 the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this September 28th on Thursday. Hope everybody's having a fantastic week. Almost over. September's almost over. Get ready for the fall. All right, not the fall in terms of falling down, but the fall in terms of the season. All right, it seems a little quiet on the chat over there. Okay, it's waking up a little bit. All right, let's see. We have a bunch of different stories today. There's a lot of going on, although I don't think any of them is going to consume a big chunk of our time, so we'll jump right into it. The first, of course, is the debate last night. Now, I have to admit, I ended up skipping the debate, now watching it and catching up this morning on it, watching most of it clips, fast-forward clips of it. I think the consensus basically has been that it was just boring and irrelevant, and it doesn't make any difference, and none of them have done anything to chip away Donald Trump. I mean, they keep swapping percentage points between them, who's first, who's second, who's third, who's fourth, who's fifth, who's sixth, but no difference between first, right? Second, third. It's all about second, third, fourth, fifth, and absolutely nothing on the top there. And no impact on Trump. Trump seems to be dominating the field, seems to be dominating the field in every one of the primary states. He's dominating the field on a national poll. DeSantis seems to be holding on to the second place on the national polls, but not doing very well in places like New Hampshire, and we'll see what happens in Iowa and in South Carolina. He's not going to do well. So there's just nobody. And part of this is without question just too many people. Like, why can't the Republican Party just, I mean, don't you, Mr... I mean, none of you remember this, but it used to be the nominees, used to be decided smoke-filled rooms. And while I don't think it's a good idea to go back to those days, although it might be an improvement, the reality is that right now what the Republicans need is a smoke-filled room to pick between the seven people on stage up there, trim it down to three, and let them go at it. And maybe that way they can make a dent in Trump. I have only three debate, kick out everybody else. I mean, basically it should be, I think it should be DeSantis, Haley, and Vivek, and that's it. The rest should be retired. And maybe then, maybe then, one of them, before the primaries get started, could make a dent in Trump. But with seven of them, it just, you just can't do it. You just cannot do it. So I think the Republicans here committed suicide. This is, you know, it's basically guaranteeing that Trump will be the nominee. I think, as I've said many times, while Trump could beat Biden, given how weak Biden is, he is the weakest of all the Republicans in terms of beating Biden. So why do it? Why just let him roll over this? I mean, Trump is loving this, and he's never going to participate in a debate, because as long as it's divided up into six, seven people, he has nothing to fear, zero, zilch. He's got enough of the base to win every primary. And really, national policy is getting over 50%. So why would he ever participate in a debate? So yeah, you know, Christie had a good line about Donald Duck. Nobody's calling him Donald the loser. That's what they should be calling him. Nobody's calling him Donald the loser, Trump. And, you know, what's his name? DeSantis made a comment. But they probably made comments about, DeSantis actually made a comment about the deficits that Trump accumulated. That was good. But all the other comments were about he's not here. They seem like just whiny kids, whining that the guy who they want to beat will not play fair based on their rules. You've got to go to the jugular if you're going to have any chance. There's nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. I don't think the indictments are supporting, the indictments have people supporting him. I think the reality is that the Republican Party is Donald Trump's political party. The reality is that the Republican Party loves Donald Trump. The reality is that the Republican Party stands today for nothing other than for Donald Trump. At least 50 plus percent of it. That's it. And he's going to get denominations even if he goes to jail, which is, I don't know how the country recovers from that. It really is hard to tell how the government, how the country recovers from it. All right, let's see. Talk about country recovering and talk about pathetic Republicans. The government looks like it's going to be shut down. It looks like the Republicans committed to that. The Republicans in the House, that a small minority of them are committed to shut down the US government. Trump, of course, is supporting them. And he says that unless you get everything you want, keep it shut down. They'll never get everything they want. So the government is going to be shut down for a long time. I don't see where the compromise comes from. I don't see how, unless Democrats and Republicans unite and kind of outnumber the small number of Republicans that are going to vote against everything proposed, I just don't see how they avoid