 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday, great week, and it's going well so far. Busy, busy, busy, busy, but that's my life. It never stops. So I did manage to put a program together today, it wasn't easy. It seems like time just gets squeezed every morning, more and more so. Anyway, yeah, let's jump in. Jim has gotten us, Jim Swannick just gotten us off to a fantastic start with a $50 contribution, just kind of with a basically a sticker. No question. Thank you, Jim. Really appreciate it. And he says, yeah, I made it to a live show. Live today can't wait, that's wonderful. Thanks for supporting the show and thanks for getting us off to such a great start. James has already got a question in for $20, so we need a few more of those to make our goal of $250, but as I said, we're off to a fantastic start. So it looks like Donald Trump is going to be indicted a third time. We're probably looking at least four indictments overall by the time we're done, by the time this summer is over, but now it looks like we're definitely going to get a third indictment, a second indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith's Justice Department. This one related to the January 6th events and Trump's alleged, alleged attempts to basically overturn the election and put pressure and try to get people to behave in ways that are fundamentally illegal and go against the Constitution and against the law of the land. He received a target letter on Sunday night, which basically said, which basically usually, which gave him an opportunity to come before grand jury and testify this week, which probably suggests that they're about to wrap up their investigation and will probably issue an indictment either late this week or probably more next week. It looks like the letter sites, according to sources because the letter is not being released, that the letter, the Trump could be charged with three different things pertaining to deprivation of rights, not sure what that is, conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States, that's the election and, and attempting with a witness. You know, this is going to be interesting, it's a circus, it's, you know, it's good to see. I, I, I think this is great. You know, Trump should not be president. Trump did horrifically illegal things. You know, none of these things, all these indictments, everybody says, oh, it's politicization of the Department of Justice, the Justice Department, it's politicization of the process, all of this stuff. But in every one of these cases, nobody is denying the facts. Nobody denies the fact that he paid off a, a porn star and, and, and diverted funds from his, you know, campaign, campaign funds and, and that that is illegal to do. Nobody, people saying, well, it's not that big of a deal, you shouldn't be indicted. Maybe, although if it was anybody else, they would have been indicted. So, maybe, maybe, maybe it's too mind of a thing. Nobody denies that he kept top secret information in boxes, in a bathroom, you know, in a bathtub, I guess, and Mar-a-Lago in spite of repeated multiple requests to turn over the documents as the law requires and that he hid them and moved them and, and lied to, you know, basically a obstruction of justice, lied to the FBI about them. Nobody denies the facts. And indeed, if you followed January 6 and you followed from election through January 6 and after January 6, you know that Donald Trump did everything that he could to try to manipulate the system, try to put pressure on people, try to, to change the results of the election. In a, you know, to the extent that the election is, is what governs, you know, elections matter in an illegal way. And then finally, he's going to be indicted probably in Georgia over trying to put pressure on election officials in Georgia to, again, change the fate of the election. Find me a few more votes. Just find the votes so we can flip this election. This is a US sitting president. So yeah, he deserves it. He has done everything in his power to make this happen, to bring this about. He, he doesn't care about the law, the law. He's above the law. He doesn't care about reality. He is above reality. He doesn't care about truth. He is above truth. He is truly a post-truth, post-reality president. He has inculcated into our culture the idea that one can lie and if one does it in a bold face matter enough and repeat the lie over and over again. I mean, this is not new. People have been doing this forever, but he just takes it to a new dimension. So yeah, you, when you do stuff like that, you get into legal trouble and he's in legal trouble, shockingly, unsurprisingly, he's in legal trouble. And he doesn't have a defense on the merit. He doesn't have a defense on the facts. There is no defense on the facts. So all Trump can say is cry and whine and whine and cry as he does almost every single day about the fact that the election was stolen from him. And this is, he's just a victim of politicization and he did nothing wrong and he's just a victim and it's the, the elites, the institutions, the deep state that is just after him from day one and continues to be after him for no good reason. He's such a nice guy. And he will, you know, when we get president, he'll