 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to the Iran Book Show on this Tuesday night, Tuesday night second show today. I have to admit, I'm tired. It's 8 p.m. over here in Puerto Rico. I know it's much earlier where you... Oh, well, no, some of you in Europe might be much, much, much later than it is here in Puerto Rico. So it depends on where you are located. So again, welcome to Iran Book Show. Let's see, today we're gonna talk about Thanksgiving, about production, about economic growth, about technology, and the relationship between that relationship and I guess the program to save this country and to save the West, I think the two are, I think they are heavily related. So we will talk about that, at least in terms of buying us time to have a philosophical ideological impact on the world. Let's see. Yeah, so a quick reminder is you can support the show with a super chat or a sticker. Also, don't forget to like the show before you leave. It's an easy button press, doesn't require you to do anything. And finally, if you're not a subscriber and you're watching this, please subscribe or listening to it, please subscribe. Go to YouTube, subscribe. It's good. We need to get the 100,000 subscriber mark, the algorithm then really favors you once you get to 100,000 mark, at least that's the theory. That's what I am, that's what I'm told. So encourage you to do that. Let's see. Yeah, I ask questions. It's a great way to shape the show and I answer all questions, particularly those at $20 above and it's a way to get me to talk about stuff that you want me to talk about because I do talk about it. Oh, Herschfeld is in Israel. Greetings from Israel. Hi, oh, good to see you. Glad you're here. I have a few Israelis. It's late in Israel. It's like, it's 2 a.m. Go to sleep. What are you doing up? What else did I want to say before we get started? Yeah, remember the show sponsored by the Einran Institute. Don't forget to go to Einran.org slash start here. Einran.org slash start here. And there was an event next week about the fountain and I think it's on the 28th. The Institute spends a lot of time and resources and effort to try to get young people to read the fountain head. It is a book. I'd say for young people. Yeah, I mean, it's a book for anybody age, but it has particularly appeal, I think, for young people. Get them young before they're completely corrupted. You should tune in to the event. It's free. You can tune in to the event, but you do have to register and you can register at Einran.org slash start here. URL is right beneath the video in the description. All right, so we're two days away from Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is, is it my favorite holiday? Second of Christmas, maybe? But it's a great holiday. It's a great holiday. It's an American holiday. Einran loved it because it was an American holiday. And what makes it an American holiday is it really is, it's kind of a benevolent, positive celebration of what? What do we celebrate on Thanksgiving? Who are we giving thanks to really at the bottom of this? Do you know the, I've told the story before, but it's a good story. So some of you might have heard this, but there's a movie called Shenandoah with Jimmy Stewart. It's a movie I like a lot and I encourage you to watch it. Anyway, in the movie, James Stewart says grace over dinner and he is very secular, but he promised his wife who died that he would raise his kids with some Christianity, some religion. So they say grace over dinner. So grace goes something like this. This is Jimmy Stewart's grace over dinner. He goes, we tell the earth, we planted the seeds, we watered the plants, we harvested the vegetables, whatever, the corn. Everything that is on this table, everything on this table is a product of our work, of the work. The people around this table have engaged in. Thank you God anyway. It's the best grace ever. Jimmy Stewart does it much better than I just did it. I need to find the clip and show it to you. There's a clip of it on YouTube, you can find it. It's really, really good. Anyway, Thanksgiving is that. Thanksgiving is, it's giving thanks to the producers of the world. It's giving thanks to the bounty that we have. It's giving thanks to our ability to live good lives in this world, to live materially complete lives really with our material needs. Really, we can take care of those material needs. People out there keep producing stuff, right? Keep producing stuff that we all benefit from. Our standard of living is unbelievably high. I think it is a holiday, it is a day, to really remember that and to think about it and to embrace it, right? Take your iPhone out and show it some appreciation, right? Appreciate not just the food on your table and the abundance of it, I assume, and the tastiness of it and appreciate the money, the effort, the challenge of producing that food and bringing it to your table, not just of yourself by producing the money to buy it but all those farmers and supermarkets and grocery stores and logistics engineers who bring it to wherever you might live and make a meal like that possible, right? Or if you had a restaurant, the restaurateurs and their entire supply chain, that makes that possible. Think about all the rest of what our material lives look like. The TV, you're probably watching football on Thanksgiving on, the furniture, the house, that all of our material goods that we have and we cherish and we survive through. Think of the internet, think of all the technology that makes the Iran book show appear in your home pretty much every day. I sometimes take Sundays off and I will be taking Thanksgiving off. But that is amazing, didn't exist not that long ago. It was super expensive to replicate this technology would require gazillions of dollars in the past. And now basically most of this technology certainly the online stuff is all available for free. I use OBS, which is for free. I use Restream, which is free. No, Restream I pay. Anyway, it doesn't cost a lot. I mean, all of it is really truly amazing. And it's something to be appreciated in a sense. Thanksgiving is the one day of the year where you're supposed to, you're not just allowed to but you're supposed to, you're encouraged to. You should be thankful for the material wellbeing that exists in the world around us for your material wellbeing, for your wealth, for your wealth made possible because of your own productivity. And this is fabulous. What an amazing holiday. Where we celebrate material wealth, where we celebrate material comforts, where we celebrate great food and we celebrate great stuff, stuff without some pretense of some guy on a cross dying for our sins with some, you know, deeply out of ourselves meaning and spirits and, I mean, I think it's a very spiritual holiday because if you understand where material goods come from, they come from man's mind. They come from human reason. Then it's definitely a spiritual holiday because it's a holiday that celebrates the ability of man to create, the ability of man to build, the ability of man to use his reason to change the world out there to make it comfortable and amazing for man to live in. It's the anti-environmentalist movie. Anti-environmentalist holiday. Again, truly a celebration of man's capacity to use reason in order to shape his environment, to fit his own needs and to maximize his comfort, wealth, satisfaction, ability to enjoy life and to celebrate life. So yeah, it's a very capitalist holiday. It's a holiday that celebrates markets, markets that make it possible for us to access all