 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right. Welcome everybody to Iran Brook Show on this Friday evening filled with political news all over the place. It's like an explosion of news, whether it's Donald Trump going after social media companies, Twitter, you know, limiting or commenting or restricting. I don't even know what to call it. Donald Trump's tweets, whether it's Donald Trump going after China today, and of course China going after Hong Kong and riots in Minneapolis and demonstrations all over the country. And on and on it goes. It seems like it is a, the world is kind of on edge. Things are explosive and it looks like the Trump administration is right in the middle of things. Everything seems to be connected. But before we get to all that, I got a haircut. I hope you like it. Haircut, the world is coming back to normalcy. I actually got a haircut. I then, with my wife, went to a restaurant. Not a restaurant that was closed off just for us. A restaurant that had, was normal. I mean, wasn't completely normal. Like the waiters not only wore masks, but they wore these plastic shields over their faces. And you got the menu. The menu was texted to me because you don't want them touching menus and stuff. But it was a restaurant. There were families there, people sitting, people having a good time, good meal, drinking, eating. All right. The world is slowly, slowly coming back to normalcy. Somebody says, be safe. Thank you. I appreciate that. But what does that even mean? I mean, the chance of me getting really sick from coronavirus is small. It's just, you know, you got to live. You got to live. You got to take precautions. Keep your social distancing. Wash your hands. Wear a mask when there are lots of people around you. But generally, I'm going to beach tomorrow. I'm going to beach tomorrow. Now, the beach is pretty empty. There's nobody there, but I'm going to go swimming. So, no, I intend to embrace, I've had enough of this. I tend to embrace life and go out there and live and enjoy it and be careful. Be careful. There's no reason to take risks that are necessary. But on the other hand, look at me. I'm healthy. I'm still for a little while longer, a little while longer. I'm under the age of 60. And therefore, not in the high-risk group. I got one year to go guys, one year to go, and then I become high-risk. So, it is scary stuff getting older. But so far, I might as well take advantage of my last year on a low-risk, in a low-risk population group, right? Anyway, got a haircut. Got to go to a restaurant. Life's pretty good. I'm pretty happy. They keep being the 25% capacity. But remember, 25% is not 25% of the normal number of people in the restaurant. It's 25% of the legal capacity. Often restaurants don't meet their legal capacity. They run it under that legal capacity. Legal capacity is how much that gets to fight upon when it allows you to have a new restaurant. So, 25%, I mean, the spacing of the tables. Tables were spaced out. No tables closed to each other. So, it was fine. Again, the bigger problem in Puerto Rico is that we have a curfew that starts at 7 p.m. So, if you're a restaurant, how do you get enough customers for dinner if they all have to be out of there by 7 p.m.? That's the insanity. So, I expect the governor to either get rid of the curfew completely or to move it to 9 p.m., which would make it a lot easier for restaurants to survive. But even 9. Puerto Ricans tend to eat late, like Europeans a little bit. And to me, it doesn't matter, because I eat. My wife and I eat dinner at, I don't know, 5.30. I eat 6. So, for us, it's fine. But if they move the curfew to 9 p.m., it'll be a lot better. Hopefully, they can get rid of the curfew completely. I mean, what's the purpose of the curfew? The purpose of the curfew, I think, is two things. One, prevent people from going out and partying late at night. So, bars are closed, but people party in other venues or at people's houses. And I think the second one is to try to reduce crime. I think it's just an attempt to take the opportunity to exploit the situation to try to get crime out of control in Puerto Rico. Crime is terrible in Puerto Rico. Gangs and drugs and stuff like that. You don't feel it unless you go into the wrong neighborhoods. Generally, I recommend not going to the wrong neighborhoods, whether it's in Puerto Rico or in Los Angeles or in pretty much anywhere else. But anyway, it was good. It was good to get a little bit of normalcy. And tomorrow, the beach is going to be fantastic. And yeah, things are going to be good. Let's see. I'm not sure what I'm going to do show tomorrow sometime in the evening probably because I'm going to go to the beach in the afternoon. And I'm giving a talk, a Zoom talk at one o'clock in Italy. I'm giving a talk in Italy tomorrow. So that'll be a lot of fun. All right, I see already, I haven't even started the show and the super chat questions are pouring in. I promise I'll get to all of you, but first let's try to get through some of the topics I want to talk about. And the biggest topic is this fight that Donald Trump is having with Twitter and Donald Trump put out two tweets earlier in the week about mailing voting that encouraging fraud and Twitter labeled it as misinformation. Because the fact is that there is no evidence, there's no evidence to suggest that mailing voting is fraudulent. I've used mailing voting when I was in California. I know a lot of people have many of the people who work for the president have used mailing voting. I've seen stories about that. It's just one of these talking points about trying, I mean, partially the president is trying to establish that there is a lot of voter fraud. So if he loses, he can blame the loss on fraud. I mean that in my view, he's been doing this from day one. He's been doing this from day one when he got elected. It's a Republican talking point. I mean the last election that was probably decided, presidential election decided by fraud was probably the Kennedy Nixon election where Kennedy probably won that election in 1960 because stories have it that a lot of dead people voted in Chicago and that swayed Illinois towards Kennedy and I guess it was a very close election and that gave him the election. But even that is questionable. But the idea that, I mean, study after study after study have shown that, I mean, I'm not saying there's no fraud, there's always fraud, but that voter fraud swayed the presidential elections in the United States and it's just untrue and it's unlikely to sway it in the future. And I'd be very careful with that claim because if I remember right, Donald Trump won the last election. So if voter fraud sways elections, maybe it swayed it in his favor. Who knows? Why assume that voter fraud only goes one way? I certainly wouldn't. Although Democrats have been better at it in the past. They have been better at rounding up dead people and rounding up buses and paying people to vote than I think Republicans have. But I'm not sure Republicans have any improved their capabilities in that regard more recently. All right, so he put out these tweets and they got this disclaimer and man was he furious. Oh my God, did he get angry? I mean, you can't do that to Donald Trump. You can't do that to pretty much anybody else. But you cannot do that to Donald Trump. And of course, immediately we got an executive order, right? So interesting how if Twitter attacks other people, if Twitter discriminates against other people, if Twitter has political bias and it affects other people, that's fine. But when it affects Donald Trump, immediately we get an executive order because the world circulates right here. And the executive order is basically that the government, that the FCC and other branches of the government are going to look carefully at section 230 of the U.S. Code. Section Code 230 is protection of private blocking and screening of offensive material. Which was passed in 1996. And they're going to look at that and try to weaken its protection of internet companies, you know, in order to prevent the ability of internet companies to discriminate politically. Now, there are so many things wrong with us. You're giving the government the power, the ability to decide when internet companies are discriminating. Now, maybe a lot of you are going to cheer this on because, hey, they're going to stop the discrimination against, I don't know, conservatives or pro-capitalist or whatever. I