 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday afternoon. Hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend. It looks like Jennifer and Robert and the whole Michigan gang are going out to have a good time somewhere. Greenfield Village. Greenfield Village, which is beautiful, so I have a great time guys. Hope all of you having a good time. I'm not feeling too well today. Don't know, I ate something I think, so hopefully we'll get through the show. I think so. I think we'll do okay. Robert, thank you for getting us going with $20 contribution. Really appreciate that. We're going to talk about two big topics today and then of course take your questions. We're going to talk a little bit about the impotence of evil. Kind of the topics related a little bit. In particular, an article that Ilan Juno and I wrote for the Institute for Arts and Ideas in the UK. We'll talk a little bit about that, about particular Putin and Xi, what they have in common, and how charismatic and efficacious they are. Then the main topic I think we'll talk about today is crime in America. How high is it? Why is it so high? How bad is New York? How does it compare to other cities in America and in the world? Again, why, what's going on? What are the causes? Interesting question. What are the causes of crime? And why does it go up and down? Why does it ebb and flow? What is going on? Really fascinating topic. I don't know that I have all the answers. I'm sure I don't, but I think it's a fascinating topic. I've got a few ideas of things to explore, but I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. So interested in seeing what you guys suggest. Jonathan, thanks for the support. So those are going to be the big topics. Of course, Super Chat is open. You can help support the show by making contributions like Robert and Jonathan have to the Super Chat. You can also use the opportunity, like Anthony has done, to ask a question. The questions can be, you can do it for two pounds, two euros, I guess, Anthony put in. Or I think you can go up to $499. So anything in between there you can use to ask a question. It is, you know, I greatly appreciate it. It's value for value, a trade. It's a sign to me that you guys value what I do. And anyway, it's highly motivating to me. And of course, I live off of it, so it's also part of my income. So thank you to all of you who participate and who participate in the Super Chat. We've been on a streak lately. I don't know when the last time. We didn't make our goal of $650. So hopefully we'll make it again today. Also, if you're on right now, and if you can go on a Twitter and just tweet the show is on live right now, just share it right now, that'd be great. Maybe we can get some more live participants. It's not easy on a Saturday afternoon when the weather is so beautiful. But hopefully we can up our live numbers as well. That'll also make it easier to get to our financial goal. And of course you can support the show on youronbrookshow.com. Support on Patreon and subscribe to our locals on a monthly regular basis. So yeah, go over to Twitter and Facebook and just share the show so we can get and tell them it's live and encourage them to come on over to YouTube and participate with us. All right, let's start just a quick, just about this article that we wrote. I think this is a pretty big deal. I think it's a pretty important article. It's an important kind of publication website, I think, with a lot of philosophical content. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, it's called The Banality, a Putin and Xi, Tyrants are not strategic geniuses. It's by myself and Ilan Giorno. It was published in the Institute for Arts and Ideas website, IAAI. Dot TV, I don't know why dot TV, but dot TV. And you can go there and it's an interesting site. I mean all the articles are very philosophical. I disagree with probably 90% of them, 99 probably. Here's one after Metaphysics, Rode and American Pragmatism. The Return of Metaphysics, Hegel versus Kant. The Return of Idealism, Russers versus Hegel, you can see very philosophical. But then also practical. What a victory in Ukraine looks like. Forgetting is more important than remembering. Forgetting is more important than remembering. All right, maybe. Google's AI is not sentient, not even slightly. I agree with that article. I was going to do a show on that. Trauma, chaos, control, repeat. Human, all too human. Why we need anti-heroes? Well, I don't think we need anti-heroes. Panic is causing a recession. Panic is not causing a recession. The impotence of reason. There's a good one for us. The impotence of reason, guys. Anyway, within that, we've got one called the monality of Putin and Kishi. Basically, tyrants are not strategic geniuses. And they approached me. They asked me to write this. So I've given a number of talks to the Institute of Art and Ideas. You can go on their website, put in my name, and you can find a bunch of videos of me. I've given talks about sex, about socialism, about inequality, about hedonism, a bunch of different things. So panels and talks and a bunch of different things. Capitalism. So you can go on and watch it. But the core idea behind the article, which I think is important, is that what we're seeing today in Russia, and it's in Ukraine, and Russia's kind of inability to win, the failure of strategy on behalf of Putin and his people, was not surprising, as you know to me. What we're seeing today in China, the authoritarianism, the rise of authoritarianism, the increase in authoritarianism in China and Kishi, is not going to be successful. This is not a brilliant maneuver that is going to result in China being more successful, indeed quite the opposite. And the point of the article is that dictators are not strategic geniuses. Because to be a strategic genius, what is the most important thing you must be able to do? This is why almost no politicians are strategic geniuses, very few of them are, and why certainly no authoritarians are strategic geniuses. Because what is necessary to be a strategic genius? It's to be able to plan long term to think about all the different things that can happen to position yourself to win. In other words, the most important thing to be a strategic genius is to be able to think to be rational. To be strategic means to be rational. Now, to be rational means what? It means to be fundamentally connected to reality. To be committed to facts. To be committed to reality. To be objective. That's what it means to be rational. Facts. Commitment to reality. Now, authoritarians by definition are not. They're not fact oriented, they're not reality oriented, they're not interested in the truth. None of them are. This is why Hitler had to fail. And to fail massively. To destroy Germany for a long, long, long time. This is why Stalin had to fail. And to take down with him his entire, you know, millions and millions of people with him. This is why Mao had to fail. This is why Putin has to fail. This is why she has to fail. Because they are detached from reality. Their commitment is not to reality but to their emotions. To their passions. To their mystical beliefs. To their arbitrary assertions. There is nothing rational about authoritarianism. It's authoritarianism almost always motivated by mysticism. And guided by a mystical approach to living. By a mystical approach to life. And this is why our politicians even in the free world have to fail. Because they're not committed to reality. So, I don't know, Trump and Pompeo and a bunch of people said, Oh, look what a strategic genius Putin is. No, he's an idiot. He's literally an idiot. Because he has separated himself. He has separated himself from the benchmark for truth. From the benchmark of reality, for the benchmark of strategy, for the benchmark of success. Reality. And how do we know that they've separated themselves from reality? Because we know that they reject the truth. They don't want free speech. They don't want people to tell them what they think. They don't want people to argue with them, to debate with them, to challenge them. No, they want people to just say yes, sir. And unless they believe somehow that they're omnipotent and omniscient and they know all everything. And they can never be wrong. That is a sure sign that unwillingness to accept criticism. That they're uninterested in truth. They're uninterested in fact. They're uninterested in reality. And of course, we know this from how they live, from how they close circle, from the fact that they shut down free speech. So, none of them. I mean, I'm really curious if you can think of any efficacious authoritarian. Any efficacious dictator. Maybe one or two by accident. Never by intent. So the article makes that point. It talks about Iran, look how Iran and how disastrous it is Iran, how every one of these countries is disastrous. And one of the most interesting aspects of this is the other thing people talk about dictators is how charismatic they are. Hitler was so charismatic. Stalin, Putin has got such charisma. People love Putin. But are they charismatic? Are they charismatic? No, of course not. I mean, if they were charismatic, if people truly loved them, if the rhetoric could convince the masses, if everybody would rally to their side just by what they said, why did they restrict free speech? Why do they end elections? Because if people love them and they're charismatic and they can convince anybody of anything, then what are they afraid of democracy for? Why are they afraid of criticism? Why are they afraid of what people might say about them? I mean, there's nothing charismatic about these people. Indeed, they are primarily motivated by fear, by fear of other people, by fear of their own subjects. And the people, of course, who suffer the most are their own citizens. So, you know, Frank says, Attila Lahan and Gingis Khan were successful authoritarians. Were they? I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the parameters of success are. Did they conquer empires? Yes. Did many of their people