 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Thursday, middle of September already. God. Yeah, you hear this a lot from me. Time is flying, amazing. All right, we got a lot to talk about today. I'll just remind you you can ask questions in the super chat. Yes, I know I need to turn on the video. You can ask questions in the super chat. Feel free to do that. I'll pretty much answer anything and steer the show in a direction you wanted to go. Also, I want to remind everybody, particularly those of you in Europe, in the UK, that I am doing a public speaking workshop seminar on October 18th in London. So if you are available, if you don't like to participate, it's going to be a small group. Email me. We've got several people now, so I'm pretty sure we're doing it. Now just a question of how many people? It's going to be about $750 for the day. I was looking at public speaking seminars to $3,000 a day easily. So I think it's expensive, but a decent price relative to the competition. So if you're interested in improving your speaking skill, public speaking skills, if you have a day in the middle of the week to spare to join us then the 18th, October 18th. Did I say September? I apologize if I said September, October 18th in London. So yes, join us then. Yes, I have a debate with Brian Kapler next week. Yes, so if you're in New York, if you're in New York and you'd like to come and see me debate Brian Kapler on alcocapillism, I think the proposition is something like an alcocapillism definitely is disastrous for civilization or for society. That is at the SOHO Forum. You can find it online, SOHO Forum. I can't sure, 6.30 p.m., I think, on Monday, September 18th in New York City. So if you're in the New York area, you'd like to come down, you'd like to be one of the few people in the audience who are going to support my side, then join us on Monday. That'll be terrific. All right, I will be in Europe in October, but I'll go over that schedule and the show and let you know I'll be traveling quite a bit. This should be fun. All right, let's jump in. I don't know, you might have heard about this, if you're following the news, you certainly would have, but there was an earthquake early in the week, last week, on the weekend, in Morocco, in up in the Atlas Mountains, and close to 3,000 people are probably dead from that earthquake. Just a couple of days later, there was a massive kind of storm, huge amounts of rain, more than a year's worth of rain in one day in Libya, Northern Africa, so not that far from Morocco, and at least 6,000 people have died from the flooding that resulted from the rains that swept through Libya, just really, truly horrific. So what is it? I don't know, 10,000 people, close to 10,000 people have probably died in two massive natural disasters in Northern Africa. This is a good opportunity to ponder a couple of things. One is the fact that so many people died in these weather-related or natural disasters, because obviously a earthquake is not weather-related, they can't blame that on climate change, although I'm sure they will, they will try, I'm sure they'll try. Natural disasters, I mean that's a lot of people. The earthquake in Atlas Mountains was strong, I think it was a 6.8, but California's suffered from earthquakes that size. The flooding and the amount of rain that came down in Libya was immense, but we've seen rainfalls like that, it happens, it's not that unusual on a global scale to see there come a rain. But what is it about Morocco and about Libya that have led to so many deaths? And the answer here is primarily the fact that they're both poor countries. Poverty is what makes them susceptible to natural disasters in a way that the rest of those of us who live in relatively wealthy countries are not. Japan has had bigger earthquakes in modern times and has had fewer casualties, even though it has a far higher population density than Morocco does. Many places around the world, developed world have had the kind of rain that Libya saw and they did not suffer 6,000 casualties. We in the United States have seen flooding periodically in different parts of the country on a massive scale and we don't see the kind of casualties and the reason for that is, again, poverty. When you're rich, you can build better homes. When you're rich, you can build buildings that are resistant to earthquakes. When you're rich, you can build drainage for flooding. When you're rich, you can let the population know in advance that massive rains are coming and people can seek high grounds. When you're rich, you can shore up mudslides and prevent them from happening in advance. Wealth allows you to prepare. It allows you to be ready and it allows you to survive these kind of natural disasters. Of course, one of the things that makes us wealthy, one of the things that allows us to be prepared and to do all this work necessary is off our fuels. It's a fact that we have cheap energy that we can cheaply bring in bulldozers and cranes and create building materials and do all the things necessary in order to shore up our environment to make it safer for human beings. That requires lots of energy expenditure. It's crucial that that energy be cheap so that we can do a lot of that kind of work. In the West, we have benefited from the fact that over the last 100 plus