 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. I don't know, days of the week get kind of mushed up together in this holiday season. Thursday, December 28th, we're getting close to the end of the year, getting close to that big December 31st show, which will be at 1 p.m. east coast time. I moved it earlier by an hour. So maybe we can go four hours. Who knows? Give us a little bit more room on the other side. So 1 p.m. east coast time. It'll go for three to four hours until we raise the requisite amounts. It'll be a big fundraising event. So please come prepared with questions, comments, suggestions, and a checkbook. All right, let us jump into today's show, Millet. I mean, the more you dig deeper into Millet, the more, I think, interesting it is. It becomes and is. I mean, what's unique about Millet really certainly in modern political history. I can't think of anybody in the political map who has had such a deep understanding of economics, just straight up economics. So there is just a one example is a video that's up on Twitter right now. And it looks like there's a series of videos called Millet Explains. You can subscribe to this channel, I guess, on Twitter. Axe called Millet Explains. And he just showed videos explaining different economic principles. And this one, for example, is about free trade. And he just talks about how free trade is good, how import tariffs weaken the economy and make you poor on a bad economically. And he does it easily, fluidly, without hesitation, and just simple economic reality. And you can tell he's trained. He's an economics professional, and he knows his stuff. Now, not all economic professionals know their stuff, but he is because he's trained in Austrian economics. He's got it right. And he's president. And there's no wonder, therefore, that one of the first things he's doing as president is reducing barriers to trade. He's eliminating tariffs. He's reducing all kinds of taxes and whether tax or other barriers to the facilitation of international trade. And good for him. This is going to be crucial for Argentina. And indeed, to the extent that he is successful, it'll be to the extent that he turns Argentina into, if you will, kind of a free trade. I was going to say island, but that was my hope for the UK, free trade haven, a zero-tariff place in the world, in the middle of Latin America. And investment will flow. Cheap goods will flow, which will raise the standard of living of Argentinians. And then Argentinians will specialize. And their agricultural goods, their wines, maybe we'll see a shale revolution in Argentina where we'll start fracking natural gas will flow out, and they'll start exporting all this other stuff and where the other countries lower their tariffs are not. It doesn't matter. Argentina will be a massive beneficiary of that free trade of the zero-tariff. So the fact that they're not taxing their own citizens for buying stuff from outside the country. So that's amazing. And it's amazing to see him explaining. It's amazing, particularly when you think about our leading candidate for president in the United States, Donald Trump, who thinks trade is a lose-lose proposition. He thinks the United States loses when it trades with Canada, never mind China, but with Canada, who has a five-year-old's understanding of international trade, which is a zero-sum understanding of international trade. Or any other candidate, I'm picking up Trump because he made trade a big issue and has promised 10% tariffs across the board if he gets re-elected. But all of them, not a single one of them out there, can literally, in concrete terms, actually explain why free trade, why lowering tariffs to zero, again, I want to make free trade real to you. Not fair trade, not OK somewhat, maybe sometimes trade. I'm talking about free trade. Zero tariffs, unilaterally, unilaterally. So with the exception of those things unequivocally necessary for national defense, free trade unilaterally, he actually shows why it's good without any equivocation. And there's just no politician I know of in the Western world who can actually do that or comes close or tries or wants to do it. So he's not, the leftist media likes to attack Mele as just another Trump or another Bolsonaro. He's nothing like Trump, and he's nothing like Bolsonaro. He's actually intelligent, and he's actually knowledgeable, and actually as principles. Principles. He has ideas. He knows what he wants. He has clear ideas. He is ideological, which is the exact opposite. He's more different than Trump. Then Biden is different from Trump. Biden is Trump, light, Trump left, but same, no big difference. And Mele is a complete break with the Trump-Biden dissenters, Hailey throw them all in there, complete break with all of that. So anyway, as you can tell, I'm a fan. One of the proposals that he sent yesterday, an elaboration of what he announced last week, was he actually sent Congress a list of 27 companies that are currently in the hands of the state that he wants to privatize. That includes the Port Administration, the airline. We'll get back to the airline in a minute. A couple of banks, the Mint. I think from this, it looks like the post office. Can you imagine privatizing the post office in America? God, it's