 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday, one PM Eastern time. Ready, the end of September. I hope everybody's having a fantastic, had a fantastic weekend. And have a fantastic weekend. And looking forward to this coming week. I'm laughing because Andrew posted on the chat, you should be atoning Iran. That's right. Happy Yom Kippur to everybody. I hope you're all fasting appropriately. I am not. I've been gouging at food all day. And you're supposed to be fasting today. It is the day of atonement. You're supposed to ask for forgiveness. And it is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. So there you go. I've, in one swoop, since I got up this morning, I've been violating the atonement rules. Actually, you're supposed to fast from sundown last night until sunset tonight. And yeah, that hasn't worked for me. So it's not applied for me. Ryan says he forgives me. So good, Ryan. Ryan forgives me. All is good. Forgiving for what? For being alive. For being human for the whole, and during the ceremony, it's a very Christian ceremony. During prayers on Yom Kippur, you stand there and you say you're spending a synagogue. And you spend the whole day in synagogue. Basically, the whole day in synagogue. And you say, you basically pray. And part of the prayer is, basically, I'm a sinner. I've committed sin. I've done bad things. I've done this wrong. Allowed, you say. And you hit your heart, as in you have to sway as well. That's part of the shtick, right? And you admit to being an awful human being. Anyway, it's been a long time since I've been in a synagogue. And I don't remember the prayers by heart. But yes, that's what you're supposed to be doing today, spending all day with a bunch of other Jews in synagogue, who if they're following the traditions, it didn't shower this morning. And certainly didn't brush their teeth, because brushing their, you know, fasting includes not brushing your teeth. So the synagogue sticks. Anyway, it's been a long, long, long time since. But when I was a kid, or when I was a teenager, used to go all the time and spend all day there. It was no fun. All right, let's jump in. Just a quick update from last night. We talked about the Armenia situation, the Armenia Azerbaijan. And reports are today that Armenians are kind of streaming out of the Karabakh region and into Armenia, basically abandoning their homes, their villages, because they do not wanna be ruled by Azeris, by Azerbaijan government. Now, it is to Armenia is a democracy, nominally a democracy, Azerbaijan is a dictatorship. So I can understand it from that perspective. But I think the main issue is not democracy versus authoritarianism. The main issue really is, you know, tribal alliance. So thousands of people are leaving. It's not clear how many will leave. Ultimately, there are 120,000 ethnic Armenians in this region. The leadership of the Armenians is basically say this, they'll stay in the region until everybody who wants to evacuate has been evacuated, and then at that point, they too will evacuate to Armenia. I guess this just suggests that the conflict is never gonna be over, because they'll just keep, they'll just keep coming back to it. They'll just, you know, the Armenians will wanna go back home, and there will be another war in the future. So it's one of these sad areas of the world, like the Balkans, like Russia, Ukraine, you know, maybe like the Middle East with Israel, where the conflicts are deeply tribal and unlikely really ever, or at least in our lifetimes, or at least as long as the world is as irrational as it is to be properly resolved. All right, let's jump into the news for today. Good news out of Hollywood for those of you who are having withdrawal symptoms, because your favorite shows are not coming back to the streaming platforms or haven't been slow to come back to streaming platforms because of the writer strike. It appears, not for sure, but it appears that after 140-something days of striking, the writers and the studios have come to an agreement and that the writer strike will end. Remember that the actors are still on strike, so this does not guarantee a return to production. But the writer strike, at least, the writers will at least come back. They've agreed around the central issue of residual payments for streaming services. It looks like the writers got much of what they wanted. With regard to AI's role in the creative process, again, it looks like the writers, at least for the next three years, have gotten what they actually wanted. It looks like it took the involvement of four of the industry's top executives, Iger from Disney, the CEO of Warner Brothers, the CEO of Netflix, and the CEO of NBCUniversal to actually get a deal done. They stepped into negotiating a few days ago, and they got a deal done. Exactly, is this good, is this bad? I have no idea. And as I told you in the past, I don't like this idea of one centralized union negotiating with all the studios at once, and there's one contract that applies to all writers. It's adjusted by seniority and by the demand for the different writers, but it's still, it's a one-size-fit-all, in a sense, of many of the provisions of the contract. I'm a big believer in competition, in competition for contracts as well, in competition for terms. I would like to see different studios have different agreements with different groups of writers, and maybe it's less efficient, maybe it's more cumbersome to negotiate, but