years, we've had cheap fossil fuel energy sourced energy and being able and also because of economic liberty, because of economic freedom, because of innovation, because of entrepreneurship. Because of those elements of capitalism that we've had, we have rich enough and can deploy that energy in ways that protect us from nature and make it possible for us to suffer some pretty bad natural disasters and still survive. I live in Puerto Rico and how we can Maria went through Puerto Rico six years ago, almost exactly six years ago. And a lot of people died nowhere near as many as in Libya. But a lot of people died on the island. But again, who died? It was those parts of the island that are particularly poor. Those parts of the island where the effort, the wealth, the didn't go to showing it up. And the fact that Puerto Rico is relatively poor, the fact that Puerto Rico is unfortunately quite corrupt prevents it from benefiting from cheap energy. And indeed, it's hard enough to get electricity here, particularly during bad weather. Never mind showing up all the all the residences and roads and everything else on the island to make it so that people don't suffer. But the main thing I think a lot of people died in in Puerto Rico because electricity was out for months. So hospitals and other places and even emergency generators didn't always work. Again, it's an issue of wealth. If you care about human life, if you care about human life, if you care about human beings ability to survive in the face of a nature that is constantly trying, not consciously, obviously nature is not conscious, but trying to kill us. Then what you want is for humanity to get as rich as possible as quickly as possible. And the main way to get rich is through capitalism, it's through the institutions, the rule of law, and the freedom of capitalism. And of course, for capitalism, it to function optimal efficiency in producing their wealth to save those human lives you need cheap fuel. And again, right now, it's still true that cheapest fuel available is fossil fuels. So as we move away from fossil fuels and more horribly, as we force countries who can't afford expensive electricity to move and unreliable electricity to move away from fossil fuels, we are guaranteeing more deaths, more destruction in the future. I will add that there was one other element in the debt toll, an added government incompetence. Both in Morocco and in Libya, the government responded very poorly in terms of search and rescue operations when other countries offered to send crews to help out. They turned them down. It took days to get crews up there, still there are places in Morocco and in Libya that don't have the kind of rescue crews that they need. It's sad and pretty horrible. Libya basically is a country under anarchy. It has a government, but it also has gang rule in vast areas. The Russian Wagner group is there, but also the equivalent of ISIS, al Qaeda are there, and it is just gang infested. It is anarchy. And the central government is very weak, very weak even to do the things that a government should do. But in the world in which we live, governments are the only resources available for these kind of search and rescue operations, and they failed completely here. Morocco, on the other hand, is a kingdom with a king. It is much more of a country of rule of law. It is a much more organized country with a much more powerful and organized central government, but it also failed. Maybe part of the failure there is the absence of the king. The king is a playboy. He is going through a midlife crisis. He is traveling all over the world. He is partying a lot. And he does little in terms of governing, and it certainly appears that the Moroccan government was a complete and utter failure when it came to dealing with the consequences of the earthquake. And of course, it is unlikely to be any consequences in both cases. All right. Just a quick update on Ukraine overnight, or last night, not this last night, the night before last. Ukraine struck the main navy base of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea in Sevastopol, that is, in Crimea. They struck it. They launched 10 cruise missiles, probably British-made cruise missiles, at the naval base, seven of which supposedly were shut down, three of which made it to the targets. They destroyed a submarine, a ship that is used, the ship that would be used for an assault from the sea, and they also set on fire some warehouses and other stuff. It is a major attack on the number one port of the Russian fleet again in the area. It's a major achievement to be able to cause real damage to military equipment and a navy that really dominates the Black Sea. At the same time, they also attacked with several drones, I think a destroyer of the Russian navy out in the Black Sea. Supposedly the drones were shut down. Of course, Ukrainians have had success in the past at taking out some of the Russian fleet ships. We will see what happens in the future. Ukraine attacking Crimea. This is not the first time. There have been a number of different operations like Ukrainian special forces landing in Crimea, destroying a whole setup of anti-aircraft missile batteries and other equipment. They have attacked the bridges, connecting Crimea to Russia, and the bridge is connecting Crimea