a shutdown. I don't think McCarthy can afford to do that. So we will see. I mean, we might be in a situation where if McCarthy tries to avoid a shutdown, the Republicans basically vote him out of the speakership. And then we're back to a crisis about who the Speaker of the House is. No Speaker of the House, right? No Speaker of the House. And then there's, and there's also a government shutdown. There's no leadership. How do you get out of that? So again, another one of these just pathetic situations Republicans are putting themselves into, they're going to get blamed for this. I don't think, and one of the interesting phenomena out there is the hysteria of the media and pundits about government shutdowns, how awful it's going to be the stock market, stock market will crash, the economy will crash, it's going to be devastating. It never has been and it won't be. But it is unbelievably inconvenient for a lot of people. And it will distort the, it will cause the economy to sputter a little bit. It does create uncertainty. The stock market will go down. Generally, it usually does if there's a government shutdown. And it just creates this massive uncertainty. Nobody knows what's going on, what's going to happen, how it's going to all play out. And with this group of crazy Republicans, there's a good chance that they don't come to any kind of agreement that there is no solution. And this continues. Who knows for how long. So a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unpleasantness, lack of leadership. For what? For what? What do the Republicans want? What are they asking for? I mean, I could understand this. If this was on principle, they want to cut government spending. They really, they want, they want to cut the budget. They want to, they, and that's it. And if they, if they get a deal where government spending is cut, they'll, but they're not doing it. That's not, I mean, there's that. There's abortion. You know that, that there's a senator, I forget his name, but there's a senator who's holding up all Pentagon appointments. Because he wants some abortion language to pass that's unequivocal and, and nobody's going to allow it to pass. Democrats are not going to allow it to pass. They control the Senate. So he's holding up all Pentagon appointments. This is Tommy Tuberville. The only thing that's important, not national security, not defense. The only thing that's important to him is abortion. So, right? I mean, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. I mean, we have nobody, literally nobody, literally nobody standing up for any semblance of rights, freedom, capitalism, markets, anything like that, anything like that. It's just, you know, one loser after the other, you know, pursuing all kinds of goals that have nothing to do with the well-being of this country. All right. So there's going to be a shutdown. Economically, it's not as bad as people will portray it. Politically, it's a disaster. And it's not good economically. It's just not as bad as everybody makes it out to be. The main issue of shutdown is the uncertainty that it creates. And the fact that this shutdown, it's not even clear what it's about exactly, what the Republicans actually want because they want a whole menu of items. All right. As you know, there is this big, there's this massive migrant crisis in the U.S. Migrants are crossing the border. Some of them are being shipped to places like New York. New York doesn't have the money and the, just the place, the infrastructure to house all these people and to feed them and to provide them with a stipend that's just not out of money. The same is happening in El Paso, Texas. El Paso, Texas is seeing a massive inflow of migrants and, you know, they just don't have the housing to provide for them and they don't have the resources. They don't have the money. And people, you know, these migrants are just being dumped in the middle of a city like El Paso and the expectation is that the city will take care of them. Now, of course, the whole issue of migration and the whole issue of illegal immigrants and crossing the border and entering into the United States and what to do about it and how to treat them and all of that, it's a super complex issue and we'll talk about that another time and you know my controversial views on it. But here, this whole issue of we don't have enough money to take care of them. That's the whole problem of illegal migration. The whole problem of the way the United States approaches this issue on a southern border is captured in that sentence. We don't have enough money to take care of them. Why are we taking care of them? Why do we have an immigration system that requires us to take care of them? Why has immigration become a global welfare program where anybody from anywhere in the world can come in and get welfare, get accommodation and get food and get all the stuff? Now, part of the reason is because we won't let them work explicitly. We won't let them work. Right? Oh, I have to comment on something Doron wrote here. Yeah, maybe later. I'll comment on that. I'll comment on that. If you don't let them work, then they're going to stop in the street. But of course, maybe if