 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 Thursday, December 7. We'll get to that date in a minute. Yeah, this is fun. I'm having a blast. This is already my second show today. First one in English, though, just concluded. But now and a bit ago, my first episode of the Iran Brookshow in Hebrew, we went now almost 45 minutes straight in Hebrew. I snuck in a few words in English here and there. I invented, I actually invented a new word in Hebrew. We discovered there was no real word for egalitarianism, so we made one up. And now we have a new word in English. Yes, I also seem to have broken Miroslav's app, but Miroslav has built such a great app that even broken, it's working. It's, you know, I jiggled with it. I figured it out and it's working. It is giving the wrong number on this super chat in terms of the amount raised because it is still carrying over the amount for the previous show. But more managed, I adjusted the goal, so we're in fine shape and that's not going to be a problem. And I'm sure Miroslav will fix the app so it'll work again. So it'll work in the future. I'll be doing these shows every two weeks in Hebrew. My Hebrew was better than I expected it to be. It was better than my wife expected it to be. It was probably better than boys expected it to be. It's only going to get better as we do more of these shows. My Hebrew will get better. Trying to have an impact on a small country like Israel, it's interesting. We'll see what happens. I'll also be visiting Israel at some point in 2024. Maybe we can leverage the show into some bigger following in Israel. So anyway, fun, exciting, and for me, fun, because you know I enjoy doing these shows. It was a little hectic finishing that one, starting this one up. That's a little challenging, but we'll see what we can do in the future. Maybe move this one one hour further in later in the day. And of course, we've got a third show tonight, a third show. So the next show will be tonight at 7 p.m. east coast time and that show will be in English. Unless Don Watkins has learned another language that we both share, which I guess the only other language is because Hebrew. So but that will be me and Don. I'll have Don on the show. We'll be talking about his new book, Effective Egoism. If you haven't yet watched the Effective Altruism show, you should. And if you haven't watched my show on selfishness from Saturday, you should. That'll kind of set you up for the Effective Egoism show that will be on tonight. So there you go. Never going to be, you're on in French. I took, I don't know how many years of French in high school. I remember, what, two words, three words maybe at most. Did I speak English or Hebrew at home as a kid? Originally English, then Hebrew, then English, then English, then Hebrew English, kind of a mixture of the two. So when I was three, I think I went to my parents and said, I don't want to speak English anymore. We live in Israel after all, or whatever I said, right? You said something about it. I don't want to speak, so I refused to speak English. So they tricked me and moved us to the UK where we lived in London where I forgot my Hebrew and learned cockney, which is a kind of English. And I spoke cockney for like two years. And then we came back to Israel and had to relearn my Hebrew. And from that point, I basically spoke English at home and Hebrew outside. But it was kind of a, at home, it was kind of a hybrid English Hebrew. All right. Where are we? I think we're at, OK. So let's get started. Today is December 7th. The 7th-7th is the anniversary of two horrific events now. It's the two-month anniversary of October 7th, which was the Hamas attack on Israel. We've talked a lot about that, so I'm not going to say more about it, but it is exactly two months when that shocking event happened. And as you said, I've talked a lot about it, so we're not going to talk today about Israel Hamas unless you ask about it in the super chat. But today is also Putin's birthday, really? I don't know. Today is the anniversary, of course, of Pearl Harbor. On December 7th, 20, got 20. Jennifer's comments confused me because she says, we were in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 2011, and it was like, Pearl Harbor happened on 2011. It was just me. So December 7th, 1941, of course, the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor, killed something like 2,400 US servicemen. About half of them died on the battleship USS Arizona, which was sunk within minutes after bomb struck. Its forward magazine ignited more than a million pounds of ammunition, and the boat sunk in about 1,200, over 1,000 Navy soldiers sunk with it. The attack damaged 19 US warships, 300 aircraft, and was just a blow to the US. It was just a stunning blow to the United States. If you really think back at it, Pearl Harbor is probably ranks as the biggest military error, mistake, a nation has ever committed. Japan could have continued dominating Asia, could have continued attacking Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Guinea, Dutch East, whatever. In Guam, the rest, Guam was American, but pretty much everything else, with the exception of the Philippines, and maybe even potentially going to Australia, without ever engaging with the United States. The United States was in the thawes of very much a non-interventionist perspective. It was very much, you know, the United States did not want to enter World War II, at least American people didn't want to debate whether Roosevelt did or not. But clearly, it was an unforced error. I mean, think about it. Literally, they could have dominated Asia. For who knows how long? And continued their murderous, horrific, fascist regime. For who knows how long? Instead, they decided to really awaken a giant. It is very interesting to read about why they decided to attack the United States. Really, it was motivated by the idea that while the United States was very large, had a large population, had an industrial base that was about 20 times bigger than the Japanese, they really did believe that America was rich and fat and spiritually weak. And that it would not engage, that it would fold, that it would not rise up to the challenge. They really believed that. You know, if you think about that, Putin believed that about Ukraine and about the West's support for Ukraine. He might be right, right now. But he believed that, that the West would never support Ukraine and he could take it. There's a sense in which Hamas attacked on October 7th out of the belief that Israel was corrupt and there was a lot of