know, you know, YouTube discriminates against me, so maybe I should cheer this on because it'll stop discriminating against me. But then what happens when the left gets in and it decides that Twitter, Facebook, whatever is discriminated against them? What are they going to do? Once you open up a Pandora Dogs box of letting government decide what constitutes ideological discrimination, you're getting the government involved in what is ideology and what is correct ideology, wrong ideology, inappropriate ideology, inappropriate ideology. How much time is given to left, right, center, objectives, libertarian? Then you are basically eliminating the First Amendment. You're basically getting the government involved in speech, you're getting the government involved in ideas, you're getting the government involved in categorizing what is and is not ideological discrimination. And the government should have no business in doing that. A long, long time ago, there was a feminist doctrine. And the feminist doctrine said that you have to give all voices equal time on the radio and on television. So if you had a liberal, then you had to have a conservative. But what about a free market person? What about a socialist? What about a communist? How do you decide? And what is a conservative? What is a liberal? What is right and what is left? And who gets to decide what is right and what is left? And when does it deviate? And you're giving a government agency, the FCC, the authority to decide. And that's how it was in America for many, many decades. How to decide who is what and how much is enough? And what is fair and what is not fair in terms of ideological balance? Indeed, when the Furnace Act was eliminated under Ronald Reagan, what's amazing is that conservative radio boomed. Conservative radio because the rest of them could have never existed under the Furnace Act. Because for every rush, you would have had to have a lefty. Otherwise it wouldn't have been balanced. Once the Furnace Act was eliminated, indeed the conservatives dominated, became dominant of radio. And talk radio today is dominated by conservatives or has been for decades. Imagine if you applied these principles of fairness or balance to talk radio. You'd have to shut down half the kind of right wing conservative talk show radios and put on, replace them with leftists. Now nobody would listen to the leftists because there's no market for them obviously on talk radio. But the FCC would be required to do that. Now that is the kind of world we want to create online. The one domain in which it truly is a free fall. The FCC should look at whether a tweet was discriminatory or whether Twitter behaved in discriminatory fashion versus conservatives versus liberals versus what other. There's just no end to this. No end. Once you give the government that kind of power. And why? Because the president of the United States has offended a private company said that his tweets were wrong. But this is being called for by the way, by both left and right, both Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz, want to regulate speech on the internet. I mean, I said a long time ago, I did a whole show a while ago, I think the title was, We are all China now. China won. And I think China won. China is winning. China is winning the cultural war. Not the left. Not the right. China is. What are we adopting from China? Well, China solutions to the pandemic was to shut everybody at home, isolate them, keep them at home, not allow for any social interaction for weeks. And I remember when that happened, everybody went, oh, well, you could never do that in America. We have a constitution to protect us. And within a month. What were we doing? We were shutting everybody at home, isolating everybody, criminalizing, walking your dog further than X from your condo building. That's what we did. We copied China's model. The whole Western world, with the exception of Sweden, copied the Chinese model of shutting a city, shutting cities down, shutting economies down, shutting lives down. And then what do we want to do to our internet? Well, it looks like what we want to do to the internet is give the government control over it. Given the government, the control over the ideas expressed on the internet. Have them decide what is fair and balanced, just like Fox, fair and balanced. Now that's China. China controls the internet. And the China authorities, I'm sure, convinced that they are doing a fair and balanced job. In the common good, by the way, for the public interest to prevent subversive ideas appearing that would undercut the common good in the public interest. Because, don't you know, that is the war being of the Communist Party is in the public good in the common interest. And anything that undermines it would be bad and therefore must be eliminated. Well, the American government seems to want to do the same thing. Now, it won't start by claiming that everything has to be for the Republican and Democratic Party. But it's not far from that. I mean, after all, it was the tweets of the president of the United States being flagged, which spurred all of this. So what is it that they're trying to undermine? They're trying to undermine the Section 230. It stuns me, the number of people commenting on Section 230. Does anybody actually read it? Do they know what the context is? Well, this is the context. In 1995, I think there was, there was a bullet. This is 1995, in the very early days, very, very early days of the internet. And there was a bulletin board in which somebody posted something that turned, that was negative information about a particular company. And as a consequence, the stock of that company declined. And the company sued, or a broker sued, another investor, I guess, sued the, not the person who posted the false information, but posted the bulletin board. Because it said, you guys posted this and you curate this. You don't post everything. Some things you won't post. And yet this you posted, therefore you are a publisher and therefore we want to sue you. And they won. Now here is the dilemma now. If you turn every platform company, every chat, every bulletin board on the internet, if you consider every one of them a publisher, then you're going to have significant restrictions in what gets posted. They're going to have to fact check everything. They're going to have to monitor everything. It's going to be almost impossible for them to publish stuff. Now it's possible they will do it, but then you're limiting what can happen online. And it's not clear. They should be a publisher, conceived as a publisher, because the fact is that they didn't write the content. They don't have positive content approval. They restrict certain content. But if you don't allow them to restrict that content, if the fact that they restrict certain contract turns them automatically into publisher, then you basically cripple the web. This is 1996. There's no Google. There's no YouTube. There's certainly no Twitter or Facebook. I think Zuckerberg is 11 years old. There's barely Yahoo. Maybe Yahoo is just starting out. There's almost nothing. So we're trying to allow for platforms and bulletin boards and think about all the bulletin boards that are around today, that think of all the, I don't know, channel, what is it? Channel 4, channel 8, I don't know, whatever, that are racist, bigoted, alt-right BS places. Imagine if those were perceived as publishers and could be sued for the content that was there. I mean, they wouldn't exist. They'd be driven out of business. They would be gone. That would be it. The internet, as we know it, would not exist if we had viewed anybody who restricts certain information, and not others, if we turn everyone like that into a publisher. Now, this ruling came to the attention of a couple of congressmen. And they said, you know, one of the problems of this is, what if a company that publishes stuff online, what if it restricts pornography? Will that turn them automatically into a publisher? Because they've chosen to restrict certain content, legal content. Pornography is legal. But they've chosen to restrict it. If that turns them into a publisher, then what will happen is some sites will be publishers, and they'll be very small, very limited, and very resource constrained. Other sites will publish everything, including pornography. So they said that can't be right. And this, by the way, is exactly why we need a congress. It's