I think ultimately it results in more innovation, and in particular, with regard to AI's role, maybe they've stuck a deal now for three years, but in three years, AI's role is gonna be different. And at some point, the studios are not going to just let the writers get away with whatever they want in terms of AI, because the reality is that AI is going to change the industry, just like it's gonna change many, many other industries, it's gonna change writing, it's gonna change the movie industry in profound ways, and everybody better get a handle on that and better prepare for that. Disney supposedly has created a task force to study artificial intelligence and how it can be applied across the entertainment conglomerate, and I'm sure a lot of the other players are doing the same thing. AI is going to change the world in one way and the other, and I think we just, you know, maybe the writers have bought themselves three years and we'll see what happens after that. It really, you know, so the deal's not done yet, they still have to get a final agreement together, and then I guess the union votes on it, votes to accept or reject it, but it does look like there's a good chance within the next few days that the writer strike will be over and then the focus will shift to the actor strike, it'll probably require, again, the movement of the big executives to get that done and for our favorite shows to be back. To filming, I don't think we'll actually get any of the shows onto the streaming platform so a few months, many of them have to finish filming. At the same time, the auto strike continues and is actually on Friday, the UAW announced that they were expanding the strike, primarily with regard to General Motors and Chrysler or whatever Chrysler's called these days, whatever the European name of that company is, one that I cannot pronounce. Ford, for some reason, seems to, is further along in negotiating with UAW so UAW spared Ford from additional strike, and as a consequence, Ford and the Audit Union will continue to negotiate, will continue to talk and without additional striking. You know, again, this is horrible timing. Yeah, it's Stalantis, Stalantis, Stalantis. I don't know what kind of a name that is, but Stalantis is Chrysler, it's the company that owns Fiat and Chrysler, not Fiat, Volkswagen or Fiat? Fiat, no, it's Fiat, Fiat. So anyway, horrible timing just as the industry is completely shifting to not only electric cars but also shifting to non-unionized labor in other parts of the country. According to a Cato study, and I'm quoting from it, non-unionized vehicle assembly plants. This is not obviously the big three, this is Toyota and maybe Nissan and some of the German manufacturers, BMW and Mercedes who build automobiles with non-union labor primarily in the South, it says non-unionized vehicle assembly plants in the United States appear to be more productive, more innovative and often even better paying than the unionized counterparts. You know, given that and given that the industry is gonna be engaged in a massive shift towards electric vehicles, it is really, really hard to imagine how workers are gonna benefit from striking right now and how this will enhance their interest or improve their standing, improve their position. The reality is that the auto industry is changing, changing in profound ways and to the extent that the auto unions make the big American three auto companies less productive, more expensive in the sense that they make labor costs significantly higher for the big three, to that extent, they make the big three less relevant in a world shifting whether we like it or not, whether we support it or not to electric cars and to a real, a real threat from the industry's perspective of imports from China and you also see, of course, the Japanese shifting to electric and that'll be interesting in and of itself. Whoa, Vadim just stepped in with a $500 support, I was just starting to get worried about how we're gonna make our numbers and Vadim has just doubled them. I'll get to the super chat, Vadim, in a few minutes. So yeah, I mean, I think the American auto industry is in trouble, it's in big trouble because it's like they have at various key moments in the past, the auto industry and the unions are basically taking their head, dug a deep hole in the sand and stuck it in there, right, not good. All right, God, the story about, okay, what are we doing now? Yeah, got my shut down. Republicans seem like they want a government shutdown. I think that some of the people in the Republican Party, those, I don't know, the Freedom Forum, whatever they call themselves, within the House of Representatives, there are a few members there, it might not even be a large group, but they just seem like they want the drama of a government shutdown. And it's not even, that they hope to get something meaningful, it's not even that they're doing this in order to cut government spending, it doesn't seem like that's really their agenda. They just wanna flex some muscles, they just want to create some havoc. I think there's a real nihilism in this. Now, I'm not against government shutdowns, I'm actually really for government shutdowns, for a good cause. That is primarily the cause should be cutting government spending, proposing an alternative that cuts government spending dramatically, forcing Democrats to vote on it, forcing the Senate to consider it, maybe the Senate votes it down, but then you negotiate