 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, what is it? It's Monday, March 4th. And yeah, thanks for joining me. I know it's, well, it's late here. I don't know if it's late for you guys, but maybe there's some Europeans which are really late for you guys. All right, Tom says it would be a better show if it had been titled, Philosophical Objections to Objectivism. Really? I'm not sure why. Maybe you can provide some philosophical objections to objectivism, and I can shoot them down. I need that special effect. All right. Sound effects, shoot them down. I don't know. I think capitalism is more, well, it's easier for me anyway. So we're going to talk about philosophical objections to capitalism today, and my answers to them, but mainly just cover some of the philosophical objections to capitalism, and cover some things maybe we haven't talked about explicitly. We'll see how far we get. Charles Butts says, I thought there were only whiny objections to capitalism. Whininess is one of the, well, no. Yeah, whininess is one of the objections to capitalism. Capitalism makes people so rich they can afford a whine. That's a legit objection to capitalism. God, I'm going to get all these terms mixed up. Let's see, what else? Hector says, holla, you're on. Hi, Hector. It's nice to see you. Remind everybody, I will be in Argentina in April. I need to actually tape a marketing video, because I'm going to be in Argentina and get everybody excited about coming. So all right, I'm flying tomorrow. So I'm not sure I'm going to do a show tomorrow because I'm flying out. So tomorrow's going to be hectic. I have to pack, I have to get everything organized, because you know me, I pack at the very, very last minute. Yeah, packing's easy. It'll take me 20 minutes. But there's just a lot of stuff to do, mainly to do with the talk I'm giving in Amsterdam, which I'm still working on. And then up at, I'm writing that I'm hoping to get published, which I'm still working on. A lot going on. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I don't know if there'll be a show tomorrow, so you will see. But then on Wednesday, I will try to do a show from London. And on Thursday, another show from London. And then I'll be in Amsterdam for the conference, for the Einmann Conference Amsterdam, which should be a lot of fun. I'm giving a couple of talks, panels, breakout sessions. So a lot of interaction with the people there, a lot of interaction with the students. I'm really looking forward to it. It should be a blast. Plus Amsterdam, of course, is a fantastic city. Then I'm doing a day-long public speaking seminar on a week from today on Monday. And that'll be fun. Those are always fun. And then I've got a couple of days in London. I'm still hoping that I'll be able to do a talk next Wednesday night in the parliament area. So we'll see on foreign policy. So we'll see if all of that. Oh, I do have two meetings with London newspapers. I've got the telegraph, and I've got one other one who want to interview me and potentially talk about maybe regular publishing gig there. So I do have two newspaper interviews. I don't have any TV interviews yet. I need to bug my guys at GB News. At GB News, maybe we can get some GB News. Anyway, we should jump into not the Guardian. The Guardian I don't think would interview me. But I think I've done an interview in the past with the Guardian. No, I think I can't remember who it is. I can look it up if you're really interested. Who am I interviewing with? Let's see. Next week, it's Wednesday. Yeah, I've only got the one written down. The one is the Daily Sunday Express. Daily Sunday Express. And then I think the telegraph. I think those are the two, but the telegraph has not made it onto my calendar, which is actually quite worrisome. So I'm not sure what's going on here. All right, I'll have to work on that. All right, we'll figure it out. That I don't know why it's there. All right, let's jump in. Philosophical Objectivism. God, philosophical objective, objections. I've got objective, objectivism, and objections all mixed up in my head, I think because there's just too much going on. OK, so I thought we'd talk about some philosophical objections to capitalism. I talk a lot about altruism. We talk a lot about altruism. I bring it up a lot. And my model case for capitalism makes a big deal about how capitalism is incompatible with altruism. And that is absolutely true. And that is one of the major philosophical objections to capitalism. But it certainly is not the only one. And it might not even be the most important one. So I thought we'd talk about a few others, all in the context of trying to understand why it's so difficult to get people to embrace capitalism, to get people to get it. Yeah, I mean, there's one. Jim Brown just gave us one. And it's definitely on my number two on my list. Yeah, but it's a crucial one. He says, those who deny free will consistently find that it's easy to object to capitalism. Yeah, and we'll talk about why. It's absolutely easy to object to capitalism if you reject free will. So that's definitely a philosophical objection. And note that that is, in some ways, at least in the philosophical hierarchy, that is a deeper objection to capitalism. So today, we'll talk about, in a sense, epistemological. This one's a metaphysical as it pertains to the nature of man. Objections to capitalism. And we can also talk about altruism if you want to. But again, altruism, we talk about it a lot all the time. And I think the link there is fairly obvious. So I'd like to talk about some of these other issues regarding capitalism. By the way, the free will issue, again, we'll get to it, is a big part of Marx. It's a big part of why Marx objects to capitalism. All right, I think the altruism has a lot to do with it. But a big part of it is free will. All right, let's see. So let me remind you that you can shape the show. You guys can dictate where we go by asking questions, by making comments. Super Chat is the way to do that. That way, you also support the show while you're doing it. We have a target each show for the Super Chat. So it'd be great to have you participate. And it'd be good to have you participate as we go along this evening. So I want to actually start with the first objection. And I think this is an objection that most intellectuals hold, whether it's an explicit philosophical idea or is an implicit idea. And that is kind of the notion that comes from Plato that human beings cannot actually perceive truth. They cannot know the good. They cannot know reality as it truly is. They are in a cave watching shadows. Real reality, the truth, is something that is only accessible to the philosopher kings, to a certain class of people, to a certain trained group of people who have the ability to use their mind or whatever, their soul, to connect with real knowledge. With real knowledge that really lies in another dimension. And regular people just can't do it, whether it's an issue of IQ or it's an issue of something else. They just can't do it. And therefore, and you see this in the kind of elitism that pervades our culture. It's not an elitism that says rationally. Well, you know, they are experts. They're people who just know stuff about a particular topic. And I need their help if I go to a doctor. He's the expert. If I can check him up, I can get a second opinion. I can get a third opinion. But he's the expert. And the economics experts and the finance experts and the medical experts. And I subcontract with them and gain their expert. But at the end of the day, I make the decisions. It's my conclusions. I get to choose who they are. I don't listen to anybody who calls themselves an expert. But expertise is of value. But there is a certain segment of the population among intellectuals who believe that in a different sense. They believe that you are basically incapable and incompetent of choosing your own values, of knowing what truth and what good is. That you cannot make those decisions for you, even take choice of a doctor. Even choosing a doctor requires thinking, requires some knowledge, at least as a mechanism by which we discover truth. And since that is not available to most people because of Plato's view on the nature of man and the nature of reality and the nature of the world of forms and the reality we see is just a projection of the world of forms. It's just the shadows. And you need some special skills, special sauce to actually observe the real world. Notice the dualism, metaphysical