to Ukraine. Ukrainians seem to have had quite a bit of success in rattling Crimea over the last few months. In addition, Ukrainian troops on the ground are making slow, but I would say steady, progress and a number of different fronts, both in the south and in the east. A Russian counter-offensive in the north seems to be bogged down and doesn't seem at this point to be going anywhere. So, Ukraine still seems to be of the two armies, seems to be the one with the initiative, much slower than people expected, much slower than I think Ukrainians had hoped, but still making progress. The number one barrier the Ukrainians are now going to face is the weather. They probably got another, what, six weeks, maybe eight weeks of decent weather to engage in fighting. After that, it becomes muddy, icy, and pretty horrible. The south is a little better than the northeast. So we will see, but not a lot of time for them to achieve, I think, the strategic goal of this offensive, which was basically to cut off the Ukrainian forces from those on the western side connected to Crimea and those on the east connected to Russia directly by land. So it's going to be an interesting few weeks to see the extent to which Ukraine can make advances and can move forward in spite of the weather and in spite of stronger than expected Russian defenses, primarily just unbelievably expensive minefields, trenches, but primarily mines that are slowing down, any kind of progress. It's very hard to advance with tanks. Tanks need space. They need maneuvering space. And the inability, it's very difficult to use tanks in an area, in a large area that is fully mined. So it will be interesting to see how much progress Ukraine can make in the next few weeks before the weather kind of shuts everything down for a while. All right. I think the biggest story today as we speak are union negotiations with the automakers that are going on right now. This involves basically 150,000 UAW members that work for the three big auto companies in the United States. They are threatening a strike if a deal is not achieved by tonight. It's pretty amazing kind of the demands that the UAW has, what they're asking for. Let me just find this for you. Yes. So according to Bloomberg report, right, UAW, well, I said, I'm in the wrong paragraph. There it is. According to Bloomberg report that is quoting a non-name management negotiator or whatever. Labor costs, if the auto companies just accept what the unions want tomorrow, they just accept it today in negotiations. Labor costs would go from $64 an hour right now, $64 an hour to $150 an hour. That's more than doubling. The estimate includes a 46% wage increase, restoration of defined benefit pensions. One of the great achievements was getting rid of the defined benefit pensions, but restoring defined benefit pensions, cost of living increases, and a reduction of the work week to 32 hours a week. So 46% wage increase. I'd like that. That would be pretty cool. Defined benefit pensions, cost of living increases, and a reduction of the work week to 32 hours. Union spokesman didn't deny any of these and basically said record profits means record contracts. I mean, this is nuts. Basically what the UAW is thinking is the following. They figure they won't have work in 10 to 20 years, maybe in 10. They figure four General Motors and Chrysler going bankrupt anyway over the long run. Might as well squeeze them from all they can in the short run so that they can benefit as much as possible before the inevitable happens. Now, why do they think the auto companies are going bust? I mean, it's simple because the reality is that the government is moving towards banning the internal combustion engine. The government is moving slowly towards increasing the use of electric cars in the United States and mandating the use of electric cars around the United States. We've already know California is going to be mandating electric car use very soon here and banning the sale of internal combustion engines very soon, I think by 2030. Other states will follow. The federal government will follow. And of course, the increase in electric cars use. Somebody has to produce those electric cars. They're already getting the sense that the big three are not at the forefront of that revolution. Again, Chinese companies are way ahead. Japanese countries are going to pivot to that very quickly here. Tesla is way ahead. And the reality is that while the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden passed, which by the way the Union at the time supported, allocated massive amounts to subsidize electric cars and electric car production in the United States, it did not mandate that electric car companies employ union employees. So if you're going to build a new car factory that is going to produce electric cars, where are you going to build it in Michigan and pay union wages or in South Carolina and get unionized labor that is indeed cheaper? Well, it's obvious. So what the Union is afraid of, in a sense what the Union knows is going to happen, is that electric car production is going to move south and it's not going to be unionized. And the Union, while at 150,000 in the three big companies, the employment in those three big companies is going to shrink over time. And what they're trying to do is get as much as