 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Wednesday, January 10th, I hope everybody's having a great week and continue to have a great week. All right, we are going to roll into our news roundup and we're going to start with a big finance story that I think everybody's waiting for. I don't know, I have not seen the breaking news with regard to this. Maybe there was breaking news, but not yet, no breaking news yet. So anyway, today the SEC, the Security Exchange Commission is supposed to approve a Bitcoin ETF, an exchange traded security, exchange traded fund, that's what the F, for there would be backed by Bitcoin. So the idea here is that you could buy the ETF, the ETF would track the performance of Bitcoin, and of course the ETF would use your money supposedly to buy Bitcoin and therefore would always have the money to pay you. But it means that you could speculate on the price of Bitcoin without owning any Bitcoin. You can speculate on the price of Bitcoin without owning any Bitcoin. So you don't have to go through the trouble of creating a crypto wallet and doing everything you need to do in order to get Bitcoin. You can just buy the ETF and the ETF will go up and down, the value of the ETF will go up and down based on the price of Bitcoin. And when you sell the ETF, you get cash and that cash, the price at which you sell it will reflect the price of Bitcoin when you sell it. There are at least eight different companies competing to offer Bitcoin ETF and they are competing on price. Now what do you mean by competing on price? Bitcoin price is set. They are competing on the fee that they take. They can do this for free, right? So in order to, when you buy the ETF, you're going to have to, you will pay a monthly fee for the period where you hold the ETF. The monthly fee varies right now between zero for the first six months. The best deal I can see right now is zero for the first six months and then 0.21% after six months. That's being offered by AUK Invest. Bitwise is giving you two months free and then 0.2%, a little lower than AUK in the long run. But you get more free at AUK. Other funds are also giving you six months free. Ice shares actually gives you 12 months free and then 0.25% and then others are not giving anything free, at least not for now. Although I think they'll have to, otherwise how can they compete? But I see two, four, six, eight, 10, 11 different firms offering Bitcoin ETFs. The Bitcoin price has gone up quite a bit in recent weeks in anticipation for this. This will allow a lot of institutional money, a lot of people who, again, don't want to bother with actually owning the cryptocurrency, don't want to bother with securing it, don't want to have to bother with creating wallets and all of that. They can, in spite of that, they can buy the ETF and they can buy Bitcoin this way. There was a fake post yesterday that, I guess, the SEC Twitter account was hacked and there was a fake post yesterday that resulted in Bitcoin jumping significantly up and then as soon as they discovered it was fake crashing significantly down. Anyway, what this basically is, and the reason people are excited about it beyond the fact that more people will be able to participate, although if you listen to Peter Schiff, he's arguing that as soon as the ETF comes out, there'll be a price spike and then everybody will sell and Bitcoin will collapse. So it'll be interesting to see if his prediction about Bitcoin is right. He's been wrong so far, mostly wrong on Bitcoin. What this is as a sanction by the SEC that Bitcoin is, if you will, a legit asset. This doesn't make Bitcoin money. Bitcoin is not money. Bitcoin, I don't think, is going to be money maybe one day in some distant future. But Bitcoin is not money. Bitcoin is a speculative asset. I don't know how to value the speculative asset. I don't understand where it gets its value. I don't understand what value it provides. And I know some of the things that I know what it does. I know some of the value it provides. I don't understand the valuation, how you translate it into valuation. Certainly not at the current prices. It doesn't really make any sense to me. But if it ever becomes money, if it becomes the dominant money in the world, then it's way underpriced. Then it's worth, I think closer to a million dollars, Bitcoin. If it ever becomes money on a global scale, I don't see that happening. Certainly not anytime soon. Certainly not in my lifetime. But who knows? I could be wrong. I've been often wrong. But anyway, this is exciting, particularly for those of you who invest in Bitcoin. This is clear legitimization. This clearly puts Bitcoin into one of the asset classes that institutional investors are going to look at, and that people with diversified portfolios will look at. And you'll probably see an increase in the kind of average investor's Bitcoin allocation, because they can do it now so easily and so cheaply through the ETF. And of course, everybody's withholding breath for the government central planner bureaucrat to decide whether it's okay for them to have the ETF. They're supposed to decide today. So any minute now, you could see a decision. And of course, the suspense, part of the suspense is around the stock market movement of both Bitcoin and then the ETFs once they list the ETF. So a lot of action in the Bitcoin space in the next few days. Just because it's relevant to this, J-Doc says, wait for Bitcoin, it's hard for asset managers to not notice Bitcoin anymore. It's slowly becoming mainstream and accepted. Yeah, as a speculative asset. And the question is, it's not income producing. It's not revenue producing. It's not dividend producing. What is it producing? And then the question is going to be for all asset managers, how do you value this asset? How do you price it, given that it's not producing a cash flow off of what you price this asset? And that's going to be the big question for asset managers moving forward. Or are you just doing it, put a little bit in it, because what the hell? I mean, it's gone up so much over the last 13 years or whatever. Why not? Even if I don't understand it, it might as well be in it. So if it goes up to a million, I get to benefit from the upside. Of course, it could also go down quite a bit. J-Doc says, fun fact, for any four-year period, portfolios of 2% Bitcoin, 98% cash would exceed 100% exposure to S&P, but with much lower volatility. I mean, I'd want to see those numbers. I want to make sure that those four-year periods are rolling four-year periods. I guess it's possible, particularly given the extraordinary success of Bitcoin early on. I wonder if from the peak, when did it peak in 2021, if that is true? Now, that's why it's a four-year period, because you don't have 2025 yet, so you don't know what the four-year period that starts if you bought it at the peak in 2021 would be. Probably not exceed S&P 500, at least as of now. I'm always suspicious of stats like that. I could probably create a million statistics like that. There's something that mutual fund managers always list that I think is really, really important. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Why four years? I know why not two years, because two years Bitcoin underperforms dramatically from 2021. Three years, it probably underperforms dramatically from 2021. Four years escapes that. Five years, I'm not sure why not five years. Five years probably holds, but you just don't get many data points. Also, Bitcoin is an asset, a young asset, so there's not a lot of history around it, right? Not a lot of history for Bitcoin. So, you know, the market's pricing it the way the market is. Those people who have dared to short Bitcoin, which I have not done, mostly have taken massive hits other than between 2021 and 2022. They have taken massive hits and lost a lot of money. I am well experienced in losing a lot of money, shorting, and particularly, I know now never to short a speculative asset, something that people get very emotional, very excited and very passionate about, and it can go up through the roof and you can lose everything. You can lose gazillions of dollars. With a short position, there's no limit to how much money you can lose. When you buy something, the most you can lose is what you invested in it. With a short, you can lose many, many, many multiples of what you invested, what you shorted. So, beware short sellers. That's why markets are asymmetrical. Anyway, that's for another time. We can talk about that. All right. What else is in the news? Well, big news out of Ecuador. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Ecuador. Ecuador is a country in Latin America. It borders with, on the one side, I think it borders with Peru. Yeah, it borders with Peru. And I think on the other side, it borders with Colombia. Is that right? I think that's right. Ecuador is, you know, the Galapalus Islands are part of Ecuador. Ecuador has two pretty well-known cities that I've been to. Once, I've given talks in Quito, I think San Francisco University in Quito, and I give talks in a couple of places in Guayaquil. Ecuador is in the midst of a massive spike in violence that has been occurring for the last year or so, primarily as a consequence of massive increase in activity by various drug gangs, drug cartels. There are at least 12 official recognized gangs in Ecuador. And violence has gone through the roof. Murder rates have become some of the worst in the world. Part of what's going on here is, I mean, this is pretty simple. As long as there is massive demand for illegal drugs in the United States, there will arise illegal groups, groups that deal in these illegal drugs and use violence as a means because it's illegal and that's all they have in order to facilitate the demand from the United States. The demand in the United States is massive for these drugs. El Salvador, which used to be the most violent place on planet Earth, had this just massive rate of homicide, has been completely, not completely, but mostly pacified. Mostly pacified by the president, by the harsh regime he has put together in terms of incarcerating gang members. As a consequence, the drug activity and with it the murders and the violence have moved elsewhere. Costa Rica, which used to be this incredibly safe place, has now experienced a spike in gang violence. Mexico, which has always been violent, is now even more violent. And Ecuador is seeing a massive spike in violence. So when you have this illegal drug that has to get somebody's going to facilitate the movement, somebody's going to facilitate their movement. And that movement is, and if it's not in El Salvador, if those gangs are neutralized, then gangs will pop up elsewhere to facilitate that movement and bring the violence, the relevant violence with them. So Ecuador has just experienced this explosion of violence. And in the last few days, a couple of the leading gang members who were incarcerated and were put in jail have disappeared. In other words, escaped the custody. As a consequence of their escape, the gangs feel completely emboldened and feel like they are in control in Ecuador. And violence in the streets of Ecuador has exploded. A TV station in Guayaquil was taken over. Hostages were taken by one of the gangs. Ecuadorian security forces ultimately secured the TV stations and freed the hostages. But all over Ecuador, particularly in Quito and in Guayaquil, there is a massive spike in violence and the gangs are just rampaging through these cities. As a consequence, the president of Ecuador has declared an emergency situation. He has deployed the military. He assigned an executive, whatever emergency thing, which allows the military to function within Ecuador itself. And the Ecuadorian military is in the streets with armored vehicles with troops of both Quito and Guayaquil. I expect them to round up thousands of these gang members. They might mimic what was done in El Salvador, basically look for anybody with gang paraphernalia, tattoos, symbolism, and round them up. It's going to be a fight because these gang members are ready, so there's going to be literally warfare in the streets. The president, in order to declare this emergency situation, identified the 12 gangs as terrorist organizations. So now they are treated as domestic terrorists. And there's in a sense a kind of a, I wouldn't say civil war, but there's real battles. There's real shooting. There's real violence going on in Ecuador right now in an attempt to pacify these gangs. They need to do something. The violence in Ecuador is absurd and ridiculous and it's completely disruptive