these goods, to have them produced at prices that we can afford and then for us to be able to go out, reach out and get them, whether it's through Amazon or whether it's going to your local store or whether it's some other way in which you buy and consume and some other marketplace that exists out there. It's a celebration of capitalism, of markets, of free markets in particular. So Thanksgiving is a day to think about the producer, but more importantly, our ability to produce. In a sense, it's a holiday to celebrate production. Ability to produce, change the world around us and create the material wealth, the material stuff that we need in order to maximize the quality of our life on this earth. And it's also, so let's think about this from both a personal and an economic societal, if you will, level. At a personal level, it's a celebration of our own careers, our own productive endeavors, the meaning we get from the work that we do, the meaning we get from producing and creating values. This is the real meaning. This is real purpose in life, not something outside of me, but something I create, I produce, I love. It's a day to celebrate whatever career you have, whatever career you engage in. And maybe this is a time of year to really think it through, is this what I wanna be doing? Is this, am I doing the best that I can? Can I do better? Should I switch career? Should I stay with this career? It's a great time of year, generally between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a great time of year to contemplate and new years, the future, and to rededicate yourself to your purpose, rededicate yourself to your meaning. But the reality is that we get our self-esteem from our work. The reality is we'll spend more time at work than doing pretty much anything else. The reality is that we get more of our joy, our satisfaction, our sense of competence, our sense of efficaciousness in the world, from the work that we do. Thanksgiving is the holiday where we celebrate that, that satisfaction, meaning, career. Indeed, that career is a really essential purpose. The material wealth that we create is, makes all other values possible and makes life possible, makes it possible for us to eat. It makes it possible for us to have the self-esteem, to know that we are, from the knowledge that we are capable of producing what we need to eat. It makes it possible to buy all the stuff that we buy that we need in order to live and in order to thrive and in order to survive. So it is the central purpose. It is what integrates the rest of our lives and it makes possible the rest of our lives. So Thanksgiving is a time to think about, celebrate, appreciate your own achievements, your own career, your own purpose, your own, the meaning that you give to your own life. So at a personal level, production is a manifestation of that meaning, of that career of, you know, the work one does in order to sustain oneself from a material perspective. Economically, of course, production is everything. Production is what drives the world. It's what drives our economy. Now consumption, we're taught by Keynesians and by others, pretty much everybody agrees. Consumption is what drives the economy. Right now the economy is doing great. Why? Because people are consuming. But consumption is an effect. Consumption is not the cause. The cause is always production. In order to consume, one must have something to consume. Something must have been produced. But also in order to consume, one must produce oneself. Otherwise you yourself will have nothing, no money in order to trade for the production of others. So every act of consumption requires at least two acts of production. One on the side of the thing that you're buying rather than the side of you in order to get the money to be able to buy the thing that you're buying. Production is at the heart and at the core of all of economics. It is the essential characteristic in production here. In the broader sense, it doesn't have to be of stuff. It couldn't be of services, of values to human beings. And in that sense, what drives an economy, what drives economic growth, what drives wealth creation is production. There's a sense in which this is supply side economics, Robert says, but you know, I think it's deeper than that. It is economics. Everybody else is faking it. Economics, in my view, is the study of production and trade. But those are the fundamental activities that we engage in in the economy. It's production and trade. Production is what drives us forward. Production is made possible through, again, the use of reason. It requires kind of a view of the future. It requires long-term planning. It requires a certain optimism about the future. A certain confidence that people will want your product, that they will buy it when you produce it sometime in the future, that you are creating real values, not pretend values, something real that people will indeed value. And in that sense, people's attitude towards production, people's attitude towards technology indicate a lot about a state of a culture, indicate a lot about the state of the economy in terms of its long-term prospects. A world in which people poo poo production and the producers view it negatively, I don't know, it's polluting, it's exploitative, or it's not going too far with this technology, I don't know, artificial intelligence, because it'll end the world. We'll all die, so let's not do it. A culture like that will see, ultimately, very slow economic growth. Because people don't value production. They don't value the future. They don't value progress. They're never afraid of it. And therefore, they will do what they can to suppress it. They won't invest the entrepreneurial energy and the entrepreneurial force to make it happen, to make the production happen. And this is very much a state of the world in which we live in today, where these kind of attitudes are bubbling up to the surface or bubbling away from the universities, however you wanna call it. You're seeing it all over the place. Fear of progress, whether it's climate change, whether it's AI is gonna kill us all, whether it's some other pollution, some other story exploiting the third world, destruction, production leads to destruction. That general attitude is prevalent out there in the world and it is growing. And to a large extent, it is inhibiting. I think investment, it is inhibiting entrepreneurship, it is inhibiting real energy behind what is required in order to grow, create wealth, produce values, not easy, not simple things to do. They require real energy, focus, money, resources, there's a huge amount of fear out there, a debilitating fear and it will kill the West. It will kill America. America's built on exactly the opposite. America's built on a confidence in the future, on the energy of producers, on a generally positive attitude towards production and producers ultimately we celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate the holiday of production. America's built on the idea that technology will make our lives better, that we should produce more, the material goods are good for us. We want more, it's a culture of more. That's good, not bad, it's a culture that says we wanna be rich, all of us. At least that has been the culture in the past. That culture is under attack, it's under attack from universities, it's under attack from the left, it's under attack from the right, under attack from the crazy left that is upset because all this economic production actually creates inequality. But it's also attack from the right who