they can, you know, just grab as much as they can and to hell with the future, because they're going to, they view themselves as losers no matter what. By the way, this has created a major political problem for Biden, because while the Union supported the Inflation Reduction Act, they have now announced that they demand massive changes to it. They now realize that the act actually hurts the Union, or at least hurts from their short term narrow perspective. And now they're demanding that the bill be changed and that it includes a requirement for Union labor in electric car manufacturing. They're also refusing to endorse Biden. They view Biden as not friendly to the unions. Biden, of course, does not want to strike. A strike would clearly slow down economic growth. You know, when you get a big chunk, 150,000 people going on strike, a whole industry shut down, GDP goes down. Or that is downward pressure on GDP. Biden does not want that. He's giving up for a reelection campaign. He needs a strong economy. It's the only thing he's got going for him. And this is going to hurt the economy. So Biden, on the one hand, is trying to present himself as, I'm the Union guy. I'm pro-Union. I'm all in on unions. He's also trying to say, I'm the electric vehicle guy. I'm the climate change guy. And he's also trying to do, I need a good economy, guys. Don't screw this up. Don't mess this up. He can't come out fully for the unions. He can't come out against the unions. And he can't change the inflation reduction act that barely passed Congress the first time. He's stuck. It's a real challenge, a real quagmire. Of course, Trump, who is great at identifying these weaknesses and jumping right onto them, is already trolling him and basically telling the union they should embrace him because he is much more pro-Union than Biden is. There's a funny one. UAW, I don't think is tempted by Trump, but they are solely disgusted by Biden. And so we're facing a real challenge here for the Biden administration. And more widely for the economy as a whole, if the auto companies do strike, it will take a toll on the economy, particularly in those areas that are highly dependent on the auto industry. And it's going to be interesting to see how the government deals with it. Supposedly, it's not intervening. Now, of course, at the same time, the UAW is trying to unionize the new electric vehicle and electric battery plants. But it's not clear that they'll be able to. It's not clear that anybody wants them there. It's not clear that workers in these other states are going to want them there. And again, as I said, the union is vehemently now opposed the Inflation Reduction Act. The same union president who praised that a year ago is being fired and the new guy, Sean Fain, is basically dedicated to trying to fight against it. And for a 32-hour week at wages that are 46% higher on an hourly basis than they are right now. All right, it's going to be interesting. We'll get news tonight whether there's a strike or not. All right, talk about unions. One of the strong unions historically will be truck drivers. But the reality is the trucks are going driverless. And I told you yesterday about the fact that California passed this bill to not a lot. If a driverless truck drives on the road in California, there needs to be a driver there just in case. What's the point of a driverless truck if there's a driver there? So California is not the place where people are trying out driverless trucks. It's not the place that is probably going to launch the driverless truck revolution. So where is? Well, it's the launch star. It's Texas. Two companies, Aurora Innovations and Kodiak Robotics, both based in California, of course, are actually testing autonomous 18-wheelers in Texas. They say they would love to be testing them in California. It's easier closer to them, but California has made it very, very, very difficult. And indeed, Texas has done the opposite. In 2017, the Texas legislature approved a legal pathway for autonomous trucks. They haven't changed their mind yet. We'll see. Again, I said yesterday this is a massive revolution. It reduced the cost of shipping, reduced the number of accidents, reduced the number of fatalities, because when trucks get into accidents, they are usually fatalities. And this will make a trucking more efficient, safer, cheaper. Remember that autonomous driverless trucks don't get tired. They don't have to stop at truck stops to take a nap. They don't doze off at the wheel. I mean, this is a big time revolution if it starts happening. Maybe some cities will not allow driverless trucks into the cities, and they'll unload the cargo onto other trucks to go into the cities. I don't know. But it's going to be interesting. Yeah, no bathroom breaks. That's right. No bathroom breaks, no stopping. So you get much more efficiency, which means lower costs, significantly lower costs. So both the companies are trying this out in Texas. And I'm not sure what the expectation is in terms of when these will actually be starting to dominate the roads. So far, the trucks are doing relatively well. Federal government data shows there being fewer than 20 incidents in Texas, in terms of traffic accidents, all of them caused by drivers of other vehicles, all of them. In one case, a motorist fell asleep, crossed