get slaughtered? Yes. For what? For the sake of an empire. What purpose of happiness? Whose happiness? And of course, neither one of them actually faced any free countries, any countries that actually stand up to them. And that's the other thing. So why is it that these dictators and these authoritarian states appear to be successful? Why is it that they, you know, that they succeed at least to some extent, somewhat, for a while? What is it about them that allows the perception of success, of efficaciousness, of charisma, two things that make it possible that allow for success. One is just a short horizon, right? For a while, lots of things can be successful. For a while, they can be successful in spite of, not because of their evil, in spite of, not because of their dictatorship, their authoritarianism. They can appear successful. For example, China can be successful for decades, not because of its authoritarian nature, but in spite of it, because it's successful in those areas where it ignores its authoritarian nature, where it allows for freedom, where it leaves people alone, where it lets things thrive. Communism, GDP grew in the 20s and 30s. To some extent, we'll get to the other reason in a minute, because Lenin, in the early 20s, freed up the economy a little bit because otherwise they were going to starve, they were all going to die. So in spite of its authoritarianism, in spite of the communism, that freedom is what makes them appear to be successful, but successful very minorly as compared to what they could be if they were free. But second and importantly, what makes it possible for them to appear successful and to attain really anything is the sanction provided them by the West. I mean, where would Russia's oil industry be today, if not for free countries, free companies, not just buying their natural gas and they're off on them and basically enslaving themselves, or not enslaving is the wrong word, obliging themselves for the long run to stay committed to them. But where would that industry be without BP, Shell, and other Western oil companies providing them with technology and know-how and investment in capital? Where would China be with our massive capital investments in the West and know-how and expertise? And put aside whether those companies should have done it, shouldn't have done it, whether that's just the reality, where would Russia be right now in the world with Ukraine? If Germany wasn't still committed to buying, what was it, a hundred billion dollars of natural gas a day, would any of these countries be without Western technology, without technology generated by relatively free countries? So even in the Soviet Union days, it was American companies, it was a number of occasions, American wheat that saved them from salvation and collapse. World War II, I doubt that Russia would have won that war without massive assistance from the U.S. So it is the sanction of the victim, the sanction of the victim from without and the sanction of the victim from within. It's businessmen and others helping these countries out, acting as if they're free, using their mind, using their ability in spite of the authoritarianism that makes these authoritarians appear to be successful. All right, so I encourage you to go read it. It's called The Banality of Putin and Xi. It's on the Institute for Art and Ideas. It's a London-based institute in the UK. Please share it. Please read it, tweet it, Facebook it, LinkedIn it, comment on it. Any activity would be greatly appreciated because it would be great if they came back and asked me to write more for them and to get more articles there. I mean, this is part of how you get cultural influence is bringing these ideas, relatively radical ideas, a real critique of things that the mainstream is thinking into a mainstream publication, into a mainstream website. The next step, of course, is for them to invite me to come and speak at their conferences. They have two big conferences in the UK. They do a lot of debates. They do stuff online. I've spoken for them a little bit, but I'd like to become kind of a regular speaker there. So please help. Help, help, help. Asking for your help. Go to the article, tweet it, Facebook it, read it, comment on it, engage with it so that they have an incentive to get us, to get more of us, more of us participating. All right. We are way over $650 already, primarily because of Ashton. So, you know, Ashton says, could you do a review of the YouTuber called the cynical historian? Specifically, his video called Neoliberalism. It was a thumbnail of Reagan on it. It has a thumbnail of Reagan on it. Yeah, I can do that. $500. Absolutely. I can do that for $500. So thank you. Thank you, Ashton. That's great. That doodle bunny, can you do a review of the music video called Deutschland by Wumstein? There should be one with English subtitles. Yep, I will do that. Thanks, you doodle bunny. Neol says, for $50 Canadian, preach your own preach. I like it a lot. Thanks, Neol. I appreciate the support. Whoops. None of that works. Okay. All right. We'll get to crime in a minute. Michael says, did you see Alex Friedman's interview with Richard Wolff yesterday? Wolff said the debate in academia is between Keynesian economists and free market economists. Marxists don't get a seat at the table anymore. There's a sense in which that's right. There are very, very few Marxists in economics. In economics. In the world, really. I don't think there are very many Marxists in Chinese universities. Marxists in European universities. I don't think there are many Marxists in American universities. Marx is influential. And there are many Marxists outside of economics in the humanities. But in economics, the debate is between various kinds of Keynesians and monetarists and semi, I'll call them semi-free marketers. The real free marketers are not that engaged in the mainstream debate. It's between people who lean a little bit more free market and between a variety of different Keynesians. Right? So it is true that Marx is his dad in academia in economics at least. All right. Let's talk about crime. And we're going to talk about crime in terms of what we talk about crime today. I'm going to talk primarily about motor rates. And the reason I'm going to do motor rates is because motor is easy to measure. Motor is fairly objective. A lot of other... And it's easy to compare across cities, across counties, across countries because either somebody's been motored or they haven't been. No, there's some ambiguity. Some things could be categorized not as motor as accident as other things. But generally it's the least ambiguous whereas almost all of the categories of crime are pretty ambiguous of different definitions of different countries. Even something like rape is very, very differently defined in different countries and is defined differently across time. So it's very, very difficult to compare those statistics. Motor is motor. So it's a proxy for violent crime and violent crime is really what I'm talking about here. Less interested for the purpose of what we're talking about shoplifting and other types of crime where a lot of that is just enforcement. A lot of shoplifting in California going up. A lot of that was just these crazy leftist district attorneys who basically had decriminalized shopping lifting. So that's easy. It's much more difficult to look at motor rates because motor rates are the worst of all crimes, obviously. And also they don't quite go in as predictable a direction. It's not quite as directly linked to politics. So for example, San Francisco, which has high levels of shoplifting does not have high levels of motor rates. And here when we talk about motor rates, we're going to talk about murders per 100,000 in the population. Other countries that might have a very, very left-leaning... I don't know, left-leaning district attorneys, mayors, very lenient towards some criminals don't have necessarily high motor rates. So it's interesting to see who does have high motor rates what are the cities in the United States, for example. I wonder if you know in terms of large cities what the worst motor rate in any city in the United States. We're going to talk about the biggest cities per 100,000. Let's say New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia. Here's the quiz. I want everybody to participate in the quiz in the super chat. Of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia. Which city has the highest motor rate and which city has the lowest motor rate? Which city has the highest motor rate and which city has the lowest motor rate? I'll wait for... Let's see if we have answers. This is on a per 100,000 of population. New York City is the largest city there, so it probably has the most motors. But who has the highest actual motor rate of all those cities? All right, we got Stephen and Florida, Nick, say Chicago. We are kind of an obvious expected answer. Wonder Freeman says Houston. It's interesting. Houston, Scott says it must be Houston with the highest for him to ask. I didn't use San Francisco and Houston is not the highest. Let's see, who else? Managed IT Solutions says the one with the most blacks. I don't think so. I don't think so. Chicago, Chicago, Houston. We got another Chicago, another Chicago, and another Houston. So everybody's wrong so far. All right, so New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Philadelphia. Who has the lowest? Oh, Zee Racer says Houston is the lowest. Who has the lowest? Who has the lowest crime rate? So we got that you guys believe Chicago and Houston, Chicago has the highest. Got that. Who do you think has the lowest? The highest you all got, everybody participated, got wrong. Who has the lowest? Don't look it up on Google. You know, New York City. New York City, Scott says is the lowest. Who else? Anybody else? All right, Phoenix has the lowest. Interesting, interesting. Phoenix has the second lowest. Oh, no, third lowest. Phoenix has the third lowest. Phoenix has the third lowest. No, it's not the lowest. All right, here