 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, August 30th, summer is almost over. Where did it go? It just flies. Okay, and as you get older, it flies faster. We got a lot to cover today, a lot of stuff going on, I think, I mean, none of these are kind of breaking news kind of stories, but all significant stories out there. So we'll talk about them. Reminder, you can use the Super Chat to ask me questions, so any topic, any issues, any news story out there that you would like me to discuss, please bring it up in the Super Chat, that's the best way to get my attention, and I answer all Super Chat questions. No matter how much money you put in there, $2 to $500, I answer the question, although the more dollars you put in, the higher priority they get. All right, I think we can jump in. No announcements. All right, let's go. Dugan, remember Dugan, the Russian philosopher? Alexander Dugan, I did a whole show about him, so I'm not going to talk much about him today. This is some people considering Putin's whisperer, but it's not clear, it's not clear that he has a relation with Putin, but clearly a big influence on the Russian right, and a big influence on the right more broadly in the world and in the United States. So the right generally in the world loves Dugan, loves Dugan. Anyway, I just came across this quote that was published today from Dugan that I thought was quite entertaining and tells you a lot about, I think it tells you a lot about Russia, and to some extent about Russian culture, and certainly tells you a lot about Dugan. Here's a quote, you all have only a limited time to say goodbye to the West. Now this is the sense in which he's talking about decoupling, right? Russia is going to isolate itself from the West, so no more Western products, no more traveling to the West, no more, just, you know, no contact with the West anymore. Russia isolating itself. So it says you all have only a limited time to say goodbye to the West, to start going over to only using Russian things, sure, it doesn't work, doesn't drive, doesn't function, and isn't tasty, but it's ours. So let's rejoice over that. Now I'm assuming this is a real quote, it sounds like Dugan, so I believe it. I don't speak Russian, so I'm relying here on somebody who I trust, I posted this, who does speak Russian, that's great. And it sounds like the Soviet Union, what has changed, right? It doesn't work, it doesn't drive, it doesn't function, and it isn't tasty, yeah, Russian food, but it's ours. So let's rejoice over that. By Russian, by America, by Russian, by only ours, God, these people are nuts. This is a guy admired and respected throughout the West by right wing nutcases like him. All right, on a more serious topic, God, we're talking about COVID. So here's the thing, first of all, there's a warning under my video that says get the latest information from the WHO about coronavirus, so there's a disclaimer under the video. Second, you know, twice now, recently, including my interview with Amish Adulja, YouTube has banned my video because I talked about COVID. And today I am talking about something a little controversial, so who knows if this video will make it. So we're going to try, we're going to hope it does, and we will see. Anyway, there is a new article out, let me just, oops, let me get rid of that, let me highlight this. A new article out by Jonah Norberg from Sweden, who is a friend, Jonah is quite friendly and is a good guy. I like his books. He has a book called Progress that's very good. And basically the article summarizes how Sweden did during COVID, given that it had very different regime, if you will, in terms of lockdowns than the rest of the West. Rob corrects me, it's Johann Norberg, Johann, I should know, given them friendly with him, I should know. Johann Norberg, there's written an article, the article, you can find the article on Kato's website. It's a Kato publication. It's called Sweden during the pandemic and it really goes through the data, it goes through what actually the Swedes did and through some of the data that actually came out around it. This is, you know, it's interesting, particularly given the response by many in the United States to Sweden taking a different path during the pandemic, a pro-individual, pro-rights path, relatively speaking. It wasn't perfect. New York Times called it a cautionary tale and Donald Trump, President Trump at the time. This is a tweet he did during that period. This is an April 30th, 2020, people forget how bad Trump from every angle was with regard to COVID. This is what he wrote. Despite reports to the contrary, Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown. The United States made the right decision to lockdown. People forget conveniently, purposefully that Donald Trump was a huge, huge, the hugest proponent of lockdowns at the time. Anyway, you know, the article is excellent. I encourage people to read it. It really goes through what the Swedish government did and much of what the Swedish government did was to leave everything alone and to provide guidance and recommendations about socially distancing, about working from home if you could, about, you know, about staying indoors if you felt sick, about avoiding non-essential travel, and emphasized social distancing and remote work. But none of this, with some exceptions, which I'll talk about in a minute, was mandated. Basically, the Swedes changed their behavior. They stopped going to work. Indeed, by some measures, Swedes, you know, used public transportation less than a lot of other countries that had lockdowns, Swedes stayed home and worked from home. Swedes didn't go to restaurants. Some Swedes did, but most of them did not. So they behaved as if they were under lockdown, but without the government imposing it on them. Now, there were restrictions. Let's be clear. This was not laissez-faire, as it should have been. For example, there were limits on no more than 50 people gathering together. So, I mean, theaters, cinemas, concerts, lectures, religious meetings, demonstrations, sporting events, amusement parks, but it did not include this limitation, workplaces, shopping centers, and private gatherings. But all those other places, you couldn't have more than 50 people in a room. This was restricted, this, I don't think Americans know, but in November 2020, it went from 50 to 8, 8 people. So you couldn't come together in groups of eight people from November 2020 until May 2021, and it was completely removed only in September 2021. In April 2020, the government banned private visits to elderly care homes. Bars and restaurants were ordered to offer table service only, and the space between tables had to be increased, again a government mandate. November 2020, alcohol sales after 10 p.m. were banned, and by the end of the year, the deadline was advanced to 8 p.m. This was, again, was terminated only in