get back at all of them. He'll get back at all of them. Don't worry. And his fans love him. So there's a, you know, at this point, there's a better than, I don't know, one in three possibility better than that, that he will be president in a year and a half, one in three, one in four. I'm not sure what the, how much of probability, but it's high. It's high. It's as high as Biden will be president. So there's a chance somebody else will be for a variety of reasons, but yeah, it doesn't matter. They can indict him 55,000 times. He can actually stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and on live television, shoot somebody and kill him. And his followers will still vote for him. And it's not about ideas. It's not about what he stands for. It's not about closing the border. It's not about immigration. It's not about China. It's not about the economy. It's not about any of these things because the reality is the DeSantis represents all those ideas. Indeed, he's taken the Trump platform and presented an even more radical consistent presentation of it coupled with the fact that he is governor of Florida has actually executed in his promises. He's done a better job than Trump ever did. He's done a better job and he doesn't have the craziness. He doesn't have the indictments. And he indeed is tough and people left hates him and he hates the left and he's done everything. He's done everything to tell the world, look, I'm a more competent executor of Donald Trump's ideas and I'm more consistent. And he can't get traction. He can't get traction. They're not interested in the ideas. They're not interested in execution. They're not interested in actually somebody going to Washington, D.C. and doing this stuff. They're interested in the clown show. This is about the clown show and what it says to them about Trump. They love Trump because he's such a clown. Because he'll do anything, say anything and so unpredictable. Because he's so irrational. Because he's so disconnected from facts and reality. Because they don't care about facts and reality. They love this. So the Santas can't make any traction because the Santas thinks, the Santas is under the illusion, delusion, illusion that this is about policy and achieving certain things and undoing certain things in Washington and that he can run on his record in Florida and he is better at this and he knows this stuff and he's just better than Trump on every dimension. Well, you can't speak for yourself. And what people love about Trump is the circus. They love the circus and they love the irrationality because I think it reflects the logic that what's going on in their own minds, in their own heads, it's a reflection of that. So the Santas comes off as, I mean, I never thought I'd say this about the Santas, but too rational, too thoughtful, too straight, too, what do you call it, actually somebody who can get stuff done, actually get stuff done. And that's not what they want. It's not what they want. Yeah, so the Santas is really struggling. The Santas is, was supposedly the guy who could beat Trump and in every single one of, in national polls he's way behind, but even in every single one of the state polls where there's going to be primaries starting in January with Iowa and the caucuses in Iowa. The Santas is way 20 points, 15 to 20 points behind in every single one of them. Now it's still early. Things can change. Of course, Donald Trump could drop out of the race. I mean, there's a lot of speculation that ultimately he's going to add up all these indictments and cut a global deal because ultimately the thing he's afraid of more than anything else is jail. I mean, jail is not going to be good for good Donald Trump. And if he thinks he might lose, if he thinks he might land up having to go to jail, he will cut a deal and that deal might include not running for president. We'll see. We'll see. I'm not sure such a deal can be done. I'm not sure that's in the cards. I'm not sure. I'm not exactly sure how delusional Trump is about his ability to win or lose these things. So really, really hard to tell. But assuming Donald Trump runs, DeSantis is way behind. And unless, I don't know, Christie, and DeSantis is avoiding really going after Trump and certainly going after Trump around these indictments, he doesn't touch that. So mostly he goes after Trump by saying, I will do what Trump promised or I'm going to be more consistent practitioner of the culture wars than Trump is. But again, they don't care about that. What they care about is Trump. They care about is the man. This is personality worship, which you saw a little bit, you saw glimpses of it. With Obama in the left, you're seeing it full throttle with Trump over the four years and since then. But this is a phenomenon that's not characteristic of America. It's not characteristic of American politics. And it's, again, another little indication of how America is getting ready for, is setting itself up for authoritarianism of a charismatic leader who captures everybody through that charisma. Donald Trump has an element of that and, you know, did it, all right. Let's see. Yeah. So the scientists are struggling. His, as I said, his financial supporters are really, really worried. And