we go. The highest motor rate in the country among big cities, you know, major metropolitan areas is Philadelphia. Philadelphia has a motor rate of that is seven times, between six and seven times higher. Six and seven times higher. New York City has the lowest motor in the lowest city, lowest rate city. There are 67 times more murders in Philadelphia. Who has the lowest motor rate in the country? Well, Scott got it right. New York City by a long shot, by a long shot. So New York City has a motor rate of 5.7 motors. Now, this is as of 2021. So New York City used to be a lot lower than it used to be around four. Because in 2020, New York City motor rate went up 40%. Then it went up another 7% last year and it's gone up a little, it's about flat this year. But it's still 5.7. New York City, one of the most diverse multicultural cities in the world. This is the rating. New York City, second, second. Least murderous major city in the U.S. is Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Rudy was never in Los Angeles. Third, I have to, third is Phoenix. Chicago is the second most violent right after Philadelphia. So New York is 5.7. Philadelphia is 35.7. So 30 more deaths per 100,000. And note that the perception of New York City is it can't go out at night. It's so violent. It is indeed the least violent, at least in terms of violent crimes, at least violent city, major city in the United States. Anybody want to know, anybody want to guess what the most violent city is among kind of mid-sized cities. So not these major metropolitan big cities, like mid-sized cities. Mid-sized cities, the most violent city in the United States, a lot more violent than Philadelphia is St. Louis. St. Louis, New Orleans is also very violent. So again, in terms of murder rates. Generally, New York was even lower in 2017. And generally, murder rates in the United States, in New York, were super low in 17, 18. Do you know what the murder rate in New York City was in 1991? In 1991. In 1991, the murder rate in New York City was the same as Philadelphia's is today. It was over 30. It went down by 2019 to under four. Oh, Detroit has a very high murder rate. So does Baltimore. Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, those are the worst. I think St. Louis is higher than Detroit and Baltimore. I think it's St. Louis, Baltimore than Detroit. Yeah, I mean, if you look at diversity, the two most diverse cities in the United States, Los Angeles and New York, are the lowest in terms of crime. Certainly in terms of murder rates. So the whole idea of diversity causes crime. Diversity raises murder rates. Take London. Take London, right? London is one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It's certainly the top 10 most multicultural cities in the world. How do you think London compares to New York or to Philadelphia? So New York is this year, which is kind of a new hype in New York, 5.7. What do you think it is in London? What do you think rates are in London? So London has a third of the murders New York has. A third, in spite of the fact. Generally, if you look at the most dangerous places in the world, the most dangerous cities in the world, Mexico, Tijuana is the most dangerous city in the world, Acapulco, then Caracas, Venezuela, then Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, then Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, then Iropuelto, Mexico, then another city in Venezuela, then Natal in Brazil, Fortaleza in Brazil, then Cape Town in South Africa, then Belém in Brazil, then Cancun, Mexico, then Frère de Santana in Brazil. So the, what is it, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, most violent places in the world, in the world. Cities are all in South America. Then St. Louis, USA. You remember I said Philadelphia has 35 murders per 100,000 people? Well, St. Louis has 60. Then it's Mexico again, Venezuela, Venezuela, Mexico, Jamaica. Jamaica is super violent, Mexico again. Brazil, Brazil, then Baltimore, then El Salvador, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Puerto Rico, shit, Puerto Rico, oh, wait a minute, I live there, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, oh, and then Detroit, then South Africa again, Brazil, Mexico, and New Orleans. So the most violent cities in the world are dominated by South America, dominated by South America and then a few American cities sprinkled in between. If you look at overall, if you go outside the cities, if you just look at country rates, country rates, the United States is, has almost a rate of about five, same as New York. So New York is like the country, right? There are cities that are way high, but the country is where New York is, about five murders per 100,000 in the population. South America is much worse. Brazil is at 27, Mexico is at 29. But then you find aberrations, right? Chile. Chile is safer than the U.S., only 4.4, right? Argentina is five, like the U.S. Interesting, right? South Africa is bad, but other parts of Africa, not that bad, particularly Muslim areas in Africa do not have very high homicide rates. Europe, super low, under one per 100,000. So Spain, 0.62. That's, you know, in Spain, you are 10 times less likely to be murdered than in New York City. 0.62 per 100,000. The U.K., again, some people blame diversity and minorities and all the stuff. U.K. is full of minorities and a lot of Muslims. God, lots of Muslims in the U.K. And this includes, by the way, murders as a result of terrorism. 1.2. Ooh, but Richard, who always brings race into these debates, right? Richard says, but whites, white people are super, you know, unviolent. Well, then how do you explain Russia? Moscow in particular, eight. Moscow is much more violent than New York City. Or how do you explain a small, homogeneous country where you can't talk about minorities, no minorities, a small, homogeneous country like Latvia or Lithuania, which have about the same motor rates as the United States? I mean, I'm Lithuanian, 100% almost, right? You can see the skin color. Maybe that's important. Canada, Toronto, which is super diverse. Again, a lot of Muslims, which is, you know, about a quarter to a third to a quarter, basically a third of the motor rate of the United States, right? Scandinavia, Sweden, which again has a large Muslim population, 1.08, so a fifth of the United States. France, which a large minority population, both Africans, a lot of Africans in France. And Muslims, France has 1.2, a quarter, less than a quarter of the United States. Italy, 0.57. Again, large immigration from Africa into Italy if you around Italy, you'll notice that. Let me just tell you, diversity, multiculturalism at the country level has no impact. No impact. You can't find it. I mean, Europe is dramatically safer than the United States, dramatically, particularly southern Europe, is dramatically safer than the United States. So now is the interesting part, right? Why? Why? And, you know, if you want to take the racial line, you can even ask the question of why are blacks in America more violent than blacks in Europe? They are much more violent. So black moderate in the United States is super high, right? Why is it not super high in Europe? So those are the question. So, you know, and why, by the way, in the United States, moderate violent crime rate peaked by a long shot in 1991 when Donald Trump, in his first inaugural address, said there's carnage in the streets of America. It was the most, in that period was the least violent period, the most violent, the least violent period maybe in American history. Suddenly, in the previous 50 years, the most violent period, the most violent period in American history, or at least in American modern history as far as we know, is, was the, over the 1980s, early 1990s. Why? Why was that a period of a lot of, you know, violence? It started in the 70s and grew throughout the 80s and into the early 90s. Why was the sharp decline, sharp decline in violent crime in the United States from 1991 basically until 2019, until pre-COVID? Why is there an increase right now? These are the important questions, right? And so, why is there cross-sectional differences between countries? Why are they, and then why are there cross-sectional, and then why are there differences across time? What explains violent crime? Now, let me just say that this is a super complicated question that lots of people have looked into. And it has many causes, many causes, right? And it has many causes, and it is super complicated, right? And it's, I'm going to give you some of my ideas about this. I think some of them are kind of original. I haven't seen this discussed anyway. I haven't seen this really studied empirically. Basically, all the empirical studies that have been done to try to explain, particularly to try to explain the decline in violence in the United States have gotten no way. They don't have a good explanation. One explanation is that it was just less, fewer young people, fewer young people. So if you look at, what was that book, something econ, you know, kind of the popularized, popular economics thing, God. So there was this argument I made which said that basically Elvis's weight reduced crime. Because starting in the early 1970s, you had fewer unwanted babies. Unwanted children tend to be, tend to go more towards crime. If you allow abortions, you reduce crime. You started allowing abortions in the early 1970s. And crime is committed by young people. You project into the future about 20 years. And when those kids get to be 20, and now there are few of them that are unwanted, crime goes down. Alright. One, free economics. Thank you, Matthew. Free economics has that explanation. I mean, that could be true. Second, just demographics. Fewer teenagers. Fewer teenagers. Just an issue of demographic. How many teenagers are they at a given point in time? Doesn't explain cross-sectional differences. Neither does abortion explanation explain cross-sectional differences. But it could explain over time why the differences. Incarceration rates. In the 1980s, in