exactly why you need a legislature is when encountering a new technology, we need to clearly define property rights. We need to clearly define how the laws apply to this new technology. So Congress came together and said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to say, you can publish stuff. You can be restrictive in what you publish. And we won't call you a publisher, unless you're really a publisher. Now, the law doesn't say this, but what is a publisher? Publishers actually hire reporters. It actually does positive things to the article. It edits them. It promotes certain articles. It buys certain articles. It sent reporters to accumulate certain information. It publishes. It doesn't just negatively exclude. It positively includes. It solicits particular materials that it wants. So unless you are explicitly a publisher, we won't consider you a publisher if you're just excluding material. That's what section 230 does. And here's how it reads for those of you who've never read it. And there are many I know out there who comment on it all the time. Maybe you should read it. What is section? So this is under section 230. I won't read you the whole 230 because it's a long thing. But 230, 5C. No, this is section C. Protection for good Samaritan blocking and screening of offensive material. One, treatment of publisher or speaker. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. It's very clear. Two, civil liability. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of A, any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable. Whether or not such material is constitutionally protected or B, any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others, the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph 1A. Just paragraph 1. And it goes on again. And it's a long section, 240 years long, and it covers a lot of different things about interactive computer services. In other words, this is before the idea of platform even existed. And it differentiates between interactive computer service, which means any information service system or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users or computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions. But Facebook and Twitter would qualify. And then it differentiates. And information content provider means any personal entity that is responsible for the whole and part for the creation or development of information provided through the internet or any other interactive computer service. Now that's different. They're actually providing information. They're more like a newspaper. They're more like a publisher. So this is good law as far as I could tell. It makes clear differentiation. It expands the rule of law into a realm we don't yet understand. It takes away barriers that exist because of old ways of thinking about technology. It's the application of an objective assessment to a new technology. And look what it's put. It's created the internet as we know it today. Not a bad thing, mostly good. And for those of you who think Twitter and Facebook and all these entities are horrible, then stop using them by the very fact that you use them. You're indicating that you think they're good. If you didn't think they were good, you wouldn't use them. You could be a hypocrite too. Nothing wrong with this. You don't like the way a particular company is using information. Then don't use that company. There are plenty of alternatives to Twitter. I mean, they might not be particularly popular, but you don't have a God-given right to a popular social media platform. I mean, you don't really have a God-given right to any platform, but certainly not a popular one. So go use GAB or go use something else. If you think they're censoring conservatives, fine. Don't use them. When people thought Patreon was discriminating against conservatives, a lot of people left Patreon. And indeed, the attempt now to restrict Twitter's ability to filter, to be selective in terms of what it allows on its platform or not, what it warns or what it not, is a violation of free speech. They are a private entity, and the government is stepping in or wants to step in to say, no, no, no, you can't flag the president's tweets. Why not? They want to flag the president's tweets. And if it violates the terms of service, if it's a violation of a contract, then sue them. That's easy. The terms of contract, go sue them. The fact is, they're not being sued, and they're not being sued because everybody knows they wouldn't win the lawsuit because the terms of service are written in a way that they can do these kind of things. Michael asks, what if Twitter removed every tweet posted, said nothing appears on the platform, by the logic of Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Hawley, John Hawley has to be the most nasty senator out there, him and Bernie Sanders. By the logic of Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Hawley, he's really dangerous. Twitter then becomes a publisher. It's so absurd. Of course it's absurd. It's nuts. It's their platform. They can delete anything they want. They can flag anything they want. And look, I suffer from this. There's no question in my mind, I know exactly when they did it, that in August of last year, YouTube changed that algorithm in ways that restricts viewership of my content. I could see it immediately. Subscriptions suddenly plummeted. I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. But subscriptions went down. Viewership went down. I've struggled to bring it back up to where it was before, but subscriptions have never gotten back to where they were before. And there's no question, the algorithm changed. Dave Ubrin told me he noticed the same thing on his platform and on his channel at about the same time. Okay. If I had an alternative to YouTube, I'd shift. But the fact is, if YouTube doesn't like me, they can do whatever they want. I don't, I don't, they don't owe me anything. Indeed, they're giving me this amazing service. A service that I couldn't even imagined 10 years ago. 10 years ago. 10 years ago is nothing. Yesterday. I couldn't even have imagined 10 years ago. They're giving me this. I don't know how much storage I have there. Gigabytes, terabytes. I don't know. For free. Not only for free. I make money off of it. You know, I made 100 bucks, I think, today on SuperChat, at least off of a platform. YouTube provides me for free. And you're complaining? Don't like it? Move somewhere else? Do something else? It's stunning to me. Stunning to me. The number of conservatives. The number of so-called objectivists, so-called libertarians who are clamoring to see the government. The government that we so hate. The government that we so despise when it exceeds the protection of individual rights. They want the government who now they trust suddenly. They trusted to build walls. They trusted to do ideological checks at the border. Now they trusted to do ideological checks online. We trust the government to figure out if Twitter's balanced or not balanced and if it's giving enough time to this point of view or that point of view. Or do we want to take away the 230 restrictions and turn Twitter into a real publisher? And then most of your tweets will never be published. Indeed Twitter will go out of business. Or they'll publish everything including pornography and you won't be able to stop them. And they won't want to stop it because as soon as they stop it. Or you could pass a bill that says you can restrict pornography but nothing else but that won't stand up in the courts because why should pornography be separated from all of the content? It's legal content. So it truly is what Trump and all these senators are trying to do is truly insane. Anti the Constitution. Anti the principles on which this country's founded. And destructive to the one area we still have in this country an edge which is the internet. You want to give that away? I'm sure other countries would love to do it better than us. So that's Trump and Twitter. Oh and today or yesterday was it this morning I can't even keep track. Trump tweeted something about the Minnesota riots. I'll talk about the riots in a minute. Talked about the riots in Minnesota. And at the end of the tweet he said basically he said we're going to take this over. If Minnesota, the state can't take this federal government is going to send in troops there and we're going to stop the looting and start the shooting. So the