such a long-hanging fruit, so obvious to do in America. They will never do it. Construction companies, I guess, all kinds of other stuff. Navigation company, the railways, a lot of railways. There's a bunch of railways here. Retirement insurance, so he wants to nationalize the Retirement Insurance Program. That interesting. Amazing. It turns out that with the exception of like seven of the 27 companies, every single one of these companies runs at a deficit. They're all losing money. So privatizing will make them more efficient. Whoever buys them, if they're willing to pay anything for them, will commit to making them more efficient. It also means laying off thousands of people. These companies are unbelievably overstaffed and unproductive. And again, a revolution. These are 27 large companies. I think that, yeah, there's some energy companies. Energia, Argentina looks like a nuclear electrical company. I mean, this is fantastic, fantastic. So hopefully, Congress will allow this and it'll get privatized and this will go through. And then finally, as part of privatizing the national airline, the president also wants to do something bonkers, completely crazy, that doesn't exist in the United States. It's called open sky policy, which basically says any airline from anywhere in the world can fly any route within Argentina. That is, a Mexican airline can fly from Buenos Aires to Bariloche. Or the Chilean airline can actually fly from Lima. No, Lima is Peru. What am I saying? OK, so Peru of an airline can fly from Lima. Anywhere in Argentina, they don't have to connect through Buenos Aires. In other words, they can do what makes economic sense. Now, think about that. That does not exist in the United States. Britishers can fly from London to LA. But they can't fly from LA to Seattle. They can't fly from LA to New York unless it's part of a flight, I think, that continues to London. No, indeed, when Virgin wanted to start a domestic airline in the United States, it had to be 51% owned by Americans. It has to be a domestic airline in order to fly domestic routes, which made Virgin USA a lot less efficient than if it could have been part of the Virgin network and just be exactly the same ownership, run exactly the same way with exactly the same management and everything else as Virgin and therefore compete with American airlines. I mean, imagine if European airlines, budget and otherwise, were flying routes within the United States. I mean, of course, American Airlines lobby for protection. They want fewer competitors. But that's the point. Get, I mean, this is the point. And I'm sure whoever buys Argentinian airways from the government will lobby to prevent this in Argentina. But this is the point of having a principled president. I don't care. I don't care. Compete, compete. Prices would drop. Quality would go up. A variety would increase. And some airlines would go out of business. Maybe quite a few of America's airlines would go out of business because they deserve to. And there would be real competition over routes, over fees, I mean, prices, over quality, over every single dimension. Imagine if Europe did the same thing with the US. If it allied American airlines to fly between cities in Europe. I mean, you'd literally have a transportation revolution like we haven't seen since airlines were deregulated in the 1970s. So this is huge for Argentina. Good for them. You'll see massive competition. Right now, the two airlines that dominate South America, La Tam and Avianca out of Colombia. And you could see other airlines, South American airlines, expanding their route system by taking advantage of flying into Argentina freely. And Argentina airlines might go to business, but who cares? And you might even see some American airlines flying unusual routes into Latin America, given that they now have the opportunity. But let's see if that happens. But if it does, I mean, Tim says New York to airline $50. I mean, in Europe, if you're willing to fly the discount airlines, you can sometimes fly for $10 from London to, I don't know, to Italy. You can fly for really, really, really cheap. Now, service sucks, and you can't take a suitcase and all that. But they start adding on if you add on stuff. But Europeans love it, because it basically makes it possible for anybody to go anyway in Europe. Students, poor people, they can travel anyway. They just adjust in terms of what they take, how much they take. And they can fly. So that could happen in the United States, where you could fly domestically. Domestic prices, domestic airline prices are really expensive in the US as compared to Europe. And the reason for that is they're protected. Now, there are also lots of taxes and costs and gate charges at the airports and all kinds of other stuff. So you'd have to increase capacity also in airports. But all that is doable, and you would have a revolution in airflight. But yeah, but if we actually got those really, really cheap airlines, call them, I don't know, the dollar airline, then as Jennifer points out, Taka would complain that it was demeaning for poor people to have to fly in the dollar airline. And Taka Carson would be opposed and rally against it. And he'd point out that the dollar airplanes, I mean, because the cheaper