they stop in the streets, they won't keep coming. That is, this is the crazy system that we have. Why not just say and make it clear to everybody in the world that people are welcome to come here. They can cross the border. They can apply for asylum, but they will get literally zero help from the US government, not from the federal government, not from state government, not from local government. It's not the world of government to provide welfare to asylum seekers or migrants or whatever they want to call themselves. Now it would be good if we allowed them to get work permits and then they could get work, but the one easy straightforward solution to this is just not pay them welfare. Just stop. I mean, New York is about to do that because they just ran out of money. So the city is literally distributing flyers at the southern border and in immigrant shelters saying, look, don't come to New York. We don't have any money. We don't have any resources. We can't give you a home. We can't give you a stipend. The federal government won't allow us to give you work permits. So you can't work. And by the way, New York City is the most one of the most expensive cities in the world and we cannot help you get a work permit and you won't be able to find work here. Though from what I hear they're all working illegally in New York black market. New York is full. Don't come. But if that was, I mean, the message should be the U.S. government is not going to support give handouts to migrants. You come, you know, starve. Now ideally, ideally, but I don't expect this, we say come and work. We're looking for people to work. Come and work. Here's a work visa. But that's not going to happen. So at least I mean, I love that everybody's worried about everybody talks about the migrant crisis. Everybody talks about how horrible it is. They're taking over the country. They're doing this. They're doing that. We don't have the wealth estate make up to the welfare state. New York doesn't have enough money, all this stuff. And nobody talks about why are they getting any money to begin with? Why are they getting any money to begin with? And you know, this is what we're seeing right now is, you know, the bankruptcy of the welfare state, the bankruptcy of altruism, the inability of anybody in our government to say, you know, we can't redistribute your wealth anymore, we're stopping. They do this with Americans. And they do this with anybody who questions the border who needs anything. And that now has become the standard. Welfare is you cannot question it. You can question migrants, you can question work, you can question anything. You can't question welfare. Why say let's just end welfare. Certainly we should end welfare for everybody. But as a simple solution for right now, just end welfare for immigrants, all immigrants, they shouldn't need it. Now again, we should also allow them to work. I find it, yeah, pretty amazing that the assumption of every single news article that I read about this is that the state has to take care of these people. They have to take care of them. And that, you know, that that's the problem. The problem is they don't have enough money. Or the problem is that too many migrants coming in. But nobody's willing to question the assumption of why do we have to take care of them? All right. Interesting cannabis cannabis cannabis is always interesting, right? So as you know, many states in the United States have legalized marijuana. So significant number of states now have legal marijuana dispensaries, businesses, businesses are now growing marijuana all over the United States and selling it in various forms. One of the problems with this is that it's still illegal, according to federal law. It's still a felony. It's still a crime to sell marijuana, to grow marijuana in terms of federal law. Now the feds are not enforcing that law very much. But there is one area in which they are enforcing that is since almost all banks are, you know, have a national charter have a regulated by the feds or banks are regulated by the feds in one way or the other. Then federal law applies to all these banks. And one of the one of the regulatory principles is that banks are not allowed to deal with illegal businesses. They're not allowed to actually sell, sorry, bank people who deal in illegal activity. You know, I'm sure there's a technical term for what that means, but it's a crime. It's a crime to bank an illegal business knowing it knowingly. So what happens is that you've got and this is true of credit card companies as true banks. So what you have is a whole segment of the economy, at least in the states where it's legal, that is functioning legally, but they cannot bank. They're an all-cash operation. They have to carry cash, they have to transact cash, they have to deal with cash. They can't open a bank account. They can't get a loan. They can't deposit money. They can't write checks. They can't use credit cards. So the whole supply chain of marijuana is a cash business, which means that it's an open invitation to robbers, muggers, money laundries, organized crime, and it's super inconvenient. And indeed, banks that have in the past banked marijuana dealers have gotten into trouble with the feds. Mergers have been stopped because a bank has been discovered that it has a lot of deposits of businesses that do marijuana. That's not right. Anyway, for a change, there's actually a building congress that's actually going to fix a problem and actually do some good. It's a new bill that aims to give the marijuana industry access to banking services and it's actually passed the Senate Banking Committee in a vote of 14 to nine. So, you know, it got some bipartisan support. I wonder who the nine who voted against it are probably nine conservative Republicans. It's being led by both Republicans and Democrats in terms of getting it through. But I can't imagine Democrats being against this bill given that they want to legalize everywhere. 