of regular life. Ecuador was doing quite well. I mean, it wasn't booming, but it was doing quite well before this explosion of violence and they need to quash this. They need to destroy it. Of course, if they destroy it in Ecuador, the violence will just move somewhere else. And the reality is, and nobody wants to admit this and nobody wants to deal with this, the reality is that as long as the United States keeps drugs like heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, and the rest of them illegal, South America from Mexico-South will continue to experience massive amounts of violence. By the way, and the United States will too, that is whatever violence we have in the U.S., much of it is caused by our drug laws, much of it is caused by gang warfare between drug sellers and distributors. So if you want to solve these violence problems, the ultimate solution is legalizing drugs. Legalizing drugs in America, the more we legalize, I mean, we've kind of legalized part, but not really because we tax it so heavily and regulate it so heavily. But what really needs to happen is a legalization of all, all these drugs. And yeah, it's the United States drug laws are the cause of much of this problem. Of course, the rest of Latin America doesn't want to have different drug laws because they'll piss off the Americans. Imagine Mexico legalized drugs, which I think this president is threatening to do. I mean, America would go apoplectic. Vivec would invade tomorrow. So, yeah, I like Ecuador. I know people from Ecuador. Ecuador has a vibrant free market community in Ecuador. Enrand is, is read in Ecuador quite extensively. And I hope, I hope Anastos here is in Ecuador. He's listening to the show right now and he's in Ecuador. I really hope the Ecuadorian government can get this under control. I mean, this gives you a little flavor of what Anarchy would look like. Violence, gang warfare, horrors in the streets. All right, let's see. Number of reports, number of reports out in the economic press, the financial press, about the fact that really the world, really the entire world is in a, in a state of stagnation. Really, since, if you include COVID and since COVID, the world economy is dragging. It's got some of the lowest growth rates we've seen in many, many, many decades. For a long time, the story, the economic story of the world was that much of the developing world was growing at super high rates. The United States was doing relatively well. Europe was growing a little bit. But the world was generally on a, on a, on a trajectory. People coming out of poverty because of this and, and the economic future looked bright. A lot of this is not, it was reversed during COVID and then coming out of COVID. The, just the, the economy is tepid and the economy is tepid. For the reasons I've been saying, we're going to face stagnation. I've been saying it for the last 15 years. It's because of increased government intervention and abandonment of what the left calls neoliberal and the right called neoliberal policies and abandonment of free trade and abandonment of, of markets and over reliance and government stimuli, government regulations, government control, over dependence on, well, dependence, not any dependence is over dependence on central bank stimulus, both in Europe, in the United States, in China and elsewhere. And this is, this is placed a drag on the entire world gone. Also from the rest of the world is a model is a belief. Oh, we should all become America because America is not America anymore. So the belief was we should be like America. We should lower tariffs. We should lower taxes. We should lower regulations. We should, we should, we should strive towards more freedom free markets. That is gone. That kind of went away after the great financial crisis. And really the world does not recovered its faith. Faith is the wrong word, belief, trust in markets in whatever remnants of capitalism it is. A big part of this, of course, is the fact that China is stagnating. And China is facing a real slowdown in economic growth, possibly zero economic growth or maybe even a recession. Europe right now is probably as a European Union is probably in a recession. UK is probably in a recession. China might be in a recession. Of course, the actual numbers were never, were never knows. And the reality is that the Chinese economy is dragging. The Chinese economy is in crisis more than dragging. It's got a real estate crisis, but it's got a massive debt crisis. And the debt is far bigger than anybody else that people feared. Every day, more revelations about debt at the local government level, at the municipal, at the regional province government levels is revealed. There's so much that was done off balance sheet that is not clearly reported. And this is a massive drag on the Chinese economy on top of more regulations, more controls. She's increased authoritarianism and increased central planning. We'll get to an example of that in a minute. And you're really seeing China become a drag on the world economy. Indeed, the only economy in the world right now that's doing, I don't know, OK, not great, but OK is the United States. That is the reality. If you look at GDP numbers, if you look at any, you look at employment numbers by any objective parameters, objective parameters that everybody recognized when Trump was president. But for some reason, nobody looks at when Biden is president. But every objective parameter, the United States is the only economy in the world right now of a major economy doing OK. China is dragging. Europe is in a recession. And the UK is in a recession. And, you know, the challenge in China is only going to get deeper because it's going to combine increased regulation, increased control, increased involvement of the central bank and of Chinese authorities with a shrinking number of young people in kind of the working age youth, the shrinking number of babies. China is going to be one of the fastest shrinking countries in the world. It could have its population in a few decades. And that is all a recipe for massive economic decline. Another reason why I don't worry too much about China. I was going to say something about China. Yes, a demographic decline. Yeah, anyway, so massive challenges on a global scale economically. And again, the