two lanes, and real ended a Kodiak truck, dented the car's hood. In another, a car swerved into an Aurora truck at 65 miles an hour. But both vehicles were able to drive away from the scene. The conclusion really is autonomous vehicle technology is not science fiction. It's not hypothetical. In fact, it's already here. That's a quote from Aurora's CEO. So innovation continues. This is exciting. And yeah, we will see. We will see how quickly this actually gets adopted. And it really will benefit is cross country, is once they allow this across state lines, at least in the highways. All right, finally, talk about innovation. Talk about science fiction. This one's pretty amazing. The FDA put aside the factor we have to deal with FDA. But the FDA is actually in sessions right now to weighing the possibility of using, for the first time, conducting human tests on artificial wombs, artificial wombs for babies that are born premature. So these are basically plastic bags, the kind of plastic containers that have in them where you place the baby inside. You would feed the plastic bag with ambionic fluid. You would connect the umbilical cord of the baby to a machine that provided it with the nutrients that would typically get from the mother. And it would grow in this artificial environment. An artificial womb. It's not meant for one month. This is meant for the babies that are born now very early, 22 to 25 months. That modern medicine has a really hard time keeping alive. Sorry, 22 to 25 weeks, sort of, I said months, 22 to 25 weeks. Right now, if you're born at 23 weeks, you have about a 50% chance of surviving. And, you know, and of the ones that survive, about a third have severe neurodevelopmental issues by around the age of two. So the idea is to take these 23 to 25 week babies, take them out of the mother's womb through a C-section, put them straight into one of these bags before the blood in the umbilical cord clots up and connect the umbilical cord immediately to one of these tubes feeding it with the right fluids. I mean, this is just stunning. There are pictures in the article. I saw this article in the Washi Journal, but there were a bunch of them out there. They're already, they're doing this with lambs, with baby lambs. And now they are seeking. It looks like one company. They won't reveal which company, but it's likely that it's a Philadelphia-based Vitara Biomedical, is probably looking to start trials on humans. Now, you can imagine all the different questions this raises, right? I mean, just a question of human trials. Parents are going to have to go through the calculus. I mean, imagine being a parent and doing this. This is so horrible. The calculus of, on the one hand, 50% trials, you know, if a premature birth is going to happen, one hand a 50% chance that it's going to die. But even if it survives, it's got a high probability of having real developmental problems versus being involved in a completely experimental procedure where we don't know exactly what the risks are because we've never tried it in human beings. And these will be the first humans that we're trying it out on. I mean, I don't know. That's a kind of a risk calculation. Luckily, few of us ever have to face because I don't know how you do that calculus and how you make a decision. It's not easy. Really, really not easy. But it's exciting. And it's amazing. It really is stunning that we can do this. Of course, 20, 30, 40 years from now, it's possible that we'll be able to grow fetuses to humans right from conception. So you're talking about a real revolution. The other thing that, of course, these artificial worms create all kinds of issues about questions about abortion, questions about if it's in this bag, does it have rights or not? Can the mother change her mind after it's already in this bag? My senses, the answers, no. It's differentiated. It's separated. It's now a human being, even if it does depend on this artificial construct in order to survive, just like you can't kill a 25-week preemie. Once it's out of the woman's womb, it's a separate, individuated entity and therefore has rights. So fascinating. Really, really interesting. This is going to be a topic that we're going to keep coming back to, this kind of technology, the kind of issues it raises, the moral issues, the scientific issues, the other issues. I mean, it's just exciting, thrilling, great to be alive at a time where we're innovating to such an extent. All right, we're in a little long there, as usual. Let's turn to some of your questions. Michael, for $100, wow, thank you, Michael. But we're still about $80 short, guys, so four $20 questions and we'll get there. All right, Michael says, would Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan would never say build a wall and Mexico is sending rapists. Reagan wasn't a fascist playing on people's fears. He wanted to tear down walls and liberate entrepreneurship. He was always cracking jokes and smiling. Where did all that benevolent energy go? Well, it went down the path of religion and statism. It went down the path of cynicism and skepticism. It went down the path of, unfortunately, a path Reagan set us on, which was bringing into the Republican Party as a dominant force, the moral majority, making religion more than anything else, a kind of differentiator