division inside of Israel and it would never rise up to attack it. And they had plenty of reasons to believe that, given Israel's previous responses. Clearly, the Japanese miscalculated. Not only did the United States rise to the challenge, but it crushed the Japanese and launched us into an atomic era by dropping two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. A pretty, and that story is an interesting story, but on December 8th, which is the next day, I mean, this is an interesting phenomena in American history because no American president does this anymore, but on December 8th, Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan, declaring war against Japan. Notice that he did not ask for a declaration of war against Germany because his sense was that he didn't have enough votes in Congress to declare war against Germany and that the American people were still against America's intervention in Europe. They had, they still remember the horrors of World War I and the mistake of the United States entering the war in World War I. And in the second biggest historical mistake by a country, four days later, Hitler declared war in the United States. Imagine Hitler not declaring war in the United States. Now, I believe that over time, Roosevelt probably could have convinced the American people that war in Europe was necessary given that we were already at war with Japan. But Hitler preempted him and made the decision easy. It's something Roosevelt wanted anyway. Mary Alene asks, is it true that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance? I mean, I think my answer to that is I don't know. There is some historical evidence that he did. Ein Rahn certainly believed that he did, that he let it happen. So that that would allow him to enter the war. I don't know. I haven't researched it enough. I would have to really dig in to figure that out. But certainly Ein Rahn believed that. And there was some evidence that suggested that is true. But in any case, Japan attacked, Hitler declared war in the U.S. Both sealed their fates by doing that. And the war in Europe would have gone a lot differently if the United States had never entered it. I think ultimately, more Jews would have died, but we probably would have saved ourselves a Cold War because I think the war would have basically crushed and depleted Stalin's Russia. And by the time the U.S. maybe would have had to intervene, both Russia and Germany would have been dramatically weakened and the whole war would have been easier for the United States. And we wouldn't have had to deal with a Cold War Russia. But we could have dealt with a Cold War Russia anyway by just doing what Patton wanted to do, which was kick him out of Eastern Europe, which is what we should have done. We should have never given the Russians Eastern Europe ever. At the end of World War II, we just should have just kept going. And Patton could have done it without many casualties and could have pushed, pushed it forward, all right. Anyway, so yes, today is an important day in American history. It unfortunately will become an important day in Israeli history. Let's hope, let's hope, I think this is hope beyond hope, but let's hope that Israel is as victorious over Hamas as the United States ultimately was over the Japanese. All right, there was a debate yesterday, another Republican debate. I watched bits of it. I couldn't tolerate these things really. Nothing really new, nothing really exciting. I mean, the most important thing about the debates is that Donald Trump continues not to show up and the Republican Party continues not to care. It is, it is really, really, what do you, what would you say? Yeah, I mean, the Republican Party is committed to Trump. It is truly unbelievably disappointing. It is what I kind of expected when I said before the 2020 election that Trump needs to lose in a landslide. Unfortunately, he didn't, he lost by a small margin and he pulled off the brilliant marketing tactic that I did not foresee coming at that level of consistency that it came, which is the clear that he actually won and didn't lose. So he lied, blatantly lied to the American people. Shockingly, a significant number of Republicans believed him. It just proves how mindless the Republican Party is. And yes, yes, yes, the Democratic Party is as well. Just to be clear, Democratic Party is as well. But it's just unbelievable how mindless Republicans are. Republicans have a field that is narrowed now to four candidates beyond Trump, all of whom would be better than Trump, all of whom are younger than Trump, all of whom are more interesting than Trump. And yet, the Republican Party is so blatantly committed to his, I don't know what it is, to his arrogant stupidity, that they will just keep going with him. Haley and DeSantis, and probably Christie, could all beat Biden face to face. I think beat Biden with a larger margin than Trump can. I think that Haley might be able to actually win the popular vote, which would be the first time that the Republicans have done that in, I don't know, how long, maybe since 2004 to 2004, did Bush win the popular vote? Maybe not, maybe it hasn't happened since Reagan. I really think Haley could win the popular vote. But that too doesn't seem to matter to Republicans. All they care about is Trump. Mindless, stupid, ignorant. And you can't tell me, oh, it's Trump or Biden. That's the only choice you have. No, the primaries have not happened yet, and you have a choice. You can vote for DeSantis, you can vote for Haley, you could vote for Trump, you can choose. There's a real choice. And both Haley and DeSantis would be better than Trump. Better than Trump, not from my perspective. Better than Trump, from a Republican perspective. They would clearly beat Biden, whereas Trump might beat Biden, but he might not. He might also go to jail. He might also just self destruct. He might also, he is also getting close to 80 years old and his mind is not quite there. I mean, he's almost having as many crazy kind of saying stupid things that you know with just the memory in mind as Biden is. Republicans okay, they're loyal. And this shows the extent to which America, and I'm not saying Trump is a dictator, although we'll see, but it just shows how ready so many people within the Republican Party are ready for a dictator, because this is personality worship. This is what happens in authoritarian regimes. You become enamored with the personality. You become enamored with the person. It's not about ideas. It's not about policy. It's not about anything. Nobody knows