president of the United States is advocating that it's okay to shoot looters. And Twitter put a warning on it. This is the president of the United States advocating for violence. All right agree or disagree their platform. Anyway Trump has gone ballistic over that as well now and so has most of the right wing. But let's talk a minute about Minnesota and then we'll talk about Hong Kong and again we'll circle back to Trump's China policy declaration today. So obviously I think most of you have seen the video of these four policemen. I mean four policemen trying to subdue this suspect I guess somebody they placed under arrest. He's handcuffed. He's lying on the ground handcuffed handcuffed. And this policeman has his knee on the guy's neck. The guy's saying I can't breathe and he just keeps his knee on the neck. Ultimately you know the guy can't breathe and he dies. He's on the ground he's handcuffed. There are four of them four policemen and they have to kill him. I mean this is a clear case. A police abuse. And I hope this video of every time this happens because I think it happens more often than we would like to admit. Police killing people when they shouldn't be killed. Police using excessive force on people when they don't need to use excessive force. Now I'm all four. If somebody is resisting police using force in order to subdue him but even then you need to train police on how to use force that's not deadly. There's plenty of ways to subdue somebody to stop him resisting without killing them or without putting their life in danger. I mean really we really need to increase training in this country of police. Now there is a perception that this is related to racism and that is because the man who died is black and there is a perception that this happens more often to blacks than it happens to whites. Now it's true the more blacks are arrested than whites or I don't know more but more proportionate to their population and that disproportionately blacks are in the criminal justice system and the question of whether this truly is a consequence of some implicit racism or if this is just a issue of police brutality that had nothing to do with a person's race is a question of fact it's an empirical question it's a question for the data it's a question for investigators it's a question to figure out what motivated the police to act so stupidly irrationally, brutally, disproportionately and they should be prosecuted for it if this is truly negligent but I do think it is important to figure out is there a bias in our police force. Now the response unfortunately to this tragic event I can understand protests I can understand wanting people wanting their voices heard particularly people who believe that this is motivated by racism and this is part of a pattern across the country I don't think it's irrational completely for them to believe that I think that they might be wrong but it's not completely irrational again that's a question of facts and it's a question of empirical evidence there's suddenly this country has plenty of a history of racism for that not to be completely nuts to believe that at least some of these cases are motivated by racial issues so I can understand people's frustration and people wanting to demonstrate and people wanting to have their voices heard but to riot to burn things down to destroy private property to interrupt with the ability of people to go about their daily lives is unbelievably disgusting, irresponsible and criminal and people should be prosecuted for doing it they should not be treated with kid gloves I don't advocate shooting them but I don't advocate arresting them and putting them in jail destruction of private property is destruction of private property by the way, destruction of a police station which is what they did last night is equivalent to destruction of private property it should not be allowed, it should not be tolerated and you need to bring in as many police as necessary to stop this and it's a sign of a breakdown in society when this happens on a regular basis and unfortunately this is the first time it's happened in a few years but you remember all the riots and demonstrations and destruction of property that happened a few years ago when again there was a bunch of police killings that seemed to at the time target blacks it also looks like an opportunity for certain activists certain out of town anarchists or just people who want to see violence in the streets they use these opportunities they exploit these opportunities to go break stuff and this is this has to be brought under control this has to be stopped the nice thing to see is that leaders from left and right in at least Minnesota are condemning this and they need to bring in the fact that the police abandoned the police station and let them destroy it it's pathetic so while the killing of this man is incredibly tragic and horrible and just disgusting this response is completely inappropriate and must be crushed not again crushed by use of the kind of physical force or kind of shooting that the president is indicating but just crushed by the proper use of police force of course this is anarchism whenever you see violent gangs battling each other that's anarchism, the mafia is anarchism this is what anarchism is this is the essence of anarchy and anarchism is always a response because it's not a rational standalone ideology so it's always a response to grievances it's always a response to grievances by the state it's a complete breakdown of order it's a breakdown of civilization you get anarchy where there's no civilization you get anarchy where there's no yeah, civilization is the best word for it the middle ages yeah, all anarchy bloody in the bloodiest places you know, some of the bloodiest cultures you've ever lived in okay, so well, Trump is right that this needs to be put on control President of the United States should never be in a position where he's calling for the shooting of Americans even even those who are violating rights and by the way, the idea of shooting looters goes against at least a number of cases that the Supreme Court has ruled against again, if those looters constitute a threat to the police if the police feel threatened by them then shooting is legitimate but the president of the United States should not be threatening this it's completely inappropriate and it's the kind of nuttiness that this president exhibits in office and has diminished the value of the presidency alright, let's maybe not the middle ages, maybe the dark ages pre-middle ages, but middle ages as well all those wars all those little city states all those slaughters, all that you know and if you look at the, by the way, the middle ages whatever you want to call it, Iceland which is David Friedman's favorite example of Anarchy yeah, that's the middle ages and that's barbarism, not civilization and Anarchy is Statism because Anarchy necessarily leads to Statism because nobody wants to live in a state of Anarchy nobody wants to live in a state of Anarchy so the people almost always demand demand a strong man to clean things up they demand a government to clean things up Anarchy inevitably must lead to Statism and to the worst kind of Statism and it does so primarily because it is a legitimization of might is right and by Anarchy legitimizes might is right by legitimizing might is right it legitimizes the rule of the mighty and again I watch my debate on Anarchy where I articulate why that is by creating competition among entities that provide might you're legitimizing the idea that the more might you have the more market power you should have the more the more control you should have the more right you are just think about hostile takeovers just about any evolution of any kind of market if you're a market in force then over time the guy with a bigger gun is going to be the dominant player and whether he has good laws or bad laws whether people like him or hate him doesn't matter he's got a big gun and he's going to subjugate you and that is the essence of Anarchy alright one other topic I wanted to cover yeah quickly Hong Kong China has is now passed a law that basically includes Hong Kong under its security laws agenda it basically makes all the laws that apply in China that relate to national security now apply in New York in Hong Kong New York next I guess what that means is that Hong Kong is no longer independent that China can now impose its will on Hong Kong in the