particular in the early 1990s, we started incarcerating huge numbers of people. I mean huge numbers of people. The number of people going into jail increased dramatically. You take the criminals or potential criminals, even if they commit a minor crime. Usually, murder is later downstream. This is the theory. You put them in jail for possession. You've taken some murderers, a certain percentage of murderers off the street. They're in jail. Maybe true, but not a really good way of dealing with crime. I mean, yeah, if we all were forced to lock down, if we all were forced to stay home, if we all were forced to never leave our house, then yeah, there'd be fewer murders. But that's not a good, you know, if you locked up all the males, there'd be a lot fewer murders because men commit a lot more murders than women do. But that's an explanation. But none of them fully explain it. They all explain aspects. So here are my four causes in my view, and we can look at them cross-sectionally and across time. Four causes. They're all interrelated, so neither one of them stands on its own. And they're all related to other factors as well. So I'm sure there are other factors. This is my, it's just me trying this up. All right, first, respect for the rule of law and the police. And this I think is a complex idea. It's not just, you know, we live in a world of laws and rules and we're willing to accept them. It's respect for the legitimacy of the government, respect for the legitimacy of the police force, respect for the culture in which you live. I mean, I think this is very low in Latin America. I think in Latin America, for example, there's no respect for the government. There's no acknowledgement of kind of the legitimacy of the government. There's disrespect for the culture generally. Everything they believe is rigged. Everything they believe is corrupt. Why shouldn't I be corrupt? No respect for the police. They are easy to bribe. They don't treat people the same. They discriminate against the, you know, the inequality manifests itself by inequality before the law. So respect for rule of law and the police is, I think, a major cause for the disrespect in Latin America. We'll get to the U.S. in a minute. But take Europe, for example. Europe, even the new immigrants into Europe, have a certain view that, you know, European laws and everything might not be perfect. But everybody's treated about the same. The country is not corrupt. The police treat people about the same. There is no history of maltreatment, mistreatment. At least no recent history of mistreatment and maltreatment. And, you know, and admiration for the culture. This is why most of these immigrants immigrate there. They want to become part of that culture. So they don't have a complete disrespect for the culture. They don't have complete disrespect for kind of the, what is going on in this world in which they inhabit. And they have a general sense. Yeah, so that's, so respect for rule of law and police. That's one. Now, note in the United States. So let me just say something about the U.S. You can imagine the one reason blacks in the United States are more violent than other skin colors, if you will, in the U.S., and more violent than blacks in Europe, for example, is that blacks in the U.S. don't have this respect. And part of the reason they don't have this respect is that America, in many ways, differently from Europe, mainland Europe, there is a history of racism against them in the legal system. They have been a significant part of the American population for a long time. They were obviously enslaved. They then had to suffer through Jim Crow laws and suffer through redlining, discrimination across the board. They still view the police. We could argue whether justly or unjustly is discriminating against them. There is a strong belief in the black community in the United States. They are not treated equally before the law. You know, you can go back to, you know, sentencing guidelines with cocaine versus crack and how. So again, whether you agree with them or not, that's what they think. They think that the culture, the law, and the police are set up against them. And that belief, which I think to some extent is true and certainly historically is true, that belief matters to their behavior. They don't have a respect for the rule of law and for the police or for the dominant culture. Now again, this isn't everybody. This is the minority that commits crime. Always minorities commit the crimes. We're talking about very few people that ultimately commit a crime in any culture. And I think this is true of immigrants to this country who generally feel disrespected, do not believe that they are treated equally, particularly immigrants of color. And that note that even in the United States, blacks who are recent immigrants have a lot lower crime rates, committed a lot fewer crime rates. Their crime rate, their committing crime rates is much more the equivalent of blacks in Europe. It is the blacks who have been here a long time who have historical grievances that are much more engaged in crime in the United States. So that is one of my four explanations. Second, desperation, alienation from the culture, a belief that you cannot succeed, a belief that you cannot get ahead in life, that you're stuck. John Davis says, I'm lying now. People who have the suspect for the police don't go out there. That doesn't cause them to murder the police, or to murder people of a different color. It just gives them the mentality of a disrespect for the law, a disrespect for reality, a disrespect for what's going on in life, and a general malaise around the culture and about the ability to succeed in the culture. It orients them towards a life of crime. It doesn't orient them towards a revolution. It orients them towards a life of crime. This is what we're talking about. An orientation towards a life of crime. Why is somebody oriented towards a life of crime? One, because they don't have a respect for the rule of law and the police. Maybe because of historical grievances, maybe because the rule of law and the police don't deserve to be respected like in South America. So they're more likely to engage in a life of crime because they don't respect the laws. Two, a desperation, a pessimism, a general view that they cannot be successful if they follow the rules, that they cannot achieve anything, that they're stuck in place, and that the whole system, and this relates to the rule of law, but it's a little separate, the whole system is rigged against them. I think this has a lot to do with the welfare state. Now, there's a difference between the welfare state in the U.S. and in Europe, which explains the different responses, but which I'll get to in a minute. But this is the idea that life is going to suck for me anyway. Life is going to suck for me anyway, so I might as well, might as well, you know, just go for it. I might as well, you know, trade drugs and try to make it big. I know I'm probably going to die. I know I'm probably going to... John, go away. Just go away, John Davis. Go away. I'm not interested in the racist garbage that you guys have to spew. We're trying to have a serious discussion here, and you too, Richard. I mean, I'm really sick of you guys. Just leave. I'm not going to buy the racist stuff. Just go away. God. Yes, I know. I should ignore them. I will. It just maddens me when people... You cannot have a serious conversation with people without the, you know, the racist coming out. And immediately, it's genes. It's genes. Bullshit. Bullshit. Because you can't explain it cross-sectionally. Just on the face of it, you just can't explain it. You can't explain differences between immigrants and people who are not immigrants. You can't explain differences between Europe and the United States. You can't explain differences between Lithuania and Estonia and Russia. If you go by genes, they all have the same genes, and yet that moderates in those countries are very different. So, yes, all you want to talk about is the stupidity of IQ and genes, but you're ignorant and you're stupid. You have no idea what you're talking about. Why don't we think through racist glasses which blinds you to reality and commits you to a pathetic life? Enjoy. I'm not debating racists, ever. Your ideas are so despicable I'd rather debate a Marxist. All right. I am now officially ignoring them. All right, so desperation is stuck. I think that's true of people in Latin America. Actually, I'm going to add a fourth. A fifth. Sorry, it's a five-cause. Sorry, I just thought of a fifth cause. So, lack of respect to the rule of law police, desperation, a sense that they cannot succeed, cannot achieve, cannot rise. They're stuck. Third, ambition. Yeah, ambition. They want to succeed. They want to succeed. One of the differences I think between America and Europe is they want to succeed, but they don't have a spec for the rule of law and they don't believe that the culture as it is set up, the culture as it is set up, will allow them to succeed. Fourth, opportunity. There has to be an opportunity where for the crime, right, there has to be something to break the law about that seemingly seems to be bringing money, bringing fame, bring something to you. And that opportunity could be the war on drugs, in history, prohibition, smuggling, something. Remember, most murders are related to crime. They're not, you know, some murders are murders of passion and things like that, but the big murders, either murders related to particular crimes or... All right, so opportunity. Fifth, I've got six now. Fifth, poverty. In fact, most crimes are committed by poor people. Most violent crimes are committed by poor people. Most murders are committed by poor people. And poverty is related to desperation and it's related to ambition. It's poor people want to get out of poverty. They're poor people who don't want to get out of poverty, who don't care, are less likely to commit crimes. And then finally, the sixth is nihilism, a culture of nihilism, an acceptance