what Trump stands for. Nobody cares. No, the single Republican cares. He hates the left all they care about. And they like that he's a rude, obnoxious imbecile. Even if Trump was wronged, move on. Why aren't they moving on? Why aren't they moving on? Because it's a personality worship. It's become a complete personality worship. And he's not macho. He's one of the people with the lowest self-esteem I've ever seen. He's a nothing. He really is a nothing. He's got the thinnest skin I've ever seen on anybody. No self-esteem there, no pride, no dignity. He doesn't have even the confidence of self-esteem of a thug. Affairs with porn stars, porn, eight porn star. He's just a horrible human being, horrible. And Americans are enamored with him. And this is personality worship. Of the worst kind, this suggests that people want somebody just to go in and break stuff. This is Republican nihilism. This is Republican nihilism. Better than Biden. But now it's not the issue of better than Biden. You know, one of the best comments I got on the show in Hebrew was, at least in Hebrew, Scott won't be there to harass, to harass. I think my comment was, I don't know, Scott might learn Hebrew just to show up for my Hebrew show in order to be able to comment and disrupt and harass. He might just learn Hebrew for that. Who knows? He seems pretty motivated. All right, anyway, I just want to say that about the debate. Ron DeSantis did better than he has, probably in any other debate. It still wasn't good enough to differentiate him in any significant way. I think Haley stood her ground. She did fine. This debate won't hurt her. It might help DeSantis a little bit, but not significant enough. He didn't break through enough. It's basically, for second place between Haley and DeSantis, the reality is though, at some point, at some point, they will have to go after Trump. At some point, they will have to challenge Trump. When? When are they gonna do that? After the election? 2028? When are they actually gonna go after the real opponent? I mean, they can go after Christia. They can go after each other, and they can go after, you know, Vivek. It's irrelevant. It makes zero difference. The only peace people person they actually have to go after is Trump. I think the only thing that can explain their behavior is that they are hoping, praying, that Trump drops out somehow, that because he's arrested, because of the lawsuits, because of these things, he's gonna drop out somehow. But when are they actually gonna attack Trump? I mean, Trump has a gazillion things that could be attacked on, and they are silent. They are such weak candidates in that sense. It is truly pathetic. I mean, I know the strategy. Don't alienate Trump voters. Well, if you don't attract them, you have to attract them by pointing out Trump's deficiencies and why you're better. And they're not doing it. And as long as they don't, I mean, the only person attacking Trump, and he does it well, is Christie. But Christie has nothing else to offer. They do. So, I know Scott should be calling up his candidate, DeSantis, and telling him to start attacking Trump, because otherwise he is toast. They're all toast. The only way they can win is by differentiating and also showing why Trump is not a good candidate. I said from the beginning, they should be calling Trump a loser. Because he is, and has been, and he's lost to a Republican huge. The only reason Trump is electable is because Biden is so bad. And senile, at 80 something is old. Anybody pretty much could beat him. Trump will struggle to beat him. But that's only because of Biden is so bad. It's not what I wanna see. It's about winning. Biden and DeSantis and Haley cannot win without attacking Trump. It's just a reality. That maybe they can't win even with attacking Trump. It's possible you cannot attack Trump no matter what. But, but, you know, attack him on COVID. There's a lot you could say about Trump and COVID. He was awful, awful in every respect from burying his head to the sand to advocating for lockdowns to changing his mind all over again. Complete disaster. Attack him on COVID. Maybe he goes to jail and that saves DeSantis and Haley. We will see. We will see. All the attacks are being mild and weak and pretty pathetic. If the Republican party is looking for is a macho fighter, then Haley and DeSantis needs to project machoism. And the only way to project that is by going after him properly, thoroughly, systematically. Of course, DeSantis has the challenge that he locked on Florida too. But, you know, we'll put that aside. All right. We continue to observe. I continue to observe. Really, the real panic that's going on around China and China's economy and the fact that China is imploding internally, not only the real estate market, finance, banking, tech companies, innovation, you know, with exception here and there, you hear something from chip manufacturer here or there or some. Mostly things are becoming going really, really slowly. And, you know, I think this is widespread. I think China will try to stimulate the economy through government. So maybe GDP numbers won't go down quite as much, but the economy in China through and through is really struggling pretty much in every sector. One strong indication of this is the fact that Wall Street, American investors are pulling their money out of China really, really, really fast. Over the last year or so, just under a year in the first 11 months of this year, institutional investors in the United States, these are people like Bridgewater Associates, Reed Dahlio's company, which has always been very positive about China. Private equity firm Carlisle and many, many others have been pulling billions and billions of dollars, 31 billion just this year. If you remember last year, Sequoia, the legendary venture capitalist firm that had a significant number of partners in China and invested huge amounts in China, basically divested, split the China entity into an independent entity and will now the Sequoia US will focus exclusively on US, Western Europe, but non-China investments. 31 billion dollars has moved out of China. Almost no money has been raised for China focused private equity venture capital from US investors. China, which to a large extent grew and succeeded economically because of large capital flows, particularly in the early 2000s and the mid, sorry, in the late 20s, but in the, from 2001 on, but even going back to the 80s because of massive inflows of capital from the West this is what drove, to a large extent, other than the economic freedom that was allowed, it was foreign direct investment that drove much of this boom. It was this capital. That looks like that era, it looks like it's over. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2024. And look, Wall Street is not pulling their money out of China because of the way that Uggers are being treated. Wall Street is not pulling out of China because of, I don't know, COVID. During 2020-21, they were still investing heavily in China. Wall Street is pulling out of China because of the horrible economy that China has right now. And this is because, really goes back to the financial crisis and the shift in the economic model found the financial crisis on, which became far more dependent on government investment, far more dependent on a kind of a pyramid scheme based on real estate, based on real estate investment locally, and became far more dependent on state-owned enterprises rather than on the private sector. The private sector was, in a sense, sidelined during this period, during the last period since the great financial crisis, there was some momentum still, but certainly over the last five, six years with Xi and power, Xi centralizing power, and then basically crushing the private sector in order to accumulate power in around the governmental center, the state-owned enterprises, and so on. So China is in decline. Chinese don't want to hear that, they don't want to believe it, but it is a fact. Talk about decline. So I don't know if you know this, but the U.S. has this neat kind of program. It's stunning to me that the government gets involved in these nitty-gritty things, but it does. The United States government actually has organizers is involved with an au pair visa program. There's literally a visa program dedicated only for au pairs. I didn't know this. It was started in 1986. Reagan was started by the State Department, and it allows foreigners between the age of 18 and 26, almost all of them women, to move to the U.S. for up to two years to live with a host family and help take care of their children. It's intended to be affordable for Americans, so it's intended to be a program that reduces healthcare costs for Americans. Flexible, daycare, basically. Cheap daycare, and it's also an opportunity for ambitious young people from other countries to come practice the English in most themselves in American culture and spend some time in the U.S. This program has facilitated about 20,000 au pairs every year coming to the U.S. This is crazy. Why not just have a temporary visa program that allows people to hire au pairs from other countries? No, but they might state, they might dis, it has to be a special visa only two years, and it actually specifies how much the host family has to pay the au pair. So right now, host families, and this is on the Wall Street Journal article today, right now host families are required to provide au pairs, lodging, food, and weekly stipend, currently set at a minimum of $195.75 a week for up to 45 hours of work. Now, the Wall Street Journal article says, au pairs and families alike agree that the minimum stipend is too low, so why don't the families just raise it? Why don't the au pairs just demand more? What does too low mean? Too low for whom and for what? What's the market clearing price? What's the price at which families get the au pairs they want? What price is that set at? The government has to determine a minimum price. Anyway, the Biden administration doesn't like this. They don't like it because it turns out that au pairs are earning that this $195.75 a week after lodging and food and so on, is really based off of a $7.5 an hour minimum wage, which is still the federal minimum wage, but the problem is that many, many states have raised the minimum wage dramatically, $15, $16, $20 an hour in some states. And then au pairs come and they, let's say go to California or New York or somewhere like expensive like that, and suddenly they discover that the minimum that they agreed to is not enough for them to live off of. So the United States government is about to raise the minimum. And in some cases, because they're gonna adjust the minimum to the minimum wage in a particular place that the au pairs gonna live, in some cases we're talking about a dramatic increase to something like $700 a week, instead of $195, let's say $200. Like almost three X with no consideration, no consideration for the private decisions of the individuals involved. You can only get a visa under these terms. If you are willing to work for less, they won't give you a visa. I mean, this is kind of stupidity that our immigration policy, I was gonna say strategy, but there is no strategy, that immigration policy is filled with. Why not just allow for temporary visas for people who wanna work? All they have to show is they got a job and they can come. And why shouldn't Americans get all the au pairs they want? Why shouldn't they be able to pay whatever they can negotiate? Ooh, they might exploit the au pairs. Really? Is that the problem? That au pairs are gonna be exploited? Well, then au pairs will start talking to one another and no au pairs will come to the US until Americans wake up and stop exploiting au pairs. Not a problem, really, it's not a problem. Why not just let anybody who can work in the US come to the US? Ooh, because they don't look like us, because they don't vote like us. I'm not even sure that's true. I wish I got an au pair. I was too poor when I had kids to have an au pair. Although at $195 a week. I never thought of this, but at $195 a week. Now, I mean, later when they were older, I probably could have afforded it, but certainly when they were born, I couldn't afford it that. That was like expenses for the week. That was everything I spent on a week was maybe was less than $195, so there's no way I could have afforded it when my kids were born. Wow, just the stupidity of immigration policy, which brings me to the next story, which is about unemployment. So unemployment in certain states around the country is starting to tick up, and there was certain fear that unemployment is gonna increase, but what's interesting about unemployment ticking up is that unemployment is ticking up in certain professions. And there is a massive shortage of personnel in other professions. There is right now in the United States a real mismatch between the skills people have and where the jobs are, and we're talking about decently paying jobs. So right now, for example, Wall Street Journal again has a story about New Jersey, which is as the highest unemployment rate, or that unemployment