name of national security that it can view all kinds of activities within Hong Kong is threats the national security of China and legitimately under the new law shut them down it basically delegitimizes the whole idea of two systems which is never really a legitimate concept to begin with and it places Hong Kong under officially now under China's thumb and in the end it's the end of Hong Kong this should be a global day of mourning one of the great alright but Apple is Apple over the last six months has been a big disappointment to me it's you think they fix these problems and they want so China we're talking about China taking over Hong Kong should be a day of mourning Hong Kong is this great experiment of freedom what does freedom do it creates one of the most magnificent cities in human history it creates amazing amounts of wealth it creates a population that's innovative productive creative a build a civilization a culture that builds creates makes that thrives it shows that capitalism works anyway doesn't just work in Europe doesn't just work in America it can be a massive success in Asia indeed Hong Kong got closer to capitalism than any other country with exception maybe of the United States in the late 19th century early 20th century and it appears to be that that experiment is as of today over that China has killed it that China has basically the China has basically taken the island over and what I hoped when the transition from Britain to China what I hoped was that Hong Kong would take over China not the other way around that will never happen we are much more likely to see now the decline in death and slow destruction of Hong Kong and Trump today made a statement about this again more executive orders part good part horrible again he blamed China not for human rights violations not for the camps in western China where they indoctrinate and torture and abuse Muslims not for their treatment of their social media because I think he's a little jealous not for the lack of free speech not for the lack of freedom not for the violation of individual rights no he didn't criticize China for that what he criticized China for is taking our jobs taking our manufacturing stealing from us through trade I mean there is no end to this man's ignorance of economics ignorance of trade ignorance of supply chains division of labor economics he is a mukuntilist he takes us back 200 years to an intellectual framework that is pre-Adam Smith so unfortunately anything good he might have done in his accusations against China is undercut, undermined by the fact that he is you know so wrong on trade so what the United States is doing is the United States today has favored favored status for Hong Kong in terms of trade favored status for Hong Kong in terms of technology transfers favored status of Hong Kong in a variety of different things and that is all going to go away so we're going to penalize Hong Kong for what China has done to it what we should be doing is expanding that favor trade to China and then as I've argued before closing Imbasin China withdrawing any government money that goes to China withdrawing all sanction from China declaring China to be an evil regime and isolating China as much as possible not from trade but politically diplomatically in every other respect we should be encouraging Hong Kong to take over China but no that would actually require the President of the United States to have an opinion about a proper regime that would require the United States to have an actual opinion about individual rights and human rights no all our President knows or thinks he knows about trade deficits lack of manufacturing in the United States so he's penalizing Hong Kong for the evil that is China for the evil and the nastiness that China is committing against Hong Kong Hong Kong is getting penalized for now I can understand the technology transfer if you don't want the Chinese to have it don't transfer it to Hong Kong of course that was true yesterday not just today given the influence China has in Hong Kong has had in Hong Kong forever why you restrict trade what is exactly that you're hoping to achieve other than to destroy Hong Kong and somehow that will penalize China but this is our President nothing really unexpected here stuff on China mostly about the wrong things some right almost by accident because somebody told him he should be no foreign policy, no coherence no principles no shining city on a hill because what are the principles of the shining city what do we advocate for what do we believe in what kind of world do we actually want so yeah I mean Trump has got all of this wrong all of this wrong shooting protesters Twitter and China he has wrong I would be much tough on China in the realm which is the government's responsibility the political realm even potentially the military realm by asserting our right to protect the shipping lanes out of Asia but he wants to play CEO he wants to play grand poobah of trade he wants to be a central planner and is not willing to give that up and as long as he does that only disaster will follow only disaster will follow for us and for the Chinese we will get his way China will decline but so are we so are we yeah Nicholas has a good quote from Stephen Bannon he says Stephen Bannon once said America is not an ideal it's just a country with borders that's what conservatives are coming to that's what the right has become just nationalism America nothing special it's just a country with borders we want to protect it from other people no that's not what America is it's not what America was it's not what America should and could be it's a land of ideals it's an ideal it's a land of individual rights but you see they don't believe in individual rights Steve Bannon doesn't believe in rights Harley this awful senator doesn't believe in rights America is unique in any sense it's that it's God's country God's country that's what makes America special not ideas not the declaration of independence which they don't understand not the constitution which they would like to pervert and distort there's a new I'll do a show on this but there's a new movement now to have common good constitutionalism that is to interpret the constitution in a way that's consistent with the common good and the public interest from a conservative perspective none of this originalism crap none of this individual rights stuff you gotta do what's good for the common good you gotta do what's good for that nation for the country I have like 2,000 questions here so no more super chat questions let me try to get to these questions see how many I can do is there any danger in the government buying up junk bonds like airlines to protect them from going bankrupt wouldn't less competition in the industry be a disaster absolutely well it's not that less competition in the industry would be a disaster it depends on how less competition comes about sometimes less competition is required sometimes less competition is what the market dictates because a business might be a business of economies of scale but less competition created by government is bad and bankruptcy doesn't mean companies go out of business bankruptcy means they restructure their debt they restructure their business model and most companies well chapter 11 is a way to fall for bankruptcy restructure and then come out as a new company so nothing nothing is destroyed I mean the assets gets reshuffled and some things have to shut down some things to open up somebody asked can twitter alter and change trumps tweets because they own them no they don't own the tweets they own the platform on which the tweets are so they can decide whether to publish them or not and they can put warning signs on them they can't actually change the wording in the tweet that would be a violation of trumps property rights that is the agreement between the platform and the content provider and that's why the content provider bears the liability associated with the content and not the platform that's the whole point of section 230 in the law that protects these platforms now is there a danger in government buying up junk bonds yes huge danger and that is that the government starts picking winners and losers that the government starts intervening in financial markets in ways that prevent companies from going bankrupt when they should go bankrupt that saves companies now the government has been doing this since the 80s when he bailed out