39 states of legalized marijuana. So this will affect a big chunk. It'll affect a lot of businesses. It'll affect a lot of lives. I mean, what they should do is legalize marijuana nationally, get rid of the federal law that bans it. But short of that, at least make it legal for marijuana businesses in states where it's legal to be able to deal with banks. I mean, that seems to be pretty straightforward and pretty simple. You think somebody would have thought of this before, but we are where we are in the world. Not much rationality out there. All right. Yeah, we're going through these pretty quickly. That's good. You're covering a lot today. Okay, I'm going to say something controversial because I saw a post from Dawn that I just wanted to correct. Where did I see it though? He says, okay, and I know you're going to hate me and I'm going to lose a bunch of subscribers because I'm going to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. Dolan says, no one is pro-abortion. They are pro-individual rights for women, just as no one is pro-life. They are anti-choice. True. But I'm pro-abortion. I think abortion is a good thing. I think certainly having that choice is a good thing. So I don't want to run away from the idea that, yeah, abortion is a valuable option for women. So in that sense, I'm pro it. I'm not just pro her right to have it, but I must have pro the procedure. It's a life-enhancing procedure, certainly for the woman. And I'm pro-life. That's why I'm pro-abortion, because I'm pro the life of the individual that we're talking about. All right. I did as much damage as I can, as I want to do for now. All right. This is a recurring topic, but it's important, so we'll keep talking about it. And it again illustrates kind of the absurdities in the world in which we live, the false conflicts, the difficulties to move forward, the difficulties to have real breakthroughs. I mean, we live in a world that is so rich with such potential, with so many potential entrepreneurs, with so much potential in terms of the upside. And all of this is rained in, held back. And one of the things holding much of this back is environmentalism. Now, here's a great example of this, where even progress on one of the environmentalist's biggest agendas, which is electric cars and batteries and so on, is being held up by an environmentalist agenda. So one of the areas in the world that has the largest deposits of minerals, among them nickel, copper and cobert, but potentially many others, that are so essential for this whole industry of batteries and electric vehicles and so on, right? One of the areas in which that has some of the biggest reserves in the world for this is called the Ring of Fire in Canada. There are massive, massive deposits of nickel, copper and cobert and particularly a lot more in the Ring of Fire. But the problem is that the Ring of Fire is this massive area of swampy expanse. I don't think, whoa, the Wall Street Journal is using the word swamp. Swamp. I thought that was politically incorrect to use the word swamp. It should be not swampy, but it should be wetlands, right? So this is a big area of, well, I'm not going to use wetlands. This is a big area of swamps, spruce forests, meandering rivers, all in Northern Ontario. There are no major roads, there are no major settlements, there's no human activity. It's one of the most, and yet, so it's just nature. Now, not only is it nature, but given that the enemy is carbon, we're told, then this is one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world in terms of sucking carbon. I guess swamps are good for carbon, sucking carbon, so are trees, bush trees, so is lack of human activity. So he's got, in order to exploit this, I'm going to have to get rid of some of the swamp, but by getting rid of some of the swamp, we're going to increase CO2. That's not good. How do we resolve this? But how are we going to get batteries? How are we going to get EV vehicles? How do you go? How do you do it? How do you work it? Unresolvable conflict. I mean, plus, this is just nature. World mother nature, I think. And yet, there is this urgency to replace our dependence on China, to develop a domestic battery and EV industry, and of course, there's money to be made in mining all of this. So this is the kind of conflict that exists in the kind of the world out there, in the environmental world, where we can't progress because, wait