rate is rising the fastest in the country. And where most of the people being fired are white collar employees from finance, real estate, other various pharmaceutical companies, others firing them. And yet, there's a massive, wow, that didn't come out right. There's a massive shortage of, for example, in the same pharmaceutical industry. Research scientists, there's a massive shortage of commercial drivers, there's a massive shortage, huge in just generally healthcare and social assistance. Sounds like au pairs. Massive shortage for the leisure and hospitality business, construction all over the country. Americans are losing white collar jobs, but they're not going to take these jobs. And the people who are unemployed right now either don't want a job, well, they don't want a job or they're not qualified for these jobs. So the United States today has this enormous potential for wealth creation, for job creation, for production, for economic growth, for better healthcare, and we're not meeting it. And we're not meeting it because we have stupid immigration laws. I mean, there are millions of people out there who would love to get a construction job in the United States. And maybe then we could build enough houses to actually stabilize our housing markets. Healthcare is a massive shortage of, the highest shortage is in healthcare. We need doctors, nurses, nurses assistance, people to wheel the cuts in the hospitals. We need people to take care of old people. Americans are gonna do that? No, don't have enough doctors because it's socialized medicine. It's not lucrative enough. We don't have enough nurses. It's a difficult job, but there are plenty of doctors, nurses and just people who are willing to help other people, help the elderly, plenty of people around the world who would love to take these jobs. Imagine if we had more doctors in the US, well, healthcare wouldn't cost as much. It would be better. We wouldn't have to wait in lines to get in to see a doctor. I know how about by you guys, but in many states in America today, you want a specialist? Wait, months. So stupid immigration laws, a theme. And you're not gonna solve it. A big part, you know why we don't have enough doctors, by the way, one of the reasons is because the American Medical Association basically has restricted, has worked hard, lobbied hard to restrict the number of students accepted into medical schools. Not Obamacare, not any of that, but the very fact is that existing doctors, doctors who already have the job, don't want competition. So they have lobbied and made sure that medical schools are shrinking. Now you could stop that, stop the cronyism, but it's actually easier just to import doctors and break the AMA that way. AMA is the American Medical Association. So a theme of today's show, one of the themes is stupid immigration policies. Finally, here's another theme for stupid Republicans. Ukraine. Ukraine clearly needs, and I think deserves, given that it's fighting a clear American enemy, American military support. Not in terms of putting troops on the ground, not in terms of going to war, but in terms of sending them equipment so that they can fight for their own freedom, their own liberty, so that we don't have to when Russia, and in bold in Russia invades Poland or Estonia. We haven't given Ukraine 200 billion. I mean, that's a myth, and most of what we've given them is not dollars, most of what we've given them is old equipment we weren't gonna use anyway. So in terms of the cost, it's been really low. Once you take into account the amount of ammunition we sent them that was gonna expire soon anyway that we're gonna dump, the number of just military equipment that we weren't gonna use anyway, and that didn't fit what we needed on the Pacific side, might as well that the Ukrainian used it to go after Russia. So by demonstration, one of the few things that's done right has been support Ukraine, not aggressive enough, not fast enough, not, you know, it's been so, ugh, so slow. But I don't know if Trump would have ever supported Ukraine, probably not. So at least Biden did that. Douglas McGregor with all due respect doesn't know what he's talking about. He's awful. He's been wrong from the beginning and he doesn't know what he's talking about. Anyway, Republicans are holding up the spell to provide support for Ukraine. But Republicans are not gonna vote for it. Not because they don't wanna support Ukraine, they do, most by a big majority of Republicans in the Senate want to. House, I think the majority do, but a minority of magas, Trump supporters don't. But the majority in the Senate and a clear majority in the House would vote for Ukraine aid. But the Republicans have decided to link it with more border security, a bigger wall. What are the relations between the two? Nothing, there is no relation between them. But they wanna score political points at the expense of Ukrainian lives, at the expense of American national security, at the expense of freedom, liberty, who cares? We're gonna get Ukrainian aid at some point. I'm sure at some point the Republicans will vote for it. But in the meantime, they're gonna play this stupid political games because that's all this stuff is, is a political games to them. They in that sense, they're no better than Democrats. It's pathetic to watch. I mean, imagine if they were doing something, they actually meant something, like, I don't know, cutting them and spending, like they had an opportunity to do last month, or they had an opportunity to do in the past, is to squeeze Biden for more spending cuts. But God forbid they do that because they don't actually believe in spending cuts. Instead, the only thing Republicans are actually willing to go to the mat for is a taller wall, a more barbed wire, I don't know, some mythical protection on our southern border from the invaders from the south. It's pathetic. Republicans are pathetic. We really need a political revolution in this country. And what we're gonna get is Donald Trump. That's a revolution. That's the kind of revolution we're gonna get, sadly. Not the kind we actually need, quite the opposite. Oh wow, okay, that was longer than I expected. Okay, let's jump to the super chat. We are $80 short of our goal for one of these shows, which is $250. Please consider asking a $20 question, four of those, and we're done. And don't forget you can also support your one book show. On Patreon, that is amazing. That's a monthly support, so it's knowable in advance. You can also support the show on Subscribestar and on PayPal through your one