Chrysler in the 1980s George Bush did it and Obama did it in bailing out the auto industry in the 2000s Obama did it particularly badly because the government took an equity position stock in general motors which is socialism the government owning the means of production that wasn't a controlling interest but it still was a big move towards socialism but again bailouts of automobile companies go back to Ronald Reagan government should stay out of economics out of business, out of the markets if companies go bankrupt let them go bankrupt and of course through the Federal Reserve the government has been manipulating interest rates in a way that allow what we call zombie companies companies that are basically dead to raise debt much cheaper than they would otherwise which allows them to stay alive in spite of the fact that they're really dead zombies the living dead that's what these companies are does Europe do criminal justice better than we do half our prison population are nonviolent drug offenders European prisons are more humane and only have 20% recidivism rates as opposed to our 70% the issues in Europe are very different than the United States but let me say this American criminal justice system is a disaster the fact that we have so many people in our prisons for non non-victim crimes like drugs drug possession, even drug trading is a non-victimless crime is a victimless crime there's no victim I would decriminalize at the least legalize at best all drugs certainly wouldn't send anybody to jail for possession or even for trade, for selling it is a disaster what our prisons have today the number of people in our prisons today for crimes that have no victim whether it's prostitution, who's the victim in prostitution and there are a lot of corporate laws that are completely victimless that are completely arbitrary that constitute power grabs by the government where people are sitting in jail for nothing so laws in America are way too expansive and we are far too quick to pull the trigger on putting somebody in jail I don't know much about the criminal justice system in Europe and I don't I'm not big on humane prisons if you commit a violent crime I don't want to treat you humanely but the fact is recidivism rates in the US are very high the fact is that we put in jail many many millions that should not be in jail the fact is that the American criminal system justice system is broken and it needs to be completely and utterly reformed just as so many other things need to be reformed and again, I think part of this plays into the frustration, the anger that exists among certain populations in the United States in certain neighborhoods in the United States where a huge percentage of the male population is in jail it's a disgrace and I wish somebody would change it but it doesn't look like anybody will change it they're like again, ask about Twitter so I'll answer it because it's about no, they cannot, they shouldn't be allowed to change Trump's tweet now again, I don't know what the terms of services are but I'm pretty sure that the terms of service say that they can't change that if they have deleted or changed a paragraph in somebody like Trump's tweet then they're probably in violation of the terms of service and should be sued well it should be sued the person who owns the tweet should sue them but I'd be surprised if they changed it I mean I'd like to see the evidence that Twitter has actually changed somebody's tweet not blocked it, not put a label on it, but actually changed the text I haven't seen evidence of that and if it is then sue them that we have a legal system that is pretty good about these things you violate a contract you do things you're not supposed to do then go after them in the future will technology or medication allow us to experience happiness without having to achieve values no happiness is not a state of a sudden amount of chemicals bouncing around in our brains happiness is a state that results from achieving one's values that has as part of that an expression in chemicals but it's not clear that all of it is and it's over long periods of time it's your entire life and it's conscious you know it so if you feel it but you haven't achieved the values what you'd feel is alienated from yourself you'd have a chemical response in the brain that you did not recognize did not identify as a link to anything the brain is not I mean human consciousness and human mind is not just the chemicals that's why you cannot create just a happiness state by using drugs all drugs should be legal medication drugs recreational drugs all drugs should be legal and let people choose they want to commit suicide everybody has a right to commit suicide they want to use them to get high everybody has a right to get high you want to not use them don't use them prices would drop violence would decline by I don't know 70% at least dangerous drugs don't use them they're dangerous I don't use dangerous drugs you shouldn't use dangerous drugs somebody wants to use dangerous drugs any of your business guns are dangerous knives are dangerous life is dangerous you got to live and you got to let people do stupid things in order not for the purpose of letting them do stupid things but in order to let good people do good things freedom is freedom you don't get the side what are the boundaries of freedom as long as I'm not violating your rights as long as I'm not infringing on your property as long as I'm not doing harm to you why is that any of your business what I consume in my own home hey Iran wanted to clear up my hot 25 year old comment I don't know what that is it wasn't it got your question I'm just having a hard time differentiating between long term selfish behavior versus pursuit of pleasure big fan and keep up the great work well pursuit of pleasure is part of long term selfish behavior but pursuit of pleasure in the moment is just one value it has to be weighed against other values and I'm not against pleasure I'm hugely for pleasure pursuit of value should be pleasurable at least part of the time and your wife and in your family life you should get pleasure from your wife and you should give her pleasure it's part of having a life together but the question is where is any particular pleasure where is that in the context of your hierarchy of values and the hot 25 year old going you know some hot 25 year old in a sense giving up on your family nobody thinks in terms of values in terms of what's really important to you nobody thinks the hot 25 year old is more important than your family some people go with the hot 25 year old because they don't think they don't have a hierarchy of values they haven't thought in those terms and they're impulsive and they just do the pleasure of the moment but anybody who thinks anybody who creates a hierarchy anybody who thinks in values realizes very quickly some things are more important than other things the hot 25 year old might be pleasure in the moment the lifelong commitment relationship and the pleasure is far greater over the long run so I'm never going to be tempted by this 25 year old because it's so low on my hierarchy of values that kind of pleasure relative to the pleasure of having a long term relationship that it doesn't even cross my mind to go after I might look at the 25 year old and go wow she's hot I'll usually turn to my wife and say wow she's hot, my wife will say yeah she is but but I'm never tempted to actually do anything about that because it's my hierarchy of values which means the things I want I know what I want and I know what I don't want some things I don't want because I figured it out, I figured my hierarchy so don't deny pleasure nothing I said should say pleasure is no good it's the kind of pleasure the context of the pleasure you know and there might come a time where you don't want a family this is why divorce happens right Derek is still single and he wants the introduction to the hot 25 year olds they're at any bar they're just going to a bar and there they are so you know there's plenty of them so there's no shortage of hot 25 year olds that's what you want that's what you want any bar later night hotel, major city you can find them but it's not to deny pleasure that you deny going with the 25 year old it's to recognize a much greater pleasure a much greater value much greater happiness you're always trading our values you're always choosing to do with your time X rather than Y Y because X