some compromise. But basically, government spending, in order to bring about a reduction in government spending, is fine. But that's not what this is about. You know, they might say a few things about government spending, but a lot of this has to do with border security and immigration and something it has to do with, I don't know, woke in the military and all kinds of other issues that the Republicans in the House are frustrated by. A lot of it has to do with flexing muscles within the Republican Party, within the Republican caucus, in the House of Representatives. So it's a kind of a competition between Matt Getz and the Republican leadership in the House. But it's, you know, and again, I'm not against government shutdowns. I mean government shutdowns are nowhere near as economically destructive as people claim they are, quite the contrary. They might do a little bit of good to have some of the agencies shut down for a little bit. The government doesn't actually shut down. That's a massive exaggeration. Of the 2.2 million people who work for the federal government, maybe less than half of that will actually not, you know, will be furloughed, less than half. For example, I think under the current plans, the IRS has basically designated all of its employees as crucial to national security and therefore all of them will keep on working, right? And so, you know, the Department of Homeland Security keeps 227,000 of its 253,000 workers on the job. You know, the Department of Justice plans that 85% of its 116,000 employees would be considered essential. You know, the, what do you call it? Air traffic controllers are deemed essential. I think they have to work without pay and then they get pay afterwards. But, you know, it's just a hassle. And of course, it would be good if this was used in order to again cut a deal about cutting government spending or cutting government spending as a percent of GDP or doing something like that. It's going to make for interesting politics. It's going to make for interesting soundbites. It's going to make for interesting few days as this gets sorted out and the Republicans figure out exactly what they want and what they want to get out of this, because it's not clear what they want to get out of this. But nothing good can come of this. At the end of the day, government spending will not decline until there's either a massive crisis that requires government spending to be cut or a real ideological shift happens in America where, you know, politicians, in order to fulfill the wishes of their constituency, actually go into the budget and start thoroughly cutting it and revising and reforming entitlements. I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, but it will happen at some point because if it doesn't happen voluntarily, it will happen in a sense that the government will be forced to do it because it will have no choice as it approaches bankruptcy. I don't know what bankruptcy exactly means in the context of the federal government, but something like that. All right, talk about government and useless government activities. The SEC, over the last few years, has been on a campaign to try to control what employees in the financial industry how they communicate with one another. So the SEC has very strict regulations about what we can say to one another, what kind of communications we can engage in, but then also one of the regulatory requirements are that every financial firm, every financial firm, private equity, hedge fund, bank, investment bank, every financial firm keep a record, keep an archive of all communication between its employees, all its emails, all its texts. It's why financial institutions that are moving to things like teams and Slack and then they have their ability within those to archive everything. And if you use Google email or if you use Microsoft email, everything is archived through your employer's account. So that way, if the SEC thinks you've committed far or done something bad, they can ask for all the communications you have ever done. Or text, Slack, or teams and figure out whether you're guilty or innocent. Well, the problem with that is the SEC has discovered and you have to keep track of everything for years and years and years and years. The problem the SEC has discovered is that a lot of people use other forms of communication that are not being archived by the employer. So for example, it's illegal, illegal for you to use your personal email address to talk about work because that is not archived. You know, that's relatively easy for them to intercede and intercept and figure out email is relatively accessible to the government if they want it. A bigger challenge for them are messaging apps, particularly messaging apps like WhatsApp which are encrypted. Now what do they do? And they, you know, so you could be messaging your coworkers on a messaging app like WhatsApp about work and that would be illegal. I mean, this is the level of intrusion into our lives. This is the level of regulatory supervision. This is the level at which you're guilty until proven innocent by our government. This is the SEC, the Security and Exchange Commission, right? Anyway, they suspected that people in the investment banks were doing this. So what they asked the investment banks a few years ago to do is they asked them to acquire all their employees to submit all their text messages to their employer and then the SEC and employer, you know, scanned them