airplanes would probably be uglier than the Saks Fifth Avenue airplanes and the business-only airplanes. And he would complain. He would really complain about that. All right, that's Millay. So far, so good with Millay. As I said, next Thursday, not tomorrow, not today, but a week from today, at 6 PM East Coast time, I'll be interviewing an Argentinian economist. He'll be speaking from Buenos Aires. And we'll be talking about Millay. We'll be talking about his policies. We'll be talking about what he's already done, what the economist expects him to do. Ivan will be explaining all this. He's a good guy. He's quite articulate, good English. And it should be a fascinating show. So I hope you'll join us next Thursday at your Unbrook show at 6 PM East Coast time. All right, Argentina has this radical president who actually wants to make radical changes in the country to our own presidential candidates. And this is depressing. Oh, God, is it depressing? I really, really, really want to support Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley constantly is, I mean, it just constantly makes it difficult to support her. So Awab actually came out with this ridiculous anti-privacy thing where she would make it illegal or something for you to post anonymously on social media, which is like the worst idea I can think of. It's like disgusting and awful. And so anti-liberty and anti-freedom. And then yesterday, she's asked in New Hampshire a simple question. What caused the civil war? And she rambles all about the role of government and all this stuff. I mean, the ramble itself is not bad if it was an answer to a different question. But she never mentioned slavery. She thinks, I think the cause of the civil war is basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people should and couldn't do. What do you think the cause of the civil war was? And the guy says, well, you know, you're the running for president, I'm me. And then she goes on, I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of government. I mean, freedoms of the people, I think that's right. I mean, it's good. Secure rights. Wow, nobody talks like that. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn't need to tell us how to live our lives. They don't need to tell you what you can or can't do. And they don't need to be part of your life. You know, they don't need to be part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. Cool. Very good answer to a completely different question. She was asked the causes of the civil war. Now, I know why she said, and then she goes on. Just to see why I wish she continues, we need to have capitalism. She uses the C-word. We need to have economic freedom. Wow, we need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties, individuals. I mean, she's the perfect candidate, right? Have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech. I mean, even anonymously, Hailey. Freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way. I mean, a really good answer. It's not the answer to the question. Why can't she just say, we had slavery because the self-succeeded in order to protect their ability to have slaves. And Lincoln launched a civil war in order to protect the union and abolish slavery. Simple. One sentence, go on. Well, she didn't say that as my guess because her one hope to beat Donald Trump is to win South Carolina. And in South Carolina, her answer is ambiguous in terms of who the good guys and the bad guys are. Because in many parts of the South, they believe that the South was right to secede, and the South was the one defending individual rights. Now, it could be she's ignorant, but that would be bizarre given that she was governor of South Carolina. And it's not that she is like for the South in the civil war, because she actually was the first governor to take down the South's flag. The, god, what's the name of it? The South's flag from the state capital when she was governor. And she actually advocated for taking down some of the statutes of Southern generals and stuff. But she wants that forgotten, the Confederate flag. Thank you, the Confederate flag. She wants that forgotten. She wants the Southerness to vote for her, I guess. I don't know. But it's pathetic. It's pathetic, even though, again, she talks about rights. Nobody on this campaign talks about rights, not DeSantis, not Trump, certainly not Trump. He never talks about rights. She talks about the individual. Wow, she says the C-word, capitalism. Wow. And she can't bring herself to actually say slavery. Yeah, Vivek does. And then he says a bunch of nutty, crazy stuff that disqualifies him. So Vivek is just a flake. And he has zero chance. He's much more of a flake than Nikki. And he says more outrageous things than Nikki. All right, let's see. Yeah, so there you go. Nikki Haley Trump. Quickly on Trump. So the Republican Party has appealed the Colorado decision to knock him off the ballot based on the 14th Amendment to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court, they haven't accepted it, but we are assuming they'll accept it. And I'm assuming they'll overrule it. Now, if somebody pointed out rightly that there is a conservative constitutional scholar, a literate who is actually on a short list of the