thinks, ooh, a consumerist culture and we've lost God or we lost the spiritual values or we've lost meaning outside of us or whatever because we're too busy consuming and producing and engaged with the material. This has been the conservative attack on capitalism since it's beginning, really. So, to a large extent, you could boil down the battle today for the future of America, to a battle around this idea of producing, of technology, of the future. Is production good? Is economic growth good? Is wealth creation good? And are we committed to a program to build and create? Or are we committed to a program of stagnation? Which so many of our intellectuals and our politicians seem to have embraced. Do we wanna just stagnate? Is this good enough? And do we care more about the temperature of the planet or our fears of technology? Or just our fears of working hard? What do they call them? Did this debate with this conservative, front porch conservatives? God, all I want is to have enough money so I can have a little house with a porch and a rocking chair out front and I can walk in my rocking chair without having to worry about anything. Kind of the unambitious, I ran and talked about the mentality of stagnation. Any, the divine right of stagnation that these people have, the unwillingness to take on any risk, unwillingness to accept any risk, unwillingness to let other people take risk. They just want everything to stay the way it is. Isn't that good enough? And those of us yelling, no, it's not, well, we don't care, we'll regulate the order of existence, we'll control you, we'll tax you, we'll do whatever's necessary to stop you. And that's much of the battle that really is happening in America today. I mean, yes, there's a social, there's a war of all kinds of social issues and there's a war over wars and there's a war over, but at the end of the day, in terms of the future of this country, I think the main war is happening in the boardrooms of America. It's happening in Silicon Valley. It's happening in the industrial facilities of this country. It's happening in the mind of young people trying to decide what they wanna do with their future and whether they wanna be ambitious, whether they choose to be ambitious or whether they've given up on that. And one of the manifestations of this recently, I tell on the positive side, it's something I talked about a little bit with what's his name, Mark Andreessen. Mark Andreessen has really been a voice in the wilderness who rejects the notion of stagnation, rejects the notion of passivity, rejects the notion that this is the best that we can have. A few years ago, he wrote an essay about build, build, build, how America does not build anymore and how we need to start building. We need to start being ambitious and allowing for building, getting rid of the regulations and controls and the environmental certification so we can build, build great things, build big things, build little things, but build, create. And that that was the essence of America, the essence of the entrepreneurial spirit, the creation of values, the creation of wealth. And I think it's right, that is, the essence of the American spirit. That is the essence of Thanksgiving, build, build, build. More recently, Mark Andreessen wrote an essay about techno-optimism, a manifesto, a techno-optimist manifesto. And while it has many flaws in it and it is not grounded in any kind of philosophy, it's not grounded in any kind of fundamental ideas, it embodies the spirit of this country. It embodies the American sense of life. It embodies the producer's sense of life. It embodies the idea that we can make tomorrow so much better than today. The idea that the future can be so much brighter than anything we produce, anything we have in our world today. And I've seen since then people attacking Mark Andreessen as you would expect in our culture. But I also see people supporting him. And people advocating for America, for economic growth, for unleashing the entrepreneurial spirits, for artificial intelligence, because it has, really it has, the potential to revolutionize our economy, to revolutionize production, to revolutionize value creation to make more easier, to make more better, to make the stuff and the services that we produce so much more efficient and to free up so much more of our time to do what we're really good at, which is innovation and ingenuity. It takes, it has the potential to take all of the rot routine things that we do, the boring stuff, the uninteresting stuff, the stuff that does not require reason, has the potential to take all of that off the table and free us up to think, to think and to enjoy, to think and to enjoy and use that thinking to produce values that I don't think we can even imagine today, given how much brainpower will be freed up by AI, how to imagine what that brainpower will actually produce for all of us. I think the conflict right now going on at the open AI board is part of this battle. There is a bunch of people so afraid of the future that they would want, they want, and they embrace stagnation, the precautionary principle. Precautionary principle says don't do anything until you're 100% sure no negative outcomes can come from it. If you did that, nothing, no progress, no advancement would ever happen. Well, I think the board of open AI came to conclusion AI is too dangerous and we're moving too fast and that's why we need to shake things up in spite of the billions of dollars that investors have put into this country, into this company for the purpose of speeding up innovation in artificial intelligence. It's a battle for the soul of this country. Do we have confidence in the future? Do we want the future to be better? Do we want to invest in that future? Are we willing to free up the resources and liberate our entrepreneurs to create that future? Are we gonna embrace Thanksgiving? Are we gonna reject it? Are we gonna embrace economic growth? Embrace production, embrace technology, embrace value creation. Are we gonna turn our back on it? And it's a great debate to have. It's a debate that's happening all around us. I also saw there was a article, a talk that won by Katherine Boyle. Not accidentally, also venture capitalist, not accidentally a venture capitalist from Andreessen Horowitz, from Mark Andreessen's firm, talking about a dynamic vision for the future of America. It's called how to win the fight for America. Doomsayers, technophobes and neurotics want to undermine America from the inside. Our dynamic vision must prevail. She is launching a campaign around something she calls American dynamism. American dynamism. A lot of people are offended by this, by the idea of growth, by the idea of dynamism and by the idea of American dynamism. That seems exclusionary. But I think it's exciting. I think these are the kind of initiatives. Technology, optimism as Andreessen launched. American dynamism that somebody like Katherine Boyle has launched. These are the kind of initiatives that will buy us time. They won't save America in the long run. They can't combat the philosophical ideological weight of the left, of the anti-progress, anti-enlightenment. They're not enough to win an intellectual battle. Then they don't have the foundations to defeat them, but they embody the American sense of life. And in embodying the American sense of life, they can buy us time. They can buy us time to build intellectual opposition to those who would defeat American dynamism, those who would defeat progress, those who would defeat production. But that's gonna take time. In