June 2021. And while secondary schools and universities were required to switch to remote learning, preschools and elementary schools, for the most part, stayed open throughout the time. So they never closed preschools and elementary schools when the United States and the rest of the world did. Now in terms of the data, the initial data about deaths from COVID coming out of Sweden was pretty bleak. So the 2020 data showed that it had many more deaths from COVID than its neighbors, like where they had massive lockdowns like Denmark, Finland, Norway, and so on. And yet, once you get into 2021 and 2022, if you just look at COVID deaths, COVID is kind of average, is where, you know, is not particularly exceptional. It has more deaths than Norway and Denmark and Finland, but a lot less deaths than Spain, Portugal, Italy, United States, United Kingdom and Greece. But then, and here we're talking about deaths per million people, right? So deaths standardized by the population. But then if you look at not COVID reported deaths, which we know there are differences between countries and how they report explicit COVID deaths, if we actually look at excess deaths, then Sweden now becomes a superstar, right? Sweden has, by one measure, the lowest rate of excess deaths in the world, or at least in Europe, lower than Norway, lower than Denmark, lower than Finland, who already have very low rates, much lower than places that, you know, Sweden, the only country that didn't lock down has much lower rates than everybody else. Now that's one measure of excess deaths. There are several other measures. The different institutions, different publications use, the economist uses a different measure, but even by the economist measure, which uses a different measure than this, Sweden comes out really, really good. It's excess deaths in 2020, 2021 and 2022. So over the three-year period, way below Britain and the United States. Sweden's death rate, according to, this is according to the, what do you call it, the economist magazine, excess deaths in Sweden, 5.6%, compared to 10% in Britain and 14% in the United States. I mean, that's, those are huge differences. We're talking about large numbers of people. So, again, a variety of different, by a variety of different indicators, Sweden did a lot better and we now have the data for all three years and we can evaluate it. Again, the real thing that is different between Sweden and the rest of the world and the rest of the, is the fact that Sweden relied on people's own values, relied on people's own decision-making and provided, the government provided them with information. They did restrict somewhat, but the rest, they provided with people information and let them change their behavior and indeed people did. People didn't go to work. People didn't go to crowded places. Malls were allowed to stay open, but the attendance in malls plummeted. So, you know, hopefully Sweden is an exemplar. Why this happened, I mean, Johan goes into that in his article and I encourage you again to read it, but mainly it's because the government did not override the recommendations of basically the epidemiologists. The epidemiologists said lockdowns, lockdowns, there's no justification for lockdowns. There's no science behind lockdowns. Sweden didn't close its border. It didn't have travel restrictions, which if you remember right in the beginning, everybody had travel restrictions, but the scientists were all saying, there's no science behind travel restrictions. You know, Trump closed the borders. There's no science behind closing the borders. And Sweden did not. It ultimately closed the borders from people outside of the EU because it had to because the EU closed its borders, not because Sweden wanted to close any borders. It's in terms of education, it's kids are not lagging the way American kids are lagging because schools were open and particularly in those lower grades where it's hard to imagine kindergarten and the first few grades being done virtually, it's so important, particularly there to have in-person education. So Sweden stayed open with regard to all of that. And of course, economically, Sweden did a lot better than the rest of Europe and in the United States and others because it stayed open. Production continued. Just to quickly, I'll just say Sweden has a very, very, very high rate of vaccination, one of the highest in the world. Excess death is still very, very, very, some of the lowest in the world. So this relationship between vaccines and excess deaths somehow doesn't work in Sweden. Only works in the cherry-picked locations that the anti-vaxxers want to use. All right. Let's see what else. All right, that's Sweden and COVID. So the country that had the best response to COVID, oh, I did want to say this, one of the real flaws that Sweden had, and it comes up, this is a flaw that both the chief epidemiologist in Sweden mentioned after the fact, others mentioned, and Johan mentions in his article, and Amish mentioned at the time when we were talking about Sweden way back during COVID. One of the flaws was that they did not do a good enough job isolating old age homes, isolating the people who are old. So they had early on in the epidemic that a very high rate of old people dying from COVID, which was unnecessary. And if they focused on cocooning, shielding, protecting old people in old age homes, I mean, Sweden would have been a marvel to wonder at because they would have done exactly the right thing, which is what Amish in a tutorial recommended from the beginning. Cocoon the elderly, really protect the elderly and leave everybody else alone. And that's what should have been done. And of course, test, test, test, that's the other thing that the chief epidemiologist of Sweden, the guy who kept everything open, says that the other area in which Sweden failed was that it didn't build up enough testing capacity. So on the two things, testing and protecting old people, Sweden lagged. But given its openness and and given the, you know, allowing people to voluntarily decide what and what not to do, Sweden is way ahead, way ahead of the rest of the pack. All right, that was Sweden, Africa, Africa, another coup in Africa today. I don't have seen this one in Gabon. This is on the Atlantic coast south of Nigeria and Cameroon. You know, Africa is they always coups. It's always crazy. It's always insane there. And it's sad. It's sad. This is an important, it's an important continent. It's a it's a backward continent for a variety of different reasons. I think primarily because the ideas of liberty, the ideas of freedom have not been applied. They have not been taken seriously. They have not been and they have a cool history of colonialism, which then when it ended was replaced by a cool period of socialism and and and a very, very significant impact of of the Soviet Union and communism. Now Russia is