for what they found was, not fraud, not anything problematic, but work communication. Work communication on private chat. Anyway, they discovered enough of this that they find the investment banking industry over a two-year period, $2 billion of fines over work-related messaging that was not done through what the SEC considered proper channels was not archived in the way it's supposed to be archived. I mean, the level of... I don't know if this outrages you guys because I know we live in a culture where who cares? Business, Wall Street, screw them. You know, we're outraged by woke, outraged by a million different things, but economic stuff just doesn't outrage anybody anymore. But to me, this is infuriating. The level at which this is, you know, intrusive and the level at which this is, you know, trying to control people, control their behavior, which forum do they communicate with people when? I mean, if it's a coworker, and you're saying, let's go to dinner, I mean, I'm surprised you're allowed to go to dinner with coworkers. And when you go to dinner with coworkers, you're not supposed to record the conversation to make sure that, God forbid, you didn't talk about work-related stuff that wasn't archived. I mean, it's so disgusting. It's a police state. It basically is police state tactics, completely totalitarian tactics as applied to the financial community, the financial world. So, you know, that's what it is. Anyway, now they've decided, well, partially because, God, the SEC got $2 billion. This is great. This is a way to get real revenue, right? I guess this goes to the government. It all sits at the SEC. Maybe they even pay their employees bonuses. I don't know. But they've decided that they were too narrow in their concerns. And now they're going after, not just the investment banks in Wall Street, they're going after everybody. So they're going after Carlisle Group and Apollo Global Management and KKR and TPG and Blackstone, all the private equity funds. They've asked these funds to not just ask the funds, the management to look at employee phones and check whether they violated these things. What they've asked them is for them to give their personal phones. This is just unimaginable. To give their personal phones and other devices that employees give it to their employers or to lawyers, and these devices must be copied. And then any messages discussing business have to be handed over to the SEC, right? Now, this was not the case with the broker-dealers on Wall Street. In those cases, the SEC asked companies to review staff messages and report to the agency how many discussed work. Here SEC staff is going to review a sample of the messages themselves. Now, this should be a clear violation of the First Amendment. Clearly, a violation of like a million different individual rights that we have. Like a violation of our privacy, a violation of a business's trade secrets, a violation of the business's own privacy, the individual's privacy. And this is just unbelievable. Who knows? How much they're going to extract from this one? This is our SEC, right? They've already gone after Wells Fargo Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley. Now they're doing private equity. Who knows what they'll do? I mean, they'll do hedge funds next. They'll do Citadel. They'll do all the big hedge funds as well. I don't know. God, just for this SEC, she should be disbanded tomorrow. Consequences to be damned. I get really pissed off at stuff like this. Anyway, so now let's move to a more positive story. Yesterday, I think it was yesterday, right? Yesterday, a space capsule, from a robotic spacecraft, OSIRIS, it came back to Earth with a sample from an asteroid. The asteroid's name is, I had it here and I let it go. Anyway, from a distant asteroid, it touched on yesterday on the sandy floor of the Utah desert, and it was picked up by helicopter and taken to a decontamination facility. And, you know, they, Benu, thank you, Benu. I was looking. I knew it was something like that. Anyway, this asteroid, Benu, which is, it's a relic of an early, of the early solar system. It has, you know, the assumption is that because it's present-day chemistry and mineralogy have virtually unchanged since forming this asteroid, forming four and a half billion years ago. Just think about what four and a half billion years means. I have no concept, really, of that. You can't hold that, really. It holds valuable clues to the origins of the rocky planets such as Earth. It may even contain organic molecules, similar to those necessary for the emergence of microbes. That would be fascinating. Anyway, they, you know, this spacecraft, this is another amazing part of this. The spacecraft was launched in September 2016. It reached Benu in 2018. It spent two years orbiting the asteroid, before venturing close enough to snatch a sample of loose surface material with its robotic arm on October 20th, 2020. Right? It left Benu in May of 2021, and it traveled from Benu to Earth over 1.2 billion miles. 