of nihilism, a rejection of happiness, of success, just a nihilistic view of just wanting to break things, wanting to wreck. You can see the school shootings, the shootings motivated by racism like we had in Buffalo. Those are all motivated by kind of a nihilistic... They're not achieving anything. They don't want political motivation. It's not terrorism in the sense of an attempt to achieve a political goal. It's just destruction for the sake of destruction, sometimes in the name of some ugly ideology like racism, and sometimes just for the sake of seeing the blood flow. So these are the six factors. Now let's look at them a little bit across countries. It's not an accident, I think, that Latin America is super poor. And that Latin America being super poor is one of the factors for the violence there. But it's not enough to explain the violence in Latin America because they are vast parts of Asia that are super poor as well. And yet, I don't know, a country like Thailand has a lot less violent crime than Mexico and half the violent crime of the United States of America. So it's not enough to be poor. But one of the things that is true of Latin America, that is not as true at least a part of Asia, is ambition. I think the South Americans want to be successful. They want to achieve something. They want money. The Asians are much more likely, with the exception maybe of the Chinese, the Asians are much more likely to accept their fate in the world, to accept it, to embrace it. They're poor, okay, we're poor, that's fine. So you see it's interaction between these variables or the respect for the rule of law which doesn't exist in South America. But in Asia the cultures are much more cultures of obedience, acceptance, collectivistic, also related to ambition, and willing to accept the authority that is to respect the rule of law, even when it's not just. Desperation is linked to ambition. If you're desperate but you're not ambitious, you're not going to be a criminal. If you're desperate and ambitious and have no respect for the law and there's the opportunity, then you typically will be more likely to be a criminal. If you look at American history over the last 50, 60 years, the 70s were a period of growing desperation, growing alienation, growing frustration with the world around, and a growing resentment, growing resentment against the state of the country, inflation, recession, stagflation, big changes politically. I don't think it's an accident the 70s come after, the new left kind of takes over the intellectual high ground in the 1960s. And the 70s kind of basically set the course for the country through the 1980s of high crime rates, a lot of people feeling desperate, feeling low, the system has left them behind, and yet a real American ambition to want to be successful, quote, in some way. Poverty and because of the war on drugs opportunity. By the 1990s though, the desperation has mitigated. The economy is growing, the 1980s were ultimately a success, the 1990s were economic success, there's growth, the opportunities. I think during this period the kind of the racial tensions in the United States were reduced significantly. I think this is the period in which racism seems to be on decline in the United States. There seems to be a greater respect for the law, greater respect for police, police become more efficacious, it's the broken window period. People who are ambitious have a sense that they can be successful in the economy. But more recently, what you're seeing is a rise of an ideology of nihilism, by the way there was in the 60s as well, which maybe kind of helped along into the 1970s and 80s. But starting in the 1990s, violence dramatically declined, across the board declined in the United States. So if you look at these cross-sectionally, then there's no correlation between violence and IQ, intelligence. If you control, I think, if you controlled for all these other factors, if you controlled for desperation, for respect for the rule of law, for respect for poverty, for having ambition. I mean, if you look around the world, if you look at the different countries, it's fascinating to see which ones are more violent, which ones are less violent. Again, New York City, one of the least violent places in the United States, less violent than much of rural America. All right, God. I wanted to talk about crime and all the chat wants to talk about is race. You want to ask me a question? There is a super chat. Okay, let's take some questions from the super chat. All right, theme asks, this is crime in terms of force always sacrifices another to you. Without altruism, could crime exist outside of an emergency? Oh, sure. I mean, altruism is an ideology, doesn't really, altruism is the ideology, you know, is relatively new. The idea of sacrifice of yourself, certainly to others, is an invention of Christianity. So crime existed well before altruism. It's just, you know, murder or whatever, it's in the Old Testament. It's the beginning of man. It's cane and able, right? It's a consequence of short-term emotionalism. Crime as a motivation is something that is the rejection of reality. It's a rejection of long-term success. It's a rejection. And the question is why in some cultures is this rejection more prevalent than others? And that's some of what I was trying to explain. So maybe that didn't come across, but some of what I was trying to explain is why in some cultures, do you see more in some cultures less of this behavior by individuals? And the behavior by individuals ultimately is caused by the individual, by his choices. But why is it more prevalent in some places than others? Because in some cultures, they've given up on the respect for the rule of law. In some cultures, there's no ambition. And as an individual, they don't strive for anything. They don't want anything. If you don't want anything you're unlikely to commit crime to achieve, the thing is you don't want. Desperation, culture, all of that are, you know, at the conditions in which individuals make bad choices. One of the female asked me about Israel. Let me check Israel. If I remember right, Israel is like your, let's see, map is too small, and Israel is too small for me to click on. It's on the map. It's a, there it is. Israel is 1.49. Homicides, homicides per 100,000. United States is 4.96 or five. So Israel is like UK. It's like, it's more murders in Germany, more than Poland, more than most Western European countries. But still, you know, within the European kind of framework. But again, a third of the United States. All right. So, yes, I don't think altruism is related at all here. I mean, I'm sure it's related. Altruism is part of what causes people to lack ambition. But, and altruism is what causes people not to think, not to think rationally about what really is in their self-interest. Because if they really thought about their self-interest, if they really thought about their own happiness, a life of crime would never, would never be that, right? Again, when I'm talking about crime, I'm not talking about pickpockets, I'm talking about murder. So Frank asked about Italy. Italy has a very low murder rate, very low, one of the lowest in the world. The lowest I've seen, a place like Japan, South Korea. Japan is much lower than South Korea. Japan, Italy, Italy is very, very low. So I don't necessarily have the answers, but a lot of this is interesting. Michael asked, I know many young, very successful leftists who are, let me wait on the, oh, yes, there it is. Many successful leftists who are extremely bright and wealthy and wealth comes easily for them. They view it as luck. The street criminals, homeless, are just victims of the gene pool. So being soft on them is more moral approach. Yeah, I mean, but so do, so do the people in my chat here. They all think it's genes. They all think they're just, these are people who are just too stupid to succeed in life, and therefore they become homeless and criminals, and that they have genes for criminality or whatever. So none of it is their fault. So you can't blame anybody for anything. So don't be hard on them, be soft on them, because you can't blame them, it's not their fault. You just have to accept it. So, but yes, that is the common view, the view that people can be succeed even in a world, and certainly that the solution to crime, and here I didn't give you the solution, the solution to crime is more freedom. The solution to crime is capitalism, because capitalism eliminates poverty. It eliminates the idea of desperation. Everybody can be successful. It encourages ambition. And it shows the way for ambitious people to be successful. It shows that ambitious people can be successful through hard work, through thought, through investing, thinking. John, thank you, really appreciate it. Capitalism is the solution to these things. Respect for the rule of law, and police would be much higher under capitalism. The laws would be much more objective. They'd be much clearer. They'd be much less discriminatory. And I don't think, I think the whole mentality of the culture would be anti-desperation. It would be optimistic, positive, ambitious, and respectful. And therefore crime would plummet. So I think ultimately the solution to crime, as the solution to most of our cultural problems, is freedom. It's capitalism. And it's of course a better philosophy of life. And under that view, I think pretty much anybody can be successful. I think these arguments about intelligence are nonsense. As what's his name, Taleb has shown, and other studies have shown, there's very little correlation between wealth creation and IQ. I measured IQ. I don't consider measured IQ particularly informative in terms of true intelligence. But measured IQ does not predict wealth creation. It does not predict success in business. So other people can be successful in business. Wes, do you see the words sex and gender synonymously? Or does gender encompass more than biological sex? If so, what do you include in gender? Objectively defining gender seems to be