the meantime, this economy better grow because if it starts shrinking, the fascists will take over. The Andreessen's of the world, the Boyle's of the world, and there are thousands of others all over this country. They have to be heavily concentrated in Silicon Valley because that is the dynamism of this economy whether we like it or not. They better be there. That's why it's so good to see Andreessen and Boyle from Silicon Valley. They need to buy us time by building and creating and shaping and molding and expanding this economy and showing that it can still be done and showing that wealth can still be created and showing that life can continue to be improved. They're the ones who do it. I can talk about it. They do it. The great promise of AI must not be suppressed. It must be embraced. They need to radically embrace this and push it forward. I'm not worried about the machine waking up and killing us all. It's bizarre. And neither is Mark Andreessen to his credit. So sure. Is Mark Andreessen a, you know, laissez-faire capitalist advocate? No. Did he sick? The Justice Department on Microsoft 30 years ago? Yes. Is his manifesto unshaky philosophical foundations? Absolutely. In reading Catherine Boyle's article, Speech, is a third of what she said, a quarter of what she said, eh, not exactly right. Absolutely. Absolutely not grounded in the right philosophical premises. Absolutely. But this is the best we have. I'm not talking about the politicians and the intellectuals. They're hopeless. Right, left. They're hopeless. They're not gonna buy us time. Jordan Peterson is not gonna buy us time. Even Ben Shapiro is not gonna buy us time. They're hopeless. At the intellectual front, the two options today are the nihilism of the left, the nihilism of the right, maybe the three options, and just the nothingness of everybody else. We need time to build an actual pro-progress movement that is grounded on true philosophical foundations. But that can only be done by business leaders. That can only be done by entrepreneurs. That can only be done by wealth creators, by people who create those values out there. That can only be done by people like Andreessen and Boyle and others. So I don't know what their politics are of any of the people involved in this techno-optimism. For that matter, and any of the people building today, the amazing AI tools that are going, that are coming down the pipe, I've already seen a few of them, and they're pretty amazing, and they're gonna save us all huge amounts of time. The people who will save this culture in the near to medium term are not gonna be intellectuals. The people who will save this culture in the near to medium term to save it for long enough for the intellectuals to catch up, for the intellectuals to actually save it are the business leaders, are the producers, are the entrepreneurs, are the Silicon Valley types, no matter what their politics are. They'll do it not by spotting politics. They'll do it not by spotting philosophy. They'll do it by having a positive attitude towards the future. They'll do it by embodying that confidence that the world can be changed, and then they do it by going out there and actually changing the world, by creating wealth, by making our lives better, and by showing, showing that economic progress and economic success are possible. So I have always been, and I know I get a lot of flack for this, I've always been pro-businessmen, even the ones that do some cronyism. I don't think they have a choice. I'm pro-businessmen because they're the ones who produce the world in which we live. They're the ones who create the world in which we live. They're the ones who build the stuff that we consume and create the society and the culture in which we live. Business is crucial to shaping young people to the extent that business becomes weak and woken. To that extent, the whole culture deteriorates. To the extent that business is focused on production and creating and building, and it does that, to that extent, we live in a much healthier culture. So I'd say celebrate Thanksgiving by thanking the entrepreneurs, by thanking the builders, by thanking the creators of values, by thanking all those businessmen out there who have made the world and who I hope, who I encourage to continue to make it. Keep pushing, don't give in. Keep trying to change the world. Keep trying to create values. It really is our only hope at this point for a better tomorrow. All right, let's see. We have a bunch of questions. Don't forget, you can add. By asking a question using the super chat, or yeah, using the super chat, you can also support the show with the sticker. We are far goal, but the night is still young, so please feel free to jump in with any questions you might have. And one more thing I wanted to say. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of movies out right now. I mean, there've been a few movies. There was the movie about, what was the video game Tetris, which I thought was quite entertaining and quite good, about kind of technology a little bit. There was the movie about Blackberry. I definitely encourage you to watch the movie on Blackberry. It's not, I don't particularly like the way it's shot, the way it's made. It's got the style of the office, which I hate, but it's really fascinating and really interesting. How these guys did indeed change the world. I don't know if any of you used a Blackberry. I did, I loved my Blackberry. I thought it was amazing. It was like the best technology ever until the iPhone. But wow, I mean, I loved my Blackberry. And then I told you, I just watched this TV series on Uber, which I found really interesting and entertaining. I think they're doing another season next season as on Facebook. Yeah, there should be more TV shows about business. There should be more TV shows about technology, about startups. I mean, startups are so, the stories are so dramatic. They're so exciting. I'd love to see a TV show, like a multi-episode TV show about the founding of Google and how that all came to being. It certainly beats reading a dried book about Google. I mean, put it into, or even Microsoft, or any, you know, through the antitrust trial, imagine a multi-season show on the history of Microsoft. That would be like super fun. And it would be a celebration of genius, a celebration of ability, a celebration of production. It would be perfect movie for Thanksgiving. All right, Michael asks, does the left not want to destroy wealth but concentrated in big cities where the philosopher kings are? Look at European wealth distribution. Almost all of it is in London, Paris, Berlin, et cetera. Outside of these mega centers, there isn't much. But that's true everywhere. I mean, cities are magnets of wealth. Cities are where wealth are created. Cities are these amazing places. Look at China, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, it's in the cities. Look at the United States. Where's the wealth? You say it's in Texas. No, it's in four cities in Texas. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. It's in New York City. It's in three or four places in California. It's not that the left wants to concentrate wealth in big cities. It's the fact that by their very nature, big cities are where wealth gets concentrated. And there's very little outside the cities. You don't travel around rural America. Not much there. Not much wealth, certainly. People are much richer in the cities than they are in rural America. Never mind Europe, never mind anywhere else. No, and cities are amazing because they create these amazing networks. Everything is close and you can connect with people which allows you to share ideas, shape plans, stimulate conversation, challenge one another, hire people, create businesses, be entrepreneurial, find capital, all of that is in the cities. So no, wealth is in the cities because cities are great. Cities are great. That's what facilitates wealth creation. It's the, to a large extent, interaction with other people. And think about the 19th century, where was the wealth created? It was created in Pittsburgh, in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, in Boston, New York. It was created in cities, always. That's where production happens. That's where people are. That's where factories happens. That's where you get the logistics, the talent, the ability to move stuff around. So cities are massive advantage for production and that's why the wealth is concentrated on, not because some effort of the left to do so. The left has nothing to do with this. This is in spite of the effort of the left to redistribute that wealth away, in a sense, from the cities towards people who are poor. Look at America. We tax California and New York and we send the money to Alabama and Mississippi. That is the reality. We take it from the rich and we give it to the poor and the poor are not in the big cities. The majority of the poor are outside of the big cities. All right, Richard. Richard Witt, thanks for Adam Wakeling's Why the Enlightenment Matters. Happy to have shared that. I'm getting the book. Getting this, I also found free online in PDF, the anti-enlightenment tradition. Oh, can you send me a copy of that? Because the anti-enlightenment tradition is an $80 buck, $85 book on Amazon. So if there's a free PDF, please send me the link to that. By Arthur Zev Stearnhill, he seems a controversial figure, no of him. I do not. I'm curious about him. I'm curious about anybody writing about the enlightenment. So yes, I would definitely like to see that book. So send me a link to it. All right, Adam. Thanksgiving equals production, division of labor, capitalism, free trade, meaning of cultures with different innovations for food production and football and a nap. It's a great day. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fantastic day. A lot of, you know, you missed the most important one. Food, you talk about food production, but what about food consumption? Isn't Thanksgiving to a large extent about food consumption? And great food at that. We have, my wife and I have a tradition of spending Thanksgiving in the best restaurants in Puerto Rico. And food is amazing. He does a turkey, God, best turkey I've ever had. So that's where we will be in Thanksgiving. So it's all about the production that ultimately makes the whole point possible. And the point is consumption. It's the point of the holiday. Consumption, it's the point of the holiday. It's to consume the food and appreciate where it comes from, which is the production. All right, Adam says, it baffles me. People don't understand this concept of production. Money is frozen production. Production is wealth. When you prioritize those that demand over those that produce, we all become poorer. Yes, and that, you know, we live in an economy that is clearly focused on consumption, focused on demand, focused on fulfillment of demand, oriented towards that. We live in an economic world that believes, that really believes that society is driven by, or economics is driven by consumption. And to that extent, we regulate, we tax production. We have an income tax, which is a tax on work, on production. We have a corporate tax, which is a tax on production. We have a capital gains tax, which is a tax on investment for the sake of production. We try to control and limit production as much as possible when it is what drives the world. It is what drives human life, what makes human life possible. So, yeah, it is the essence of what it means to, it is the essence of economics. Produce the goods. Demand, that's easy. I can drop any of you off at a mall and you will go and consume and demand. How to produce, how to make the stuff, how to get it to market, that is unbelievably hard. Requires effort, requires innovation, requires skill, requires thinking, is a real challenge. All right, thank you, Stephen Hopper. Thank you, Nick Bruno. Thank you, Antonio. Let's see who else did a sticker. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you to all of you for doing stickers and getting us, inching us closer to your goal, which is still far away, far, far away. Actually, that's the new one. All right, Rob says, a prominent media personality in my country, this is Australia, I take it, claimed recently the corporate profits are the real driver of inflation. How would you respond? Well, that is a, it's a common belief. It's a belief right now in Canada, the grocery stores in Canada, the supermarkets are being lambasted because their profits supposedly are driving inflation. The same has been true in England and actually Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Warren for a long time during this inflationary period has been touting the idea that inflation is caused by the greed of producers, by profits of producers. I mean, basically this is reversing cause and effect. Profits are the consequence of inflation. They are the consequence of the fact that people, you know, that produces can raise prices because people can pay higher prices because there's more money circulating. That the more money circulating is bidding up the price, but the profits cannot sustain themselves because they don't just bid up the price of the good that you're making, but they also bid up the prices of the things that go into producing the good, including the price of labor. But in the short run, if you think about the short run, prices go up cause there's more money in the economy and consumers are driving the prices up by bidding higher prices for them. Maybe the prices of the inputs going into producing the goods have not yet gone up and maybe the cost of labor has not yet gone up. So for a while profits go up. And then over time, what happens is all that inflation starts manifesting itself, not just in the prices of the final goods, but also in the prices of the inputs and in the prices of wages, which causes profits to shrink and often for companies to lose money. I mean, a lot of these people claim that it's greed that drives inflation, but isn't it true that greed is always there? Did greed just get invented in 2021 and thus we had inflation? Are people not as greedy right now as they were a year ago and that's why inflation's coming down? I mean, this is just what do you call it, stupid economics. Profits are consequence. A consequence of government intervention in the economy, in some cases, excess profits, if you will, excess in quotes, higher profits. A consequence of the misalignment of supply and demand. And businesses always pay for that because ultimately that misalignment will hurt them on the other side in rising costs of inputs and rising costs of labor. And you're seeing that right now. So for a long time, egg prices in the United States was just going through the roof. And everybody in Elizabeth I, everybody said greedy egg manufacturers. And recently, egg prices have been growing down like this. And I haven't seen Elizabeth I come out and say, ooh, isn't it amazing to see those wonderful altruistic egg producers? This is driven by supply and demand. It's driven by the quantity of money that is available. It's driven by the cost of production. And