dualism. There's a world of forms and there's this real world. And then our inability to use reason to discover this world. So there are experts who believe that that is absolutely right. And therefore, we are incompetent. We are unable to know what we should do, which doctor to see, what treatment to get, how to invest our finances. And therefore, it's not just that there are experts who we can get advice from, but that there are experts, there is an elite who should literally dictate how we live. What values we should pursue? Which doctor we should see? What treatment we should get? How diverse fight-up or four-year should be? If at all, maybe it should just be a state pension. So it's incompatible. This view, this philosophical view, deeply held philosophical view, held by many, many people for 2,000 years now, 3,000 years. That is incompatible with liberty, incompatible with freedom, incompatible with capitalism. Capitalism not only is implicitly self-interested, implicitly a sanction of selfishness. But capitalism is also implicitly a system of reason, a system that assumes implicitly that individuals can take care of themselves, can know what's good for them, can choose their own values, and can pursue those values. That reason is not something, and truth as a consequence, is not something exclusive to a particular class of human beings. Call them philosophers, kings, call them priests. But truth is accessible to everybody, and therefore we all choose our values, and therefore capitalism allows us the freedom to engage in trade, to engage in interaction, all in pursuit of values that are good for us, that we have chosen rationally, because we have that faculty, we have that capability. But that is a philosophical view, which most people, or a significant portion of intellectuals do not hold. And that's in capitalism is incompatible with the notion of a philosopher king. Capitalism is incompatible with the dualism with regard to reality of another dimension and a reality here, and that only some people have access to this other dimension. Indeed, almost by definition, if there's another dimension, only some people have access to it. Since there is no other dimension, you can't fool everybody all the time. In that sense, so many of our intellectuals, so many of our political leaders, Elizabeth Warren, comes to mind today, are forms of philosophers, kings, the people who know what's good for us. We can't take care of ourselves. What we do without these, the guidance of these experts, without the guidance of these philosopher kings. And notice here that there's one very, very popular ideology in the world today, very popular ideology in the world today, that embraces this notion from Plato. What is that? Anybody know? What ideology today, popular, prevalent ideology today, embraces the notion of a philosopher king, embraces the notion that only some people have access to the truth. Some people know what's truly in your interest. Only some people can tell you how to live and what to do. Who thinks that other than some academics, right? But who has this notion? Well, the fundamental, the postmodernist, no, Christianity, particularly specifically in particular, Catholicism. Catholicism has this notion. Catholicism is a Platonic philosophy. It's a Platonic religion, a neoplatonic religion. It is clearly the notion that only the pope and his cardinals or whatever have access to the truth. The pope and the cardinals can never be wrong. That is Catholic dogma. They can never be wrong because they access the world of forms. They are the true philosopher kings. The world of forms is God, or logos, or the perfect world that lives in another dimension, that only God as through Jesus made real. And some people have access to, but most of us do not. 99% of us do not. Christian dogma is written in that form. You don't have to understand the dogma. Indeed, much of it is incomprehensible. Think about the trinity, incomprehensible. So Christianity inherently places people above us, whether they are the pope and priests and cardinals and bishops and so on, who can read the Old Testament and derive from it the truth, or for worldly things, we have an emperor. And Catholicism has always, at least up until maybe the 19th, 20th century, has always been together with some kind of political leader, some kind of political authoritarian, who basically channels the worldly needs of the people and tells them what they can and cannot do, whether it was the Roman Empire or the Holy Roman Empire in the pre-post, I guess, Charlemagne era. But the church embraces this notion of, and again, particularly the Catholic Church, because the Protestant Church somewhat rebels against that, because the Protestant Church is claiming, no, no, no, every individual has access to God. Indeed, one of their big projects, the Protestants, and one of the reasons they were successful was because the Bible was being translated and the Bible was being printed. Protestantism couldn't have been what it was without the printing press, because the Bible was being printed. Now everybody could read it, and everybody could interpret it, and everybody could communicate with God directly, and God was in every human being's heart. And it took away the power of the few, the elite, who were the only ones that could communicate with God, the only ones who could deal with them. And this is why Catholicism is overwhelmingly anti-capitalism. I mean, there are a few American Catholics, there are a few libertarian Catholics, but that is the rare exception. What do you call it? There's a think tank of libertarian Catholics. But almost all Catholics are some form of statists. Many, many, many of them are outright socialists. Take all the Jesuits today, are mostly outright socialists. I taught at Santa Clara University, a Catholic university, which was super socialist. The theology of South America, the liberation theology, which is borderline communism. And that makes sense, because the whole assumption in the socialism philosophically is, somebody else will dictate your values. Somebody else knows what's good for you. Somebody else will determine what your values should be and how you should act. So the very foundational knowledge within Christianity, the very foundational assumptions, philosophical, foundational assumptions, in Christianity anti-capitalist. So when capitalism and Christianity butt heads, it's not just the altruism. Altruism is a big part of it. It's not just altruism. It's also the efficaciousness of reason and the efficaciousness of reason for the individual. So Catholics cannot really be capitalists. I mean, again, there are exceptions. They override the Catholicism with stuff they would rather believe. So I don't know what that means, Jim. And it's no accident, by the way. The capitalism, freedom generally, evolved and flourished in the non-Catholic areas of Europe because Catholicism by its nature is authoritarian. Catholicism by its nature is statist. Protestant, Protestant, Protestants. Protestants is a particularly intellectual religion. It immediately fragmented. It's non-centralized. It claims a relationship between the individual and God. It's still anti-reason and anti-rationality. Indeed, you could argue it's even more anti-reason. But in favor of personal individual emotions, so Protestantism emphasizes emotion and emotional connection to God. But it rejects the authoritarian, the specific authoritarian grand scheme, access to the world of forms, notions of Catholicism. And that's one of the reasons that you see freedom evolve. In the North, there's more freedom to do so. There's less authoritarianism in Northern Europe. There's less authoritarianism of the Church, dictating every aspect of life from the position of only we can know the truth. And there's much more a willingness to experiment, a willingness to test, a willingness to go out there, observe, and a willingness for individuals to pursue their own values, and sometimes those values distance from the Church, and you see that in England, you see that in the Netherlands, you see that in Northern Europe as Protestantism takes over Northern Europe. This is another aspect, this is kind of cool. It's an interesting point that I keep thinking about. I don't know how important this is. I came across it when I did my studies of usury and finance, the history of finance. One of the, this is crazy, but one of the advantages of, one of the reasons the Protestants make room for economic freedom, make room for making