you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens in the next few months. But there was real, there's tons of stories out there about financial backers backing away about, you know, the fact that they're laying off some people in the campaign. Now he does have a pack. The pack is loaded with money. And the pack is going to be responsible for DeSantis' ground game. So we'll see. We'll see what happens in the debates. We'll see if he's willing to go after Trump. Trump's definitely going to go after him. We'll see how he goes after Trump. Chris Christie is the wild card here. Not because I think he can win, but because Chris Christie could shake things up by being so brutal towards Trump by going after Trump so harshly that he actually makes a dent in Trump's favorability ratings among Republicans. We'll see. Is he willing to go all out? Is he willing to call Trump a loser? Is he willing to articulate the anti-Trump case? You know, no holds bar. And if he is, that could be the thing that opens it up for somebody like DeSantis. But DeSantis is going to have to step into that gap. He's going to have to do something that resonates with people. So far, he's been a dud. This is just a weird story. It looks like a year soldier stationed in South Korea was being sent home, decided he didn't want to go home, landed up joining like a civilian tour of the Dmeril-Troi zone, and during the tour, just skipped over to the North Korean side and is now being held by the North Koreans. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's interesting what the hell happened there and what's going on. But there is a U.S. soldier now being detained in North Korea. After he bolted for there, it sounds like he wanted to go there voluntarily. And of course, the North Koreans are not necessarily going to believe that he wants to be there voluntarily. But yes, there are crazy people in the world, really, really insane people who would like to go to North Korea. You know, this was not an accidentally whoops, I crossed the border. I didn't mean to. This is somebody who wanted to be in North Korea and got around the soldiers and got around the U.N. and made it through, right? There's actually pictures of him running across. So weird, weird that there are such people out there. All right, I don't have anything original or interesting to say about the South, the American soldier going to South Korea. All right. I think this is an important story, the anti-Chase story. It's an important story because it could have consequences that are very long term in its, it's very difficult to undo these things once they get established. So the FTC, this is, I've talked about the FTC and Lina Khan and the evil that is Lina Khan and her commitment to basically destroying mergers and acquisitions in the United States, to increasing central planning, increase government supervision on every aspect of business consolidation and using anti-Chase, not only to prevent mergers and acquisitions, but also in a much more aggressive way than has been done in America ever to use anti-Chase to break up companies and to go after them. And Lina Khan, who has been committed to this agenda for many, many years, who wrote her final paper, I guess, at university about the evils of Amazon and how Amazon need to be broken up, she is now the head of the FTC. Hard to believe that somebody like this has made it all the way to the FTC, but she is, she's the head of the FTC. Anyway, a few months ago, the FTC put out for public comment new guidelines for anti-trust. So to really change anti-trust laws, you would have to go through Congress and Congress would have to rewrite the anti-trust laws. But the FTC can change the way those laws are interpreted, at least by the FTC, and then it's a question of what are the courts do and how do the courts treat it. Anyway, the FTC has guidelines. The FTC and the Department of Justice have guidelines in terms of major activity and what they were allowed and what they don't and how they're going to evaluate this and so on. They put it out for public comment a few months ago and then yesterday they basically submitted a new draft and new draft of those guidelines was made public yesterday. It's not the final draft but it's a pretty close to final draft. Anyway, reading through this new draft is just unbelievably depressing and discouraging. You know, these people are truly committed to increasing. So what has happened really? Since 1968-69, there's been an effort to try to bring some objectivity and granted it's very hard to bring objectivity to anti-trust laws because they're so non-objective. But there's been an effort since 1968 to try to bring elements of objectivity to the process of emergency acquisition, to the evaluation, to the judgment of whether to prosecute anti-trust or not. And for the most part what has happened is certainly since the 80s and 90s, anti-trust enforcement has come down. A lot of the things that might have been, they might have tried to enforce way back as bad as anti-trust has been over the last 20, 30 years. It's nowhere near as bad as it could be or that it has been in a more distance past. Anyway, Lena Kahn is dedicated to eliminating these more objective standards and she wants to give much more power