stirring the pot there and creating havoc and creating discord. A lot of these coups, I would not be surprised at all if they were ended up being related to the Wagner group and Russian ambitions in Africa, among many things, the desire of Russia to access the natural resources of Africa. You know, this is particularly an issue because Africa is the one continent that is growing in terms of population and is only going to grow further. Half of global population growth from now until 2050 is going to happen in sub-Saharan Africa. The region population is currently growing three times faster than the rest of the world. By the end of the century, it'll be home to a third of all the people in the world. In a sense, Africa now is what Asia and China were a few decades ago, this massive population. The difference is that right now, at least, there is no development path for Africa. There's no path towards economic success, towards providing jobs, food, and a livelihood, and ultimately, liberty and freedom to this massive population that Africa is home to. So it's going to be a third of the population of the world by the end of the century by 2100. It's only 14% in 2019, so it's massively going to exceed that. It is going to become a powerhouse of people at least. Now, that means, what do you do? This is the poorest region in the world. Some of the poorest people in the world live here. And we know some of what's going to happen because it's already happening. There is a fight over the natural resources. There is no legacy of property rights. There is no legacy of respect for the individual. There is no legacy of respect for political freedom and political liberty. But that's exactly what Africa wants and needs, not wants. It's exactly what Africa needs. I wish it wanted it. And it's exactly what American leadership and America as a shining city on the hill could at least provide an example, a model for. But Africa has no model, has no example. And basically the dominant power right now, the two dominant powers in Africa right now are Russia and China. Neither one of them providing a model for Africa to become developed, to become successful. Although China somewhat in that you could see a freeing up of its economy if they try to model China. But so far, that has not happened. With a few exceptions in the region of South Africa, where you're seeing a few economies move towards freer markets starting with Rwanda, Botswana, Namibia. But you needed a much larger scale. And you needed to happen for the north, where some of the richer economies are. Or you need to happen in South Africa, which then can become a model for Africa. But it's certainly not happening there. So Africa has a massive population and a horrible political system that will not allow for economic growth. Finally, and the reason why I think Europe, and to some extent the United States, need to care about this, is that Africans are not just going to sit still. They're not sitting still right now. They are going to try to escape from Africa. They're going to try to get out of there. And the destination, the primary destination right now and the primary destination in the future is going to be Europe. In some cases, like in Ethiopia, we talked about this a few days ago, the destination is Saudi Arabia. And the Saudis are much more brutal than Europeans. They're just killing them as they enter Saudi Arabia. But you're seeing boatload after boatload of Africans trying to leave Africa and trying to enter into Europe illegally, trying to establish a future for themselves in Europe. These people coming from Africa are not Muslim ideologues. Many of them are Muslim, black Muslims, but they're not Muslim ideologues. These people are just trying to make a living for themselves. They're trying to better their own lives. And this is only going to get worse. And let me be clear, nothing Europe does will prevent this. They can start shooting at them like the Saudi Arabians are shooting at the Ethiopians. It's not going to stop the Ethiopian from coming. Why? Because they're being shot at at home. At least if they can zigzag through the bullets, there's some hope. At home, there's no hope. So Europe is going to have to deal with this immigration. One way or another, it's going to have to deal with it. And it's only going to intensify. And it's not clear how this affects the US, although some of these people are crossing the Atlantic South America and then hiking up through Central America and trying to enter the United States. That will also increase over time. Just like the Chinese are doing it. The Africans are going to be doing it. People are going to be on the move over the next 50 years. And developed countries need to figure out a strategy for how to deal with that. And if the strategy is to erect walls, which are not going to help, are not going to constrain the people. But if the strategy is going to erect walls, if the strategy is we don't want these people clearly, then maybe doing some work to help these countries achieve economic success so that people are motivated to stay. But short of that, they're going to come. And no wall will stop them. No wall is going to stop them. Not the Mediterranean and not a wall along the desert. All right, quickly, Canada. Canada, isn't it shocking that Canada's weirdness keeps showing up on these news roundups? Anyway, latest from Canada is that Canada has just updated its international travel advisories. You know how in the US, the State Department has travel advisories. Don't go to Gaboon right now, because there's a coup. And be careful when you go to Saudi Arabia, because da, da, da, da, da, da, so on. Well, Canada has a travel advisory now for the United States. It basically tells the LGBTQ plus community in Canada that it may face discrimination if they travel to some places in the United States. They don't list the places. But they're just general travel advisory. If you're LGBTQ, be careful when you go to the US, because those Americans, dangerous people, just watch out. Now, it's true, 18 US states have passed laws that limit or ban certain things like gender-affirming medical care for minors or teaching about sexual orientation in schools. How does any of that threaten Canadian tourists? God. I mean, even if that's bad, how does that affect Canadian tourists? I mean, is there increased violence towards LGBTQ tourists, travelers from out of the country? If two men are holding hands in Mississippi, is there violence towards them now in New York? And where is this? Where is it happening? Now, it could be that there is. But then you'd expect some evidence to suggest it. And then you'd expect also a listing of the places where it's happening, because clearly it's not happening in California. Clearly it's not happening in New York. So where is it happening? But is it happening? Do we see this spike? Now, remember, this is some