money, make room for usury and banking. And again, it's why banks and industry and everything starts gravitating out of Italy and to Northern Europe. It's because the Protestants believe in a way, much more deep way than the Catholics, that this world is an abomination. And then indeed, if you read Martin Luther, in particular Calvin, if you read Calvin, Calvin believes that what you do in this world has nothing to do with whether you go to heaven or hell. What you do in this world has nothing to do with whether you go to heaven or hell. In that sense, the determinists, he thinks that God already knows when you're born, whether you're going to heaven or hell. And what you do in this earth doesn't really matter. So one of the consequences of this is the Catholics who believe that your actions on this earth will determine whether you go to heaven or hell, at least most Catholics, Augustine didn't, but most Catholics, before they died, if they were rich, they gave up all their money to poor people because they believed that that would buy them into heaven. But Calvin and Martin Luther didn't believe that. So Protestants didn't leave their money to the poor. They left it to their kids because they weren't trying to buy into heaven because they knew they either were going to heaven or not going to heaven. And that was determined before they were born. So why make an effort? And indeed, while they were alive, sin was much more palatable. Usury, much more palatable. In this earth, who cares if you commit usury or not? The only thing that matters is what happens in the kingdom of the Lord, there's no usury. But in this earth, it's grubby, horrible, disgusting, selfish, material. Yeah, absolutely. And in that sense, the perception of capitalism is this is why Christians, I remember what's his name, Novak, Michael Novak, if some of you remember him, a conservative from years ago. He had this speech that he gave in Asia once, probably 20 years ago, maybe longer, maybe 30 years ago, about capitalism and praising capitalism. And everybody, the Asians should become capitalists. And he ends the speech by saying, but look, capitalism only has one cheer, only one cheer for capitalism. Because they understood that capitalism was not moral because it was selfish. It wasn't good because it was grubby and material and about this world. It didn't fit into the kingdom of God. It fit into the kingdom of earth, which is there, which is bad, filled with sin. So sin, it doesn't matter whether you go to hell or heaven. It's being predetermined already. This is one example where, so while the Protestants can be a little bit more open to ideas of capitalism or ideas of liberty, even that has to be constrained. It's only going to get one cheer. Because at the end of the day, they think human beings are sinful. They think selfishness is evil. They think making money is grubby and this worldly and materialistic. But they just shrug, OK, but that's just the way it is. See, see how different dimensions of Christianity, different dimensions of the philosophy, all arrayed against capitalism. So philosopher kings in the primacy, any kind of primacy of consciousness is going to incline you to be against capitalism. Capitalism is a system of reality, of facts. It's not a system of wishes and prayers. It's an issue that very, capitalism very much depends on objectivity. And again, on reason, reason, reason, reason. And anybody who advocates for, anybody who holds really primacy of consciousness cannot be consistently an advocate, cannot be consistently an employer, never mind an advocate, of reason. And therefore, they're going to fail in capitalism and that will turn them off. They fail and they have the philosophical justification for why it's bad. Again, altruism and objectivity and reality and what's that reality stuff? All right, let's turn to another objection, which Jim Brown raised earlier, which is one about free will. If you deny free will, if you deny the very nature of man as a choosing, thinking, thinking as in choosing, what's the point of thinking if you don't get to choose? The point of thinking is to choose, to shape your action, to shape your life, to shape your thinking. If man is just determined by stimuli, by the things that happen to him, and to some extent by the genes that he has, if it's not choices, then first of all, there are a few things. All the advancements that we've had and the left, the environmentalists, very much think this. All the technology we have, all the innovation, all the success, all the wealth that has been created was going to be created anyway. You can't attribute it to any particular choices because these don't exist. You can't associate it with any particular ideology because it doesn't matter. Free will doesn't exist. The world as it is had to be as it is. It was determined from day one. It's just the way the atoms crashed. And suddenly, you can't give more credit. And therefore, view them as deserving. Those people who made a lot of money because of the world is the way it is, or made a lot of money making the world the way it is, they had no choice. It's just the way it is. What makes them worthy? If they have no will. If they're not choosing to do what they do. I mean, this is directly reflected in Obama's famous speech. You didn't build that. You didn't build that. So it's not you. She don't fully deserve it, or maybe at all deserve it. And if you don't deserve it, then it's going to be here anyway, whether there's Steve Jobs or not, we'd get an iPhone. And if we're going to get an iPhone anyway, then why should we admire Steve Jobs and why should we pay him a lot of money? The money's not going to incentivize him. He's just determined to do what he's going to determine to do. I mean, the whole thing is self-contradictory, but any argument about free will is self-contradictory. You can't even make it without, in a sense, applying the ideas of a reasoning mind that chooses to think that there's no choice. What? So if you're anti-free will, you're anti-merit, notice how many philosophers these days are anti-merit, then you're going to be anti-capitalism because, by definition, the distribution of wealth is going to be viewed as unfair. Unfair because nobody deserves what they have. And egalitarianism becomes very attractive. Nobody deserves what they have, so everybody should get the same because everybody's equally undeserving. And the wealth will be created anyway. This whole idea about incentives. Incentives assume people actually choose. I read this book once, written by these radical environmentalists, and we're talking about all the things that they want to do in order to solve the world's problems and clean the world and everything. And a lot of it relied on advanced, new advanced technology that doesn't exist today. And their attitude was, the attitude was, well, the technologies were just coming to existence. We need them. Need, this is, again, a primacy of consciousness. Need is a force in nature. Need as a force in nature brings about the reality of innovation, technology, new things that we need. That's enough. You don't need entrepreneurs, a mind, incentives, freedom. No, it just happens. It just happens. And for most people, it appears that way. I got an iPhone. Wow, there's an iPhone now. I have an iPhone. There's no conception of who made it. I didn't have an iPhone before. How did it come into being? Who built it? Who imagined it? How many years did it take them? What kind of capital did they need to raise? Did anybody take any risk? It looks like it's a huge success. Nobody risked anything. But of course, it wasn't guaranteed to be a success. And on and on, they can't conceive the whole chain of events that is creating, building entrepreneurship. It just, again, happens. It happens to them. And they benefit from it. Cool. But they don't give credit to anybody for it, because it's just like nature gave. It's just like God dropped manna from heaven. Even Karl Marx. Clearly, Marx hates capitalism because of its implicit and explicit self-interest. If you read, it's all over his work. But my favorite Marx essay is the under-Jewish question where all this anti-Semitism comes through and where he hates the Jews being selfish and capitalist. He gets the connection. He gets the selfishness and capitalism of the same integrated somehow or interwound somehow. And he hates them both. He hates capitalism because it's selfish. And he hates the Jews because he believes they are the source of selfishness. And of