book show dot com slash support. And, all right, let's jump in. Michael, Mike Dile says, "'Have you already talked about Basil III, "'a capital regulation scheme "'that would allegedly raise borrowing costs "'and decrease access to credit?'' I haven't yet. And Basil is a international regulation that certainly would affect banks in Europe and the United States, and ultimately the idea would be to make this global. I have argued in the past that Basil II, which was the previous version of this, actually significantly contributed to the financial crisis, was a huge mistake, encouraged European banks in particular to buy heavily into mortgage-backed securities, American mortgage securities, because it was treated as if they were risk less. And there's no reason to think that Basil III would be any better. I mean, the reality is that central planners cannot centrally plan. And to anything they pass will ultimately be, you could call it unexpected consequences or you could call it expected consequences but bad consequences. Now, I haven't dug into Basil III in the details, but they do want to increase capital requirements. Now, I understand wanting to increase capital requirements. And higher capital requirements are a good thing and are ultimately the solution to a lot of the instability and finance that we have today. To impose them from the top, to impose them through a regulation is a mistake. Although you could argue of all the regulations they do at banking, this is the least harmful. If they got rid of all the other regulations and instead just impose capital control, capital limits so that banks had enough capital not to go bankrupt, that would help a lot if they got rid of all the other regulations. But to load up banks that are ready, just volumes and volumes of volumes of regulations with also capital regulations that is increases in capital and also the kind of capital. I mean, this is the problem. It's more than just capital. It's a kind of capital. It's really getting into the nitty-goody of how banks are run. It's just a fundamentally wrong and disastrous thing. I think the way that bankers defended themselves the other day in front of Congress is not the right way to defend it because they were saying, oh, we'll have less capital to give the American people. Yeah, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe there's too much credit out there. Maybe because in a free market, I think banks would have more capital. In a free market, there would be probably less credit than we have today. But the only way to know that and the only way to get to the right capital ratios and the only way to get to the right types of capital, the only way to do that is to let the market determine them. Let banks that overextend themselves go bankrupt. But that requires doing away with all the regulations because the regulations are what drive banks in a bankruptcy today and banks have no choice but to have low capital levels today because of government policy, because of the way the government runs because of the government's regulatory regime, which is too much for me to cover today, but at some point we can talk about. But so what you need to do is unwind the entire regulatory framework and let markets determine capital. All right, Savanas with 50 bucks, thank you, Savanas. Is Vivek lost down a rabbit hole yet? I didn't watch the debate because I was busy. Yeah, I mean, he's gone. I mean, what was the conspiracy yesterday? They was pitching, not during the debate, but right afterwards. God, I forgot, I just read about it. I don't know. It's like he's trying desperately to compete with Trump for the wacky vote, the completely nutty, crazy vote. And to do that, he's willing to embrace some pretty bizarre, ridiculous conspiracy theories. Now, the sad thing about Vivek is he has some really good ideas. He's good because of Alex Epstein, his impact on climate change, but so is the Santas now. The Santas seem to be impacted by Alex. He's good on cutting up at spending. He claims at least, who knows if we'd actually do it. But yeah, Vivek is lost. I mean, I can't remember the conspiracy theory. Anyway, maybe next time I'll figure it out. But yes, he's way down the rabbit hole. He's lost. And all he can do is try to mimic Trump in attacking, personally attacking his rivals. And it's all about personal attacks. And the argument is that Nikki Haley's bought, I mean, which is stupid, all politicians have bought. There's not a single politician that doesn't have these deep connections in and is not using those connections. It's not like the Santas has not gotten contributions from the right people. It's not like he, if he left the governorship right now wouldn't be going around giving talks for $300,000 a pop. You know, this is the way American politics is built to expect somebody not to give a talk when they're offered $300,000 or to not accept money from, I don't know, Jamie Diamond towards their pack in order to get reelected is to expect insanity and to expect somebody who can't win. So Vivek is nuts. I think he lost it completely really after the first debate where he got a bump, but then declined dramatically. And since then, he's just seems to embrace more and more and more kind of nutty conspiracy theories, which is too bad because some of the ideas he presents are actually pretty good. All right, here I'm Muroslav, thief in laws. I don't know what that means, languages. Well, for what that's worth, you did say you lived in South Africa for a time, for some time or parents. How much is Afikon is different from Dutch? I have no idea what this means. But the bottom line is I never lived in South Africa. I visited it a few times, I spent some time there, but I never lived in South Africa. My parents were born in South Africa. That's why they speak English at home and that's why we spoke English at home. How different is Afikon is from Dutch? I don't know, I mean it's different, but how much I don't know, I don't know Dutch or Afikon is well enough to be able to tell the difference. Andrew is the MAGA crowd capable of mass violence if Trump's leading Biden or wins and then is put in jail. Are institutions strong enough to shut down political violence in America? Just wondering how bad it could get. I think what you really should be afraid of is not widespread political violence because Trump loses or widespread political violence because Trump goes to jail. I think ultimately that won't happen. I don't think the MAGA crowd is organized enough, committed enough and would engage in that kind of violence. I