US economy somehow is chugging along, chugging along. China is looking more and more and more like or even worse than Japan did in coming out of the big crash in the early 1990s or the late 80s in Japan, i.e. decades of stagnation. China is worse because the population shrinkage is going to be even faster than the population shrinkage in Japan. One more Chinese story. You know, in 1978, when Dengchapeng in the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s, when Dengchapeng came to power in China, he basically identified the area close to Hong Kong. He made a circle around it and he basically said, I want to see what will happen if we just leave this area in a sense alone. If we allow foreign capital to come in, if we don't regulate it, if we don't control it, if we just let markets function in this area, what will happen? And the consequence was the creation of one of the most dynamic cities in the world, where a lot of the Chinese high tech is based, where Apple iPhones are built, or at least one of the places. Anyway, Xinjiang became a city of, I don't know, 12 million. Next to Xinjiang, other Guangzhou became a massive city of even more than 12 million. Dongguan is another city of 8 to 10 million. Anyway, the whole region exploded with productive activity. Many cities were created out of nothing. Dongguan, there was no city there. Xinjiang, there was no city there. Guangzhou, there was a city that just exploded in terms of size. Well, Xi is trying to do, is trying to mimic this in a sense. He went to a map and he drew a circle around an area not too far from Beijing. Beijing is, the city is too big. It's just so big the infrastructure is failing it. Traffic jams in Beijing are just unbelievable. And he made a circle around this place and he said, we're going to create a new modern, dynamic, exciting city here. And through massive central planning, a city was built. A city was built in this area. It's supposed to be a high-tech metropolis. It's called Xinjiang, something like that, X-I-O-N-G-A-N. Well, it's not north of Beijing, I'm wrong. It's south of Beijing. It's just south of Beijing. And the idea was to build a city, to build office space, to build residential, and if you build it, they will come. And it would be a model city. It wouldn't have traffic jams. It would be beautifully laid out. It would have parks. It would have everything. And indeed, the city has been built. It's massive. It's got all these kind of minion buildings. It's got a whole office park. It's got a whole area for high-tech companies to be in. It's cost. They've spent $85 billion building this city. Which is maybe the most expensive infrastructure project that Chinese have ever engaged in. The only problem with the city is nobody lives there. Nobody lives there. China probably does not need a new city with a population that's starting to shrink, or it's already shrinking. The reality is that nobody wants the city. Nobody lives in the city. For Beijing, Beijing University said they're going to relocate to this place, but who knows if that's going to happen, when it's going to happen. There's an amazing high-speed railway station that basically is empty. Nobody goes there. Nobody leaves from there. The streets are empty. The homes are empty. The buildings are empty. Everything is just empty. And this exemplifies the change in China. When Deng was in China, basically you draw an area and allow freedom there, and then you don't micromanage it. You don't centrally plan it. You let it thrive. And that was, those were the boom years for China, 80s, 90s, and the first decade of the 2000s. Since Xi has come to power, there's been more and more and more control regulations, central planning. And as a consequence of that control, regulation, and central planning, as a consequence of that, you get empty cities. I mean empty cities on a scale we've never seen before, even not in China. By the way, for those of you who claim that I'm saying that the economy in the United States is a consequence of Biden, I've never said that. And by the way, the reality is that I didn't think the good economy under Trump was a consequence of Trump. I didn't think the great economy we had in the 1890s was a consequence of Bill Clinton. I didn't think that the economy under Bush was a consequence of Bush. I don't think presidents have that much influence on the economy during their reign. They get a lot of credit for it. And the funny thing is, I'm sure Scott, when Trump was president, you gave him full credit for the greatest economy in human history. Biden has a decent economy going and nobody gives him credit. I don't give either of them credit. Indeed, the economy would be a lot better today, if not for Biden. And Trump's economy was never very impressive, never impressive at all. And it could have been really impressive if he'd done the right things. So I don't give presidents credit for the economy, but I call it like it is. Like the numbers are the numbers. The reality of what's going on is the reality of what's going on. But so many people out there, so many people out there, have lost the ability to be objective about anything. Everything they look at, they look at with political glasses. The same number, if Trump gets it, oh, it's great. If Biden gets it, oh, it's terrible. Because one is Republican and one is Democrat. Oh, the other way around. Oh, the other way around. Same thing other way around. The same numbers that Obama got that were fantastic when Trump got, oh, it's a terrible economy. It's both sides, but there's no objectivity out there. All there is, all there is, is political hackery and political absolutely unbelievable distortions. All right, let's see. The president deserves a very small share of credit blame, very small in my view. Mostly they can really screw things up. And granted, Biden is really screwing things up. But not for now. For now, most of Biden's screw-ups we will pay for in four years, five years, 10 years, we will pay for over time. We will pay for the fact that, but, you know, we will pay for the fact that we had the Inflation Reduction Act, which was bipartisan. We'll pay for the fact for the CHIP Act, which was bipartisan. We will pay for these things, but it takes a long time for us to feel the pain of those things. But no, very few