of the travel advisies, for example, that they have for the LGBTQ community for going to Kenya, where engaging in homosexual activity can land you in jail. And engaging in sudden sexual activity as a homosexual can land you with a death sentence. And certainly that is true in Saudi Arabia. Certainly that is true in many Muslim countries and in some African countries. So those travel advisories make a lot of sense. Thank you, government, for letting us know we shouldn't travel there, because whoa, those countries are barbaric. But the United States of America, really? Canada? Give us a break. Stop it. I mean, you're going a little overboard. We have problems here, but you guys are going a little overboard with this stuff. All right, let's go to where people are really discriminated and really have a hard time. Saudi Arabia. We talked about Saudi Arabia, right? And this is not related LGBTQ, but it is related to daring, daring. Now, remember, Saudi Arabia is supposed to be reforming. It's going to have a peace deal with Israel. MBS, so Muhammad, whatever his name is, who's the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, is a liberal reformer. He's bringing Western ideas into Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a changed place. Let's embrace Saudi Arabia, and let's have a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and let's celebrate that, and let's dance with the sheiks and bow to them and whatever. Anyway, in spite of MBS's westernizing, Saudi Arabia is just sentenced to death. A retired teacher for criticizing the ruling family on his social media platforms, for which he has, I don't know, something like nine followers? Like, nobody follows this guy, and he criticized them, and he's getting a death sentence for criticizing the royal family. This is the liberal, pro-western, innovative, moving the right direction royal family, right? This will be the first death in the kingdom for social media posts, but they haven't been lenient. Everybody else around social media has been sentenced to long prison sentences. And the trials for these things are done in a specialized criminal court. It was established in 2008 to deal with terrorism cases. And saying something on your Twitter account, criticizing the royal family is terrorism. Last August, a Leeds University doctoral student was sentenced to 34 years in prison, 34, when she returned home to Saudi Arabia for the summer holidays. Because she was accused of, quote, assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts. All she did was follow people's Twitter accounts, and she was sent to 34 years in jail. This is a young woman with a future, a doctoral student in the UK. I mean, all I can say is, why did she go home? Why would anybody go to Saudi Arabia? Why would anybody want anything to do with Saudi Arabia? Truly, truly disgusting. All right, I mean, this is a topic, God, I'm already out of time. This is a topic that deserves a lot more time. But let me just give you the highlights out of this. European Union as a group has the third largest economy in the world. It has a large number, hundreds of millions of consumers who are relatively on a global scale wealthy. And while the European Union produces very little when it comes to technology, and particularly when it comes to technological innovation, it is a very large consumer of technology and technological innovation. And this has given them power that is kind of interesting and horrific in the way it's applied. Call it the Brussels effect. Now, I'm getting this article. This is a really good article. It's something called The Industry. But this is part of Pirate Wire, the Pirate Wire network of substacks of, I don't know. I think it's upstack. And it was published today by a guy named Luke Hoag. And really interesting. Anyway, the Brussels effect is the ability of Brussels to impact producers and builders and creators and innovators of technology, even though none of them actually produce and do their innovation in Europe. So how do they have such a big impact on them? Well, basically, the way they do that is by saying, if you want to sell in Europe, you have to abide by our regulations. So even though you don't produce here, even though you don't necessarily have offices here, you have to abide by our regulations if you want to sell here. Europe is a big market. Everybody wants to sell into Europe. The regulations are buddhism. They're the most buddhism in the world. And companies then abide by them. But if they're going to abide by them for Europe, economies of scale suggest that you don't want to have one set of products for Europe and another set of product for the United States and another set of products for Asia or one set of websites that Europeans can access and another set of websites that Americans can access. You just want to have one standardized product. So what they do is they standardize based on Europe's standards. So Europe lands up determining the regulatory regime for technology throughout the world, even though it has very few technology companies, certainly very few technology companies that are leaders in their field. It, in spite of that, dominates the regulatory environment. It dictates regulations. Now, there's one other place in the world that is similar. A little different in that a lot of the companies do indeed produce in this place. And that is California. California is this progressive state, of course, frustrated by the lack of regulations coming out of Washington. California is embracing the bust of models and thinking, if we regulate here in California, that will force these regulations on everybody in the United States because if they want to sell in California and indeed if they want to produce in California, if they want to have their headquarters in California as most Silicon Valley companies have, then they're going to have to follow our regulations and then those regulations will become standard throughout the world and we will be imposing global regulations. So they're kind of competing with bustles, but it's worse than that. Instead of competing with bustles, what's happening right now is that California and Brussels are working together. They're forming an alliance, an axis, where they are going to coordinate regulation and this is primarily relevant for the latest and greatest breakthrough in tech, which is artificial intelligence, AI. The European Union now has a representative of its tech regulatory agency, if you will, a career bureaucrat by the name of The Graph, stationed in San Francisco. He has an office in the Irish Consulate just east of Union Square and what you get now is he is in regular now communication with California lawmakers in order to coordinate between the two, to pass AI regulations that will apply in California and apply in Europe and by extension will force the federal government either to match it but