course, Marx is a determinist. So he believes again, and it doesn't matter. Capitalism will happen. It'll run its course. And then the proletarian world rise up. That'll run its course. And then ultimately, without explaining exactly how, or you get a utopia of the proletarian. And that'll run its course. But it all is determined. That is the end state, I guess. But that's a determined end state that has to go there. And in that sense, it's easy for him to reject dessert, reject individual values. Note that if you're deterministic, if you take your determinism seriously, I don't think everybody takes their determinism seriously. I don't think Sam Harris and some of these others take it seriously. They claim to be determinists, but then they act like they're not. But if you take your determinism seriously, then you have no personal values. What does it even mean to value something? It's not like you care. But what is you? What is I? Is there an I? If you're a truly determinist, there's no I. I mean, even for Sam Harris, she says, at the end of the day, there's no I. There's just the collective consciousness, whatever the hell that is. There's no I. And if there's no I, there are no personal values. And reason doesn't matter. Because reason really doesn't matter if you don't have free will. Capitalism is gone. Capitalism is a system of individuals pursuing their values based on their own judgment, based on their own reason, in pursuit of their own happiness. Pursuit, pursuit, pursuit. Pursuit guided by what? Guided by their mind, guided by their reason. Guided by their choices, by their choices. So capitalism, again, implicitly assumes free will. And then capitalism also makes a point that it's objective that some people make a lot of money and some people make less because some people create more value than others. More value for whom? For their customers. For whoever their customers have it to be, for other people. So some people create more value. Some people create less value. And therefore, some people deserve, because they activated their own reason, their own choices, to create that value. And some people don't, because capitalism is the consequence of philosophy. It's a consequence of particular philosophical views. And if you hold philosophical views that contradict, that ultimately contradict the foundational concepts, then you're not going to be pro-capitalism. And look, the reasons so few people out there in the world are not pro-capitalism is because they have rotten philosophies. It's not because they don't understand how capitalism works. They don't understand how capitalism works because they won't accept capitalism. They don't listen. They can't comprehend it because it doesn't fit into the rest of their worldview. And the worldview is what dictates their particular view about economics and about political systems. So if you reject free will, as many, many intellectuals do, you can have capitalism. If you embrace some form, and there are many forms of this, of the philosopher king, notion, or the ignorance of the individual, not the ignorance, the incompetence of the individual, or the sinfulness of the individual, you can't have capitalism. So we don't have it. If you have the primacy of consciousness, or you reject reason, you reject rationality, you're just not going to get capitalism. If you embrace altruism, and you reject self-interest, even superficially, not an iron-rand even egoism, just an idea of pursuing your own self-interest, you can't have capitalism. This is why capitalism is so, I mean, the development of capitalism is so special. It's so unusual. It's such a moment in time that cannot, and it is very difficult to replicate. It comes out of an enlightenment, an enlightenment in which people, respected reason, believed in the primacy of reality, and used reason to make choices, to change the world, discover the world, and then change it. It's a period in which, while everybody still gave lips over to altruism, there was real starting to think, people were starting to think about, okay, but the real purpose of it all is happiness, right? We're supposed to be happy, and I need to choose values to be happy. And yeah, I can't quite reject the Christian ethics yet, but the goal is for the individual to be happy. It's the embracing element of egoism, the embracing elements, definitely elements of reality and reason. And this is why it all comes together, and we get capitalism, because it just doesn't come together in the minds of intellectuals, but because they're communicating it, and teaching it, and developing it, and it becomes part of the culture. And people go out and start living, really living, with a capital L, using their minds to make choices, and when they make the money, when they succeed, they feel a lot less guilty than in the past and in the future, maybe, because they believe they deserve that, because they buy into free will. Dessert makes sense to them. And that's what happens in the 19th century, is all that work that was done in the 18th century, in the Enlightenment, people capitalize it, and what the result we get is capitalism. The result we get of the Enlightenment is capitalism. It's the consequence of a decent philosophical view. And since the beginning of the 19th century, the Enlightenment has been attacked, and attacked, and attacked, and attacked, and attacked. The idea of a philosopher king has come back. The idea of primacy of consciousness has come back. The idea of the impotent of reason has come back, postmodernism, Kantianism, everything. The idea of determinism has come back, and of course the idea of altruism has come back, and as those keep coming back, as those philosophers keep being elevated in the culture and seeping through the culture, and in every corner of the culture, thus capitalism declines. And that's why it's so hard. It's so frustrating, right? You do economics, the economics of capitalism, so simple, so relatively easy. The history of capitalism, so true, so simple, so straightforward, capitalism works, socialism doesn't. Why don't you people get it? Because that's not what it's about. They will tell you, capitalism is unjust. Capitalism is exploitative. People don't deserve it. People are unhappy under capitalism. Haven't you heard that one? People are alienated, alienated. They don't know what's good for them. People make choices, they're materialistic. We have a consumer culture, a consumerism culture. They don't know what's good for them. They need somebody to tell them what's good for them. And you see that today on left and right. Everybody wants to tell everybody else what to do. Authoritarianism is on the rise in America and in the West. And it says on the rise, not because of politics, it's on the rise because the philosophy of authoritarianism has been on the rise for 100 years. 200 years, really. But for the first 100 years, we still had that energy and momentum from the Enlightenment. All right, so those are some of the philosophical objectives to capitalism. You could take this in a lot of different directions. You can go on all kinds of philosophical issues. You can go much deeper. You can go all kinds of things. That was just kind of an intro, a few ideas, hopefully stimulated some thoughts. All right, I will be moving to super chat in a minute. We are distilled plenty of room for you guys to ask questions. So please feel free to ask questions. Questions can be on anything. They don't have to be on the topic of what I just discussed. So anything you want, please feel free to jump in with that content. Let's see. What else do I want to say? Yes, March 15th is the deadline for applying for a scholarship to Ironman Conference in Austin, Texas with Tara Smith, Gina Golan, Greg Salamieri, Jason Rines, Ben Bear, whom I'm missing. I'm missing somebody. Do I say Greg, Jason, Ben, Tara, Gina? Maybe I got everybody. All right. So yeah, the bottom line is there's no shortcuts people to change the world, to make us a capitalist nation, to bring capitalism back, really back. That's going to require objectivism. That's going to require philosophy. And this is why I like Millay and it's going to be really interesting what he can get done and it's going to make Argentina better. But if you think we're heading towards the laissez-faire capitalism in Argentina and then to the world because everybody will look at Argentina and learn from it and embrace it, you have got something else coming. You are going to have an nasty bad surprise. No. Things will