Supreme Court judge, who is the one who first proposed that Trump is disqualified for running for president based on the 14th Amendment, and therefore, you know, Supreme Court might take his side, I doubt it. I doubt that Supreme Court, once that particular political potato, I doubt I don't think most conservative scholars agree with Lidwig. I think I'm pronouncing his name right, maybe not. And I just think it's a weak argument. So I think that they will overturn the Colorado decision. In the meantime, the Michigan Supreme Court basically kept in place a lower court's decision not to take Trump off the ballot. Now, this is why the Supreme Court has to make this decision, because the fact is other states are going to try the same thing. But once the Supreme Court rules one way or the other, it's a done deal, and it's finished. So either the Supreme Court rules, yes, states can take him off, or they can rule, yes, it should be taken off all states, because he's disqualified by the 14th Amendment, or they can rule, no, no, this doesn't count, the 14th Amendment does not disqualify therefore the states cannot do it. So that is the range of things that the states can do. All right, let's see, yes. All right, let me just remind you if you want to ask me questions, this is Super Chat, is the way to do it. With all the grief I give to Scott and all the disruptions and my disagreements with him and everything, he, when he has a question, he asks it, he's actually got a question here right now in the chat. Some of you out there who would like to interact with me more on the chat, who ask questions, but who are too cheap, I guess, to ask it in the Super Chat could learn from Scott. See, there's a value in having Scott around. He's a model disruptor. All right, OpenAI, the whole phenomena of large language models of the chat GPT kind is going to create some interesting legal issues. It's going to create some legal, interesting legal issues because they basically go out there and the way they learn is by basically consuming or using information that's available out there and from that extrapolating through a variety of statistical models, what they think is true, right? Can I pay you if your ideas were worth a dime, but they're not and I think you think mine are not too, but I don't waste my time going on your show, so I don't know why you waste your time here, but I'm not asking you any questions. I don't really care about your opinions, so this is a one-way street, not a two-way street. That was in response to a comment by Ken on the chat in response to my previous comment about Super Chat. And so this is going to open up a bunch of interesting intellectual property issues because a lot of what OpenAI and other AI systems are scanning in order to get the information from which they analyze to give you an answer when you make a query is intellectual property of other people. Intellectual property that is maybe granted to Google in certain terms, or granted to other browsers or other news sources or other places by certain terms, but which OpenAI just takes it, right? And this is gonna create a lot of interesting issues. Now, we've seen already that some AI companies have negotiated with certain news sources to be able to consume your news for the purpose of the AI, the large language model, and they pay for it. They pay a percentage, but we haven't seen a universal model arise, and I think there's still work on a universal model to arise, and we haven't seen all AI do this, and we haven't seen all the news suppliers do this. And as a consequence, there's a lawsuit now that was filed, I think yesterday, by the New York Times suing OpenAI. Now, put aside that this is the New York Times, the point is that this is really interesting because this is going to be, these lawsuits are gonna become more prevalent, and how the courts rule are basically gonna shape the way in which large language models evolve in the future. Also, it's gonna shape the economics of these AI models because if they have to pay for all the information, do they have the resources? How much will they have to pay? Or what is the basis for that payment? And will we then have to pay for queries or chat GPD stop being for free? Exactly how is it gonna work? Now, this is fascinating to me, and that might not be interesting to you, but to me it's interesting because I'm really interested in the way technology and business models evolve, and business relationships, and when business relationships evolve and develop, and I think this is gonna be a really interesting one to watch and see, I think OpenAI and the rest of the AI industry has the potential to completely revolutionize the way we do a lot of things. And, but to do that, they're going to have to solve these fascinating intellectual property and business models challenges that they face, and I think this New York Times lawsuit is a first step in the direction of getting that done. We have a bunch of Middle East, Hamas, Israel, Houthi's, Red Sea, Iran, Iraq, updates Hezbollah. So I'm just gonna run through them. Nothing too much in depth here, but just a general analysis. I did a show on Tuesday about what it means for Israel to win and what I think the likelihood of it winning. So if you're interested