one of the most important social environments people have which is the workplace. I also think working from home is probably not a great idea in the culture we live in today because, again, it reinforces loneliness. There's so many contributing factors, but I'd say the dominant contributing factor is the inability of people today to value, to define their own values, create a value, hire a key and fight for their own values and gain the self-esteem necessary for that and then relationships with other people are part of that. Now, of course, family breaking up, families breaking up, high divorce rates are both at the parent level and once the children get married, again, the feminist movement combined with the inability of men to kind of have the self-esteem to deal with women, all of that leads to significant loneliness. You know, and the reality is the breakup of the church. People don't go to church as much. Church used to be the social institution that brought people together and we haven't yet created alternatives to church and secular alternatives to church and that is related to the fact that people don't know how to define their values. I think it would be much easier to do it, to create secular institutions that people became real values and recognized real values. Alright, James Chee says, can U.S. major cities be saved from self-destruction? Yeah, probably. I mean, it really looked like New York was going to hell in the 1970s and it came back. So I really don't think self-destruction is necessary. It seems like the voters, you know, correct themselves after a while. It's just sad that they have to go through the pain in the meantime. Wesley says, you've said that Latin America is deeply influenced by content and philosophy but in my experience it's very anti-intellectual, hence why they don't produce scientists and philosophers. I agree with you that they don't produce scientists and the reason for that is exactly that, that they're influenced by content and philosophy. I do think they produce a lot of philosophers and a lot of intellectuals, a lot of public intellectuals and it's fascinating to me, when you walk around in Latin America, particularly Brazil but also Argentina and Chile and for example in bookstores in the airports, there are a lot of books on philosophy. There are a lot of books about philosophy. I remember in Brazil there was a philosophy for a dummies-like book and there was Ayn Rand's figure on the cover of the book. Ayn Rand is considered a philosopher in Brazil, not so much in America. I find that Latin American culture is very bifurcated. It's a class system unfortunately and the educated classes are very philosophical and are very influenced by content and philosophy and as a consequence of that they maintain the class system and the lower classes where there's no philosophy and complete pragmatism and a lot of religion unfortunately. But the middle class and the upper middle class and the rich are very intellectual I think in Latin America in a negative way, in a negative sense. That is bad philosophy, bad intellectual ideas. And you see that in the bookstores. Compare a bookstore at the airport in Sao Paulo and a bookstore at an airport in New York and it's a vast difference. James says, do you like Southern or Northern England more? I like London. I mean, I like the city, you know, that's what I love and I've spent a lot, a lot more time in Southern England than Northern England. So I don't really have a good sense of Northern England. Frank says today's 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon album. Yep, great album. Roger Waters speaks the UN hoping for Ukraine to surrender is disgusting. Absolutely. He's also unbelievably anti-Israel in a really horrible, horrible way. So yeah, Roger Waters, good musician, horrible human being. Let's see, Michael says, why do people insist the past was better than the present when statistics show otherwise? Because they're unhappy and they want to believe that there was a period in which things were better where they would be less depressed or less unpleasant, right? So I think that's why they insist on that. They want to believe that there was a better period because they're not enjoying this one. Clark says, is there any benefit of being at the bottom of a hierarchy in a capitalist system? Well, I hate the term hierarchy as applied to capitalism. What does it mean in that context? But no, there's no benefit to it. There's no necessarily evil to it. You know, people who have limited abilities are going to be at the bottom of the hierarchy. And that is, it's better for them to be at the bottom of the hierarchy of a capitalist system than at the top of the hierarchy in a socialist system. So capitalism benefits everybody, top to bottom. In many ways, the 1950s were a more sane time. Insanity has broken out all over today as if we are supposed to accept that people are just loopy like Lowry Lightfoot. It was, to some extent, more sane. It's not clear that it really was. It was superficially sane, but all this stuff was boiling under, you know, in the background and it blew up in the 60s and then it was pushed back into the background again, I think in the 80s and 90s and then it's been bubbling up to the surface again now. But you should not have any kind of nostalgia for the 50s. The 50s were not a good period of time. Government was awful. It was doing horrible things. Marginal tax rates were something like 80, 90% in the United States. And there were a lot of really, really bad things going on in the U.S. You know, Jim Crow laws were still in the South. So there's no reason to be nostalgic. Not your average algorithm continues. While the 1950s had its share of evil, irrationality and cruelty towards others, it manifested in different ways that general population had higher standard of behavior. Today's ugliness is on the display. Yes, but I think those higher standards of behavior were facade that I don't think really reflected anything really deep behind it. I don't think people necessarily that much happier. And certainly there were real social ills and real ugliness certainly again in the South, but all over the culture. The wackos today are more wacky than they were in the 50s, both on the left and the right. But again, there was the John Birch Society on the right, which were pretty crazy people. One of the things that happened in the 50s, and I will talk about this in our future episode, is the country was united and it was united by the Cold War. And I think there's a real longing both on the left and the right to bring back a Cold War because they view that as the only way to unite the country. And I think that's why both left and right in America are so adamantly anti-China. I mean, there's plenty of reasons to be anti-China, but they are so eager to bring about a Cold War with China, so eager to push us in that direction and encourage China to view it on the other side that I suspect, and I've read about this a little bit, that there's a certain nostalgia to the 50s. Certainly the Republicans have, but also the left has. It's a time of unions, it's a time of high marginal tax rates. They consider it a time of ideal, low inequality supposedly, ideal social circumstances. Of course there was no welfare state, of course there was no Medicare. So if they really think about it, it's an ideal. But the left also likes the idea of the 1950s and the idea of the Cold War. James says, Juan Buffett hates private equity, is he P.E.? No, he's not P.E. And Juan Buffett hates a lot of things irrationally. Juan Buffett is very irrationally. He knows nothing about economic policy. He knows nothing about... I think this is where Juan Buffett is the model, because he should know better. He knows the value of P.E., why P.E. is crucial, why P.E. is important, why P.E. contributes to this economy vastly. And to be anti-PE with the knowledge Juan Buffett has, there's just no excuse in the world for it. Okay, last question. Liam says, I meant to ask this during your chat GPT show. Have you ever caught a student cheating or plagiarizing? How did you handle it? Yeah, I mean, I basically failed the student. So yes, I have caught students cheating. I don't tolerate cheating. I didn't tolerate cheating. I was really lenient about a lot of things, but cheating was beyond the pale. So yes, I reported them to administration, gave them an F, and it proceeded from there. All right, guys. Thank you. I hope to see you tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed the show. If you're listening, not live, and you'd like to support the show, you can still kind of contribute a super chat-like thing in YouTube directly. Just click on the button there. You can also become a member. We have member-only shows. We'll have one in March. You can also become a member by clicking the Join button. And you can also support the show on your own, bookshow.com. I support Patreon, a subscribe star. I love the monthly contributions because they give me a predictability. So please consider becoming a monthly contributor if you're not already. Value for value. If you enjoy the show, show appreciation by becoming a monthly supporter of the show. Thank you all, particularly to superchatters and to everybody listening. I will probably see you all tomorrow.