get better in Argentina. Can anybody change you make? But they're not going to go all full-blown laissez-faire capitalism. Their philosophy will not allow them to do it. Won't allow them to do it. Really appreciate it if you guys are going to afford it, would consider becoming monthly supporters of the Iran Book Show. The monthly support is steady. It's fixed. And particularly, if any of you can afford to be 100, 250, $500 monthly supporters, that makes a huge difference and is incredibly valued. So please consider doing that, those of you who can afford. But if you can't, $5, $10, $25 is great as well. So you can do that on Patreon and you can do that on yourunbrookshow.com slash membership, slash membership. So either one of those. You can also, by the way, support the show on YouTube. All right. Kind of exhausted today. Let's see. We need $15, $20 questions still. Just for fun. $15, $20 questions. We could instead just do $6, $50 questions. $6, $50 questions is even better. Let's start with a $50 question from Michael. I noticed almost everyone I've spoken with who has read Rand's works of fiction have responded positively to them to some degree. But really, the people grasp how profound and earth shaking what she produced is. What's stopping them from recognizing it? Lots of different things. Some of them, they just don't get ideas. They just don't get the ideas are important. They don't get that idea shape their own life. They don't get that idea shape history. Again, this is all philosophical points. And therefore, all right? Cool novel. I enjoyed it. It was uplifting. That was great. Next. They don't get that these ideas are what? Or the bad ideas that animate the bad guys or that animate the victims of the bad guys in the novel. Those bad ideas are ideas in our culture, and they hold them themselves. And they don't get that the book is a call to arms to undo that in your own soul. Never mind in the world out there. That's one reason they don't get it. Other people might be afraid. They read it. They realize the implication. They realize the implication. And they're afraid of that implication. They're worried that that implication will destroy their lives, destroy their friendships, alienate them from their family, alienate them from the community. They're worried. Jim is asking me if I need a Red Bull. I do. I hate Red Bull. I don't drink Red Bull. I need a coffee. But if I drink a Red Bull or a coffee right now, I will not go to sleep. And that will be worse than using my free will to stay focused and sharp right now. But it's taking an effort. And it requires energy. Just so you know. All right, Vandy Pence says, how about $148, $2 questions? That'll work. That'll work. We're down to $122 questions, or maybe even less, with Jacob. So not that many, $2 questions, or $2 stickers. $199 stickers, that should be easy. Everybody do a $199 sticker and we'll be there. So those are some of the things fear, not understanding the world's ideas in their own soul or the world, even though it's written in God's speech. Not being afraid of what it'll do to their life, objecting to the philosophy in Atlas Shrugged. Disagreeing with it. Yeah, it's a novel. But disagreeing with the philosophy. People don't, they're no heroes like that. I mean, there is a very, very, very smart venture capitalist on Twitter who regularly quotes Ayn Rand, but who regularly also says, in Ayn Rand's novels, the villains apps right on. She got them all right. The heroes, unrealistic, there are no heroes like that. That's part of it, right? It's part of it is, it's a challenge to you to rise to the occasion. A challenge to you to rise to the occasion. Not everybody's interested in that challenge, right? It's the challenge that we talk about here, is to be the best that you can be, to live the best life you can. Some people are just too afraid to even contemplate that, which is sad, sad. OK, Hopper Campbell, another $50. Thank you, Hopper. On Saturday's show, you mentioned the Sopranos. I found the entire series unbelievably dark and disgusting. A complete malevolent universe void of heroes and justice. What does it say about the culture that we are fascinated and excited about mafia life? Well, it says that we are, because we're so dominated by altruism, that our lives are gray. We can't enjoy life. We can't celebrate life. We can't have fun in life. And therefore, we project that maybe people who don't care about the morality of altruism don't care about religion. Gangsters, bad guys, people who unleash their own self-interest supposedly, right, this is the perception of self-interest from the side of the altruists, they at least have fun. They at least have some quality, some value in their life. Because their perspective is, my life sucks because I'm trying to be good and goodness equals misery. What would equal fun? Well, abandoning this altruistic, self-sacrificial straightjacket I'm in. Oh, who does that? Well, the mafia does that. They just kill whoever they want. They have sex with whoever they want. They party whenever they want. They drink whenever they want. They do whatever they want. Hey, isn't that cool? And again, the conception that we are taught in morality is you can either be an altruist, sacrifice, suffer, pain, virtue, or you can be an egoist, lying, stealing, cheating, killing, murdering, raping, fun. Those are the alternatives. The rational, selfish alternative doesn't even doesn't enter their mind. They can't even comprehend it. So we're fascinated with gangsters, the Godfather movies. I mean, they consider some of the greatest movies ever made in America, Breaking Bad, Sopranos. There's a movie that I often talk about on the show called Heat, Michael Mann, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino, playing opposite each other. One's a cop. One's a criminal. Cop's life sucks, depressed, divorced. Children won't speak to him. The bad guy? Life is great. Life is wonderful. And that's typical. If you ever see face-off, face-off, the cop, miserable, depressed, horrible, the bad guy, potting all the time, having fun. Now, what it means for them to be happy and fun, right? I mean, it's a particular thing. But yeah, it's altruism. This is what altruism does to you. This is what altruism does to you. Thank you to all the $50 contributors. You've really helped us get there. Now, all we need is $92 contributions. Basically, everybody on right now doing a $2 sticker would get us the way we need to be. $199, somebody start a $199 trend. All right, West for $50. Oh, we could just do a few $50 and get it over with. Random quote from an anime I watched. Quote, I consider political power to be like a sewage treatment plant. Not having it can be a problem. But I certainly don't want to get close to it, spoken by a character with integrity. Yes, but this cynical view of politics is destroying us. It's killing us. It's terrible. Replace political power with the founding fathers. I consider the founding fathers to be like a sewage treatment plant. They were politicians. This is what happens when you're on the principles. When you can't separate proper political power from false political power, evil political power, political power focused on violating rights instead of protecting rights. And it's sad that that's a conception we have of politics. Wouldn't it be great if politics was about the discussion about individual rights and it was populated by people like the founders? And it won't be unless we demand it. But it's our cynicism about politics in a sense that creates the politicians we are cynical about because we can't distinguish between appropriate political power in the service of rights and inappropriate political power in the service of power, in the service of violating those rights. And you've got to have that separation. All right, Dave Dean, another $50. Thank you. We need three more of these guys, three more $50. Concept integration question. Is it logically coherent for someone to claim to be a rational, immoral, a rationally immoral capitalist? Hope you're having a great day. I was until this question. No, I'm kidding. But is it logically coherent for someone to claim to be a rationally immoral capitalist? No, I don't know what that means. How can you be rational and immoral? The essence of morality is to be rational. The essence of immorality is to be irrational. So to be rationally immoral, put aside the capitalist, is inconsistent. It's a contradiction. Now, we're assuming here that the person knows of what he's