in a more in-depth analysis of the Israeli Hamas battle war, really the Israeli-Palestinian war, please go and watch that show from a couple of days ago. I'll just say this, there's growing skepticism in the United States and in Europe and in Israel itself about whether Israel can win. Not just win in the strategic sense in which I meant on Tuesday, but even win in the tactical sense of defeating Hamas. This is because I think in the US and in Europe and in Israel, the push is to have this war shortened and to have Israel stop soon. And there's also this notion that Israel cannot and should not kill a lot of people. And of course under those terms, it's very unlikely Israel can even win a tactical defeat of Hamas. As I said the other day, to win even against Hamas, Israel has to make sure the Palestinian people suffer, starve. I mean humanitarian crisis is not a bad thing when it comes to Gaza, it's a good thing because that'll mean the Palestinian people will start putting pressure on Hamas. Also all these news articles think that the more the Palestinians suffer, the more poor Hamas they become. It's just not true, that's not how it works in history. The more they suffer, the more anti-Hamas they'll become. So humanitarian crisis Israel has to inflict. Second, Israel has to kill a lot of people affiliated with Hamas. We're talking about thousands of people. So and a lot of civilians will die in the crossfire. So you're still looking at lots of casualties on the ground. Of course the casualties coming out of Gaza, the numbers that Hamas reports don't separate civilians from military personnel, Hamas military personnel. Because Hamas military personnel are all dressed up like civilians, so you can't tell. But also because Hamas has no interest in telling you how many of its own people have been killed. But you know close to anywhere between 40 to 50% of the people killed are probably Hamas operative. And it's going to have to destroy all the tunnels, not some, but all of them. And that's going to require time to find them, discover them, to bomb them, to destroy them. And they're going to have to kill the entire leadership. And given the way they're fighting right now, it's going to take them months, months to do this. And it's true that if they stop fighting in the next few weeks, as Biden administration wants them to do, as the Europeans want them to do, some Europeans already turned against Israel, then they can't win. They can't even destroy Hamas. Never mind win-win. That is defeat to Palestinians. They are really, really stuck. So that's quickly on kind of the pressure worldwide. Israel is still fighting on the ground, as I said the other day. It has now entered Central Gaza. It is significant battles in the center of Gaza, still significant battles in Hanyunas. And they're still cleaning up operations in the north. They have not finished in the north. They keep kind of declaring victory in the north. And Hamas keeps popping out of tunnels. So there's still a lot of work to do just in the northern Gaza of destroying tunnels and of finishing off the remnants of Hamas in the north. This is not going to end anytime soon. Again, the way they're fighting now, it could end very fast. But Israel is not willing to do that. And the world would go apoplectic if they did. At the same time, Israel is also conducting major operations, major operations in the West Bank. As of late last night, earlier this morning, hundreds of armored vehicles and thousands of Israeli troops entered several cities across the West Bank, including Janine, Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah, and Jericho, all in an effort to capture, destroy Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad infrastructure in the West Bank. This could get ugly. Supposedly, early this morning, there were firefights going on all over the area. This is the largest-scale combat operation by the IDF in the West Bank, probably since 2002-3, probably since the Second Intifada. So this is the second front Israel is fighting on. It's going to be interesting to see how successful they are. And they're trying to hear. They're trying to be preemptive. They're good for Israelis. This is exactly what they need to do. They need to be preemptive in the West Bank. They need to stop it before these terrorists do harm. And they're arresting them. They're killing them. They're taking the weapons away. They're destroying their infrastructure. At the same time, they're constantly back and forth with the Khizballah in the north. They never did the preemptive strike against the Khizballah in the north. So they are now tit for tat in the north. At some point Israel's going to have to do more than that. I talked about that on the Tuesday show. They're also bombing Syria. Over the last few days, they killed one of the leaders of the Iranian Republican Guard in Syria. The Iranians are in mourning as a consequence. So they are very active in Syria. It appears the guy died with his mistress while his wife was at work. So that's kind of what's going on in Israel. At the same time, Iranian-affiliated forces continue to attack American forces in Iraq and in Syria. America continues to do almost nothing. They did bomb some facilities of these Iranian-backed