inflation is and always has been basically a monetary phenomena and an expectations phenomena. That is, if I expect inflation in the future, then I raise prices now with expectation that my input prices would rise. I raise them already now. But if the amount of money is stable, then only relative prices change. My price might go up. Other people's price might have to go down because the amount of money is stable. So at the end of the day, it has to be some form of increased demand, increased supply of money that is demand for goods. Supply of money is demand for goods. All right. Chipping away at that goal slowly, but we're getting there. If you wanna support the show, you can do it with a sticker or a question. And you can also do it by supporting the show on a monthly basis on Patreon or SubscribeStar or you're on bookshop.com slash support. And finally, don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber. And don't forget to like the show before you leave. Please, if you like the show, like the show before you leave. Jeff, Jeff, this is his first super chat. How cool is that? Thank you, Jeff. What degrees will hold their value and survive an AI future? Wow, that is hard to really tell. I mean, suddenly AI will require more and more and more highly sophisticated programmers. I think the simple programming AI will do for us. But the very sophisticated programming, including programming AI itself, so computer scientists at a high level will be required. I think any degree, and it's not about degrees, it's really about professions. Any professions that involve interacting with other human beings, communicating effectively with them, being able to provide guidance to them are gonna be fine. Although I do expect to see a lot of AI tutors tutoring our kids, maybe even one-day teachers, but certainly tutors, one-on-one, I think that's gonna come soon. In many respects, it could be far better than human tutors. So, but certainly, I think for now, psychology, psychiatry, a lot of the healthcare professions are still gonna be fine. Some, there'll be just a shrinkage. There'll still be radiologists, but there'll be fewer of them, and they'll be working with AI. While civil engineers who design buildings, you'll probably need a lot less of them, but you'll still need the kind of civil engineer that goes onto the field and makes sure the work is done right. Anything that has to do with the physical reality, observing it, understanding it, is gonna require human interaction, so the actual supervision is gonna require to be human, so construction managers will still be human. I'm trying to think, I still think historians and economists and so on are gonna have to be human at the end of the day. Anything that requires the kind of inductive understanding. Lawyers, but a lot of the legal research will be done by AI. Judges definitely will continue to be human. And then I think there'll be a lot of new professions, I can't imagine what they are, but there'll be a lot of new professions that add. You're not gonna, there's a lot of things like, anyway, so I think that anything that has to do directly with observing understanding reality, which I don't think machines can do, inductive reasoning, which I don't think machines can do, and anything that has to do with human interaction. You will still need people, human beings, whether they are degreed or not. All right, Daniel, what is the relationship between altruism and conspiracy theories? Quoting Atlas Shrugged, each was devouring himself while screaming in terror that some are noble evil was destroying the earth. I mean, look, conspiracy theories fundamentally epistemological, and they're fundamentally a rejection of reason, and reason is a means for knowing the world, and they are a search for simplified explanations of the world, explanations that can explain complex phenomena with something understandable, like somebody's manipulating it, it's the Jews, it's rich people, it's, you know, whatever. So anything is, so it's primarily epistemological, issue, but suddenly altruism plays a role in it, in that altruism prevents us from taking our own life seriously, and therefore prevents us from taking our own reasons seriously, and altruism divorces us from our own identity, from our own world, and from our own values, and therefore we are in this position of searching of what is it, devouring ourselves, of suffering, which causes frustration, which I think leads again to why? Why is this happening? I'm a model, I'm trying to be model, I'm really making an effort to sacrifice for the common good. Why are things not going my way? Well, there must be somebody out there who's got it in for me, somebody out there who's screwing with me, somebody out there, I don't know, the Chinese, the immigrants, the Jews, the elites, they have it in for me and not making it possible for good Christian me to just follow my, to benefit from all my sacrifices. I think that's part of the, quote, logic of it, if you can call it logic. All right, people, we have to pick it up if we're gonna make any kind of goals here. Somebody has to come in with a nice chunk if we're gonna make the goal tonight. But then again, maybe we won't, we will see, but it would be good if we did, all right. Dudo bunny, no man is free who cannot control himself. I don't know what that means, right? Freedom is the ability to live by your own judgment, the ability to live free of coercion, to act on your own values. It's, you know, people who can't control themselves can still be free politically. So there's something they can't, they can't be truly pursue their values, not in a meaningful sense, because they can't control their urges, their whims. But they're not being coerced. Force and coercion are not used against them, so in what sense are they not free? I mean, I worry that you're embracing a concept of freedom that is a leftist concept of freedom, which means the ability to do anything. I should be, freedom means, should be able to do whatever you feel like doing. But that's a false concept of freedom. Freedom is something particular and it's limited. Let's see, the Dudo bunny says, enlightenment is loving reality. Yeah, it certainly starts with that, recognizing reality and loving it and building a life around facts and real and never turning your back on reality. Adam, thank you. Adam just came in with $50, really appreciate that. Being a hero of my own life by providing this chunk, I appreciate that. I do have that talk up for those of you who have not seen it yet, called being a hero of your own life. I think you'll enjoy it. It's highly motivating. It's very positive. I did it in Hauda, Hauda, that's how you pronounce it. In the Netherlands, it got a great reception. It's really good Q and A. A lot of new people to objectivism in the audience and they asked a lot of questions, a lot of challenges. So I encourage you to watch that video. It's on my YouTube channel, being a hero of your own life. So thank you, Adam. I assume you watched it already. And I appreciate the support. Liam says, I don't think Millay is possible without Ayn Rand. The absolute sonny has his constant use of objective terms like collective status, parasite. I mean, there's no question he's been influenced by Ayn Rand. He's read Ayn Rand. He quotes Ayn Rand. He knows, he knows of Ayn Rand. You know, religious people are pretty confident and have this, I can have a certain sonny, certainly fascists and communists are very certain and confident in their beliefs. So I wouldn't say it's all about that and it's all about