1.2 billion miles. I mean, how do you even conceptualize 1.2 billion miles? I mean, can I Google map this? It's a ridiculous distance, right? It's Star Trek-like distances. The traveling back to Earth included two orbits around the sun. I mean, this is what's amazing about this. We have today the capacity to launch a spaceship onto an asteroid. To get close enough with the robotic arm, to control it from Earth, to get close enough with the robotic arm, it can scoop up some Earth, and then fly back all the way to Earth and land safely in Utah. I mean, this is stunning. It truly is amazing technology. It's an amazing achievement. It is proof of the rational capability of mankind and how we can achieve and do really great things. And it's just stunning that, you know, you can do this. And I don't know, there's a Bajani and Armenians can't decide on a piece of land and which tribe should... It's just we have on one hand such primitivism on this planet. We are primitivism, even in the heart of Europe, look at Ukraine and Russia. And at the same time, right, at the same time, you know, be able to do something as stunning as this, right? You know, Megan Ribbons, I think I got her name, right? Just powders, thank you for shouting out one of the only handful of sample return missions since Apollo. Yeah, and this is in some sense so much more impressive than Apollo because of the distance is unimaginable. The ability to control a spacecraft out of this distance or use computers, and I don't... I assume there's no AI on this, or maybe there is, who knows? But it... I don't know. It blows my mind. And what blows my mind again is the contrast. The contrast between this and this stupidity. I mean, the sheer lack of intelligence and lack of thinking long distance and lack of thinking period that is exhibited by our politicians, by most of their supporters. And yet there's still people with the foresight, the rational capabilities, the smarts, the chutzpah, to send a spaceship 1.2 billion miles away to scoop up a piece of dirt because they want to understand the world better. They want to understand the physical world better. Unbelievable. Anyway, this is exciting, fun, amazing stuff that, I don't know, just like I'm outraged by the SEC to some extent more than I think you guys are. I'm stunned by this with the exception of a few people. I don't think this resonates with a lot of people. Indeed, a number of people have stopped watching during this segment. It's... You know, people don't have... We live in a culture that doesn't appreciate the achievements of some in the culture, of the great achievers in the culture and it's not outraged by the horror of some in the culture. Like everything's gray and mediocre. We live in a culture of mediocrities. That's a dominant part of the culture. And then there's this, which I think is just stunning, amazing. All right, let's see. Yeah, and the pictures of this thing having landed in Utah and so on, and it landed beautifully, you know, parachute deployed, landed, and then I guess they have to not contaminate, decontaminate and make sure that as it entered and when it sat there in Utah it didn't, you know, so they don't, when they analyze what's inside, they don't accidentally analyze stuff that has been picked up on Earth, right? So they have to completely decam... They put it in a completely clean room. I guess they use nitrogen, you know, to decontaminate it. And then they will open it up and they will look at what's inside and, you know, in a few weeks, months, we'll find out what's in there. There's about 250 grams, 8.8 ounces. And it'll be at the NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. I mean, the scientists who are about to open this must be super excited, super excited. All right, finally, we hear a lot about rare Earth materials. We hear a lot about China's, you know, total dominance of rare Earth materials and how dependent we are on China for these materials and everything. Anyway, the number two producer, two or three, depending on how you measure, well, maybe it's... Yeah, it's the number two producer of rare Earth materials in the world is Vietnam. China has 44% of the world production. Vietnam has 22% and Russia and Brazil each have 21%. Anyway, China is the dominant player here and does that even add up? I don't know that that really adds up. I'm not sure that... Oh, this is not percentages. This is just in millions of tons. Okay, so it's 130 million tons. China has 44 million. You can calculate the percentage of Vietnam 22, Russia and Brazil each 21. So those four countries produce most of the rare Earth materials in the world. Anyway, what's possibly the largest deposit of rare Earth materials in the world is being developed now in Vietnam. Vietnam is teamed up with some Western companies to exploit this mine and these Western companies are investing a lot of money. A lot of this is geared towards trying to reduce the influence that China has on these world markets and on the attempts of China really to dominate and to control rare Earth materials. Rare Earth materials are crucial for electronics and for a lot of the solar energy type stuff, solar panels and stuff like that. And now we're going to have a more diverse supply chain. Not only China, but Vietnam is going to become a huge player, maybe bigger than China one day. My guess is Brazil is also investing heavily and trying to expand its reach. And of course, you know, there were Earth materials in Mongolia. There were Earth materials in Greenland. There were Earth materials in the United States. And I suspect that there's going to be a kind of a gold rush to try to mine them and to try to bring them to market and to try to make money off of it. So, cool. All right, let's see. Megan with regard to the spaceship says, Osiris Rex had 60,000 live viewers. NASA has millions of subscribers. Why are viewers leaving during the sample