even if it doesn't, it will force AI companies who want to do business in California with almost all of them, a station based and do business in Europe to follow these regulations and therefore these two will dominate the regulatory regime. So what we get is when it comes to regulation you get a race to the bottom, you get a race for the worst, a race for the most intrusive regulations. That's what's happening right now. So something to keep an eye on the access between California and Brussels, which could mean dramatic slowdown in innovation and progress and success of US tech because of the likely burdensome absurd regulations that are going to come out from the worst political entities one could imagine stating these regulations. These regulations are going to be very similar to the ones or more than the ones that have crippled China's tech industry over the last few years. All right, that is news roundup for August 30th. Let's go to your questions. I see quite a few of them already being posted. Okay, James for $50, thank you James. James says, have you recommended Singapore over UAE as an interesting place to live? Have you been there? Is Iran big there? What is the potential for all Southeast Asia to grow wealthy? Yeah, I mean, if I had a choice between Singapore and the UAE, it's no contest. There's no way I would ever live in the UAE. There's no way I would ever recommend living in the UAE. I mean, the UAE is, you know, yes, it's established these islands of civilization in a sea of barbarism. It's still a sea that's dominated by Islamic culture. It's still an area that has many Islamists in it. They might be dormant right now, but you never know when they rise up. It's still an area where the locals treat their women horribly and where they treat many of the people that come there to work as basically slaves. I don't want to visit the UAE, never mind live there. Singapore, on the other hand, is a place where they have a lot of foreign workers, particularly Malay, Indians, Pakistanis, but they're nowhere near treated the way they are treated in the UAE. Singapore is a relatively free place. Yes, there are some constraints of freedom of speech. Yes, there are some constraints on certain behaviors that we would take for granted in the West. But these, from people that I know that live there, these are relatively minor. And yes, it's not completely free. It's not perfect. But the economic freedoms are pretty broad. The place is thriving. And the culture is a positive culture. It's a culture of growth. It's a culture of technology. It's a culture of success. It's a culture that is, and the way they treat women is they treat them as equals. It's not even the worst of Asian culture. It's the best of Asian culture. So yeah, I think Singapore is a wonderful place. I believe that it's a fantastic place to live. Is Ayn Rand big there? I wouldn't say big, but she's known by many in Singapore. Many of the educated know of Ayn Rand. I went there once to give a talk. I can't remember if I gave one talk, two talks. But I did give talks in Singapore before COVID. It was an amazing place to visit and incredibly friendly people. And again, I have a strong desire to go back to Singapore. I have zero desire to go to UAE. Right, RIMO. I strongly oppose the arguments against fractional reserve banking put forward by people who support the free markets. Don't you think they are just motivated by hatred or at least suspicion towards bankers? I definitely think that there's something about that in terms of kind of a general cultural suspicion towards bankers, towards interest, towards that activity. I think there's a real misunderstanding of what bankers do and how they do it. And there is a real misunderstanding about the contract that is a deposit, a bank deposit, what kind of contract that constitutes. There is no fraud associated with fractional reserve banking. And in a competitive market, either fractional reserve banking makes sense or it doesn't make sense and let the market dictate, let the market determine that. And it is quite shocking to see libertarians who claim to be pro-property rights violate those property rights by denying ability to sign certain contracts that are not clearly not fraudulent because the terms are specified in advance. Part of it comes from a utilitarian tendency that they have to think that fractional reserve banking causes inflation and causes bubbles and all this other stuff. All this has been refuted by people like Larry White and George Selgin and other economists from the Austrian tradition. But a lot of Austrian economists following Rothbard still maintain that no, it has all these economic disasters and it's fraud. And none of that is actually true. So what motivates them? Probably a hatred of bankers deep down, which they won't acknowledge, a misunderstanding of finance, which I know they have. Not sure what else exactly, but those certainly are part of it. Many of them are Christians and Christianity has a deep suspicion of bankers going back a long, long time. Jennifer's back from Alaska. Impulsively versus incisiveness is a false economy. But can just going ahead and making a decision sometimes be better than never doing anything? Yes, but it's a false alternative as you know. You only want to make an impulsive decision based in a sense on emotion and without thinking through. When it's an emergency and you have no choice, but when you have time, when you can do some thinking, then think about it. And of course, the more important the decision, the more thinking you should do and the less important the decision, the less thinking you should engage in, the less time you should spend on it. But action is always necessary, always necessary. And one way or another it's always necessary. And inaction is almost always going to result in bad outcomes. So it partially depends also on the context, right? Our impulses, if you will, are very, very, very good on topics and issues that we know a lot about and that we've integrated and thought a lot about and therefore are subconscious, is well-trained, if you will, to deal with. And if those issues come about, I have no problem if you don't have the necessary time to quickly respond impulsively. If it's something new that you've never really thought about a lot or if there are completely new circumstances, a completely new context, then you have to be careful because your emotions and your impulses will only give you data about stuff you've already integrated. And if this is outside of that, it's hard to tell what you're actually responding to in terms of your impulse, in terms of your emotion. Brie says, my honey won a blue ribbon at the State Fair. Wow. But they didn't take the gender-racist sexuality of the beekeepers into account. That's not right. Society has kept others down who will be into bee-hiving. I want you to my hard work. I