forces in Iraq. But it's pathetic, pinpricks. They continue to say, be careful. Don't make us angry. At some point, we'll really go after you. Nobody believes them. And the consequence of that is basically American troops are freefall. You can shoot at them. You can injure them. You can kill them. You can do whatever you want to them. And the Biden administration will do nothing. This is a continuation of the Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden policy in Afghanistan and a continuation of their policy in Syria and Iraq. It is pathetic. And it's hard for me to express how outraged I am and how outraged you should be. These are your kids, our kids. And they're OK. Our leaders, our generals, our politicians just don't give a damn. If they don't give a damn, then just bring them home. Evacuate. Do what you did in Afghanistan. I mean, the ugliness of Afghanistan is ugly. And a lot of people are going to die because of how we evacuated Afghanistan. But the reality is that was better than staying there and let people just die in Afghanistan. So bring them home. Or penalize Iran. Penalize the attackers. So finally, the Houthis, of course, the US has a big carrier group and other attack ships in the area of the Red Sea and the Sea of Aden. And over the last few, I guess, 48 hours, 24, 48 hours, they have knocked out of the sky over a dozen drones, a couple of anti-ship cruise missiles, and other missiles launched in the direction of ships. I haven't found a new story that tells me what ships they were targeting, whether they were American ships or commercial ships. The America, with regard to the Houthis, is playing defense. They're just knocking stuff out of the sky. They refuse to attack them. This coalition they put together, 20 countries, half of whom don't want to be named, is pathetic. Most of them don't want to be part of this coalition. Most of them refuse to engage in a preemptive strike. So in attacking their attackers, all they want to do is pretend that they're there, but that the United States basically is responsible. And the US for now is only playing defense. By the way, a few days ago, a ship was attacked off the coast of India by a drone launched by Iran, directly from Iran. Not the Houthis, Iran. And what did the US, world, India, anybody do about it? Yeah, you guessed it. Bubkas, nothing. So the US is trying not to escalate. It'll do anything not to escalate. It'll basically sacrifice its own troops not to escalate. It'll play defense forever. Even if shipping is stopped in the Red Sea, just so it doesn't escalate. I mean, they're so afraid of escalation. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. And a proposition guaranteed to create more violence in the future, American weakness always leads to more violence in the future. That is always the case. All right, before we get to the last story, I'll just remind you that this show is funded by the support of listeners like you. If you're not listening live, the easiest way to support the show is on Patreon or on PayPal through the uranbookshow.com slash membership. uranbookshow.com slash membership. You can also become a member here on YouTube and support the show that way. So three different ways to support the show. Please consider doing that on a monthly basis. That is, it is a great way for me to know what income is coming. I could also support the show by using the Super Chat right here, trade value for value, but that's only for people live. And you can ask a question. Therefore, guide the show in the direction you would like. Ask questions about things that interest you. You can also use a sticker just to support the show. And that'd be great. We have 150 people watching live right now. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. If you haven't liked the show yet, please like it. Likes help the algorithms, all of that. Help the algorithms. And if you want to help the show, please do that. And please consider some financial support. We are nowhere near a goal for today. So maybe we could do a stretch, a final stretch here. I'll remind you again, December 31st. Maybe everybody's saving up for December 31st. Big show. I'll do a review of 2023 and take your questions. And we'll make our fundraising event. And we're going to raise a lot of money. I think the target's going to be $12,000 for the show. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Gail. Thank you, Mary Eileen. Thank you, Katharine. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Mary Eileen again. And thank you, Steven. And thank you, Rafael. Thank you, all of you, for doing a sticker and supporting value for value of the show. All right. Also, remind you that Einwand Institute is a sponsor of the show. And right now, they are asking me to promote the fact that OKON, the Objectivist Conferences, is going to be in Anaheim in June. A little earlier than usual, not over the 4th of July. So if you haven't come because 4th of July and all of that, then this will not overlap with the 4th of July. So you can join us. It's going to be in Anaheim, California. So fantastic weather, beautiful location, and a lot of fun. And so you can sign up. You can do yourunbookshow.com. No, sorry, not your Unbookshow. Einwand.org, slash, start here. Einwand.org, slash, start here. And you can sign up for OKON. And I think there's still a discount, maybe, for OKON registration. So go to the OKON tab. I'll be there. I'm speaking. I'm doing a course, I think. So I'm speaking more than once with Uncard. We're doing something together. So that'll be fun. Yeah, come on over. And one of the great things about OKON is spending time with other people who show you values for a whole week. And it just has a certain vibe to it that you can't find anywhere else. All right, let's see. Oh, there is going to be, Apollosus says OKON should be in Buenos Aires. There will be a conference in Buenos Aires. I think it's 5th to the 7th of April. 