return mission segment? Yeah, I don't know. There's just not that much excitement when people are not evolved. But I don't know why. I think it's that it's a manned. It's just so narrowly scientific. People are not that interested, which is super sad and super disappointing. But that's the reality. I think there'd be a lot more people really enthusiastic and about how important this is. And also just to see it happen is historic and important. All right, let's see. Vadim, $500. Wow, Vadim. Thank you. This is amazing. Really, really appreciate the support. Vadim says, I have just watched the movie Judgment of Nuremberg. This made me think about the makers of my favorite sports called Porsche. Interesting. Is it moral owning and collecting Porsche? If it's creator made unforgivable moral choices, is this the same as buying a Ben and Jerry ice cream as a symbol of support for socialism? No, I mean, I think it's very different. Certainly, I don't think you would have wanted to buy Porsche during World War II or maybe even in there in the immediate aftermath of World War II. But this is just the same as, you know, we don't support reparations for people who were ancestors of the people who suffered from slavery and we don't want to take money away from the people who were ancestors, the people who committed this sin. The reality is that the people today running Porsche, Porsche is actually owned by Volkswagen, are not the same people who committed the sins at the regeneration. I don't think that owning a Porsche today says anything about your commitment, your views on something that happened, you know, 70 years ago. That's to a Hugo Boss who I think made the Nazi uniforms. I mean, not today, but when I dress up, it's Hugo Boss almost always. You know, you can't, the people today are not responsible for what happened 70 years ago. They're not alive. And these companies have changed hands. The shareholders are different. Whereas Ben and Jerry still advocates for socialism. Now, if Porsche still advocated, if the leadership at Porsche still advocated for fascism, still advocated for Nazism, we're still involved in neo-Nazi activities in Germany or anywhere in the world. If you could find any hints that they supported those causes, then absolutely I would not buy the car. The reality is Ben and Jerry, in spite of their shift of ownership, still support socialist causes, still rally around socialist causes. Look at how one of the issues around Ben and Jerry in recent years has been around Israel and trying to boycott the West Bank in parts of Israel or stores in Israel. So Ben and Jerry still advocates for socialism. It's founders are still committed to socialism. They're still spokesmen for socialism. And they're still involved in the company itself. So you can't blame people today for the sins of the grandfathers. You can blame people today for their own sins. And with Ben and Jerry, it's their own sins. They are responsible. They're the ones still promoting socialism. It is interesting, we've talked about this in other shows in the past, it is interesting the extent to which we forgive socialists as a culture and we won't touch anything that's associated with the Nazis or fascists. I think we're right about the Nazis or fascists, but shouldn't we be just as harsh with the socialist? We're not. And in this case, these are socialists that are advocating for socialism whenever they're giving an opportunity. It's not in their past, it's in very much in the present. Now, in 70 years, if Ben and Jerry is integrated into Unilever and has no special social responsibility committee, social responsibility activity, and it's not advocating for these horrible policies, then who cares? Then it would be fine not to boycott them. Hopefully that makes sense for them. Paulo-Zu says, I don't think Rand was against unions, but why do they seem to become corrupt eventually based on observation, striking when they shouldn't, etc.? Well, because I think, you know, I know it was not per se against unions, but unions are protected by law, which they shouldn't be in. She was very much against the laws that protect unions. So there's no discipline with regard to unions. There's no market discipline with regard to unions, because they are protected from being fired. They're protected from, you know, certain of the consequences of their actions. By law, by the use of a gun, by coercion. And as a consequence, they're not disciplined by the marketplace. They don't suffer the full consequences of their own actions. And that encourages unions to be short term. Also, every time the government bails out an auto company and they're convinced that the government will continue to bail them out in the future, that again promotes unions being short term, because, yeah, grab as much as you can today. And in the future, the government will bail us out, so don't worry about it. I think when you combine those things, you get corrupt and bad behavior. They have a monopoly. They have a monopoly because the government is protecting their monopoly. It's protecting unions. Without government protection, unions would not be anywhere near as powerful and as a consequence, nowhere near as self-destructive as they are today. Andrew, I know criticizing the mainstream media is not that interesting to you, but do you consider it ludicrous that they're parroting that there is no direct connection of Joe Biden to any corruption? Yes, I mean, I think it's ludicrous