mean, good for you. And that's great. It sounds like I need a taste of this exceptional honey that Brie is a beekeeper. And she often discusses her beekeeping on this show. So thank you, Brie, for the support and for sharing. West says, why do we treat countries like this as if they can be friends or allies? It's sickening. Well, I mean, if you remember, when Biden first came in, he says, I'm going to be tough on Saudi Arabia. I'm going to treat them badly. And he went over there and he didn't really get along much with BMS or BSB or MSB or whatever his name is. And at the first opportunity, when the United States needed the Saudis to increase the amount of oil into global markets and to keep prices down because of inflation, the Saudis did the opposite and they screwed the Biden administration by reducing capacity or capacity. And so it's because we think we depend on them. It's because at the end of the day, we're cowards. So by the way, Biden has flipped. Now he's Saudi Arabia's best friend because the Saudis have taught him a lesson. But have they? So the price of oil went up. By the way, the United States is producing at record levels right now, but it could be producing more. We are the largest producer of oil in the world, larger than Saudi Arabia right now. We could be producing more and we could squeeze them. So we're cowards. We're smaller cowards. We're economic cowards. We're foreign policy cowards. And we have no more backbone. And if you start penalizing Saudi Arabia, what next penalize Russia and China and all these other countries that are really, really bad? So we are our own worst enemy. And the Saudis have used this, right? In 1973, under Nixon, the Saudis stopped providing oil. At that time, we were not big producers of oil. So gas prices went through the roof and there were shortages in the United States. And the American people were very unhappy. But there are ways to deal with that, like telling the Saudis that they do that. Again, then we will draw all our troops and let whoever wants to take their land from them take it. Like we're supposed, we're protecting the Saudis. Have been for a long time. We sell them weapons and they need our weapons. We give them diplomatic cover for the BS that they do. They need us as much, if not more, than we need them. But we never have the courage to actually stand up to them. All right, Mark, Mark, I think this is Mark's, if I caught it right, did I catch it right? Mark's first super chat question. Thank you, Mark. Really, really appreciate it. Really appreciate the support. By the way, we're only three $20 questions away from achieving our goal for today. Mark says, I mean is becoming the new like. Where do these verbal fillers come from? Where do these verbal fillers come from? Is there any way you can stop saying I mean, especially as the first two words as your answer to questions? I was going to say I mean. Yes, you can stop doing it. Are you talking to me? Do I say I mean a lot? I'm curious if I say that. I don't know. I don't think I do. But now that you're saying it, I'm tempted to say I mean because you got it in my head. But do I say I mean a lot as a filler? Because I shouldn't. So the way to stop doing it, if you're looking for advice and stop using fillers, is just to start flagging it to yourself when you actually do it. Just be aware of it. And when you do it and you're going to do it, just accept that you're going to do it. But when you do it, flag it, I should stop. Just make it conscious. Bring it to the forefront of your consciousness. Now, there are a lot of these kind of things. There's, you know, I'm doing a course on public speaking and there's a lot of uh, um, uh, uh, uh, every time. And it's partially a need to fill the blank space. It's to take that period where you're starting to think what's the next thing you're going to say. The transition, quiet is nerve wracking. It's so, you know, try this. If you ever do public speaking, try this. Just pause. Don't say anything for a little while. Now, I think that's incredibly powerful. It's a way to emphasize things. I use it a lot in my public speaking and I encourage the students I'm teaching to pause. Pause for emphasis, particularly if you ask a question. What do you guys think is the way to get rid of these? You pause. Let them think about it. So, uh, the way to get rid of the, I mean, like, um, um, um, is to embrace pausing. It's to embrace using quiet to fill in the gaps for the next thing you want to say. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for your first super chat. Really appreciate the support. Another first super chat, this one from Norway. I can't pronounce that name. I don't know what that is. Is there a bubble in green investments? Will there be higher returns in anti-ESG funds? Well, I think ESG is dying as an investment category. There's a massive amount of pressure right now to get rid of it. Even BlackRock is talking about stopping to use it. The SEC is clamping down on funds that declare the ESG and wants proof that they really are doing it. There is, of course, the pension plans of Texas and Florida and other states that are withdrawing from ESG funds. So I think ESG is going to retract. And if you look at what ESG funds actually invested in, they weren't that different than regular funds. There was nothing ESG about ESG funds. It was just a marketing con game. So I don't think you're necessarily going to get higher returns in anti-ESG funds because I don't think that ESG funds were that ESG. If they were really ESG, then maybe you'd get higher returns. But I'm not sure they are really ESG. They're just fake. Is there a bubble in green investments? Probably, but it's going to take a very long time to burst because to a large extent it's a bubble that's directly funded and subsidized by government. And therefore, it'll take the government getting to a point where it can't afford to subsidize it anymore, can't afford to support it anymore for the bubble to burst. And that can take a long time. Governments have the ability to print money for a long time and keep supporting these bubbles for a long time. So at some point it's a bubble, but hard to tell exactly when. You would assume Tesla was a bubble when it received all the subsidies, but the subsidies also allowed it to get to the point where it could produce costs without the subsidies and still be competitive. So it's complicated. I wouldn't just say, if it's green, I'm going to short it and I'm going to do well. That's not how it works. Not as long as government continues to subsidize them. It can continue to subsidize them, indirectly or directly. It could be an indirect subsidy through mandates. You have to use solar. Well, then solar energy stocks will go up even though you didn't directly subsidize the solar energy stocks. Friend Harper says, what are ways to celebrate weight loss that isn't eating