to the agency itself, to the court system, to determine what is acceptable in terms of the size of business, the mergers and acquisitions, activities in business. She relies on no economic analysis. Most of the economic analysis that she tries to suggest is all being debunked and refuted. This is a philosophical battle against bigness, big tech, but bigness overall. The model here is some utopian model of perfect competition where firms do not differentiate between one another and they're all the same and they're all small and they're all... It's a disaster to the U.S. economy and it is a disaster for productivity and a disaster for companies because one of the things that companies rely on, one of the things that every businessman relies on, is you rely on some semblance of objectivity of the law. The law has to have some objectivity so you can plan, so you can invest for the long run, so you can think in terms of the long run and how to structure your business activities. So you know if going after this other company and buying it is going to be approved or not going to be approved because the government has to approve these things and all this is out the window. She wants to throw it all out the window and this draft is basically throwing it all out the window. At the same time, Congress wants to pass laws that are going to make it, again, much tougher and get a place a lot more burdened on companies and can make it a lot less objective what they're going in for and what they're not going in for. So on two fronts. And by the way, in Congress, it's bipartisan. It's not just Lena Kahn crazy Democrat. In Congress, these are bills that are sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican. So we've got a dramatic attack here on the principles of, you know, even a semblance of free markets in the United States. We've got a concentrated attack here on businesses being able to make decisions for themselves about growth and about and about mergers that is both spearheaded by the FTC with Lena Kahn. To the extent anybody has influence out there. This is still, I guess, available for public comment, right? Speak against this. This could really be we're taking the most flexible, the most resilient economy in the world. It's why the economy is still doing well in spite of everything. And by doing this kind of stuff, we're going to destroy it. We're going to we're going to make it a lot less resilient, a lot less capable of dealing with the status of coming from the top. And all of us and our children and grandchildren are going to suffer with the lowest standard of living in a low quality of life. I mean, these are the big issues that actually affect every single one of you that actually change the quality of your life. There's so little. I mean, the right is so obsessed with the minutiae of things that have little to do with their own life. When right in front of them are real dramatic issues. And sadly, many of them are on the bandwagon to make life more difficult for all of us. It's coming both from Lena Kahn, also just a note that it's also coming from the Justice Department, the Justice Anti-Trust Division, which is run by somebody by Jonathan Kanta. But Jonathan Kanta and Lena Kahn, they need to be opposed. These merger guidelines are horrific, and they will set the U.S. back dramatically from an economic resilience and flexibility perspective. All right, let's see. Lastly, this morning, the president of Israel, I don't know how many of you knew Israel has. Oh, let me just say before I do that, Melinda Menil and the Wolf, thank you for another $50 that is very generous. We really, really appreciate that. Thank you for the support. That is great. We're still about $115 short of our goal. We have about 60 people watching live right now, so $2 from everybody would get us there. So a few, you know, some stickers. You don't have to ask a question if you're not sure about a question. But let's try to make our goal. We've made it the last few days with flying colors really, really well. I only have one question right now, maybe two on the list of questions. So once I finish the story, it's going to go very, very fast. So if you want to support the show, if you want these daily shows to continue, then please step in and make some contribution value for value for what you're receiving. Again, it doesn't take a lot of money. You can do a sticker for any amount and we can chip away at the goal. All right, so Israel has a president. The president is primarily a ceremonial function. It does not have a policy function. It does not wield any real political power. It is often used as a moderating factor for the different political polls that Israel finds itself under, but it is not per se a policy issue. Anyway, Herzog is in the United States. He will be addressing Congress today, I think this morning. Maybe he's already done it, but it will be coming in front of Congress. And of course, this has created a lot of brouhaha among Democrats. There is a significant portion of the Democratic Party that thinks Israel is an apartheid state, that it's fundamentally a racist state, that it should be boycotted. The United States should have nothing to do with it. A number of Democrats have already announced