think the real fear is Trump winning and eroding both the sense and just the very principle of liberty in this country in ways that no president has done in the past. And Trump indicated his intention to do this. He has, and in his first administration, first term, he tried but didn't have the power, didn't have the people around him. He actually surrounded himself the first time with some good people. This time there will be no good people around Trump. That's the scary thing. So last time there were people in foreign policy who really reigned him in, who really, you know, whether it was a Bolton or Kelly or Mathis or all these guys are like, head and shoulders above Trump, they're more knowledgeable, they're more American, they're more pro-American, they're more intelligent, they're smarter, they know more history, they know everything. Trump's like a buffoon has compared to them. So they reigned him in. Nikki Haley, she was at the UN, they were all better than Trump. Even Kushner, Jared Kushner, better than Trump. So we got decent policies. He had a good guy at Energy, the former governor of Texas. He had some good guys in pretty much every department and to shockingly, it turned out that the people he appointed for the Justice Department were independent enough to go tell Trump to take a hike. And that happened early on, I forget his name, the former senator who was one of Trump's biggest supporters and was appointed as the head of the Justice Department and then was fired, resigned, very, very early on in the Trump administration. It turns out even Barr, even though Barr's later, Barr at the end, had more integrity than I expected. I thought Barr was terrible. But when it really came down to Trump undermining basic freedoms in America, Barr drew a line. And this is true. He put into positions people who are good in economics. Jeff Sessions, thank you. Jeff Sessions, who was a senator, one of Trump's biggest supporters. From day one, when Trump started running, Sessions was right there. And then Sessions recused himself over the Russia investigation, over the investigation, and over the Komi investigation. And that was it. Trump was livid that he would recuse himself, which was the appropriate thing to do. And he appointed an independent thing. Now, remember, Sessions was 100% pro-Trump. He didn't let people roll him. He looked at the evidence and thought that it was what was required. He has, again, more integrity than some of you, I guess. And the result was that he got fired. So now let's think about a second Trump administration. Only Trump loyalists. Only people who do exactly what Trump tells him. Indeed, many of the people Trump brings in are more anti-freedom and anti-American than Trump is anti-American. They will push him to his crazy views. They won't moderate him. They will encourage him. Imagine a Justice Department run by a Trump yes man. Will you ever see a fair election again? Imagine a economic team that is committed now, not fight against it, but committed to Trump's 10% tariffs across the board. And industrial planning, telling CEOs what they can and cannot do. Before, his Treasury Secretary, I forget the guy's name, Treasury Secretary fought him. And he had a chief economic advisor. He had several chief economic advisors who all fought him on his instincts for higher taxes and greater central planning. Trump, you all forget, wanted to actually raise the top module income tax rate. Imagine if those people are replaced. Mnuchin, thank you, with now people who, again, completely bought in to Trump on foreign policy and everything, who suck up to Russia, suck up to China. Because after all, China shows a lot of respect to Xi. And that's what Trump wants. I mean, you can't imagine the disaster that we're heading towards. Really can't imagine. Peter Navarro was the only guy who was worse than Trump on trade. So imagine everybody in the administration is a Peter Navarro. But even Peter Navarro was pretty good on COVID. Even Peter Navarro thought Trump was bad on some things. Imagine somebody who never challenges Trump, who never questions alternatives, whatever. Right now, you have lots of alternatives. Right now, you have Nikki Haley, you have DeSantis, you have Christie, there are lots of alternatives right now. So don't tell me what is the alternative. The alternative is any one of these Republicans. Choose, pick. That's what's relevant right now. Afterwards, we can talk about Biden versus Trump. Can't be Trump. Maybe you say it can't be Biden, but then the solution is not to vote. But it cannot be Trump. Trump cannot be an alternative. Given the kind of people he's going to bring into the administration. By the way, the whole Havatich Foundation has restructured itself. Basically, the more traditional conservatives, the more free market conservatives, more American. American values, American history, American founders, conservatives have left. The small libertarians have left. And what you've got left with is Trump conservatives who are not conservatives, not in the traditional sense, who are big government conservatives. That's what you got left at Havatich. They were always dominant at Havatich. And they have geared, the entire administration of Havatich is geared towards, there's an entire massive program at Havatich. I'm not making this up, this is public knowledge. To help Trump's staff, the next administration with people loyal to him. Loyal to him. That was a long answer. All right, Amir Khet, loved your Hebrew show. Disappointed my joke flew over your head. It was in Hebrew. It's hard for me to do jokes in Hebrew. Half the soccer team in Israel are named after the Maccabees. You were just as nuts. Who were just as nuts as the Taliban? Oh, in that sense, yes, they were. They were religious fanatics. Loved hearing, you say, Gaza, Gaza delenpa? I don't get that. Anyway, he liked hearing me speak Hebrew. That's cool. Thanks for joining today. And reminded everybody, I'm doing these shows every two weeks on a Thursday, 10 AM, East Coast time in Hebrew. Please join me. The Godfather, even if a peace deal is reached, should IDF still take out the Hamas and Pij leadership? What about Iranian leadership for sponsoring these organizations or the Hezbollah leadership? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I mean, you can't reach peace unless the leadership is taken out. You can't reach a peace unless the entire leadership is taken out of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic jihad, maybe even broader than that. Maybe the current leadership of the PLO needs to be taken out. So I don't know what a peace deal. There's no peace deal possible with these people. And there's no peace deal possible with the current leadership of the PLO. The entire leadership of the Palestinian people needs to be taken out. The Palestinian people themselves need to be brought to their knees, need to be shown to them that they have no chance, or they have to believe this, that they have no chance ever to defeat Israel, that they have no chance ever to gain a Palestinian state. They have to completely accept that they have lost. That won't happen until Hezbollah leadership is dead. Not just Hezbollah leadership, the ground troops, the entire infrastructure of Hezbollah, and until the Iranian leadership is replaced. So that's a big task. It's going to be hard for Israel to do it by itself. But that is going to be a requirement. Why? Amy Peacock and Richard Salisman. Wow, there's a combo. Salisman had Richard Salisman on, and they were both hopeful about Mele. Does this presidency have real potential to promote freedom and movements? Freedom movements. Yeah, I mean, I'm disappointed in Amy for having Richard Salisman on. Richard Salisman is a nutcase and is explicitly stated how much he is an enemy of mine, so that is disappointing. But beyond that, an affiliate with the Atlas Society and everything else. I'm disappointed in Amy for having him on. But does Mele's presidency promote freedom movements? Maybe it really depends on how he does. I mean, I am very positive about Mele because Argentina needs somebody like that. I'm hopeful, although I'm not yet 100% convinced, that he will shake things up enough to get Argentina on the right track, that he will create enough cognitive dissonance, economic dissonance, really shrink government enough. I don't know if he's ever going to dollarize. I don't know if he'll ever shut down the central bank. I'm a little suspicious of his appointment to Treasury Secretary, Secretary of the Economy. It is a guy who was a Treasury Secretary under Marquis, and they didn't, Marcy, who didn't do enough. They weren't radical enough. This is the key question. Will Mele stay radical in his governing, not just in his campaign? If he does, it could be a huge boon because he could be successful. Even if he's only partially successful, he could be successful. And that will definitely give a boost to freedom movements around the world, to other candidates who have radical ideas. But he first has to be successful. And I'm worried. I'm worried because maybe he's doing this strategically and maybe he's smarter than all of us and certainly smarter than me. And maybe this is what you have to do. That is, he's playing to more moderate supporters. That's what he seems to be emphasizing. And to that extent, he's playing to them. I hope he's just doing that for political reasons and doesn't actually compromise them. Doesn't actually compromise them. Andrew, Trump at a town hall the other night was a scary scene. The audience wearing Trump hats, laughing at everything he says, jumping up and standing ovations, cultur personality, yes. That's what we have. We have a cultur personality. And that's how authoritarian regimes get started. And I don't think Trump can pull off authoritarianism. We'll see. But if not Trump, somebody else. But what this indicates is, is America's willingness to engage and facilitate a cultur personality, which is the path, the unmitigated path to authoritarianism. That's where this country's heading. There's no question. Left, right, it's heading towards authoritarianism and both are supporting it. Anybody want to ask me a question about anything the super chat is available? I'm not going to answer your questions. It's just in the chat. You have an urgent burning question. The chat is right here. The super chat is right here. Mary Eileen says, Trump has a personality? Yeah, a rotten, ugly, horrible one. But he has a personality. Larry says, have you located my book, Forks in the Road on Amazon yet? No, I haven't. I really haven't had a chance to even look for it. But it's on my, it's on my list to do. So we're working on it. We'll get there, I promise, Larry. Let's see. Mark. And Mary Benz did confirm that she paid me $500. Mark Thomas says, don't forget PLFP, Communist Life Zone for 80 years. Yeah, to the extent that they have any power today. Yeah, any one of these groups need to be destroyed. Spinemen 3000. Trump's semi-effective against the eco-nonsense. Yes, semi. But again, it comes from Trump. I'm not sure how effective it is in the long run. Biden put us back on track to destroy the auto industry almost immediately, not an alternative. Yeah, if you only want to focus on one industry that's true, I'll go back to the stats I gave you the other day. The United States is producing more oil today, barrels of oil today, under Biden, who's horrible, right, than ever in American history. I'm not saying that to complicate. I'm just saying Biden has also been put in a corner. We had no choice but to, quote, allow the American oil and gas industry to go out there and just produce the huge quantity of oil and gas that we're producing right now. So yeah, I mean, I think neither an alternative. And right now we've got primaries. So neither has to be an alternative. You can go and find somebody better. All right, everybody, thank you. I appreciate the support. I appreciate that we got to our target. Exactly, almost exactly. So that is fantastic. Let's see. We have a show tonight at what was it? 7 PM East Coast time. I'm interviewing Don Watkins. It's going to be a lot of fun. It'll be really interesting. I'm curious. I haven't read his book yet, but I'm waiting for the Kindle version to come out. But I'm excited about the book. I know Don's a great writer. I know he's a great thinker. And an effective egoism, what a great title. So I'm excited about the conversation we're going to have tonight about egoism. So join us, 7 PM. And yeah, I will see you there. Mark, last I saw Angela had emailed you. I haven't seen you applied to Angela, but maybe I missed it. But hopefully we can schedule something. Spine Man 3000 says, go see Godzilla minus one. Well, it's in theaters. Yes, everybody keeps telling me that I will try. My wife won't go with me. So I have to get a night out by myself and go watch it. Or my son is going to be here visiting me later in the month. And he really liked the movie. Maybe we'll want to see it again. And we'll go together. We'll see. But thanks, everybody. Wow, over an hour. I'll see you at 7 PM for the third show of the day.