a lot of food? I have friends dieting and when they reach a benchmark, they celebrate with food, but they hold that as counterproductive. Have you been in this boat? I haven't really, I must admit, because I've never really been on diet. So I don't really know. There are lots of ways to celebrate without food or you could celebrate with healthy food, with food that is consistent with your diet. You could just have a party, you could watch a movie, you could go to a club and listen to music, you could do a lot of things that don't involve food if that's the choice that you have made. But you can also celebrate with food. Even if you're on a diet, it doesn't mean that you can't once in a while splurge outside of the diet. I think it's important to do that. I don't eat desserts almost ever, but once in a while, I eat a dessert, right? Just for fun or just, you know, I usually regret it because it just doesn't taste that good because I'm not used to the sugar. But if the dessert is a little less sweet and it looks interesting and it looks unusual, I'll cheat, there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like, you know, this is, you have to follow it 100%, you cannot ever. Our bodies don't look like that. It's not a, it's not poison. It's poisoning quantity. And if you limit the quantity, it's not going to kill you. So why not do it? So I wouldn't worry about celebrating with food if they like food. Scott says, is it possible your respect for Amish caused you to go easy on Fauci and the establishment calls for shutdown? See, I don't think I went easy on the establishment calls for shutdown. What I did do is I pointed out that because of the Trump's administration's neglect, evasions throughout February and March, by the time anybody got serious about COVID in the United States, there was no testing because the FDA had screwed that up. The FDA under the Trump administration completely messed that up. And the CDC had been sidelined and Trump was pretending there was no COVID that by the time COVID hit New York in mid-March, it's, you know, it's arguably there was no option but to lock down for a while because the hospitals were truly overwhelmed and truly people were dying. And what I was very vehement in condemning at the time was the continued lockdown. I said, OK, lockdown for a week, but you cannot continue doing this. And then the lockdowns in other states, which were not suffering from the kind of hospital, you know, breakdown and failure that New York was suffering from. So I was never for lockdowns. I never went easy on lockdowns. I did go easy on Fauci in a sense, you could call it that because I think Fauci was put in an impossible situation. And I know this is not popular and nobody's going to like me for saying this, but this is the reality. Fauci should have never been in a decision-making capacity. Fauci is not in the United States system counted to the system in Sweden. The person in Fauci's position, first of all, it shouldn't have been Fauci. It should have been the CDC. And the CDC had a very different approach. Who put Fauci in that position? Trump did. The Trump administration did. And in the United States, the role of making political decisions like shutdowns, like mask mandates is the role of politicians. And Fauci was put in an impossible situation where the politicians refused to do anything. And he had certain opinions, which turned out to be wrong. And those opinions were treated like commandments. And they were implemented by commandments. By who were they implemented? By politicians. But Fauci has no power. He can't legislate. He's not a head of an organization that can mandate anything. So my focus throughout COVID was ongoing after Trump, his administration, and the governors, particularly governors like, you know, California and so on. And look, you can pretend I didn't say these things, but you can go back and listen to what I said. I did whole shows about the evil of lockdowns and how pathetic it was that Americans were accepting it. How pathetic the lockdown in Puerto Rico was. And then when I went to California, I commented on how brave the restaurants that were staying open and refused to abide by the lockdowns and how I went and ate there in order to support them. I mean, I was vehemently against lockdowns and government mandates of all kinds, all sorts, all types. But the focus was on what the real failure of COVID was and the real failure of COVID was not Fauci. The real failure of COVID was the lack of actually doing what the CDC and every epidemiologist pre-COVID said you should do, which is, you know, test and those are positive, isolate and leave everybody else alone. And that's what I advocated for throughout COVID. Throughout. And that's what needed to be done. And it was never justification for lockdowns. It was never justification for mass mandates, vaccine mandates, any kind of mandate from the government. It's just wrong, just wrong. So, yeah, I respect Amish and there's no question that my views and Fauci were impacted by Amish. Amish viewed Fauci as a hero from his work on AIDS previously. I think Amish has come to realize all the mistakes and the errors and the bad things that Fauci was doing. But also, when I see everybody jumping on somebody like Fauci and assuming that they're evil and manipulative and power-lusting and all this stuff and, you know, I'm suspicious of that kind of motivation and that kind of attitude. And I didn't jump on that bang-wagon and still haven't jumped on that bang-wagon because I think the real evil committed during COVID was committed by politicians who were responsible for making those decisions and by the fact that the CDC was sidelined when it should have been at the forefront and not Fauci. All right, James, which African countries have most potential? South Africa had potential but appears to be downgrading steadily. Which countries are the most exciting to see growth in Africa? Well, I mean, I think from a policy perspective, the ones that are implementing the best policy, I think, and I'm not an expert on Africa, but a place like Namibia, Botswana, and what do you call it, Rwanda. Now, Rwanda was implementing kind of free market policies, but then the president who was doing this became an authoritarian which is sad. So he's dramatically restricting political liberty and other liberties in Rwanda. But in terms of economic liberties, it's one of the more exciting places to follow. And, Scott, you're being stupid and dishonest again. So you really need to, you know, that is so pathetic, really. It's pathetic. I'm just commenting on something, Scott, which I won't repeat because why should I? So I'd say those are the most exciting in Africa. I'm sure there are others. Nigeria, which is going to be by population, the largest country in Africa, is most interesting to watch and to see what they do and how that country