a minute, we have to consider mother nature, or we have to consider this balancing act of our CO2 that is ridiculous and absurd. Of course, there's no reason to believe in all the data, so just otherwise, that electric vehicles or batteries are good in terms of, or reduce, actually reduce CO2 over the lifespan of automobile. We've done shows on this. There's no reason for that. But even if you accept all the environmentalist premises, they've got these conflicts that they cannot resolve. They created a world where there was endless conflict as long as human beings want to prosper on the world. And the only solution to the environmentalist problems as they portray them, as they set them up, is to get rid of human beings. I mean, the only reason we need electric cars and electric batteries is because human beings want to travel. Well, we can stop them from traveling. There's already talk in Europe about banning flights. We can stop them from driving. We can bring back horses and cars, although horses might emit a lot of CO2. We can walk. We can just reduce the human population significantly. That'll do it. But that's the only way. The point is, for the climate change catastrophists, for the environmentalists, the committed environmentalists, there is no solution, no solution to the problem, except a culling of the human race, a reduction in the number of the human race. That's the only solution to the problem. Reduce economic activity, reduce the number of people. Every other solution, electrify, creates more problems for them than it solves, and they're going to be against it. And that's where we are today. As the lawyer representing the indigenous groups in Ontario who are fighting the idea to mine this stuff, we are threatening to destroy so many forests and peatlands that eat the carbon out of the atmosphere. The impact will be catastrophic. We're all going to die. Not to mention the fact that you're violating the rights of indigenous people. Yeah, I mean, this is where environmentalists and Michael Knowles completely agree. The world was a much better place in 1220. 1220 is the goal today of both far left and far right. They all want to go back to 1220. And what do we do? Where are we going to be in this? We have to decide which 1220 we want to go back to, the 1220 of the left or the 1220 of the right. Good luck with that. All right. Yeah, last topic quickly. Armenia, as you probably saw in the news, the province of Nagorno-Karabakh, something like that, is basically surrendered. They are dissolving their state. This is after a 32-year quest for independence and international recognition they have given up. They will be part of Azerbaijan, which is how they've been mapped anyway, how they've been recognized anyway. Of the 120,000 Armenians in the region, over 40,000 have already left and gone to Armenia. Many others, I think, will follow. I mean, this is a tragedy, a huge tragedy. People's lives disrupted. People's lives, you know, they're now going to be refugees in Armenia. They've gotten their homes over there. They're giving up homes that have been with their families for many, many years. They're leaving. It's hard to tell if they're being forced by Azerbaijanis to leave or they just don't want to live in Azerbaijan. They want to live with their tribal members in Armenia. Either way you look at it, it's a human tragedy and all caused by tribalism, all caused by, you know, by the attitude of tribalism and the attitude of balkanization and I need to live with the people who look like me who, here they all look alike. They're all the same. They all look the same. It's more that they have to be people who have the same tribal heritage as I did, exactly the same. They're not that, you know, they're not that different, even tribally. But, you know, a thousand years ago they were whatever, right? Because all these tribes, some of these tribes moved into this. The Georgians claimed they were always there, but the Azeris who were Turks moved in there. I don't know what the history of the Armenians is. Maybe the Armenians have always been there as well, right? Just who cares? Where you've been? I mean, again, this is 1220. It's time that we just accept people as individuals. It's time that we reject tribal labels and tribal affiliations and tribal associations and any kind of tribal importance one way or the other. Get rid of them all. All right. I had one other story. I'll just mention this because it is worth talking about. It does appear that Saudi Arabia and Russia's attempt to manipulate oil prices at least somewhat has been partially successful. Crude now, Brett Crude at least is climbing towards $100 a barrel, which means Saudi Arabia is minting money. I mean, it's unbelievably profitable. The oil that they pull out of the ground is super cheap, and so they have restrained supply. By restraining supply, they have indeed caused prices to go up, which is what you'd expect. At the same time, Russia, which is also somewhat restrained supply partially because the difficulty of how to export the oil, but Russia is raking it in because it's got higher prices, so it's selling even though it sells at a huge discount to places like India