that they are not going to the talk, that they're going to boycott the talk. Of course, AOC, I had a list here of the ones that are going to be AOC. Jomal Bauman of New York, Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, you'd expect that from her, and Corey Bush from Missouri are not going to go to talk. Israel is so reprehensible, they wouldn't, they don't want to be in a position of sanction. The president of Israel, you know, another member of the Democratic caucus, Pamela Jayapal from the Progressive Caucus called Israel a racist state over the weekend. She was kind of forced to walk back her comments and, and we, you know, present them a little bit more moderately. The Hakeem Jeffries, who is the, who is I guess the minority leader and a bunch of other Democrats have issued statements repudiating these ideas and reputing in their own caucus. Because the reality is that A, a lot of Democrats are pro-Israel, a lot of, and B, Jews overwhelmingly vote Democratic. And in some districts, they make all the difference for Democrats to win. Those Jews are typically pro-Israel and not all of them are pro-Israel, but they're typically pro-Israel just in essence. And they, given that the president doesn't represent a particular political party, they would find boycotting him offensive. The Democratic Party has always been pro-Israel and they get a lot of their, a lot of fundraising money comes from Jewish donors who are very pro-Israel. And the Democratic Party is, does not want to position itself as an anti-Israel party, not yet. But one has to realize that suddenly there are strong elements within the Democratic Party that are pushing the Democratic Party towards a position that is dramatically anti-Israel. And that's the direction the party's heading. The Republican Party is much more complex. The Republican Party is often pro-Israel for all the wrong reasons. The Republican Party is often pro-Israel because the evangelicals are pro-Israel. Rand Paul is pro-Israel because the evangelicals are pro-Israel. And, but at the very heart of it, there's a lot of Republicans who are pretty hostile to Israel. They just never express it because they're afraid of the evangelical vote. The evangelicals are pro-Israel, not because the evangelicals are pro-Israel, not because they love the state of Israel and what it represents in civilization and so on. They love Israel because they believe that, you know, I don't know, they're commanded to by the scriptures. They believe that the day of reckoning is coming and they have to support Israel because that's where Jesus shows up. And all the Jews, all the Jews who are willing to will convert on that day to Christianity and the rest of them go to hell. So it's okay to support Jews now because ultimately the good ones will convert to Christianity and the bad ones will go to hell anyway. So why not? I mean they support Israel for completely mystical, bizarre, irrational reasons. I've always warned my Israeli friends to beware of people who support you for reasons like that. All right. Since we've got a little bit of time and I don't have a lot of questions, but thank you, Silvanos. Thank you, Mary-Eline, Mary-Eline, Mary-Eline. Thank you, Mary-Eline. For the support, thank you, Jonathan Honing. Thank you, Jacob Collin. Thank you, anonymous user. So all of those kind of use Super Chat just to do a sticker and provide with support rather than ask a question. So thank you. We're down now to only $80 left in order to achieve our goal. So we're slowly chipping away at it. That's $420 questions. We should be able to do that by the time we're done. Let me just show you a graph. Since I'm riling on some of Biden's policies, this is a good one to show you in terms of, okay, this is a cost, construction cost. For the National Highway Construction Cost Index. And you can see what has happened since, you know, late 2020 into 2021, 22. I mean, the index has gone basically through the roof. Not quite doubling, but a lot. Now, a lot of that is inflation. Inflation has picked up and inflation impacts the cost of building highways, partially because the cost of labor has gone up and cost of goods have gone up. But a big chunk of that increase, and a big chunk of the increase, if you look under the Trump administration, there was a nice increase on 1.6 to almost two from about 2017, 2018 to 2019. A big chunk of these increases is doing what? Is what? A big chunk of these increases as a consequence are by America. This is what by America does. It makes everything more expensive. It is basically, by America is basically attacks on Americans. And it's attacks on Americans whether the Republican does it, attacks on Americans whether the Democrat does it. This is kind of weird because on so many of these policies, like by America and like tariffs, Biden is just continuing and indeed doubling up on Trump's policies. And in that sense, on many of these issues, there's no difference between the two. I mean, look at that cost curve and look at where it was in the early 2000s. It's basically 2.7 times what it was in the early 2000 when it was close to one. 2.7 times, almost 2.8 times what it cost. That's all government distortions, government provisions. That's all by America's stupidity