speaking. That he's using the terminology correctly. And what does it mean to be a capitalist? Does that mean to be somebody who has capital, who allocates capital? Or does that mean somebody who adheres and believes in and advocates for capitalism? So you've got to be clear about what the terms are. But no, I mean, that's completely incoherent. Not if rationality, morality, and capitalism really mean something and mean what we think it means. Then it's incoherent. All right, we have a bunch of $20 questions, and then we have a whole bunch of two and five, and one or two $10 questions coming in. So if you're going to ask a question, let me ask it to be a $20 one, because there's just a lot of questions still for me to cover. And as I said, it's getting late, and I am tired. All right, this is one of the reasons why I want to move the show to early in the day, do longer shows, get it done in the middle of the day when I'm super fresh, and then have the evenings to myself and to read, to do research, to plan for the next day shows, and so on. All right, Hector, you fly often. What is your favorite airline? My favorite airline is Japan Air, Airlines by far. Do you have a dedicated airline card? I have a couple of cards in the US. What is your favorite airport and why? Oh, god. What is my favorite airline? I generally think my favorite airlines are Asian airlines, and I don't really have here a clear favorite. Japan Airlines is very good. I think I've flown to Singapore, and it was amazing. Even Thai Airlines was good. Korean Air was good. I mean, the Asians, they have service in hotels everywhere. It's just at a different level. It's not even close to compare it, particularly if you go to a place like Thailand. So I definitely say the Asian airlines are my favorite airlines to fly on. Do I have a dedicated airline card? Yeah, I mean, my most used airline is American. I'm executive platinum and have been for, I don't know, 20, 20 plus years executive platinum. That's the highest tier on American Airlines. I've flown. I've got one of those cards that says, you know how you have a million-miler club? There's a million-miler club, and different people, and you have a million, two million. I have six million miles on American Airlines, just a little bit over six million miles. You guys do the math on that one. Six million miles on American Airlines. But I also have frequent flyer cards on United, on Delta. I think I have it on Latam. I have it on Iberia. I have a bunch of frequent flyer cards pretty much everywhere because I fly so many airlines. And I try to get points on everything that I fly. Now, they're all in alliances. You can usually get the points on your main airline. I think my Korean airline membership just expired. And then what's my favorite airport? I don't know. I know what my least favorite airport is. But what is my favorite airport? I mean, I like, you know, no, I don't know. I mean, I like some of the European airports. I like Copenhagen. I like the smaller. Eh, Copenhagen was not maybe not. I don't know. Was it Zouich? I can't keep track of them, I guess. I can't keep track. Zouich is nice. I thought Vienna was nice, but I don't like it anymore. What was the other one? Richard just put in $150 and told me to go to bed. I have to finish all these questions first. Thanks, Richard. Really, really appreciate it. What was I saying? So I don't know that I have a favorite airport. In the United States, God. Dallas is OK? Even Chicago is OK if you stay in the American Airlines terminal. I don't like LA. I don't like the New York airports. Although the American terminal of American in JFK is pretty good. And the new terminal, the new American terminal at LaGuardia is very nice. I mean, they really upgraded LaGuardia. LaGuardia was the pets. Used to be the most awful place. And actually, OK, the nicest airports in the world, the nicest airports in the world, I don't know my favorite, but clearly the nicest airports in the world in China, they are massive, beautiful, clean, just gorgeous, architecturally, spacious, amazing. Don't understand a word, but amazing. All right, let's do this. Michael says, why can't professional philosophers get ran right? I don't know, ask them. Because it's hard, particularly for a professional philosopher. Because a professional philosopher has bought into a particular way of looking at the world and a particular view of the world, which is wrong. But they bought into it. And it's very hard. Once you've got a PhD and you've taught this to shake it out, and then Inrand approaches philosophical questions completely differently than most modern philosophers and most philosophy professors like. So she's an outsider. She's an outsider. Her essays are in English. They're readable by the populace. She writes novels. And that's one level. And then the other level is she challenges every single thing that these philosophers believe. There's not a single issue. Not a single issue on which Inrand is not completely new. It's not a single issue in which Inrand is not completely revolutionary. The way Inrand is not challenging their most fundamental beliefs. Now, by the way, there was a good essay on this and a video on it on the Inrand Institute website by Mike, was it Mike Mazza? I think it was Mike had a really good analysis of this issue of why professional philosophers don't get ran. Among other things, I'm not a professional philosopher, but Mike is. So if you're really interested in that particular question, then you should check out our new idea, the essay by Mike Mazza. Andrew, how does the religious metaphysical issue of believing in the Christians after life affect one's approach to capitalism and freedom? I think I mentioned it. If you believe, well, I mean, do you believe you're predestined to go to heaven or hell, like Luther and Calvin did? If you believe that, then your actions don't matter. And then you might as well party, and you might as well be greedy, and you might as well be productive, and you might as well do all these things that are associated with capitalism. If you believe that your actions are associated with the term of whether you go to hell or heaven, you want to be a socialist. You want to give your money away. You want to treat everybody through sacrifice. So your beliefs about the afterlife affect how you live your life very much, and therefore your beliefs around freedom and capitalism. All right, Clark, do you think the First Amendment will be instrumental in preventing substantial regulation of big tech? A lot of digital innovation amounts to speech and expression. I don't know. It's going to be really interesting to see how the court is going to rule. I think there are five cases related to free speech in one way or the other. It'll be really interesting to see how the court treats big tech. Does big tech have free speech? Does it write to free speech? Does that count? So I don't know what the answer is. And the court's primarily Supreme Court is going to have to make a call on which direction it is going. And I don't know what that call is going to be. But if they decide to protect free speech, if they sit on the side of free speech, which basically puts them on the side of big tech on many of these issues in front of the court, then I think it's pro-digital innovation and all of that. Absolutely. Liam, at what point does someone have the right to be arrogant after they've earned a certain master of a subject? It depends what you mean by being arrogant. Confident, projecting self-esteem, arrogance. I mean, I don't know. It depends how you use the term. But yes, if there's going to be a legitimate justification for being arrogant, it's that you are a master, a master of the field, as good as it gets. You've really nailed it. You really got it. It's not about a degrees. It's about real mastery of a topic. And then your arrogance should only and also then your arrogance should be confined to that topic, that issue. And I don't like the word arrogance. I don't like, I don't know. It depends what you mean by arrogant. I find people who are constantly tooting their own horn and how good they are, that's arrogance. And that usually indicates low self-esteem, not high self-esteem. People who really, really have mastered a field, they don't necessarily have to let everybody else in the world know that. It doesn't add anything to them. All right, Michael says, I would love to see Tucker Carlson's take on Pyongyang. The ultimate show city, the most striking thing about the interview