and China. It's a discount off of the top line price, which is still significant. Both countries are raking in billions of dollars in extra revenue over the last few months because of their slowing down the supply. The US is pumping out more oil than ever. I think it's hitting record levels. We could have been pumping out even more oil even higher, so American oil companies are making a lot of money right now as well. The whole industry is making a huge amount of money. The challenges, and this is the challenge, the challenge is to what extent American oil companies reinvesting their money into new drilling, into producing more oil. Because yeah, the Saudis and the Russians might be able to influence prices to go up in the short run, but the more the United States pumps out oil, the less influenced Saudis and the Russians will have on global markets. The US is already, I think, supplying more oil than Saudi Arabia into those markets. If we got a boom in oil investment and in oil production, we would then have much more control, not we as a country, but American manufacturers by flooding the market with oil would cause prices to come down. So the question is, again, not economics. Economics, we know exactly what would happen. All this excess profits coming in would be invested in new production, which would ultimately lower prices. The question is politics. That is, if American investors, if American producers are worried that the government is going to restrict their ability to ultimately sell oil or to drill for oil, then they might not invest their money in new oil production. This is where Biden and Biden administration is really, really, really hooding. The economy is hooding future investment in fossil fuels. So this is, again, where politics interrupts with the natural flow of economics. The economics is simple. Saudi and Russia restrict its supply. The United States would invest heavily, increase supply, prices would come down. What's stopping that investment is uncertainty about the Biden administration and a future Democratic administration's attitude towards oil and gas. All right. Those are the stories. All right. So you can ask questions. We've only got three questions. We're doing okay. We're about halfway to our goal in terms of raising money, but only three questions, because we got a bunch of you doing stickers. Thank you for all the stickers. Dawn, thank you. Fred Hopper, thank you. Keyfax, thank you. And Wes, thank you. But the best way, really, to support the show and to frame what I talk about is to ask questions, and that way also to extend the show. I don't have a hard stop at two. So please, feel free to ask questions about anything you want to ask. Get over there and and ask. Scott says Donald Trump had all futures negative at one point. I mean, that's, I mean, he's attributing that as a virtue to Donald Trump, in a sense, right? Why otherwise say it, right? Because Trump didn't have futures negative at one point. COVID had futures negative at one point. There was such fear. I mean, this is the, this is the ridiculous nature of doing everything through politics, which people like Scott do. The reality is that during COVID, there was such fear that the economy was going to collapse completely. And that there would be no demand for oil. That you literally had to pay people to take your oil and store it because the storage costs were more expensive than the future, the price of oil in the future. That's what drove them negative. That nothing to do with Donald Trump. And I had everything to do with the fact that COVID crushed the price of oil because everybody was afraid demand was going to go to zero. But yes, let's attribute everything good that happens to Trump and everything bad that happens to the left and the Democrats because that's being objective about the world. Remo. Thank you, Remo. Yeah. So we're about halfway to our goal. So please consider supporting the show value for value. You can use the super chat button below. By the way, if you're new to the show, please press the subscribe button over there. And that that would be, that would be great if you subscribe to the show and then you get announcements when we go live, which is often eight shows a week. And in a normal week, granted, normal weeks are rare, but eight shows a week and a show every day to do a news roundup or five days a week at least. And then three longer shows in the evening or on Saturday. Let's see. Yeah. So just a reminder, we've got a bunch of people, 75 people watching right now. We're short about $130, a couple of bucks from everybody value for value. And we get to our goal. Thank you, Wes, for $50. That helps us a lot. But we still need, we still need those two to $10 from everybody who's watching would be great. And you can, of course, attach a question to it. And that that way you get a question answered. All right, let's do these three questions and move on. Why did I do that? Remo asks, thoughts and the assassination of a Masawi, Masawi, God, that's a long time ago. I really saw a documentary depicting several Mossad agents who opposed it because of the terrorist retaliations. But I think we should go after the religious