presidents benefit. Even when you deregulate, the benefits of deregulation happen much later. So when, you know, a lot of the credit that Ronald Reagan got for a good economy really belongs to Jimmy Carter. But Jimmy Carter never experienced the benefits of the deregulation he did. It only came later. When Trump deregulated, I said over and over again, it's meaningless because it's done at the regulatory ages. As soon as another regime comes, another administration comes, they'll flip it. So it doesn't have lasting impact. And that has turned out to be exactly true. The bad stuff that Trump did, tariffs and stuff like that, Biden has kept in place. So Biden's really, really bad. He's a terrible economic president. But the economy's doing okay. It's pretty amazing. In spite of Biden, there's a good economy. And if you deny that there's a good economy, then you're just pure politics and you've lost all objectivity, all objectivity. All right. Talk about Trump. God. Did you see Trump yesterday? Give his little talk about, right after the discussion about whether he has immunity or not. Basically, Trump went out and said, I have immunity for everything. If I'm president and I go out, he didn't say this, but he implied it. If I go out and we'll get to something very similar in a minute, if I go out into Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, I'm president. I'm immune. You could impeach me. But unless you impeach me, I cannot be tried criminally. Basically, Trump said he could do anything. And basically, Trump also said, he basically said that if he loses the election in November, if he loses the election, there will be bedlam. Because of the way the Democrats are trying to manipulate the election by putting, you know, by trying him, by filing criminal procedures against him. He said, quote, it'll be bedlam in the country. It's a very bad thing. It's a very bad precedent. As we said, it's the opening of a Pandora box. And he went on to threaten that he was going to start legal proceedings against Biden as soon as he got out. Again, never, you know... The reality is that, you know, in almost all the cases where he's criminally being prosecuted, there's really, really strong evidence that suggests he's guilty. But it doesn't matter. He's already threatening violence. Violence, indeed, is rampant in our politics today. You've got massive threats, bomb threats. So you've had bomb threats in a dozen state capitals, closures because of an increased security threat measures, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Maine, Oklahoma, Illinois, Idaho, South Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Maryland, and Arizona have all seen increases in bomb threats and threats of violence that have either caused legislatures to shut down for a while or to step up security. But there was a... I mean, Trump is clearly fomenting violence, political violence in this country. Really evil, really, really bad. And the thing is this. There's a solution to this. The solution is defeat him in the primary. If he's defeated in the primary, he can't argue that the Democrats stole the election from him. He can't argue and, you know, make January 6 seem like Charles Play and maybe do something much, much worse. He can't do that if he loses the primary. All the focus of anybody, anybody who values the American system of government, anybody who values the American system of government, anybody who values that system should be doing everything they can to make sure that Trump is not the Republican nominee. Everything. There's no greater threat to liberty and freedom in this country right now than Trump becoming president. The only really way to make sure that doesn't happen is to defeat him in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. And that depends on you more than anything else. But, yeah, I mean, you guys think Trump is... I mean, so many of you think Trump is God's gift to humanity. Oh, yeah. So in this immunity hearing... So there's a hearing in front of the D.C. District Court about whether Trump has immunity. One of the judges asked Trump's lawyer, he said, if Trump is president, gets a SEAL Team 6 to assassinate an American political adversary of Trump, you know, who's running against him in an upcoming election, would Trump have immunity against that? Would Trump not be able to be criminally prosecuted? And the attorney for Trump went back and did hard and basically said, you know, he needs to be impeached and if he's impeached, and the judge says, well, let's say he's not impeached. I want a yes and no answer. Would you say that the president has immunity from assassinating one of his political adversaries if he's not impeached? And the Trump attorney said, yes. He has immunity. And that's why I said, middle of Fifth Avenue, it's basically the same thing. All right. Quickly, reminder that this show is made possible. All my shows are made possible from contributions from you, from people like you. We have 103 people watching live, so there certainly should be some people able to do some super chat. That's one way in which you can support the show if you're listening live, if you're not listening live, or if you want to do it a different way, you can support the show a monthly with Patreon or your on bookshow.com slash membership, or you can even become a member here on the YouTube platform, but it does require action on your part. And the show, as I said, doesn't exist without support from people like you. And, yeah, today we're a little short, so let's see if we can do something about that, guys. All right, final story, kind of a funny but really, really sad story from the United Kingdom. It turns out the Nienke Kingdom, the post offices, the offices that are labeled post office are basically franchises. They are small businesses owned by small business owners that have franchised the post office from, I guess, the UK post office, the UK government. Well, over the last few decades, really between 1999 and 2015, there were 983 convictions against people who managed or owned these post offices for fraud claiming that they had been skimming off the top, that the books didn't add up, they didn't match, and they were skimming. Four of the 983 people died of suicide. One of the post mistresses who owned the post office was jailed while she was pregnant. Others had to file for bankruptcy and quite a few landed up in jail, in jail. Now, I mean, if it's fraud, then it makes sense, but it's a little weird that so much fraud was being committed by people running post offices and for such a long time, wouldn't they see that others are going to jail and stop the fraud? Well, it turns out that no fraud was ever committed. No fraud was ever committed. That indeed, the numbers on the accounting did not match up because of bad software, a software glitch that basically once in a while misaligned the books and caused the appearance of fraud when no fraud actually existed. In spite of all these people being prosecuted, in court, being found guilty, sent into jail, 60 of them were convicted and had died before any conviction was overturned. Can you imagine? A computer glitch has basically responsible for 983 convictions of people. Again, whose lives are being destroyed. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is proposing legislation to parliament that ensures that convictions are scrapped and compensation is paid, which is very unusual. But you can't bring people's lives back. You can't bring their bankruptcy back. I mean, God, can you imagine sitting in jail because of an accounting glitch that nobody figured out? And you being accused of fraud when you know you didn't commit it. But there's no way to prove it because they're accounting books. Are they accounting books? I mean, I think it's just a horror story. It's just hard to believe that it happened and that it was allowed to happen for so long and this could continue. All right, let's see. I am going to thank some people who did some stickers. Stephen Harper, Jonathan Honing, Mike Dial, Fendt Harper, Robert Nesu and Kim A. and Big Worm all did stickers. You two can do a sticker. We've got a, you know, if everybody did a sticker, even like a $2 sticker like Robert, $1.99, maybe everybody online right now, come in at $1.99 and we will easily make our target, right? So $1.99 for everybody. Let's do a little thing like Jonathan Honing got us to do $0.99 the other day. $1.99. Let's see how many of you want to participate and get contributions up. All right, Michael says, was Ayn Rand the greatest social commentator to ever live? Yeah, I think so. I think her commentary is deeper, more interesting, more philosophical. She covered so many different topics and was really, really substantive. I don't know of any social commentary that comes even close in terms of its quality. Fendt Harper, show idea. On the anniversary of free market revolution, have Don on and do an update on parts of it. Like the current number of alphabet agencies or regulations versus deregulation rate, delisting, relisting to it yesterday, great book. Oh, it's an audiobook. That's right. That's pretty cool. Thank you, Fendt Harper. Really appreciate that. Yeah, update of free market revolution would be fun. We'd have to gather those stats. Oh, people are taking me seriously on this. Thank you, guys. This is great. I and Mika did six shekel, which is something between $1 and $2. Jennifer did $2 round. Where the $99? Schaubart a $1.99. Darius $0.99. This is great. $0.99 helps. Every $1.99, every $0.99, everything like that helps. Particularly if everybody does it, then it really aggregates into a significant amount of money. All right, Michael, I don't think it's reasonable to assume everybody is a secret antisemite. I don't think most people care about Jews one way or the other. Well, I think that's probably true, but a lot of people are antisemites. A lot of people just are, and a lot of people seem to care about Jews. A lot more people care about Jews than one would expect, right? And it would be ideal if people didn't care about any group. That is that people treated other people as individuals, and there was no thinking about Jews at all one way or the other. But don't underestimate the power, significance, and prevalence of antisemitism. People have throughout the ages, you know, undepleted and, you know, for 2,000 years, it's been proved to be one of these evil things that constantly pops up, and always surprising on who is participating. Fred just did $0.99, and it's his first Super Chat ever. Thank you, Fred. I mean, all of you should do. All of you have never done Super Chat. You should just do a $0.99 Super Chat right now just to get your first one in there. Robert says, I have a very optimistic view of life in the 21st century, but do you ever stop and suddenly think, what the hell, people? Trump versus Biden again? I stop and think that all the time. You know, it's unimaginable to me that the Republican and Democratic Party are this stupid. Are this stupid. It's just truly shocking. Unfortunately, what happened in 2020 is that Biden got out a huge vote. A lot of people came out to vote. We had record numbers in 2020. And the reason they came out to vote is they hated Trump and they came out to vote against Trump. So they voted for Biden, because he was the only one on the ticket. Biden took it and the Democrats interpreted it as they love the Democrats. They don't. People don't want to vote for Biden. They voted for Biden because they had no other choice. But tempt them again and they might flip on you. So Biden is the worst Democratic candidate right now. Most others could probably beat Trump. Biden probably can't. So at least right now it looks like he can't. If the economy actually strengthens this year, if we get a soft landing and a reversal and the Fed decreases interest rates this year, then who knows, all bets are off. But if things continue the way they are, it's going to be very difficult for Biden to beat Trump. And particularly in the swing states, God, I don't understand the American people making this kind of choice. So the Democratic and Republican Party. All right, there we go. Farm policy. I understand why it is just for Israel to defend itself and go scorching earth and Palestinians. But is it fair for you and Ben Shapiro to ask Americans to risk their lives in this war? I'm not asking Americans to risk their lives in this war. I'm not asking the Americans to risk their lives at all. I am asking the Americans to deploy their military in American self-interest. To preserve the shipping lanes, which I think is an