between Republicans and Democrats left and right, incocating religion into the very fabric of the Republican Party, into the essence of the Republican Party, which I think did a lot that dumbed down, dramatically dumbed down, because that's what religion does, the Republican Party. And by dumbing it down, by dumbing it down, it has opened up the Republican Party to all the kind of mindless nonsense that we're experiencing today. I also think we've gone through 30 years of just a slow, systematic erosion of the American sense of life that was still, if you will, somewhat alive when Reagan was voted in. But I think the fact that repeated administration post Reagan, and you could argue even Reagan, betrayed that vision, betrayed that spirit, the fact that we had 9-11, the fact that we had a great financial crisis, the fact that the left has gone nuts and nobody challenged it, the fact that the right is so incompetent and pathetic. And again, the role religion plays in politics, the increased role religion started playing in politics. All of that has led us to this day. It's since Reagan, but it's not just since Reagan. It's since Rand and since Milton Friedman's heyday. There have been very few positive, optimistic, energetic voices that are fundamentally pro-American and fundamentally pro-markets. Those voices are not on the right. Those voices are certainly not on the left. Those voices are not to be found. Everything now is portrayed as dark. Everything now is a crisis. Everything now is Armageddon. Catastrophizing is something everybody does. Just look at the headlines. And it's not just newspapers selling newspapers. It's politicians cultivating that, embracing the negativity and leveraging that negativity. And American people, because that sense of life has been so eroded. Remember that in 2004, Leonard Peacock gave a talk of the America versus Americans where he basically said that the American sense of life had diminished dramatically. And that's 2004. A lot has happened since then to diminish it even further. And yeah, and it's where we are today. This is a result of that disappearance of the American sense of life. And Iron Man always said that sense of life could not stand up ultimately as a barrier to a rotten philosophy. And rotten philosophy across the board has brought us the way we are today. The subjectivism of both right and left, the negation of reality and of reason, the explicit altruism, the cynicism of skepticism, which dominate our young people, cynicism of skepticism, the lack of ideals, the lack of values, because the values and ideals that they're presented with are so rotten that they'd rather be skeptical of everything. I don't think Reagan joined the religious party. I think Reagan made the party more religious. The party was not particularly religious under Eisenhower Nixon Ford. The party became religious or Bush. Well, no, strike Bush under Nixon and Ford and Eisenhower. The party became religious under Reagan. Reagan's strategy for winning was to bring over the religionist evangelicals onto his side, to bring the majority into the Republican party, the more majority in the Republican party. Evangelicals in 1976 overwhelmingly voted for Jimmy Carter. Now, could Reagan have beaten Jimmy Carter if he hadn't played to the evangelicals? I don't know. I don't know. But that's what he did. The reality is he did that. The reality is he won. The reality is that he brought them into the heart of the Republican party and they've never left. They're there. Everywhere. You will find their fingerprints. All right. Bre, as a supplier to the auto industry, they are awash in government cash. The unions can see this as well as I can. The problem is the spending will end with vacant factories. Lordstown Automotive is the first of many. Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. There's no question. There's a huge amount of money is going to come in. The money's coming in primarily for the batteries and the EV stuff. And they want a piece of it. The challenge, of course, is that nobody wants to give them a piece of it. Everybody wants to grab for the government money. They don't want the UAW to participate. The UAW is feeding frenzy at the government's trough. The government has created this with this ridiculous inflation reduction act by creating these perverse incentives. But we know this. These are not unintended consequences. These are intended because this is completely predictable. This is a way government can load over us by dangling all this money in front of us and making us behave in ways we otherwise wouldn't. So, yeah. I mean, the whole auto industry is going to shift. Companies are going to rise. Companies are going to fall. But overall, this will be a massive net negative on the US economy. And the UAW just wants to be on the positive side, at least in the short run, and get as much out of the subsidies and the handouts as possible because they're worried the long term, they'll be shut out of it, which they will be unless they fight for it. But this is the kind of world government creates, the mixed economy creates. It's my gang, it's your gang. There's no shared interest. There's no common interest. There's just, if you don't, if I don't get, if I don't grab as much as I can right now, then somebody else will grab