long term is better for you than Y I mean if you're rational and all I'm saying is the hot 25 year old doesn't appeal to me because Y over here is much more interesting much better for me much more pleasurable and much more value bill long term now the chat has become a discussion place about where are the best bars to pick up hot 25 year olds in the movie other people's money do you think Larry the liquidated character was portrayed in a buffoon manner undercutting his brilliant speech well not just a brilliant speech the whole movie he's brilliant everything he does and almost everything he says is brilliant right on 100% consistent even the love scenes are right on but he's portrayed as a buffoon because it's Danny DeVito and that's clearly to undercut his character yes so while and this is why the movie is not you know could be a perfect movie it's not perfect because there is definitely the undercutting of his greatness by casting Danny DeVito and casting on the other side Gregory Peck now part of that is good effect because the Gregory Peck character you want to sympathize with him because he's Gregory Peck but he's wrong so it creates a certain cognitive dissonance and Danny DeVito character you don't like him but he's right so there's a certain appeal to that but I think ultimately the motivation is to undercut him yes what is the objective free market view of companies using conflict minerals or including things in their products that are derived from slave labor I mean I think it's wrong to do but in the world in which we live to some extent is inevitable that is the certain minerals that cannot be procured they just don't exist anywhere else now I'm going to say something super super crazy but I think it's true I think it would be legitimate for these companies to hire mercenaries and to go into some of these countries and to take over the mines and get rid of the slave owner the slavery and to actually have real wage laborers do the same work now can you imagine what would happen can you imagine the uproar can you imagine the outrage but indeed they did that now it was abused primarily Belgium colonialism and others were abusive the British colonialists sometimes abused sometimes did but imagine if these corporations don't want slave laborers mostly run by moral decent human beings who don't want to buy stuff from slave but they can't access the material otherwise the governments in these countries are completely corrupt or don't exist like in the Congo ideally they would colonize in a sense they would take over these places they might even finance a coup to replace the government to a stronger government that could take control over those parts of the country and get rid of that slave labor or whatever is going on there but imagine imagine mercenaries would be legal outside the United States not within the borders but imagine how they would be treated today if they did that but yet the situation would be a lot better for those people who are today treated like slaves the sad circumstances are that some minerals out of Africa cannot be you can't access them anywhere else other than these places and that the local governments are too weak to enforce any kind of property rights or any kind of rules or any kind of behavior and therefore criminal gangs control these mines and these companies have no other way to access these kind of materials but to buy it from them that is horrific but they really have no alternative given the world in which we live and it's sad but it's not because of the corporations it's because these countries in the shape they're in let's be honest in 20 years we'll all be in Venezuela we can't stop it we can't stop it the real question is will we but there's no question in my mind is it immoral to study from pirated copies of books yes it is if you've got a option any kind of option if the books are available then you shouldn't use pirated books you're stealing that would say like is it immoral to listen to pirated music is it immoral to steal all my neighbors car and drive around is it immoral to drive in pirated automobiles is it immoral to use pirated money just replace pirated with stolen and you get your answer do democrats view blacks as cappets well not as cappets but they take blacks for granted they assume that blacks will always vote for them because they always have and luckily for democrats republicans tend to be bigoted in certain states in certain areas tend to be bigoted tend to be intolerant tend to be horrible towards minorities and the republicans make no effort to go after minorities so luckily for democrats blacks don't have many choices it's like immigrants you know Mexican immigrants should be republicans the catholic they take the religion seriously the socially conservative they generally came to this country because they want more freedom not less they came to this country to escape authoritarian regimes elsewhere and the republicans make them feel unwelcome make them feel like criminals they prosecute them criminalize them they go after them in any way that they can they say horrible things about the people about the cousins the family members and it comes from the top it comes from people like Donald trump on down so there's a chance that these people are going to vote republican and then they so it's republican failure that guarantees blacks and Hispanics will vote democrat republicans are the blame that's why republicans in texas get a lot more Hispanic votes than republicans in california because republicans in california alienated through their policies and through their advocacy they make the you know the immigrants in california and in texas they didn't do it as much so many more Hispanics vote republican in texas than they do in california why did richard spencer say iron man was autistic why would i comment on anything richard spencer says i mean the guy is a racist nut so what does he know what does he know and why should anybody take anything you know the the i don't know i'm not going to call him names says anything he's a racist he's a he has nothing of value to say nothing so i wouldn't comment on anything he says as a latin american future immigrant which is better to immigrate us on new zealand which is more future for free people it's not a tell i mean i love new zealand it's a great country but it's small it's limited in opportunities australia might be better in that sense it is freer than the united states on most economic freedom in texas but america is still the united states are still where you have the most opportunities it's declining so who knows but the universe of good places to emigrate to in the world is shrinking and that's sad for the people who want a better life who want to leave their country who want to go somewhere where they have more opportunities there was a recent 5 may 11th case a potential voter fraud in paterson new jersey hundreds of million ballots found in mailboxes but it's still being shown to be mostly a myth there's always some fraud there's fraud with regular voting there's fraud with mailing voting there's fraud with military but the question is how big is it and this is a good case because it was caught and i think most of it is caught i just don't think fraud in the election is that big of an issue not to say it's the zero issue it's just not that big of an issue but thanks for the example and for the fact that it's not it's been shown the brennan report there are the other reports that have shown that it's not a big issue trump reminds me of the movie mean girls anyway yb remind people to subscribe yeah subscribe please everybody subscribe even if they watch anyway even if they watch anyway because about yeah subscribe it helps the algorithms it gets more people and don't forget a like like helps algorithm subscribe really helps algorithms and more than anything else sharing helps algorithm share share share i know it's tough i know you don't like doing it it exposes you to all your friends and family members exposes them to me which is scary for you but share if you like a segment if you like a video if you like a whole thing share it that helps the most on the algorithm thing that is subscribers so please we need to get to 20,000 quickly here with like at 18 9 or something 18 8 we need to get to 20,000 and then 100 right but it would be cool if we got to if you got a 20,000 by the end of June that would be really cool unlikely but it depends on you