his objectivism. But certainly, yes, the objectivism gives him, even if he doesn't accept the morality, even if he doesn't embrace the morality, it gives him a sense of the kind of moral confidence that is possible because of that morality. And look, objectivism is clearly influenced by people around him, even if it's only partially influenced him. So yeah, I mean, there's no question in my mind that directly and indirectly Ayn Rand made him possible. Whether that's good or not, whether he'll be good or not is to be determined. All right, James asks, more relationships you want, at what point does enjoying the short-term fun, pleasure, enjoyment of getting to know someone, having new experiences end and being aligned of long-term values and getting serious about the relationship begins? I mean, when it ends, right? It really is, I mean, there's no mathematical answer to that, there's no, it depends on the context and it depends on you and on who, I assume, on the other part now, party to this and what that relationship looks like. So you have to, the fun, the pleasure, the enjoyment have to be sustained for long enough and then you have to have a perspective on it that says to you, wow, this is amazing and I see we have this connection and now I can project into the future and I can see us having a future together and at that point, there has to be some attempt and some alignment around that future but only at that point, right? So you can't start out a relationship with, you wanna have kids, right? You start a relationship with the fun, pleasure, enjoyment, seeing what values you share and what values you don't, seeing the effect the other person has on you and the effect you have on the other person and as that matures and as that develops and as you get the sense of, yeah, this is solid and this is something that I can see sustaining itself into the future only then does the question of the future come up. So I don't know, it can be for some people, it can be three months, for other people, it can be six months, for some people, it's two years but it's that point where, yeah, this is really good and this is sustainable and I see it because I understand it, I understand what it is that attracts me to this person I understand what values they have that I think are sustainable over a long run. I can see us being together over the long run. Let's talk about the long run. Let's see if there's alignment and the alignment doesn't have to be complete and it doesn't have to be immediate and it can evolve. People don't know exactly what they want long-term but you don't wanna have that conversation until you have a pretty strong bond and a pretty strong sense of this bond can sustain itself into the future and now let's see if other values are sustainable into the future. Robert says, if you kiss and see fireworks, that's how you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Robert's a romantic. He says then it helps if you do it on 4th of July. But yeah, I mean it's, yeah, you should definitely kiss and you should definitely have sex and you should definitely really do different activities and get a sense of this other person or whether you'd wanna spend a lot of time with him. It's no point in raising a long-term until you have a sense. Now I wanna spend a lot of time with him. Now the question is, do we share long-term values and is that spending a lot of time really possible? I don't know if that's helpful, James. My being a relationship coach, it doesn't come naturally to me so I hope I'm providing some value. Jennifer, do you think some people won't let go of privacy of consciousness because it scares them that there's no being out there? Yeah, fear is a big part of why they don't let go of privacy of consciousness. But some extent they don't know they have it. They don't identify it as such. They don't realize it's a problem. And then I think more broadly it's not even, privacy of consciousness is not even about God. It's about your privacy of your consciousness. And I think people have a hard time abandoning it. A lot of time it leads them to be narcissistic, particularly if they're not religious. And abandoning it means you are now, in a sense, behold into reality. A reality that is out of your control. At least a reality that you can't pretend is in your control. It's never been in your control. But now you can't pretend anymore it's in your control. And that's scary. To them it's scary. And a lot of people who have privacy of consciousness bring privacy of consciousness to most of their lives. And to suddenly abandon that. And to actually, my mind, reality, that's it. That's hard. That's scary. Now, to me, the opposite is scary. Oh, there's a consciousness out there dictating what I'm gonna do and penalizing me or not. I can create the world out there that everybody else is doing the same thing. That's a little scary. I like reality. But people who have privacy of consciousness are afraid of reality. And they're afraid and they don't have the self-esteem. Particularly if they've been privacy of consciousness for a while, they don't have the self-esteem to reject it and to stand on their own two feet with their mind. And reality is the only thing, right? That's it, that's it. My mind, reality. That's the only thing that matters. That's, again, that requires confidence and esteem. Liam says, suppose by some miracle, Malay turns a netina into a free market masterpiece. Will anyone copy it? Or will 2000 plus years of Christian altruism drawn it out? I mean, people, it will inspire people. But look, Chile did really well. Became capitalist, became rich, relatively capitalist. Became rich, became the richest country in Latin America. Did anybody try to copy it? Did anybody try to emulate it? No. Now, one difference is that Malay is going into this saying, this is what I'm going to do. This is what I believe in. This is my agenda. Whereas in Chile, it was foisted on the people. So they never, it was never advocated for. It was never explained. It was never an ideal that was pushed. One of the good things about Malay is he really believes in it. He's obviously passionate about it. Obviously, to ridiculous theatrics. But he really believes in it. He explains it. He's passionate about it. He wants it to happen. He has a better chance of influencing a global conversation about it if he is successful. If he is successful. And to the extent that he's successful, right? We'll see what he can get done and how much of it will have an impact. But yes, I think it does have an impact. They're doodle bunny. The only thing you can do about it off of people is not be one of them. Well, you can ignore them. You can avoid them. You can do all kinds of things like that. Frank says, historians are crying over errors in Napoleon film. They always cry over every historical film. Every historical film that's ever been made has pissed off some historians. So what? A film is not a history. A film is a film. A film should be judged as a film. As a work of art. As an artist's depiction of reality as he sees it. It's not a work of history. Historians don't matter for this. And they'll never be happy. And historians can't agree on what actually happened in history. So some historians will always be pissed off. So my view on stuff like that is who cares? Who cares what historians think? Is the good? Is the film interesting? Is the film evocative? Does it present any values? Is there some value to rewatching it? Scott, it's part of the lesson we lay that people want liberty leaders who will stand up to the left without