and everything else. It's all the other rest. This is government buying hammers, right? Government buying infrastructure. Somebody said, you know, you have to remember that the point of infrastructure spending is not building infrastructure. The point of infrastructure spending is spending. And I think he's right. Government is just there to spend. All right, let's take a look at the questions that we have. So again, we're 75 short, so $420 questions or some stickers and things like that. And we can make this and not bake the streak. Let's see, James, do you still tell people during your talks that the best country to move to for freedom and capitalism is the USA? Every year, USA gets worse for capitalism and freedom. Do you advise people to look at any other countries now? I mean, to some extent, yes. I think the advantage the United States had in the past is shrinking in terms of liberty and freedom. But it's still there. I've talked to you about the fact that Europe is so much poorer than the US. You know, there was a period when New Zealand looked like it had free market policies. They exceeded the United States. But then both you got the lockdown and the COVID, which was much worse in New Zealand than in the US. And you got really bad economic policies that have driven economic liberty and freedom in New Zealand down. It's not clear where Australia is. And remember the Australia lockdowns? They were worse than the US. It's as bad as the US was. And it's horrific as lockdowns were in the US. New Zealand and Australia outdid us. Now, if you're ambitious, then there are countries in which you can do well. Certainly there are countries in Europe, Switzerland, Ireland, UK, Scandinavia where you can still do well and you can achieve and you can succeed. But there still are limitations depending on the industry that you're in relative to the US. Now, the problem, of course, is that it's not just that the US is getting worse for capitalism. It's that everybody in the world is getting worse for capitalism. Which country in the world right now would you say is really, really moving in a positive direction when it comes to capitalism? 20 years ago there were a lot of countries, even 10 years ago. I'd say before the great financial crisis, there were a lot of countries in the world, a lot of countries moving in the right direction. I don't think India is moving in the right direction. India is sputtering along. Some liberalization, a lot of nationalistic driven trade restrictions, tariffs, subsidies, industrial policy, all that kind of stuff. India is not embarked on kind of the liberalization, even to the extent that China did in the early 2000s. So there was a time where I would have said, wow, a big chunk of Eastern Asia is moving in the right direction. Even countries in Europe are moving in the right direction. Certain Eastern Europeans countries are moving in the right direction. And that's all died since the financial crisis, most of that died. Maybe Rwanda, I don't know if you want to move to Rwanda, but Rwanda, but he's also pretty authoritarian in Rwanda. So you've got a mixture as you often have in the world in which we live. The prospects for liberty and freedom and capitalism have definitely become worse globally over the last 10, 12 years. Well, 15 years, right, since 2008. And that's America's fault. It's because we stop being an image. No, big countries are moving in the exact opposite direction. Brazil is moving towards socialism. It's got Lula as its leader. South Africa, which is the S, is massive inflation and economy that is basically shrinking and crashing. What else do you have there? China economy is disappointing. Low economic growth and authoritarianism is on the rise. Let's see. I know what R is. Brazil, what's R? India. So India is the best of the bricks. And Russia is in the middle of a war that's devastating its economy, crushing quality of life, a standard of living. And they've just experienced a massive brain drain. The bricks are in deep, deep doo doo. They're in deep trouble. So you're not going to, we're not going to be saved by the bricks in spite of all the propaganda of, you know, in spite of all the Russian propaganda. All right. We've only got $50 to go. So we're chipping away. We're getting that. We're getting really, really close, really, really close. All right. Thank you, James. All right. Max. I remember when people defined their political identity primarily by reference to the economic views. Today, their identity is primarily defined by their stance on cultural wars. Is that accurate? What can we do to fix it? Yes, I think it is accurate. I think basically what has happened is that it's turned out that people's, people, the people who actually stood for free markets, stood for the Constitution, stood for the founding fathers and the principles of the founding fathers. And I wouldn't even put it as economics in terms of liberty and freedom. And those people never understood it, never really cared about it. And we're willing to give it all up for somebody like Donald Trump. Give it all up over the cultural issues. And yeah, so they never really held those beliefs strongly. Never really held those beliefs strongly. So what do we do about it? I don't know. I