it. James, what do you think about car makers increasing their prices on vehicles by more than 30% over five years? Is this sustainable? How does car prices impact places like Texas? They are potential to be a manufacturing state. Look, car prices are going up with inflation. Car prices are going up primarily because of inflation, would be my guess. Much of what you consume has gone up significantly over the last two to three years. Car prices are going up because I think post-COVID demand went up, although you'd expect demand to go down. So I'm not sure what market phenomena are allowing car prices to go up and how customers are dealing with that, but obviously inflation is a big part of it. The automobile industry is unbelievably competitive. So it's not like this is, again, greed inflation, and it's not like it's necessarily true that car makers are making gazillions of dollars. They might be making a lot of money right now because of inflation during inflation. Certain products, you can make a lot of money during a short period of time, but they were losing money before, or making a lot less money before, and they'll make a lot less money in the future. And of course, the unions, again, want to squeeze them right now when they're high, but right now when they're high, they need to be investing significant, all those resources, back into the company to develop those electric cars. And if they don't, they're toast. In terms of Texas, I don't know about Texas manufacturing cars, but certainly, again, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, I think Kentucky, all have significant car manufacturing facilities. The Japanese, Germans are investing heavily in the South, in car manufacturing plants in the South. They will heavily invest in electric car production. They'll do that in the South. All the battery factories are going to be in the South. I don't think Texas is part of it for whatever reason. I don't know why, but it's certainly in the Southeast. It's fascinating to see. Usually, when a president passes a big spending bill and lots of goodies and subsidies and stuff to hand out, the handouts are all to the states that are going to vote in his party's favor. So the Inflation Reduction Act, you would have expected much of the dollars going from the Inflation Reduction Act to go to blue states. But they are not. I've seen a number of studies now that show that almost all the money from the Inflation Reduction Act and a significant amount of the money from the CHIP Act, two of Biden's signature quote achievements, the money is going to flow to red states. The money is flowing to places where they hate Biden. And maybe that explains part of why he doesn't get any, you know, in spite of the fact that the economy is doing okay, he gets no credit for that. And maybe that is because the red states where they are benefiting from all the money the government is throwing at them, short term again, they hate Biden so much it doesn't matter. And the blue states are not benefiting from any money that Biden is throwing at because they're not getting that money. And they resent the fact that they're high and dry. All right, still short those $420 questions. Three last questions. We'll go through these fast and we'll call it a day unless somebody comes in with more questions. Is America the only western country where meritocracy is promoted as a value? Europeans and Canadians only conceive of egalitarianism. Yeah, in terms of as a value, and I don't like the term meritocracy, it sounds terrible. China is the other country where this approach, I certainly think Korea and Japan to a large extent, you know, view this idea of merit based promotion, merit based success as being something virtuous. So I don't think the United States is alone. Again, one of the potentials, the great potentials that was China was the fact that it culturally was very focused on merit. And again, one of the reasons it's so sad that the China's gone away from markets and away from freedom is that it had immense potential. It's not an egalitarian society at all in its modern incarnation. It wasn't historically. Historically, it was more of a meritocracy in a sense that it was dictated, right? Merit was determined by the state, and you advanced based on state exams, and it was very much focused on you have to qualify for stuff. It would have been good if the freedom and at least the marketplace would have been allowed to prosper, to advance, to flourish in China. The potential was unbelievable. Sylvanus, artificial wounds are going to be huge. I agree. I'm concerned the public opinion will be an obstacle once from conception as possible. Think about the Bible. Thampus will say, yes, I agree with you. It's, it raises a lot of interesting ethical questions that will have to be dealt with. And we live in a culture that has zero competence in dealing with complex ethical questions, because they're only referent to figuring out answers to complex ethical questions. Or for many people, the only answer is, you know, religion. And religion is a terrible source for technology-based ethical issues. It's an awful source for any issue, any issue, but certainly for anything new. And then, of course, the secularists, moral thinkers, all egalitarians, all, you know, different forms of altruists, and it's