5th to the 7th of April, I will be in Buenos Aires for an objectives conference there. So don't worry, we're not going to forget Buenos Aires, right? Well, does that sound quite for me, Argentina? We're not going to let you cry. No crying in Argentina. So come to OKON 2024. Come to Argentina to Buenos Aires 2024. OKON is June 13th to 18th. Let's see, we got our last news item. And that was, you remember Moderna's mRNA vaccine for COVID and how everybody was dropping dead from it? Anyway, it turns out that Moderna's mRNA vaccines is now being used for a variety of different trials on cancer. And that it has shown unbelievable success with regard to what you call skin cancer, melanoma. And what they do is actually personalize it. This is pretty cool. The vaccine works by instructing the body to make up to 34 neoantigens. These are proteins found only on the cancer cells. And Moderna personalizes the vaccine for each recipient so that it carries instructions for the neoantigens on their cancer cells. Now that's unbelievable in terms of the potential that has and the progress that that will have. In 2022, the same researchers reported that the combo therapy reduced high-risk patients' risk of recurring a death by 44% compared to only having, I guess, a conventional treatment. So there you have it. mRNA vaccines are going to reduce deaths from cancer significantly, going to make it possible for us to recover from cancer, going to be able to target the cancer cells directly without doing damage to the body in a variety of other ways. All right, let's jump into your questions. Shazbot with $50. Thank you, Shazbot. And thank you, Obezi. And thank you, Paul Korn. And thank you, Gale, for the support. Shazbot says, General Melchorite, I don't know what that is, to trench soldiers. Don't worry. If you should falter, Captain Darling and I are behind you. Blackadder, about 35 miles behind you. So this is from Blackadder. It's from Melchorite. It's from the fourth season of Blackadder, which is the season where Blackadder is in World War I. It's about trench warfare in World War I. Not a funny topic, but Blackadder managed this to make it funny. But it says a lot about how it makes fun of how the French and the British fought in World War I. And this is a reflection. Trench soldiers, don't worry. The captain, the officers, are right behind you. And Blackadder is 35 miles behind you. So don't worry. Everybody's behind you. But this is how trench force warfare was, unfortunately, fought. Officers weren't in the trenches. Certainly not senior officers. And they weren't leading the charge. This is very different than, for example, the fact that in Gaza, you can see in the list of casualties on the Israeli side, the number of senior officers that are dying is pretty astounding. And that shows how the Israeli military officers fight from the front. Shazbad, when am I going to do a review? Because I watched maybe tomorrow as part of the news show, I'll also review Blackadder's Christmas Special, which was, as always, delightful. Trevor, have you heard of the SEC proposal regarding natural asset companies? I emailed you some info. Sounds like a veneer of privatizing public lands for environmentalist degrowth by restricting development of natural resources. I haven't read up about it, Trevor. I saw you send me some stuff on it. I need to read up on it and try to understand exactly what it is. It sounds like it's some form of privatizing the land to environmentalist groups who then restrict its use, which is fine if the land is auctioned and the environmentalists win it, in a sense, fair and square. They win it based on the highest bid. But that sounds like they're winning it on the basis of the fact that they will commit not to using it for development of natural resources. And that is downright evil, anti-progress, anti-development, anti-future. It's consistent with the environmentalist agenda of returning us to the caves, which, sadly, the Biden administration is ideologically aligned with, even if it doesn't always do it in action, because they also have to get re-elected. So they have not restricted oil production as much as they would like to because they need to get re-elected. But they will do other stuff that has just as bad consequence long term, like restricting the ability of private companies to use natural resources on ungoverned land by privatizing it into the hands of the worst people possible. Jacob says, every dollar from the US to Israel comes with pressure to not win. US policy comes first. After 10.7, it seems like Israel must be totally