difficult for most... Let me get to that and see if we've got more crime stuff that gets agenda. Dave says New York City is not a jungle of crime. It's not. That's my point. But things are definitely deteriorating here. Yes, they certainly deteriorated in 2020. Deterioration is slower right now, but in 2020 was a very bad year for New York. But it is a lot better than the other cities I mentioned. A lot better than the other cities I mentioned. People have less confidence in the city's economic foundation of rule of law. Exactly. So the potential to rise, the rule of law has been undermined, I think by the riots in 2020. And the riots in 2020 have undermined the rule of law and confidence in your ability to be successful. And crime went up. And I didn't talk about the more recent history. But that's why New York is seeing a rise in crime. But again, the rise in crime in New York is a fraction. New York today moderates a fraction, a sixth of what they were in 1991. Hopper Campbell, let me just see. Yeah, Hopper Campbell says, I was listening to a German prison psychologist who said the punishment is the loss of freedom. Once you're behind the walls, the only purpose of the institution is rehabilitation. American prisons treat people like animals and expect them to come out civilized. I don't think that prison is a place for rehabilitation. Prison is a place of punishment. And you know, it's not the job of the state to rehabilitate you. It's not the job of the state to seek psychological help. Certainly nonprofits can go into the prisons and help with rehabilitation, psychological help, things like that. But it's not the job of the government to do that. So I'm against the government as part of its control over the prisons dealing with rehabilitation. I think all of that should be done by nonprofits, done external to the state. Okay, John Bales says, lots of criminal violence happens in families. Thoughts on this, yes. I mean, and you know, and if you go to a place like Europe where murder is very low, you'll still see crimes of passion, you'll still see husbands beating their wives senseless, you'll still see those kinds of crimes that have to do with particular family circumstances that have to do with people who cannot control their emotions. I mean, ultimately crime is a consequence of people not being able to control their emotions almost always. Crime is almost always an issue of people not being rash. And so the irrationality of people is still going to be around and families, of course, it's the family dynamics that cause people to lose their senses, lose their reason and sense, become emotionalists and commit crimes. So you're not going to be crime to zero. James Taylor says, I can understand the criminal mindset if you're trying to do the right thing and still aren't getting ahead. Yeah, but some people don't try to do the right thing because they don't believe, they've a preconceived irrational belief that they cannot move ahead. They've watched their family members, they watched siblings, they watched friends, struggle doing the right things and not getting anywhere. And they say, yeah, I'm going to skip that. I mean, a great, I still think the wire is a great show to illustrate some of this, illustrate some of the thinking that the criminal mindset has, why these kids get into selling drugs and get into these gangs and so on. So they don't respect the police or the rule of law. They don't believe they can succeed through the regular places and they've given up on life in a sense. They know they're probably going to die. So what the hell? Now, again, what they don't know and what the culture doesn't teach them and what we don't teach them is reason, thinking, education. These are the things that we'll make use of. But think about the kind of educational institutions that poor people and minorities get. I mean, the worst institutions possible. Jeff says, $100 Canadian dollars, too big to care. I know you appreciate some of the chat. If you watch the big podcast, the chat files buy so fast it is irrelevant. Super Chat would be the basic interaction. No disrespect to YBS members in the chat. But I wish for it not to matter. Stay real, Iran. Yeah, I just figured that the chat represents actual views of people out there that I'd like to address and it does make me angry. So yeah, it would be nice if it moved. See, it would be nice if it moved so fast. I couldn't keep track of it. That would be cool. Let's see. I'm just quickly looking. Crime-related stuff. Frank asks, what about someone like Gilles Vachon in Les Miserables who was jailed for stealing bread but he was never a real criminal? Officer Javert wanted him back in jail. Yeah, I mean, Javert was a dogmatist and this is kind of a bad rule of law, an evil rule of law that evil set of laws that Javert is going to pursue constantly. But Javert is beyond that. He never becomes desperate. I mean, once he has the realization, once he has the realization of what he did wrong in his life, he becomes committed to his own success. He's dedicated to achieving his own terms. He rejects all crime and everything. And so he's the example of the person who doesn't let the desperation get in his way and is ambitious and who rejects, chooses out of an act of will to reject all this and to in spite of it all commit himself to being successful. All crime in the end is caused by individuals who reject reason, who rejects, you know, morality, who rejects long-term rational self-interest. It's a question of what kind of cultures make those possible and there are always going to be exceptions in our culture, even in our culture. Most people are not criminals, even in our culture, even in communities with very, very high crime rates. Most people are not criminals. Most people don't make those choices. But some cultures seem to encourage more people to make those choices. Some cultures seem to encourage people to make less of those choices. That's what we've been talking about today. Theemastor says, I heard that Norwegian prisons treat the inmates like guests and it does result significantly if your criminals are turning back. Of course, now justice is lowered to victims with this caused long-term problems in Norway. I don't know. I mean, Norway is a funny country. It's a small country. I don't think you can learn anything from Norway. It's a rich country because of its oil. Norway is not a good example for anything. So I really don't know. But look, the point of jail is not to prevent you from becoming a criminal later. The point of jail is to discourage people from becoming criminals and to punish you. It's an act of justice. It's not to rehabilitate you, in my view. Adam says, as the function of government is to place force under objective control, why qualified immunity precluded objective and responsible police candidates are not screened for psychopathy, pathology, narcissism, et cetera? Yeah, I mean, I'm constantly complaining about the fact that thank you, Ryan, really appreciate it. I'm constantly complaining about the fact that police training is not good enough, pretty screening is not good enough. I don't like qualified immunity. It places police above the law in a sense. I think we've lost touch with the function of government. We've lost touch with the fact that the function of government is to place objective, force under objective control. So we don't look for police who are objective. I'm not sure we look for judges who are objective. Our lawmakers are certainly not objective. Do we evaluate our politicians for whether they're psychopaths or sociopaths or narcissists? God, most of our politicians will be kicked out if we pre-qualified them based on narcissism or being sociopaths or psychopaths. So, yes, we've completely lost touch with the wall of government and therefore the wall of the justice system. All right, we've got a bunch. Oh, let me do, oh, I've got one more, wait, on crime. How does the behavior of Raskolnikov fit into your theory? Now, remind me, Paul, Raskolnikov is the character in Dostoevsky who comes, who's thinking about killing his landlady. Is that right? And he comes to conclusion, without God, why not? What's the point, you know, if you can get away with it, why not? That is not what most criminals do. It's not what motivates most criminals. That criminal is an amazing intellectual criminal. Most criminals are not intellectuals. And he's an evader because he evades the consequence of the killing on his own psyche. He evades the consequence of the killing on his own will and ultimately ability to live. On his own pride, if you will, and self-esteem. You don't, you know, he assumes that all those depend on religion. That is, morality equals all those things, equals religion. And without them, there is no morality, so you can do whatever you want. Well, no, none of that is true. But I don't think most criminals think like that. I think a lot of them are religious. There's no reason to assume that criminals are atheists. I don't think criminals go through that kind of mental process. So, I think, you know, Dostoevsky is using that not to describe the common criminal. He's using that to delve into a philosophical point, which is the lack of morality without religion. That's what he really wants to get. All right, put aside crime, we've got a bunch of other topics here. I think I got all the crime questions we'll see in a minute. Let's go back to Wes' question on the difference between sex and gender. This is not my area of expertise. This is not something I think a lot about or I've thought a lot about until the left started making this an issue. I never thought about sex and gender at all, right? Are there differences between them? I think there probably is. I think sex is purely biological in the sense that you're either male or female biologically. You have the particular organs that make you a male, the particular organs that make you a female. You have the particular hormones that make you female versus particular hormones that make you male. There are some people