mean, we advocate for what we believe in. We advocate for individualism. The political spectrum was never, remember, I ran in 1969, I think, declared conservatism basically dead and conservatism impotent and conservatism, you know, because it was being captured by religion, would never save America. So she'd already given up on the right. And then she wouldn't vote for Reagan. She gave up on the right decades before any of us. And what's left then? What's leftist is, as the left became more identitarian, as the left became more focused on identity, on genes, on skin color, so did the right. By the way, Reaganomics did not lead to the fall of the USSR. That is a massive fallacy. The USSR was going to fall anyway. Reagan might have accelerated it a little bit. If anything, what Reagan did was inspire the opposition, like solidarity in Eastern Europe, but it wasn't Reaganomics. And Reaganomics is not even a thing because he didn't do that much from an economic perspective. So no, you know, yeah, the government spent a lot on defense and the Soviet Union realized they couldn't compete with the US. But what really led to the fall is their own incompetence, their own decadence. And when they opened up a little bit to the West, the people seeing what the West had and what they didn't have, they rebelled against it. The credit for the fall of the Soviet Union goes to the people of the Soviet Union, particularly the people in Eastern Europe, not to Reagan. I'm not implying she would have backed Democrats for the last 40 years. I'm implying she wouldn't have backed Republicans. Only you think in terms of dualities. If you don't back Republicans, then you're backing the Democrats. If you hate Trump, then you love Biden. Because you can't think. When you can't think, you can only see two options and there's no other option. But the reality is she didn't vote. She didn't vote for, she didn't vote for Reagan. Does that mean she backed Carter? Well, by your thinking, yes. So I guess she did back the Democrats, huh? It's just so silly. But that's the problem of not being able to think. Anyway, how do we fix it by advocating for individualism and liberty across the board and defusing, you know, taking the cultural issues and trying to defuse them, trying to find the validity in why these issues are big and trying to show that both left and right are wrong, unwrong on these issues? Jacob says, how do I determine my market worth without applying for jobs and pissing off my current employer? I don't think my pay is just compared to coworkers. Well, you need a, I mean, there's surveys, there's information online where you can find out what people at your level are making in the industry in your particularly geographic area. And then you can, you know, you can risk pissing off your employer by taking some job interviews and going to see what it looks like. I don't think, but I think there's a lot of resources online to give you information about, about, you know, what's going on. Adam says, are you going to see Oppenheim? Yes, definitely Oppenheim. I'm very curious about the movie Christopher Nolan is an interesting director. So I will definitely see Oppenheim. I'm not exactly when, but I will see it. Gail says, what about Camilla Harris's Freudian slip about population control? You know, I think she's just being infected with the Biden virus and, and you know, they go brain dead periodically. You could, I don't know, I don't think we should read too much into it. I think she meant pollution. I doubt she meant population control. But, you know, who knows, but she's just not ideological. Camilla Harris is just a chameleon. She's whatever she needs to be. Her whole political career shows that she's not a far leftist. She's just whatever she thinks she needs to be in order to win. She's really horrible in that sense, but, but maybe that's better than being an ideologue that thinks that we should have population control. So I just don't, I just don't give it a lot of credence. You know, and people do make, you know, these kind of miss, misspeak, particularly Biden misspeak. So it doesn't shock me that somebody so close to him can't keep a thought straight in their mind. All right, let me just mention that tomorrow we've got Amish Adulja. I will be interviewing Amish Adulja tomorrow night. So we will talk about COVID lessons learned. We will talk about vaccines. We'll talk about other kind of bio threats. We'll probably talk about RFK. We'll talk about conspiracy theories. We'll talk about a bunch of different things. So Amish Adulja will be on the show tomorrow. That should be a lot of fun. But for those of you who want to ask questions, feel free to come and ask the questions. What else? There was something else I wanted to announce that has basically slipped my mind. All right, we'll see if I remember between now and the end of the show. Mary Elaine asks, what about the cost of bicycle lanes and environmental studies and highway costs? We have a lot of little used bicycle lanes in Washington state. Yeah, I mean, bicycle lanes are probably huge in all new construction. I don't know if how much that factors into that particular graph. Correlation is not causation. So you can't say that that graph is just because