not clear how they would think about these issues, but it's not going to be good either. So we are so immature when it comes to morality, and yet so advanced when it comes to the technology, and there's a real mismatch over there. All right, Lewis, do you think people know how much control the government really has over them? I believe COVID lockdown showed a lot of people the extent of the control which triggered the popularity of conspiracy theories today. Yes, I think that's right. I think COVID made it real. What was, in many respects, always going on, we were always being controlled, and COVID made it real to people because it was visceral. It was right there. I don't think people know the extent of it. You'd really have to think through all the ways in which government controls impact your life. It's massive. It's huge. It's everywhere. And most people don't realize that, and I do think I agree with you that because of the complexity of it, because of the complexity of it, and because of how challenging it is to really understand what's going on in the world, because it's become complex because of the world of government and the mixed economy, that conspiracy theories thrive. Conspiracy theories thrive in this kind of environment. People need simple explanations. And when simple is impossible, they go for simplistic. They go for simplistic. Noah, what do you think is the reason young men today are more reluctant to approach women? Is it lack of general self-esteem or lack of knowledge, principles, and how to do it? I mean, I think it's a lack of self-esteem. I mean, look, did I know how to approach women? I had no clue. I had no idea, and I wasn't very good at it. But that didn't stop me then from doing it. And so I really think at the end of the day, it's lack of self-esteem. It's lack of self-confidence. Now, granted, women today are maybe more intimidating partially because they're freer in a sense of they're not as constrained by convention. They're not as constrained by as in previous generations, by a particular role that they have. And men are still struggling to deal with women who are not constrained by that traditionalist role. We don't have a model for what that looks like yet. I think men don't. But I think if you had self-esteem, you'd know how to deal with it. If you had self-esteem, you'd be seeking out a strong, successful woman who could match you, who could be your equal. You wouldn't be looking for a woman just to be in the kitchen and have your kids. And you'd want to, to some extent, somebody who was, who was your equal. But to do that, you have to have self-confidence and self-esteem. You have to have some self-assuredness and know what you want and be willing to fail. And that's the other thing. We live in a culture that's becoming more and more anti-failure. And failure is necessary for success. You'll never succeed at anything. You won't be an entrepreneur unless you're willing to fail. You won't find a goal unless you're willing to fail. You're not, you're not going to be successful in your career unless you're willing to take risks and fail sometimes. So, you know, so it's anti-risk. It's an aversion to risk. We live in a risk-averse culture. This is the consequence of, in America at least, helicopter mothers and helicopter parents are not allowing kids to scrape their knees and are not allowing kids to do anything and are not allowing kids to take any risks. We've developed an anti-risk society and I think that the unwillingness of young men to approach young women is a consequence of that. I'll do more on this in a future long show because talking about this more makes a lot of sense. Savana says, when your rich government grows and forces you to build to higher standards of building codes, I don't think that's necessary. That is, when you live in a rich society, not a rich government, when you live in a rich society, then you demand higher building codes, better building codes. You demand it from your contractors and that's how you get them. You don't need the government to impose them on you, but you now value life more. You have the resources to pay a little bit more to get better buildings. So don't, it's not the government's responsibility. It's yours. Pa says, if you could safely, would you visit Mars or other planets? Yeah, if I was young and it could do it safely, yes, I would. It would be a blast. I mean, amazing. You'd be living a science fiction novel. That'd be so cool. All right, guys, we made our target. Thank you all the superchatters. Thank you, Savana's there for getting us over the top both with your question and your sticker. Your $50 question. Thank you. Michael for doing a $100 question. That's amazing. Very, very generous. Thank you. And for everything else, all the other questions you asked. Oops, what am I doing? All right. Thank you, Catherine, for your sticker. Thanks, everybody. I will see you all no show tonight. No show tonight. Tomorrow we'll have two shows, one news round up at the same time, I think one o'clock, and then there'll be a show tomorrow night. And then we've got Fleming Rose, interview with Fleming Rose at 1pm, East Coast time on Saturday. So no show tonight, show tomorrow night, and a show tomorrow morning, afternoon, early afternoon. All right, everybody, see you tomorrow. Bye.