born confused with both organs. The hormones are confused, but basically there's men and there's women. Biologically, when you're born in 99.9% of the cases, it's clear cut, right? There's a certain small percentage faction, wait, it's not. Gender, on the other hand, I think, and this is me speculating, relates to femininity, more to femininity and masculinity. It relates more to the psychology of sex. So you can be a woman, but be masculine or be more masculine and less feminine. You can be a man and be more masculine or less masculine, or be a man and have certain feminine, strong feminine characteristics. So I think gender relates more to the psychological element, which is masculinity versus femininity. I don't think that you can be born with certain genitalia, but with a brain of the opposite sex, somehow. I don't think that's the case. I don't think somebody is born male, but really is female. Now, I think some people feel that way. And some people, it's really, really, really strong. And it's a real, real, real problem for them. So I don't dismiss the existence of transsexuals. It's real. It happens. And it's sad and horrible. And to the extent that they can get help, and to the extent that that help might entail wearing the other sex's clothes or having hormone treatment or whatever, I don't know, right? I'm not an expert on this, but okay. But gender is, I don't think that's primarily what gender is about. I think gender is much more about the issues of just healthy and a healthy woman and man, the way in which masculinity and femininity manifest themselves in them. And not all men are as masculine and not all females are as feminine, and there's a lot of mixture and interaction, and what does that even mean exactly femininity and masculinity? And that's all for the field of psychology to disentangle and to figure out. So that is my view. Gender is more psychological. Sex is biological. And of course, the psychological and biological are related. They're not related. They're heavily related. But psychological is also related to your choices. It's not purely determined. Whereas your sex is determined. Laren asked, does religious upbringing encourage criminal tendencies? Hmm. I don't think so. I don't think so. Look, I think that the more rational you choose to be, whatever your upbringing is, the less likely you ought to be a criminal. Does a religious upbringing reduce the probability that you will choose to be rational? Maybe. If to that extent it might increase the probability that you are a criminal, maybe. But I think that the much greater is, you know, kids who are raised without any values, who are raised in your world in a completely pragmatist world, without religion or anything else to replace it. Nothing that provides the values and guidance on how to live. Nothing that provides them any kind of indication. There's some religious communities that can be very violent of other religious communities that are not. South America is very Catholic and yet very violent. But Chile is very Catholic and Argentina is very Catholic. And they're not as violent as some of the other countries in Latin America. So it's very, it's very hard. Again, as I said, it's hard to pinpoint one cause. Right? Italy, well, is Italy religious? Probably not. You know, I just look at numbers from Algeria. Algeria is very religious. It's Muslim. But not very violent. At least not murders, right? One of the problems with across countries is what are they defined as murder? But I assume the definition is pretty universal, at least up to a point. So I don't know that religion is that. I mean, I think you could ask why is Japan so nonviolent? I think it has to do with respect to the rule of law, partially out of conformity, partially because it's a pretty good rule of law. And in a police, because I think there is some objectivity, a culture of respect, a culture of that. I think there's also a certain lack of ambition, less opportunity, less things that illegal. So fewer opportunities to engage in crime and no sense of desperation, right? A sense that you can be successful. You can achieve. You can be okay. But it's also a culture that's not... And here I'll get in trouble with my Japanese friends. Not a super ambitious culture. At least that's my impression. A culture that's quite poor. Japan's not a rich country. Not by American standards. Not even by European standards. And I don't... Yeah. So those... I think when you get like somebody doing something crazy in Japan, killing a bunch of people, it's usually somebody... It's an act of nihilism usually. All right. Anthony asks, how is inflation a tax? Well, it's a tax in a sense then. It's money out of your pocket. That is, you're paying more for goods and services caused by the government. The government is doing it. And you're paying more for stuff. And the supposed beneficiary of it is the government because it gets to... It's debt becomes less valuable. That is the debt that it pays back. It has to pay back less debt because it's... It's debt becomes less valuable as inflation goes up. Now, it's not exactly a tax, right? Because it doesn't have a lot of the other characteristics of a tax. You know, it's not a particular fixed rate. It's not you either pay it or you go to jail. It's... But it is a little bit like a sales tax, right? It's a little bit like a sales tax. But it doesn't directly go to the government. It's just a way for the government to manipulate you so that they can get out of debt. It reduces the cost, the value of the debt that they have. The problem is that if interest rates go up and they keep borrowing at short term, they land up actually increasing. So it doesn't work. It works as it taxes you in a sense of reduces the standard of living. And the government, the politicians are screwed because their debt is only increasing. But that's a kind of a new phenomena where the government just spends and spends and spends and spends and spends and there's no control over deficits, which is in America at least relatively new. Anthony Osas, what are your views on SpaceX as a company? I mean, I admire the vision. I admire the ambition. I admire the process, you know, the willingness to fail, the willingness to have these amazing goals, the way that they learn from their failure. I mean, I'm a huge admirer of the company. A lot of what they do, they do for the government, but that's not their fault. It's the fact that as the government is involved in space and if you're going to be involved in space, you're going to be doing business with the government. But I really admire SpaceX as a company. I think they've done amazing things. If you look at the cost of taking, you know, one ton into space or whatever the parameter is, has plummeted, plummeted because of SpaceX. So I'm a fan. Liam asked, how do objectives identify and define the concept of subconscious? Why are they two consciousnesses and is this consistent with science? Yeah, I think it's consistent with science. I think you can see that your brain is working and active even when you're not conscious. For example, when you're asleep or when you're under anesthesia, there's stuff going on there. So the brain is working, is active. But you can introspect. You can see that your memories are stored somewhere. The connections are made that you're not doing consciously that you're not to go, this relates to that. But that connection can somehow come seemingly out of nowhere, out of some process that's happening. You can introspect and identify. You can query your subconscious like you can query a memory disk. Like what did I do in January of 2018? Oh, I moved to Puerto Rico. So that's somewhere that's stored in the subconscious. So it's not two forms of consciousness. You only have one conscious. This is some process that exists underneath this consciousness that is not part of your direct awareness. Consciousness is awareness and in that sense there's only one. That's a good question to ask Gene Moroni when Gene Moroni been swinging when I have a run. Harper Campbell asks, has Alex Epstein changed the culture and has John Sassowena positive force? I mean Alex Epstein has changed the culture somewhat, yes. Has he changed the culture? Not yet. But he's changed it at the margin, which is how you change the culture in there. So he's changed people. The culture overall hasn't changed yet other than in certain segments of it. He's changed the attitude of many people in the oil industry. But if you view the culture as the dominant culture, the dominant views of people in the world out there, not yet. Not yet. Has John Sassowena positive force? Yeah, I think so. He's given certain credibility to certain ideas around free markets and the evil of government regulations and things like that. So definitely he's given all of us a voice. He's given me a platform. I ran a platform. He's given a lot of good ideas a platform in that sense. And again, changing the culture is you chip away at it. You chip away at it. You chip away at it. It takes time. He says, hey, Yvonne, how much we need to pay for you to view the latest John Oliver episode and regulations on big tech? I'm sure we'll have a lot of views. I don't know to review this YouTube thing was $500. So something around that if it's short, maybe 250. If it's really short, maybe 100. So that ballpark make me an offer. The master is man made cultural change. Like what Alex and Objectivism does logarithmic. No, I think it's exponential. I think for a long time, you see nothing. It's all very, very small. And then you start seeing and then it explodes. So I think it's I think it's exponential growth. Is that logarithmic is logarithmic exponential? The same thing. Now you've got me there and I think but it's it's definitely exponential, which might be logarithmic. All right. James says slightly off topic, but how did Elon Musk become the richest man in the world from selling electric cars 300 billion from that? How many people could have bought a $700,000 car? See, the stock market doesn't price stock based