evolves. Because I think that country is going to be very much the barometer of what happens. They have an English educational system. They were colonized by the British. A lot of Nigerian migrants have moved to the U.K. and been very successful there. Of course, a lot of them have moved to the U.S. and been very successful there here as well. It'll be interesting how the Nigerians deal with the future. They also have oil, so they have some revenues, but they have to take the right steps in terms of property rights and securing individual freedom. Wow, we're going late today. Friend Harper says, I'm only kind of kidding. Ha, ha. No, we have not. James says, Saudi is playing a lot of, is paying a lot of expats to live there. Yes, I know. I wouldn't live in Saudi Arabia. I don't know. I don't care how much they paid. Friend Harper, I hold that the practice of celebrating achievement is valuable to building self-esteem, to building self-esteem, to building self-esteem, to effectively achieving achievement is valuable to building self-esteem. Deliberty recognizing achievement instead of taking it for granted. Do you think that's right? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's also a form of justice. It's a form of justice, so, so, absolutely. I'm not accusing you, Scott, of heresy, because you didn't say anything against subjectivism. I'm accusing you of being dishonest, being dishonest about how you portray what I've said, what I lack, said, what I think, what I believe, and so on, you're purposefully distorting and perverting, and you're purposefully making arguments to provoke me, I assume, and to provoke other people in the chat, but you are being dishonesty, and it's not an issue of heresy, it's just an issue of fact. Michael, do you believe in once a week cheat days for your diet? No. I mean, first of all, I don't really have that stringent of a diet, I don't think we know enough about nutrition to have a super stringent diet, so I don't have a diet that says, don't need this. I minimize certain things, and I keep to that. I generally don't need dessert. That's the only real thing, and I don't need refined sugar, and I don't need foods that have added sugar, but restaurants add sugar to their sauces and stuff all the time, and I eat at restaurants almost every day. So, but no, I don't, you know, I know what I want to eat, and I know what I like to eat, and I eat it. I don't cheat. Once in a while, once in a very long while, I'll eat a dessert, and as I said, I almost always regret it, and that's why I don't do it often. Noah, Swedish Krona, first time super cheddar, thank you Noah, really appreciate it. You talk about how we live in an age of non-ideology. How do you evaluate specific persons as having not having an ideology? Well, I mean, you have to know a lot about them. You have to know about what they, you know, what they say, what they hold, how pragmatic are they, how often they change their minds, do they invoke any principles, right or wrong principles, are they living by those principles or just they mouth them. So, you have to know a lot about a person to be able to identify an ideology of that person. So, it's not easy because you really, it's not enough just to listen to them. You have to, if you're doing it personally, if you're doing it in terms of that person. But you have to know a lot about them. You have to know a lot about how they act, not just what they say, right, in order to know whether that ideology is guiding them. You know, unless they're intellectual, and then you're judging them just based on the ideas they communicate, and then you evaluate those ideas, and is there coherent ideology behind this, or is it there? And you can find that. You know, you can definitely say that Jordan Peterson has an ideology, and you know, and it's not necessarily a consistent one, a completely integrated one, but it's an ideology. But to take just a person out there who is not an intellectual, you have to also know how they're acting. Because if they're acting in a position to what they're saying, well, then do they really have an ideology? Does it mean anything to them? Does it hold anything for them? I hope that answers the question. What do you, Justin, ask, what are your thoughts on the Sackler family? You know, I don't know. And this is something I want to do some research on. And I will hopefully, if I had the time, because I worry that they're being demonized, but they could be really, really bad people as well. But the whole issue around OxyContin, was that the drug that they produced? I mean, this is the thing. If OxyContin was the cause of the opioid epidemic, then why now that we've discovered that and OxyContin is off the table, is the opioid epidemic bigger than ever? Why is now everybody consuming fentanyl? If it's all caused by OxyContin. So I wonder if they, the Sackler family and some other pharmaceutical companies, and I don't know this for fact, I'm just wondering it out. I wonder if they are a scapegoat, an easy scapegoat, because we all love to hate pharma, for the epidemic in order to avoid, you know, the actual causes and the responsibility, which is probably shared by doctors and by the individuals taking the drugs and by the FDA for not approving other forms of painkillers and maybe by pharma that advertise these drugs as under false promises. But really, you'd need a researcher to figure it out and I haven't done the research. David says, I'm having a lot of problems getting motivated to study for a FINRA exam. It literally makes me angry that I have to take it. How do you stay motivated to deal with things like that? Well, I try to minimize having to do them because I agree with you completely. It's infuriating, it's ridiculous and pathetic. But look, the basic motivation is I motivate myself around the values I intend to achieve by taking the exam. I treat it for the purposes of studying. I treat it as metaphysical. It just is. It just is. There's nothing you can do about it. And if I want to achieve goal X, I just have to study for this exam and get it by me and get it done. And that's how I motivate myself, by treating it in a sense as metaphysical, even though I know it's not. Because then you can take out the anger you have at it and everything. It just is. And then after you do the test and you can get pissed off and you can advocate against it. All right, thank you everybody. We blew away the goal, so I really, really appreciate that. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It really helps with the algorithms. If you want to support the show on a monthly basis, which I hope many of you will, you can do that on Patreon. Just search for your own book show. Or you can also do it on my website, youronbookshow.com, slash support. That one's PayPal, Patreon is Patreon. Talk to you soon. Actually tomorrow morning, tomorrow at the same time, for another