American responsibility. It's what the American Navy is built for. It is part of, you know, it's always been, I and Ben was must asked, what is the, what is a farm policy under capitalism? She said, all the farm policies free trade is the facilitation of free trade. And she complimented the British for the gunboat diplomacy that opened up ports and that facilitated free movement of shipping. So I think it's in the United States, it's in your interest to open up the shipping lanes and be, I think the United States should take out Iran. But I've thought the United States should take out Iran since 1979 when Iran declared war on the United States. Iran is a real threat to the United States. It's a real threat to U.S. interests. And it's attacking Americans, making lives at stake in the Middle East right now every single day. So I'm not asking for one single American soldier to lay foot in Israel and to fight for Israel. I'm asking American soldiers to fight for America, to fight Iran and to fight and to open up the sea lanes. Fighting Iran is much more important than opening up the sea lanes. Those are American interests, direct American interests. So, and I don't think Ben Shapiro is asking any American to go out there and, you know, risk their lives for Israel. So I think that's a straw man of both my position and Ben Shapiro's position. And in terms of, you know, support of weapons and financial support, that's part of the deal America has with Israel, that it would provide that. You know, if it doesn't want to do it, it should say it doesn't want to do it and let Israel have enough time to arm itself and not do it in the middle of a crisis. And I think it's some of the best investment America can make. Israel is fighting an American enemy. It's fighting, and as I explained after 9-11, Gisbalah and Hamas are part of the slommest enemy that America and Europe face. Israel's failure will be the death of the West. So don't put troops on the ground, but send them weapons. I hold the same thing for Ukraine. Don't put troops on the ground, but send them weapons. They're fighting your enemy for you. Don't risk your life, but do, you know, but recognize the fact that they're fighting an enemy that you share with them. All right, we've got, let's see, Fred. Oh, way before Fred. Let's see, we've got, Jennifer, I say, Charles Badavius, we've got Fred. Also, first time Super Chat, I think I said that before. Jennifer, another $2 or $1.99 this time. Thought criminal did $2.99. Carolina from Mexico, I have no idea how much $50 Mexican pesos are. Actually, I do have an idea. No, I don't. Yal, ask a question. We'll get to that, and then Stephen did $2. Yeah, I mean, these $2 slowly are chipping away. We just need another, like, $50 of those and where we need to be, which is not a lot, right? So keep it up, guys. Keep going. All right, Wesley, off topic. But South Africa is such a repulsive country, friendly with Russia, even as they accuse Israel of genocide. They were backward country during apartheid and they're backward today. Well, they're more backward today, and economically and politically, and in terms of apartheid, they were morally backward back then and they're still morally backward. It is a despicable country. It's a despicable regime. I really, really, really do hope that in the election in South Africa this year, finally, South Africans vote out ANC, the ruling party that has won every single election since the fall of apartheid. It's about time that black Africans recognize that their interests are not aligned with ANC. That ANC is just robbing them blind. It is destroying an economy that has the potential to allow South Africans, white, black, grey, purple, whatever, to thrive and the ANC is destroying their capacity, destroying the ability to do so and that they need to get rid of them. This is not about skin color. This is about individual rights and economically this is about having an economy that produces jobs and wealth. And to do that, you need to get rid of socialist ANC and bring in a political party that respects private property and respects markets, even somewhat. And there are political parties like that in South Africa. They just need to beat the ANC, which is going to be very difficult, but I hope it finally happens. Otherwise, South Africa is just a one-party state with all the corruption and authoritarianism that one-party states always result in. Stingerbell 31, hello, Iran. How much for an artwork, painting, sculpture, review? Let's say $100 for painting or sculpture for me to review it. I in America, Gaza del Linda este. I in America basically wants to flatten Gaza. By the way, you're not getting your wish. Israel is clearly slowed down. It's aggression. It's bombing a lot less. More Israeli troops are dying as a consequence. They are moving to phase three, which is more pinpoint, special forces, limited troops on the ground. It's going to cost lives, Israeli lives, but at least no Palestinian will die and Gaza won't be flattened and the world will be satisfied. But it's sad, it's tragic, it's awful, completely awful, horrible. Mitch Clouser, thank you for the $5. Adam, thank you. Thank you. So we're slowly just chipping away at everything, but we've only got three more questions to go. I know somebody wants to come in with $100 to get us over this. Robert says, YBS freedom, young animals, you can afford to super chat, but can you afford not to? That's a good question. I don't have an answer for that. Daria says, ever watch South Park, thoughts on Eric Cartman? God, I haven't watched South Park enough to have thoughts on Eric Cartman, but I've thoughts on South Park. I mean, South Park is one of the funniest things ever. I loved their thing on the Mormons, the Broadway play musical in the Mormons, that was hysterical. But anyway, a lot of South Park are very, very, very funny. But I found it too cynical. Too, and there were no positive values. Everything was made fun of. There was no limit to what was made fun of, and there was no projection of something positive, something worthwhile, something good, something you should live for. There was a lot about all the stupidity in the world, but what about all the good stuff in the world? And I didn't like that. I thought that South Park and Simpsons and all of those, all of