on sales or profits today. If that were the case, Amazon stock would have been worth almost nothing for decades. The stock price is a stock based on the potential profits in the future. It bases it on what what is possible in the future discounts because money in the future is not the same. And not as equivalent to money today, so discounts it. But it projects into the future, assumes a certain growth rate, assumes a certain profitability and discounts those amounts back to today. And the market was assuming that Tesla would dominate the car market that ultimately would be bigger than Ford or GM and have higher profit margins. But maybe some of those profits would come from selling its data because a Tesla would have a huge amount of data, which the other companies don't have. And at top of that, that data and the technology could be used for self-driving cars and they would dominate the self-driving world, which would be incredibly profitable. And they would just become the dominant car company in 20 years. And all of that discounted back was $300 billion. Now, was that completely rational? Did I, for example, agree with those estimates? No. That's why I said to you in January 2021 that Tesla was overvalued in my view. I don't know what Tesla stock is today relative to what it was back then. But, you know, it's certainly come down a lot recently. But I don't know what it was. Let's see. Let's quickly see. In January, it was, January 2021, it was 826 that then went up to 1,220 and now it's 650. So it came down from January. I don't know it's 650 if it's overvalued or not by my estimates because I haven't run the numbers. But it's down for 1,200 where I certainly think it was. 1,200, it was double 650. So I don't know if those estimates about the future make any sense or don't because I haven't run the numbers. What did I do? Liam asked, the Institute for Justice seems to have a high percentage of winning cases. Very impressive. Makes me have more faith in our court system. Yes. I think, as I've said many times, I think our court system is the most rational of our different governmental bodies and of the different powers, government powers. The Institute for Justice also chooses cases that they think they can win. So they avoid cases that they think they're going to lose. But they do unbelievably important work to protect property rights and to bring these issues of freedom when they think they can really be protected under the Constitution when they think they can win. So yes, I think that's incredibly, incredibly powerful. Liam also asked, is the worst thing Trump did a point three religious judges to the Supreme Court or will his judges help private property rights? Well, they'll do both. I don't think it's the worst thing he did. I think the worst thing he did was be Donald Trump. That is the character of Trump is the worst thing about Donald Trump being president. And I think the worst thing about Donald Trump being president is the goo like love that his followers have to him more than it is anything he did in particular. That it's the shifting of the entire political map because of the personality worship that occurred around Trump. But the justices are going to be mixed. They're going to be real religious, really religious. And they were also pretty good on property rights. So it's going to be a mixed bag, you know, and it's going to be a mixed legacy. Ronald says, how safe is DC looking forward to visiting? I don't know. I don't know how safe I, you know, my I unfortunately closed the windows with the different cities, but you can check. I mean, let's see. Let's see if I can, if I can do it here. DC murder rate. We'll just Google that. So increase in cases of violent crime recently. It's a 16 year high for murder rates. But what are those rates? So it's definitely gone up again since 2020. I mean, think about 2020 as in terms of the parameters I gave you a decline in respect of law and respect for the police, a certain level of desperation among people. And again, I'm not saying it's justified. I'm just saying that is their attitude. And as a consequence, you see a rise in crime. And then of course, COVID. But I think it was more, I think COVID wasn't the reason you get homicide rates increase. I think it's a 2020 riots that resulted in the homicide increases. Yeah, I don't see the actual rate for DC per 100,000. So we can compare to, you know, the one 93 murders in DC in 2020 in 2022 by due by in the first five months, I think. That doesn't strike me as a very, very high number. But I don't year end in 2021 there were 226 homicides in DC, but it doesn't give me the per per 100,000. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't have it. All right, let's go on. Yeah, Ocon. Oh, Z-Racer says 23.52 per 100,000. Okay, that's high. That's less than Philadelphia, less than Chicago, but five times higher than New York. So yeah, it's high. It's like a pretty bad, you know, it's way lower than St. Louis. It's about, I think, where Houston is, something like that. All right, Scott says, I noticed that you're not scheduled for Freedom Fest. Was that a model or just a decision? I was hoping to see you do round three with Mackie. No, I mean, the Mackie Freedom Fest was, I was paid for that. Freedom Fest doesn't pay its speakers, at least not me. I won't speak for nothing for Freedom Fest. So as long as they're not paying me, I won't speak. The debate was paid, but it wasn't paid by Freedom Fest. It was paid by a different organization. That's why I did the debate at Freedom Fest. I used to go to Freedom Fest, but I don't particularly enjoy Freedom Fest. It's not the audience that I am interested in speaking to in particular. It's too old. It's not young enough. And it's too conservative. It's too Trumpist. And if it's not, then it's too libertarian. It's not people that I'm going to change. They have a lot of fans there. But they're people who are not going to be impacted by my talks. So not a lot of young people there for me to go and speak for free. If Freedom Fest paid me to go, I would go this year in particular. You know, I was a little worried about Freedom Fest because they were going to have a panel with Nick Foreantus on. I won't go to a conference with Nick Foreantus on the program. That's a moral issue. As it is, they're showing a documentary about him, which I find pretty disgusting. So, no, I will only go to places where I can get new people or where they're young people. And the reason I do this show is a lot of you are new people and young people. I've turned a lot of the people who listened to this show did not know about Iron Man before they started listening to the show. So, you know, that's part of what, plus you pay me to do this show. Right? You're an audience that actually pays. One of the things I love about you guys, you pay me on a monthly basis at your onbrookshow.com. I support a Patreon, subscribe, and the super chat you guys pay me. So, yeah, I'm not giving charity to Freedom Fest. And there's not enough value for me to gain it. All right, Paul, how does the, oh, we did that. Anthony, Iran, do you think autism and other social interaction disorders have just simply surfaced in a free modern society? You know, I don't know. I don't know enough about it. Autism probably at different levels on the spectrum always existed. You know, who knows why it's more prevalent today. Maybe it's just more diagnosed today. Maybe it's really more today. Maybe there is something in our behaviors, something in our environment that makes it more. I don't know. But I have not seen any study that shows a causal link between autism and any particular behavior, any particular pollutants, any particular thing that's going on in the world. So, you know, and I don't know, by the way, I don't know, by the way, over time. If anybody's done a study over time about whether autism has increased, autism has decreased over time. I just don't know. So it's something to look at. How much of it is bad diagnosis and how much of it is real increases over time? I just don't know. Michael asked, what was the crime rate in 19th century America versus today? I don't think anybody knows. I've looked into this and it's hard to find crime rates in America in the 19th century. If welfare state causes crime, Europe should have far higher crime rates than we do. Yeah, but the difference is that the welfare state in Europe, the number of things about it. One, I think Europeans are less ambitious. Europeans who gain welfare in Europe are less ambitious than Americans. There's less sense of, I want to make it, there's much more acceptance of their condition. I also think that the welfare state in, oh, also in Europe, the people receiving welfare, and this particularly relates to black Americans, don't have a chip on their shoulder against the system that black Americans do, and you could argue justifiably. Europeans don't have that, poor Europeans don't necessarily have that chip on their shoulder. I think Europeans are less desperate because they're less ambitious, because there's less to achieve. Americans are more desperate because they're more ambitious and they want to achieve more. And then, you know, there are other causes like there's more opportunity in America for crime, primarily because of our drug war. All right, thank you everybody. This was an amazing, amazing, in terms of Super Chat. We made over $1,200, that is phenomenal. I got some work for that $1,200. I've got to review a music video and a YouTuber, a particular video from a particular YouTuber. So I've got those, and I've also got some songs and other stuff that you guys left me for last time. So I've got a lot of work cut out for me. All right, tomorrow we'll have a show, not sure if it's going to be 3 o'clock or 8 o'clock, so look out for announcements on Twitter, but there will be a show tomorrow and then Tuesday and Thursday next week. Thanks everybody. Hope you enjoyed the show. Yeah, we went two hours today. So hope you enjoyed the show, and I hope to see you tomorrow. Bye everybody.