the usual libertarian both side equivocating. Is this a question, Scott? I mean, what's the point of the question? I mean, it's stupid as usual, right? You want me to say what I will say? No, that's not the lesson I'm going to lay. Not at all. At all. There are lots of lessons I'm going to lay. That is not one of them. There are lots of people out there who are unequivocal anti-left. There's a whole right in the United States that stands for nothing other than they hate the left. Is that good? Is that positive? Is that getting them elected? Is that going to get them winning? It's not. For a minute, it's not because indeed, and of course, you're comparing Argentina to the United States, you're comparing, I mean, he was anti-the conservatives. He ran, it was a three-party race and he ran against a leftist, a conservative, and him, and he was against a conservative. He ran against the conservatives, not with the conservatives. Now, ultimately, the conservatives voted for him because it turned into a two-man race. Yeah, he was anti-establishment. Any free-market person running for president is going to be anti-establishment. The establishment is not free-market, never is. But he went after the conservative party for being conservative, for not being radical, for being part of the establishment, for being corrupt, for being all the right things. But if he had only focused on the left, well, put aside me later, but only focusing on the left, if only the left is a threat, then only focus on the left. I don't know why I buy this, God, you're hopeless. I'm gonna skip that. All right, Papa, is pushing for unions pushing for stagnation? I see a call to go back to when you could get a simple, is pushing for unions pushing for stagnation? I see a call to go back to when we could get a simple union manufacturing job with a high school education and then get promoted because of seniority. Yeah, I mean, clearly, the push for unions is a push for stagnations and sadly, unions have been pushing for stagnation. It doesn't have to be that way. It shouldn't be that way. They should be as interested as anybody in progress. Progress means higher productivity. It means higher wages. It means better jobs. It means better conditions. AI means getting the drudgery out of work. Robots mean getting the drudgery out of work. So yeah, it is unions, unfortunately, have become a big, big, big part of the problem. And if you read, I ran, writing in the 1960s, she's kind of, she's not anti-union and she has a certain respect for the unions. And in a certain way, the unions at that time are less anti-business than many of our politicians because they realize that their livelihood depends on business. And that's union should be pro-progress, pro-production, pro-technology, not anti because their life depends on it. Their livelihood depends on it. Apollo Zeus, thank you. All right, we're almost done with last four questions if you wanna step in, feel free to do so. Adam says, regarding AI, look up theoretical and astrophysicist, Mikio Kaku. He has a vast knowledge in the subject and a very positive pro-human outlook. I think I have looked him up and yeah, I mean, I think I liked what I read from him. So yes, another positive voice and other positive voice on AI. We need them, we need more of them. But should one run in local politics, politics if one has a chance? I mean, it depends, right? Do you want to? Are you gonna get satisfaction out of it? Maybe you have a chance of winning. Can you actually have a chance of impacting anything, of making any changes, of influencing the debate? Are you doing it? What are you doing it for? Will you be able to untangle government? So it depends. If you enjoy it, if you like it, sure, run. If you think you can have an impact and you like it and it's on a sacrifice, then run. So there are a lot of reasons to do it, but it has to be aligned with your values, first and foremost. Richard says, as AI creates more value in supply chains, do you think the US will adopt a value added tax to supplement the income tax? Oh, good question. Quite possible. I mean, I think that would be a good trade-off actually, get rid of the income tax and have a value added tax or better than a value added tax is a sales tax. The problem of value added tax is it's a hidden tax, although a lot of times it's listed as a tax. So yeah, I mean, a value added tax and consumption tax are better than income taxes. So a shift that eliminates income tax and creates a value added tax is better. But of course, their motivation will be primarily to suck up as much value as they can, right? And look, income taxes will still be lucrative because the reality is as AI creates more value in the supply chain, it means human beings are being more productive and therefore your income and your job will go up dramatically, right? All right. So yeah, as AI creating value, increased value in the supply chain is super, super beneficial to all of us, both because our wages will go up, the standard of living will go up, prices go down, basically everything else is constant. Standard of living quality of life go up. Mark Thomas says, the quote is from Pythagoras. If I recall, wanna ask if you or anyone here is familiar with the work of Patricia Churchland on philosophy and science, I am not. I am not familiar with Patricia Churchland. Any particular book, any particular thing, I can look it up. Steven, what are your thoughts on what is called a Thanksgiving movie? Plains, Trains, and Automobiles with Steve Martin and John Candy? I mean, it's a super funny movie, so it's very entertaining. It's about trying to get home for that skipping, I think, and I can't remember everything goes wrong on planes, trains, and automobiles, and every plane goes wrong, the train goes wrong, the automobile. So it's a road trip, buddy, well, not buddy, you know, obnoxious human beings to one another movie, but it's super funny, as anything pretty much Steve Martin and John Candy do. Enjoyable, fun, family, kind of movie of everything going to hell, things not working out, and everybody yet getting to Thanksgiving and, yeah. All right, I think we are done. That is all the super chats we have unless somebody wants to come in. Remind everybody, tomorrow we'll have a usual show at either 12 or one o'clock PM East Coast time, Thursday no show, Friday we'll have two shows, one in the morning and one in the evening. Not sure what the topic will be, and then Saturday there'll be a show at two PM East Coast time, so we'll be back on regular schedule. Next week should be regular, I thought I was traveling, but I'm not my debate on, whoa, in Iran has been canceled, which is too bad, because I was looking forward to that. There was a debate with Dennis Kucinich, but it's been canceled. So hopefully, hopefully that we schedule it for some time, but for now it's not happening. And yes, all right, have a great rest of your evening, have a great rest of your week, if I don't talk to you before Thanksgiving, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. I talked about the ceasefire in my morning show today, Edward, and you can always ask a super chat, we're only $250 short of the goal, so you can ask a $250 super chat and we can make the goal and I'll answer the question. And yeah, have a great Thanksgiving. Don't forget, what you're celebrating is production, what you're celebrating are the producers, what you're celebrating is your own career, your own productive work, your own productiveness, the virtue of productiveness. All right, see you tomorrow guys, bye everybody.