leaders. God, I, yeah. I mean, I think Israel does too little of these kind of things. I think they should go after the religious. And I think they should go after the political, they should go after the military, they should go after anybody associated with these ideas. They should crush. They, you know, these are all members of organizations that are devoted to violence. El Masawi was the spiritual leader, one of the spiritual leaders of, you know, what was becoming Hezbollah, I think back then, if I remember right. And Hezbollah is an organization, even as far back as 1982, was responsible for the kidnapping of Americans. It was responsible for terrorist attacks against Israeli military. I think on the contrary, the fact that Nasrallah was the head, the spiritual leader and the head of the Hezbollah still alive, is only emboldens more terrorism and emboldens more attacks on Israel. The fact that the political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and all over the Middle East are still alive. Every single one of them should have been assassinated. I don't think that is the solution. The solution is you have to occupy land and you have to destroy infrastructure. You have to actually, you know, engage in war. But part of that is kill the leadership and destroy the leadership and make it so that being a spiritual leader or being a military leader, being a political leader of a terrorist organization is a very, very short duration job because you die quickly, suddenly and violently. So yeah, I mean, I mean, too many of Israel's Mossad's leaders are bleeding heart leftists or bleeding heart, whether they're left and right, bleeding heart generally. And that is a great tragedy for Israel because it needs people with kind of the moral fortitude that is committed to defending Israel and killing its enemies. All right, two last questions. Don't forget, you can use the super chat to ask a question. Go for it. But Sylvanos, thank you for another $50 sticker. Really, really appreciate that. John, thank you for a sticker. You guys can support. We're only $70 short of our goal. So, you know, at this point, we've got 80 people watching, do the math. Doesn't take much to get us to where we need to be. Michael says, how do we break the mythology that without state run safety nets, entire segments of our population would starve to death? I don't know how you break the mythology because, you know, the facts, the reality is so counter that that is a pre the welfare state people are not dying and starving to death in the streets of America. And with so much richer today, that the possibility of that is so much more remote than it ever, you know, ever has been. So that the richer you get, the easier it is to charity, the easier it is to just mutual aid to help the people who actually need the help. And in a world in which we live in, in America in which we live today where there are what, 9 million, 10 million unfilled jobs, the problem is not work. There's plenty of work. Now, there might be a mismatch of skills, but there's plenty of work even at the low end. I know lots of restaurants and that are constantly looking for dishwashers and waiters and people at the lower end of the skill set. And so there's actually no need for a safety net. And again, and the other thing is you don't need a government safety net. You could have a private safety net, which is what a charity ultimately becomes is a private safety net. Thank you, Michael, but I don't know how because ultimately, oh, let me say this, this is important. The issue is not factual. It's not about can we convince them that it's doable? We've done that. I mean, the arguments are sound. We've done it over and over and over again. It's a moral question. And so the real question you're asking, Michael, is how do we defeat altruism? That's the question. The only way to break the mythology is to defeat altruism. As long as altruism is the dominant view, the dominant moral view, we will have a welfare state. There's just no other way around it. Andrew says, PBS ran an admiring interview with FTC lead lawyer in the case against Amazon. It also invited Amazon, but no response. Why do companies in these positions issue lame statements or not defend themselves in public at all? I think because they're afraid because they don't have the self-confidence because they're afraid of a public backlash against them. They know the media is not on their side. They know the so-called experts are not on their side. And they don't have the moral backbone. They don't have the moral. I mean, what we need is an Alex Epstein of anti-trust. We need somebody with a law degree, somebody who can go out there and basically go economics and law and make the argument for every one of these companies on every one of these cases, defend them and defend them thoroughly and challenge anti-trust at its core. But Amazon, like most of these, they figure they're going to lose the public relations debate, so why even try? And they don't exactly know how to make a principled argument. They can make an argument, but will it be principled? And will it be one that's convincing? And will they inadvertently say something in an interview like that that the government will use against them? I mean, you have to challenge to really do a proper job. You have to challenge anti-trust at its core. And they'd have to know a lot to do that and it'd have to have real courage to do it. Richard said, I just finished a highly recommend Uneven Justice by Raj Tanam. Have you read the book and did you ever meet him? No, I haven't read the book and have not met him. But you're recommending the book, so that's great. I'm curious what it's about. So I'm curious what it's about. But yeah, thanks Richard. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the book recommendation. All right, last question. We've met our goal, by the way, so thank you guys for jumping in there. Richard said, I just saw the highly rated movie Stalker. It's a tedious slog to the dead end of Russian mysticism. Have you seen it? It's a must miss unless you want a stifling emotion in peak irrationality. There's some good sentences there. I like this tedious slog to the dead end of Russian mysticism. Is it a Russian movie? Now I'm going to probably go see it. Tidious slog to the dead end of Russian mysticism. I like that. And then I like the stifling emotion in peak irrationality. Those are good phrases, good use of words. But no, I haven't seen the movie, I haven't heard about it. And is it an old movie, new movie? When's it from? Is it Russian? Is it set? It's from 1979. It's from Andrej Tekovsky. Yeah, I mean, I don't watch, I haven't watched, I tend not to watch movies from Russia during the Soviet Union. So no, I haven't seen it. Unlikely to ever see it. Thanks for the warning, Richard. All right. I do like the way Richard turned a phrase there. He was inspired. Thanks, everybody. Show tonight. I've got a tentative topic, which will be the opposite of the Dumerism one. It'll be on the dark skies for the economy moving forward. So where are we economically? What are the issues? What are the problems? What a lookout for why it's hard to be optimistic about where the economy is going, both in terms of what's going on in the United States and internationally and globally. So it'll be the opposite of my optimism talk. It'll be a little bit of a downer. But I forget we need some balance in life, right? Richard says, I want to reach out to Scott Linsick, and by the way, thank you for the $50, Richard, to learn more about the work in the private sector, his work in the private sector. It sounds very interesting to me, but I have little experience with cold emailing about this sort of thing. Do you have any advice for professional networking? Yeah, I mean, I would email him, say you admire of your work, you really enjoy reading his sub-stack and you enjoy the work he does for Cato and everything. And you're very interested in how he got to this position and the specific questions you might have about the private sector. You can use my name if you want. You can say, I don't know if this is true, but you could say you learned about his work for me or whatever. But you can say you graduated, right, Richard, from law school, or where you are in your career and you're interested. Don't make it too long. One of the things I could tell you, two of me, I think two of other people were super busy. Don't have time for long emails. So don't make it a long email and make it a short email, short and to the point, right? And tell him you'll accept a response in any way you can. Scott, you're being an idiot again. Typical kind of cynical, silly reaction from you. All right, guys. Thank you. And I'll see you tonight. Don't forget 8 p.m. East Coast time tonight, probably about the economy. Richard said, yes, I graduated. I'm starting a job soon, but I'm really interested in his work. I agree, but so absolutely right to him. Oh, quickly, Andrew says, follow up. So do you not morally judge Amazon for not defending themselves because of the reasons you gave? No, I mean, I think they're cowards, but I do understand why they're doing it. And I do understand also I understand that they don't have the knowledge to do it. They don't have the intellectual ammunition to do it. I mean, Bill Gates tried to defend himself during the Microsoft case. He actually tried a little bit. I mean, he did a lousy job at it, but he actually went out there and tried. And so, and it wasn't successful and he got ridiculed and he ultimately got thrown out of Microsoft. I mean, he left, but he left because of all this. So on the one hand, I do judge them morally because they could give up, at least try, but I completely understand why they're doing it and I understand the lack of knowledge that they have in doing it properly. This is why Amazon needs somebody like Alex. And that's why the world needs people who have a deep understanding of the philosophical, legal, moral and economic issues involved. And almost everybody has only the economic understanding. All right, guys. Thank you again to all the superchatters. Thank you to all the ones of the big, big sticker amounts. That's great. Richard, thank you for the $50 question. We got a bunch of $50 stickers. Thank you to all of you guys. And I will see you all tonight. Bye, everybody. Have a great day.