with Lex, is how shallowly he anonymizes almost everything. Yeah, I mean, Tucker is super shallow. He's very good at manipulation. In that sense, he's like a two-wee. He's very good at seeding doubts in you and getting you to think things that you wouldn't otherwise think by creating those doubts and raising questions as if he cares about what the answer is. Really, really, really, really bad. Andrew, are socialist economic theories motivated by altruism? I don't believe they simply have a different view on the respective value of workers in management. For example, they favor workers morally and rationalize it. No? No, I mean, Marxism, which drives much of socialism or Christianity, which drives another approach to socialism, they're both deterministic. So they both believe that the capitalist hasn't earned his stuff. Socialism is materialistic. It doesn't believe in the role of the mind, the role of reason in creating value, and therefore, only muscle creates value. They are ultimately systems of philosopher kings. They believe that experts should guide the economy and guide you towards your values. You don't know how to do it. So socialism is basically brought into all of these bad philosophies. It's a consequence not brought into. It's a consequence of all these bad philosophies. Daniel says the debate between Robert Sapolsky and Kevin Mitchell on free will was interesting. Unfortunately, at the end, Kevin seemed to agree with Robert that we should completely trash moral judgment. So there you go. Yeah, I mean, it's hard. An objectivist needs to debate Sapolsky on free will. And anybody else, it can't really get there. It can't really get there. It can't really break through. You can't really break through because they don't have an alternative. They don't really present an alternative. Why is moral judgment completely trash if there is free will? And yet he's trying to defend free will without moral judgment. What's the point then? Jim Brown, nah, it's a false dichotomy, altruism versus selfishness. I was fascinated by Atlas's Francisca D'Anconia and Ellis White, both examples of genuine egoists. Yeah, neither one is altruistic. Altruism is the literal opposite of selfishness. Altruism means otherism. It doesn't mean being nice. It doesn't mean being kind. It doesn't mean being benevolent. It means the rejection of your own life for the sake of other people's lives. It means being selfless. All you have to do is read the philosopher who came up with the term altruism. The philosopher who came up with the term altruism was Augustine Comte. And his whole definition of altruism is about denying yourself. Even if you want to help other people, if it brings you pleasure to help other people, it's not moral. It's not altruistic. Altruism has to be done out of a pure sense of duty and out of a pure sense of lack of self-interest, of selflessness. So it's not a false dichotomy. It is the dichotomy. It's the whole basis of Rand's morality, who rejection of altruism, a complete rejection, 100% rejection, Francisco's rejection, Ellis Wyatt's rejection. Now, selfishness, in Rand's view, you need to be generous, kind, nice, friendly, open doors to old ladies, even help them cross the street. As long as you're not doing it, as long as you're doing it, because you understand the value it presents to you. Altruism is thoroughly evil, anti-human life. Self-interest, self-interest is what morality is about. Self-interest is living based on your values, living in pursuit of your values using your rational mind. And as long as you're pursuing rational values, rational values, values you can explain to yourself rationally, you're being self-interested, you're being selfish. And that can include charity. It certainly includes kindness. And it definitely includes helping friends, which Francisco and Ellis Wyatt are. And it is a benevolent philosophy. Selfishness is benevolent. Altruism is malevolent. So no, it's not a false dichotomy. It is the dichotomy in ethics. Richard, again, thank you for the support. Really, really appreciate it. All right, Daniel says, on Protestantism, the ridiculous number of subdenominations, considering the church down the street, heretics, quibbles over whether to play cards at church, et cetera, sounds like disintegration or at least a more parochial M2. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right for the more. Although, remember, Calvin was a dictator. Calvin ran Vienna brutally, brutally. So you can have a M2 Protestant. But it is true that, particularly in America, where there's so many denominations, all in the same geographic area, all vying against one another, it's completely disintegrated. And the only way to come together is by some very charismatic interpretation and wrapping around the flag. What is interesting, though, is how much are these disintegrated Protestant churches, how enamored they are with Trump. That I find interesting, right? That's the one thing that unifies them all. They're all Trumpists. At least, yeah, the evangelicals among them, right? But even evangelicals don't get along with one another. They're all segmented. All right, let's see. Jim Brown says, those who deny free will consistently find it easy to object to capitalism. Yes, we talked about that. Thank you, Jim. Maximus, what are your three wishes for a genie? Oh, god. I don't know, world peace? For a genie, what would be my three wishes for a genie? I don't know, 100,000 subscribers? I don't have wishes for genies. I can't even conceive of it. Because it just seems random, unearned. I don't buy lottery tickets. I don't make wishes to genies. What you get is what you earn. Go in it. Sorry, Maximus, I just don't have three wishes. I guess, all right, here you go. I want to live to be 200. I want to be 200 healthy, amazing. I want to have the biology of a 40-year-old, and I want to live to be 200. That's probably my one genie wish, because that's not possible. It's not something I can earn currently. But it's something I would really want, right? So money, all that other stuff, don't care. Allow me to live to be 200, or forever, for that matter, with the biology of a 40-year-old, and the mind of a 40-year-old. All right, James, having self-esteem means you should always stick up to yourself for yourself. But how do you know when someone's being overly defensive, isn't being overly defensive a sign of low self-esteem? Yes, definitely sticking out for yourself is not constantly defending yourself against somebody else. It's stating what you think and walking away. And also acknowledging when you make mistakes. And acknowledging you could be making mistakes sometimes when that's possible. It's acknowledging the reality of reason. And it's overly defensive. How do you know that? When they are rationalizing, they're making stuff up in order to justify themselves. When they're not engaged in reality, they're not dealing with reality. When they get super emotional, if you criticize them and they get super emotional, defensive, low self-esteem. Somebody with high self-esteem gets criticized. I've told you this before. This attitude should be, if they're right, I should thank them. And if they're wrong, it's their problem. You don't get insulted. You don't get upset from a criticism. So defensive people are set off by the criticism. Shelly, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Thank you. All right, Liam, was there a 0% chance Hitler could have won? I think if you take a long-term perspective, yeah, it was basically 0%. He was irrational. He was about to make mistakes. And the forces of good were just more powerful. The United States was going to develop a nuclear weapon. And if Germany hadn't been defeated before it was done, it would have been dropped on Germany. Hopper Campbell, I didn't come to guide sheep. I came to awaken lions. Yeah, that's a great line. From Javier Millay at the World Economic Forum. Michael Sanders, did I invent study psychology formally, or was she just an unparalleled introspective? I think she was not just an unparalleled introspective, but she also could observe other people. And she had understood the relationship between ideas. And she thought about other people's reactions. So when people talk to her, when people react it in particular ways, she tried to understand them, not just at the level of what they said, but what would motivate somebody to do that. Like she came up with a character, Peter Keening, from a conversation she had with a neighbor. She was always observant of