right alright how do the intellectuals convince non-racist white people to feel responsible for racism that they haven't perpetrated how do they convince them well it's easy it's easy because we're taught that people are flawed we're taught original sin we're taught there were all sinners and then it's just a question of what sin did you commit well even if you didn't commit by association you might have committed it people are looking for things they should feel guilty about because the religion teaches them they should feel guilty about stuff and people will find it and one of the things you can feel guilty about is your neighbor's racism and people do feel guilty about that and it's very easy intellectuals to bring that up and in a world of collectivism in a world where we are brothers keeper in a world where the tribe matters and in a world where right and left thinks that the tribe part of the tribe is the color of your skin that that matters blacks are blacks whites are whites then you are part of a tribe who a significant number of its members are racist you should feel guilty just like you take pride in the achievements of white people well you should then feel guilty for their sins that's how people think that's tribalism, collectivism makes it possible for people to take pride in the guilt of the bad actions of other people because they belong to the same tribe as I do and look there's a lot of racism in America and suddenly there's a huge history of racism in America but the only way I can say well I didn't do it I'm not a racist and I didn't do it so I don't feel any guilt it's to be an individual but we're taught from when we're little to be collectivists to take pride in their achievements and therefore take guilt in their sins we belong to the tribe this is part of the change of tribalism of collectivism what if Twitter removed every tweet posted oh we talked about this we did that already Josh Hawley one of my least favorite senators Democrat or Republican he is a Republican, evil evil ideas Josh Hawley is one of the worst of the new right, absolutely power-lusting, anti-intellectual, absolutely yet ivy league educated, yes if Trump wins, Hawley's brand is emboldened, absolutely and it's much more than Hawley it's the whole new right which we'll talk about more I've talked about quite a bit in the past but I've got a whole new bunch of stuff on the new right and Brad Thompson has done some recent essays on the new right that are definitely worth reading but I want to interview Brad on it and I want to do a bunch of shows on the new right because I hate, hate the nationalist conservatives and the alt-right and all the different variations of the new right, there's a bunch of different but they're all collectivist and they're all ugly ugly, aesthetics matter and their ideas are ugly ideas alright, we're almost done did you hear about the CNN reporter who was arrested on the scene at the riots on live TV while broadcasting this video and do you think the police who arrested them were emboldened by Trump's attack on the media I wouldn't be surprised but I don't know, you'd have to get but I wouldn't be surprised at all if people really attacked the media Trump is basically said the media is open game but I don't know the details so in this case I'm going to hold my judgment until I read up more about it my brother is a cop many of cops is very much there's us cops and there's everyone else civilians well, I think that's sad if that's a mentality and again, I think there's a lot of bad training that goes on in the police academies I think there's a lot of negligent training that goes on I mean cops should be taught that they are the servants of everybody else, of civilians they're there to serve they're there to protect that's the fundamental the whole function of police has been corrupted by the war on drugs by the war on a victimless crime nothing has done more harm to the morale to the steadfastness to the trust to the uncorruptedness to the police than the war on drugs the war on drugs have made policemen bad guys, they've made them corrupt they've made them be seduced by money because they have to enforce non-objective laws, they have to enforce victimless laws and they're tempted by all the money that's involved in it so yeah, you can see that in the wire the wire is a great show to see how difficult it is to be a cop not just because of the world in which you have to inhabit, but because of the drug war the drug war makes everything much worse I have never said white people are racist I said some white people are racist some black people are racist some Hispanic people are racist some non-identifiable color people are racist I've never said white people are racist not in my vocabulary I don't even think in those terms I don't think in terms of white and black never have people point this stuff out to me I go, what are you talking about who cares, white, black, green, yellow makes zero difference can Twitter alter the President's no, it can, to what extent okay, here's the question complicated question don't know if I can answer it fully now to what extent how should Americans' rights be protected abroad it's a complicated answer so here's an outline and I've talked about this in the past I said Americans should categorize countries by the extent to which those countries protect individual rights if a country does not protect individual rights at all the United States should have no diplomatic relations in that country and it should warn American citizens that their rights will probably not be protected in that country and that by a traveler beware trade beware that the US government will not intervene on their behalf because the US government has no embassy has no relationship does not sanction or acknowledge these governments because they are authoritarian governments that violate individual rights so you can still trade with them at your own risk if they don't pay good luck collecting these governments should protect the rights of Americans when they travel to countries that the United States has diplomatic relations with or if an American citizen is kidnapped let's say from a country that has diplomatic relations with the United States to another country that hasn't then the United States would intervene in that country's affairs but the US should only protect Americans rights I guess in two circumstances one where it's a country that is a right to protecting country so an American in Paris the American government should intervene to protect them if there's a danger of his right to being violated an American in North Korea is on his own party don't put yourself in a position where you're caught by no North Koreans if you are no American then the risk is life to protect you it's on you if you're in a country with no government anarchy open country like in a Congo yeah I mean an American government would send in and protect you and defend you the same thing with property you know if it's if you think you have property in China you don't there's no property rights protection in China an American government cannot protect your property in China lands land like the Arabian Peninsula when American oil companies dug for oil there then yeah the American government should have protected their rights their property rights but let me just say this is a complicated issue it's a complex issue we'd have to go through a lot of steps to get to my final conclusion here and we don't have the time because it's already way past an hour and a half so we're going to cut it short there I'm going to again remind you to support the show your on book show support really appreciate it of course I appreciate very much the Super Chat that you have done and all the support I get through Super Chat there are a lot of different ways in which people support the show and that's amazing I particularly value the people who do regular payments on like a PayPal because then I can know exactly how much money is going to come in next month Super Chats are a little trickier some shows generate a lot some don't so the regular payment is easier but hey I'll take any generous support that you guys can provide so thank you for that and again don't forget to like, subscribe and share alright I'll be back tomorrow probably evening after the beach and we will be doing more Super Chat so please use the Super Chat it's great and yeah I'll see you guys all tomorrow I hope you enjoyed the show