those really badly animated and generally cynical shows, basically raised generations of cynics. I think the current generation is as bad as it is, not as much because of TikTok or because of iPhones, but I think because of all those shows that they watched, because of the cynicism of the art that they were exposed to. Trey Parker and other creators maybe were libertarians, or sometimes they called themselves libertarians, sometimes not. But that's the problem with libertarians too often, is they know exactly what they're against. They know how to make fun of the status quo. But what are they for? What are the values they're willing to fight for? What do they believe in? What is the good? And how do you project that in art? It's much easier to make fun of evil, fun of bad stuff than it is to present a positive vision of the world. That's a genius of Iron Man presenting a positive vision of the world. And they didn't do that. And I think a lot of young people have suffered from that and raised in a cynical, skeptical environment with no positive values. What was your first book of 2024? In terms of the book I read, I just finished a book on Didro, the Enlightenment figure, the Encyclopedist Didro. I just finished that book yesterday, the day before yesterday. And I started on a lecture course by Alan Kors on the Enlightenment. So I'm in the midst of that. I've got the Enlightenment project reading to still finish. I've got a few more books on that, and then I'll move to something else. Darius, you wanted to see more movies criticizing Stalin. The movie Red Sun Superman is good. What if Superman was from the Soviet Ukraine, not Kansas? That sounds pretty funny. I assume it's a comedy, but I will check that out. But then, as I said, not a lot of movies that criticize the Soviets. I was complaining about that, so I'm always eager to find a new one. Although I have a feeling this one's going to be... Well, we'll give it a shot. Richard says, thanks for running up the news every day. Thank you, Richard. I appreciate the ongoing support, the regular support you provide. That is great. Well, only $28 short of our goal. Andrew says, do you think one should consider one's work as part of one's personal life, or is work a separate mental compartment, and the rest of one's life is another, as I think most people consider it? No, I think everything should be integrated. Work is your central purpose, your personal central purpose. And that's why it's so important to find work that you love, that gratifies you, that satisfies you, that challenges you. It is you. It is part of your life. It's really, really bad to compartmentalize different parts of your life. You land up not doing well in any of them, or you land up doing well in one and then not being happy and not being having the opportunity to gain the gratification, the happiness, the pleasure from being successful, because in the other place, something else is going on that is not integrated with it. So you want an integrated life to the extent that you can. And you certainly don't want to compartmentalize. Raphael says, art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him to grasp them directly as if they were percepts. Could you explain the psychopistemological function of art? Like in a question at the end of our news roundup? Probably not. I've got plenty of content up online to do that. I encourage you to read the romantic manifesto. But fundamentally, what art does is it takes our most abstract concepts. You know, epistemological clarity. This world is livable. This world is knowable, which is what epistemological clarity is. This world is livable. It takes these more fundamental metaphysical values, if you will. And it puts them in a concrete. It shows your painting where everything is clear and sharp and differentiate, distinguishable, and where man in the painting is efficacious and successful. And you go, yeah, I mean, that's my life. That's the world in which I live or want to live. That is those abstract concepts. I see them now. I can see what is meant by it. Now, you don't think that, but that's how you respond automatically to a sharp painting. If you respond positively, it's you saying, yes, life is, the world is knowable. It's reinforcing that in the painting. You certainly get that from like Vermeer. Life is knowable. Life is beautiful. Life is good. Light is amazing. Look at the beauty of light anyway. So it's taking abstract metaphysical concepts. Those are non-metaphysical concepts, heroism, beauty, and things like that, and presenting them in concrete form before you. The metaphysical is just the more important. It's what makes it art. Anmika said, I used to feel like we lived in South Park episodes. How I feel now I think like we live in a Raka Raka Ali song. Raka Raka Ali would be happy to hear that. That's pretty funny. Big worm. I'd recommend watching The Pod Generation. It is a science fiction take on future with tons of AI and tech, and it's very well done. Check out the trailer. I bet you could make a great show segment out of it. All right. I'm copy pasting it into my kind of to do to watch list. All right. Wes, thank you. Wes got us over the target. So we made our $250 goal. Thank you to all the superchats. Thank you to everybody who supports this show on a regular, irregular basis, whatever basis you do it, whether it's monthly superchat and everything else. Thanks for making that possible. There will be no news roundups at this time of day in the next few days. I'm traveling. I leave for the airport in a little while. I have to go pack and leave to the airport in less than an hour. I will do a show tomorrow night evening. I'll be in Colorado. I'm not sure if I'll do anything on Friday or Saturday. So probably certainly no show on Saturday because I'm flying all day. So no show Saturday. Friday, I don't know. Probably no shows Friday. I will do a show tomorrow. I'll do everything I can do to do a show. Internet, good internet, hopefully at the hotel. And then I'll probably do a show on Sunday to make it up for you. But thank you all. I will see you tomorrow. Tomorrow will be maybe a mashup of a news roundup plus. Plus some big story that we'll talk more about so it'll be a combination show. All right, see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.