of its shape is caused by America. But there is some causal relationship there. Environmental studies are insane and they raised the cost of building anything in the United States dramatically. I talked about that when we talked about the subway system and trains and stuff like this. I mean, the United States and the manufacturing plants that are supposed to be subsidized by the CHIP Act, the environmental regulations make everything slow and cost dramatically more. And bicycle lanes add to that. And they're now in some states like Washington and California and other places. They're mandated for almost all locations. I mean, we even have them here in Puerto Rico. We have quite a few people using them. The weather is such that you can use them all year round. But yeah, I mean, there's a million little regulations, hiring requirements, affirmative action that still exists in hiring to build these kind of preference for minority employers and stuff like that. All of that just raises the cost more and more and more. And I'm sure all of that has just become more rigorously pursued under a Biden administration. Frank says, do fathers have expectations of their son's masculinity? I mean, it depends on the father, right? And it depends on his orientation and to the extent that masculinity is important to him, sports is important to him, physical is important to him. So I don't think all fathers do. But certainly some fathers do. So it certainly is a part of the expectations that I think of many fathers, particularly the ones influenced and raised under the assumptions of a, what do you call it, a kind of a conservative, traditionalist perspective on masculinity. By the way, the show yesterday on masculinity, I thought was interesting. Hopefully you did too. Please feel free to share it. Those of you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. I think it's my goal there was to open up a conversation and to get people thinking a little differently about masculinity, to avoid this dichotomy between the left that wants to denounce anything masculine and a right that wants to go back 500 years to find masculinity and to try to envision a masculinity that is appropriate for a 21st century. Kind of remember, you know, concepts on a frozen in the past, we get new data and the new data that today is that in order to take care of yourself, in order to take care of your family, in order to be productive in the world and to have an impact on the world requires the use of reason more so than ever in human history. It's primarily a function of the mind, not at all a function of muscle, and that has to change the way we think about what constitutes masculinity and shift it away from muscle and exploitation and towards trade and use of mind. And the worst model, the worst models for masculinity are the ones presented to us by the right. The models of either 1220, the models of Andrew Tate or the model of Walsh with the good woman sitting at home or the model of course of Putin. None of those people are masculine. I don't consider Putin masculine. I consider him pathetic. And a creature of the past, not a creature of the future. As I said in my show yesterday, Steve Jobs, now there's a masculine guy. Adam Schmitz, Oregonians can now pump their own gas. Faith in humanity was stored. Oh my God, really? So you have self-serve gasoline stations in Oregon. I mean, and you guys think that these blue states are lost forever. There's a blue state that just took a massive step towards liberty and freedom. Isn't that amazing? I think Steve Jobs is masculine and is the definition of what masculinity is about the way he commanded a stage in his presentations. That's masculinity, not pumping iron. But anyway, I'm going to leave that for you to mull over and listen to my show from yesterday, because it was interesting. We talked a lot about this. And yeah, I will see you all tomorrow. By the way, we're $23 away from the goal. We've got 80 people watching right now. Somebody put in a couple of $10 or $25 or just get us there so that we don't go down kind of not achieving our goal. Tomorrow we'll have a show, a new show, probably at one o'clock. And then we'll have the interview with Amon Shadalja at 8 p.m. Friday we'll have a show at one o'clock. And Saturday, 3 p.m., we'll have a regular Saturday show. Not sure what the topic will be. And then Sunday, Sunday evening, I expect we will be doing a members-only show. So you can anticipate a members-only show for members on Sunday. And I will let you know. Yeah, I'm still looking for topics. Fred Hoppe, I think, or somebody said that they put something on the members-only section of YouTube. I don't know how to get there. I need to find how to get there and then see what you have. Sylvanas put in $20. Thank you, Sylvanas. Somebody do $3 so we can be done with this. But thank you guys. Appreciate the support. Thank you for the people who are here for the first, not for the first time, but really here live. Thank you for being live. And please go back and listen to the masculinity show. Those of you who haven't yet, like TZ. Bye, everybody. And share, share, share, share. And like. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It helps with algorithms. Really, really does.