particular attitudes and psychologists. So introspection and extrospection about people. Jim Brown, F.D. Anhuva, before him, were modern philosopher kings. Yeah, as is Elizabeth Warren, as was Obama, as most politicians are. That doodle bunny, why is evil so good at PR and marketing, like Trump and Hamas? Why are they so good at marketing? Because I think evil is very oriented towards manipulating other people. It's very oriented towards others. And it hones that skill. And marketing is just an application of that skill. So it's the one skill they have. They can't deal with reality so much, but they can deal with other people. All right, let's see. Shazbad, Fox Mulder from the X-Files made a wish for world peace. The genie responded by eliminating all people from the earth except for Fox. She then suggested Fox listen to the air carefully and said, do you hear that? Peaceful, very, very peaceful. I never watched the X-Files, but that sounds like a good one. All right, Jim Brown, hold on to that Baba Looney. Hold on to that Baba Looney. Jordan Peterson is coming up from behind, chasing the Catholic Church. Um, not sure I get it, Jim. You have to explain that one to me. I don't know what, I don't get it. Anyway, James, time has a nasty habit of proving or disproving ideas. It does, doesn't it? James, again, also it appears you are incorrect. It looks like Vivek will be Trump's VP. No, I don't believe it. Where did you read that? I do not believe Vivek will be Trump's VP. Is that like in the news now? Is that he's announced it? Is that the latest rumor? I don't see it anyway. All right, I'll make my prediction again. Vivek will not be Trump's VP. Not be Trump's VP. I'll bet you I'll put money on it, put money on it. It's more likely to be Scott from South Carolina. It could maybe be what's her name, Elisa Stefanik, but I don't think it will be Elisa Stefanik. Yeah, we'll see, but of all the candidates, I think the one with the least probability is Vivek. Clark, off topic, but did you see Kid Rock on Joe Rogan defending Israel? That would be a good clip to react to. Kid Rock was making all your points. No, I haven't seen that. That would be fun. Yeah, I'll look for that. Good for Kid Rock. Unusual, right? All right, Michael Sanders. If you want to be popular, be vague. If you want to be understood, be clear. Absolutely. I try. Jim Brown, was there any one philosopher who more than the others worked to destroy free will? Interesting. I don't know. I mean, we'd have to ask, I think, a historian. I mean, Plato, probably at the end. I think at the end of the day, it's going to be Plato. But certainly Augustine, within Christianity, Augustine is the main purveyor of a lack of free will. But then almost a lot of the philosophers reject free will. Yeah, that's a good question to ask one of the philosophers when they hear who know more about the history of philosophy than I do. How about $148, $2? Oh, we did that. $2 questions. We got that. Jacob, on vacation in Lake Tower, Aryan skiing with my girlfriend, here is still fulfilling life with loved ones. Absolutely. I thought you just got hit by a massive storm, and there was like nobody was skiing because you were under 14 feet of snow or something. Stay safe, Jacob. Stephen, I just discovered a blog on YouTube in Moscow who is very critical of the Russian government who is trying to get to the US sanctioned Ivan. Today's show was swamped with Russian government bots. He had to stop his show. Oh, that's sad. I mean, why doesn't he go to Georgia or the Kazakhstan or just somewhere to get under the thumb of Putin and then try to make it out to the United States or something? You can go to Georgia or to Kazakhstan pretty easily. Yeah, I hope you stay safe. That is tragic. Dave, concept integration question. Again, is it logically going for somebody claimed to be selfless, duty-bound, altruist, and a radical capitalist? They are... Yeah, I mean, it's definitely logically incoherent. It's definitely logically incoherent, even though you will find people who claim it. Within the libertarian movement, you will find people who claim that. But that just means they're logically incoherent people. They're not logically there, right? Yeah, you guys are speculating VPs. It doesn't matter who the hell cares. It's not going to be Tulsi Gabbard. He has nothing to gain for putting Tulsi on the ticket. She adds nothing. She contributes nothing. Remember who his pick was last time was Mike Pence? Because Mike Pence gave him Ohio. Gave him Ohio. Trump is quoting the black vote right now. He's trying to expand his base. I think it's Tim Scott. Maybe it's a woman. Maybe the only... I don't think it will be Tulsi if it's a woman. The woman, what's his name? Noam from North Dakota is more likely because, again, she brings in women. So he needs somebody to expand his base. So I think it's either... My view is it's either Tim Scott or Noam or Larry, somebody like Larry Elder. Yeah, it wouldn't be Spicer was Larry Elder. But it's somebody... I think it'll be a minority, a woman or a minority. And the fact that Tulsi was a Bernie Sanders supporter doesn't make any difference. It's not that much difference between Trump and Bernie Sanders. They agree on a lot of things. All right, Frank, as Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mills, and David Ricardo, the bad guys for Objectivists, yes, yes, to some extent. I mean, they also have some good things about them. Is there anything about their work that is connected to capitalism? Yeah, sure. Jeremy Bentham had some really, really good defense of finance and user interest, banking. He was generally pro-markets. J.S. Mills was good at free speech sometimes, relatively speaking. And he was also early in his career, particularly. He was good on freedom and on markets. Later, he became a socialist, but ultimately originally he was a market guy. Ricardo had some good observations in economics and some bad ones. They were mixed. But they're not the bad guys. They're far, far men. Beying Barry's mother. Why? Hey, Iran, unrelated, but being on my mind. If government has a monopoly on the use of force, does that mean government has a role in regulating guns? Yeah, to some extent. I mean, again, most people don't agree with me on this, but most Objectivists don't agree with me on this. But yeah, to some extent, for example, they have a role in determining which guns are OK for citizens to own and which are not. Like, tanks not. Hand pistols, yes. Figuring out where the lane is. Because government is responsible for force. It's responsible for regulating force, in a sense. It's responsible for what are the threats and what kind of threats they are. And therefore, certainly big guns, big, big guns, are part of government's responsibility in protecting our rights. Big guns are threats. And as threats, they are the government's responsibility. They're threats for afflicting physical force, physical violence against us. Vandy pants. I watch a dark malevolent movie any day of the week. It's two hours. But I almost never watch a show like that too long to stay in the kind of universe, hundreds of hours across multiple years. Yeah, I mean, I get that. I get that. And I'm with you. Who really caused World War I? Germany? God, I'm not an expert on World War I. But it was basically the ambition, I think, ultimately, of Germany and the Austrian-German Empire that they felt threatened. But Germany was the motivated power, because they thought they could win. They wanted to be an imperial power. They felt second-rate to the Americans and even the French. And they wanted to assert themselves as an equal power. And they wanted to use World War I in order to do that. That's my understanding. But I'm not an expert. Akira Felix. Candace Owne is a black woman. She'll be VP. Maybe. Maybe. I think more likely Candace Owne than Vivek. Sorry. I know he's on the short list. And Trump probably has good reason to keep him on the short list. But he brings nothing to the team, other than the potential to outshine Trump. He's clearly smarter than Trump. No question about that. So no. All right, everybody, maybe I'll see you tomorrow. If not, I'll see you Wednesday from London flying along Flight Tomorrow. But yeah, I'll maybe see you sometime before the flight tomorrow. We'll see. Thank you, everybody. You were great on the super chat. We blew away the target. Really appreciate it. And I will, as I said, see you tomorrow. No, maybe not. See you Wednesday. What the hell? See you when I see you. Bye.