and ridiculous. You know, once in a while, they'll admit that it doesn't look good for Joe Biden in the sense of him accepting the phone calls. So when they get evidence that they can't ignore in terms of his involvement, they report it, but then they move on quickly, right? They move on quickly so that they don't have to come to the conclusion that something's wrong with Joe Biden. And it's funny because on the one hand, the media is protecting Joe Biden. On the other hand, it's clear that the media would rather some other Democrat run instead of Joe Biden. You know, you would think that some people within the Democratic Party might use this scandal as an opportunity to get rid of Biden and put something younger in his place. But look, it doesn't surprise me. It's the same phenomena as right-wing media, including Fox, also part of the mainstream media, not making a big deal of January 6th, not making a big deal of any of the allegations against Trump at any point. All of his prosecutions are nothing. They don't count for anything. And it's the same as, you know, and while he was president, always having his back, always covering for him, never criticizing him, always spinning everything in the most positive way you can, right? So that's the challenge is that you've got a media today that is committed to protecting the people in power that they care about, and we've lost all of objectivity. And that's true in the political parties as well. I mean, in the 1970s is the Republican Party that put the pressure ultimately on Nixon to resign. Can you imagine the Republican Party putting pressure on any Republican no matter what he did in office to resign today? No. So it's completely partisan politics, the whole thing. Stephen Harper says the SEC is engaged in totalitarian censorship. Yep. Andrew says at what point during the Yom Kippur does the canter crawl down the aisle towards the ark as low as he can get to the ground, groveling penance, philosophically literally symbolizes man as a slug. At some point during the Yom Kippur. Yeah, I mean, I don't think he literally crawls, at least not in my memory. Does he literally crawl? But yeah, I mean, the whole point is to express how sinful you are. And it's interesting because there's no real original sin in Judaism. Yom Kippur seems to be a kind of a more modern expression of the Jews becoming more Christian. It's a Christianization of Judaism, which is kind of tragic because Judaism is a healthier religion than Christianity is. Frank says, I saw Oppenheimer again. Do you sympathize with these people who gleefully joined Communist Party then cried that they were hounded from their jobs? Well, to the extent that they, you know, no, I don't. I mean, the Communist Party, when they joined, was clearly enemy of the United States. The Communist Party, this is Jewish Stalin's period, was committing awful crimes and so on. I mean, I wish the U.S. government through McCarthy didn't enter the picture the way it did. I, you know, I really wish that the government had stayed out of it. But because I think that created kind of a press, it allowed the communists to pretend that they were persecuted by the government or to claim that they were a government persecution rather than letting, in a sense, market forces weed them out and penalize them. But no, to the extent that people didn't want to work with people who were communists, it makes complete sense to me. And what's never reported is all the people who were blacklisted in Hollywood because they were anti-communists and there were significant numbers of people who couldn't get a job in Hollywood because they expressed anti-communist views. Fenhopper, can you explain what you think a free market union would look like? I like the idea of a group who informs workers of market and job opportunities. Yeah, I mean, it's something like that. And for some jobs, it might help negotiate certain aspects of their contracts, certain parts of their contracts. It might not negotiate the exact salary or the exact royalties that they get, but it might negotiate certain principles by which those get set. But it's a group, I think generally smaller, not involving national unions, involving more local people who just band together to get information and to be able to provide educational and also to negotiate on certain aspects that might be complex and might be complicated or might be difficult to negotiate as an individual of a particular contract. And maybe in some cases they would even negotiate the full contract for the group. Yeah, so, but I'd like to see how it evolved in the marketplace. It's very, very hard to, you know, it's very, very hard to predict how these things evolve once you allow for true competition. Apollo says more Gina and Jean. I got it, Apollo. I got it. All right. Thanks everybody. We will be on a regular schedule this week. 1pm every day will be a news roundup and Tuesday and Thursday will be a for your on book show. The AMA asked me anything with some of you participating by video. Those of you give $25 or more are eligible will be on Saturday at 3pm East Coast time. That is the schedule for this week. Unfortunately, it next week will again be a bit of a disrupted week. But at least for this week you have the schedule. Bye everybody. See you talk to you soon again. Thank you. What did I do here? I click on the wrong things. Thank you Vadim for the $500 that made my day. Really, really appreciate it. Bye everybody.