self-reliant in military hardware production. Yeah, I mean, I talked about this on Tuesday's show. I think that certainly Israel should learn a lesson. First of all, it's going to be fighting wars on five fronts. And it needs, I think, the whole orientation of the Israeli military has been where peace with Jordan, where peace with Egypt, Hamas is too weak. We really will either fight Hezbollah or Hamas, but they're both pretty weak by themselves. And Syria's got a civil war, so they're not going to fight us. And I think that after we think that, there's the potential of a multi-front war. Because Israel relies so much on the Air Force, they are completely dependent on the availability of missiles. But they also have to have tank shells, bullets, just the regular ammunition, artillery shells. And they, at this point, should always have and reserve stockpiled. I don't know, a major war's worth of stuff. So even if they are not fully self-sufficient, they should buy in advance, purchase in advance, so that they have enough to be able to handle a very long war. They don't have that. They haven't done that. Their thinking has been, their strategic thinking has been very poor, very bad. And as a consequence, I think they're failing. So that needs to be a priority for the future. It's also true that Israel needs to be, when it comes to weapon systems, be more and more self-reliant. And this is sad, because self-reliance is not good economics. And it's not good in terms of getting the best. Now Israel does make its own tank. It does make certain missiles. It could make more. One of the great weaknesses is it does not make its own airplane. Now it's not a big problem, because Israel doesn't lose many airplanes in battle. So it doesn't need replenish its supply of airplanes. It hasn't really lost airplanes in the sky since the 1973 war. But you never know. Israel did, at some point, develop its own fighter jet. Some think that one of the latest versions of the Chinese jet is based on Israeli designs. Hard to tell. But Israel never completed it. It probably should have. Every major weapon system Israel should have. Some automatic weapons are Israeli made. I don't know about artillery. Tanks Israeli made can be, anyway. Again, a lot of the drones, a lot of the technically advanced weapons are Israeli made. But Israel cannot rely on the United States. It cannot rely on the United States. And who knows what's going to happen in the future? I don't think he could rely on the left. I don't think he could rely on the right. I don't think he could rely on anybody in the United States. So Israel is going to have to. It's a small country. It's going to have to buy a lot of stuff in advance and stockpile it. And it's going to have to increase its capabilities to produce the stuff it produces for itself. But it needs to have enough weapons to fight a front on five. It needs to be able to fight three different wars, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Now maybe if they win this one, they won't have one too. But I doubt they're going to win this one. I still have my doubts about it. Thanks, Jacob. All right, thank you, Rajesh. Thank you, Mary-Elene. Thank you, Bradley. Thank you, Mike. We're now only $30 away from reaching our goal for today, which would be phenomenal. Mike Alass. Jordan Peterson seems to be really intrigued by Iran Lady. Do you think more of his audience are questioning him about her? This is your window to get on the show. Maybe Alex Epstein can message him about it. Alex, as far as I know, has already tried. So we can try. But at the end of the day, Jordan knows who I am. I was at his conference. Alex has mentioned me to him. I think others have too. We can see. But I don't know. I think Jordan just happened to have Malison after he had read Atlas Shrugged. I don't think it's his audience. I think it's him. It might be people in his universe. I did meet some people at ARC who said they wanted me there as a speaker next year, and they would mention it to Jordan. Maybe that's in the works behind the scenes. We will see. We will see. He's already got Atlas Shrugged. He's already got it. Anyway, I'll talk to Alex. Maybe Alex can help. Alex obviously knows him, and maybe Alex can help. Scott says, if Holland is right, that the seedbed of woke as Christian then isn't it the most virulent strain of Christianity today with its cultural influence. But I think he's wrong. He's right and he's wrong. He's wrong in the sense that attributing everything to Christianity is meaningless. It's just, and I said this in a review, it's kind of, yeah, Christianity came before. Now if Christianity invented altruism, then yes. But then the challenge is altruism, and altruism is everywhere. But woke is the most, yeah, I mean, woke is the most destructive right now. But woke, as I've explained over and over and over again, as Leonard explained, I think, in DIMM, woke is not a winning ideology. Woke is a disintegrating ideology. Now again, woke can win for a while, and it is, and it's destroyed, it destroyed Harvard, it's destroying many corporations right now, it's destroying a lot of stuff, and woke is horrific, but woke cannot win long-term. It's too disintegrated. The whole ideology is disintegrated, right? Yeah, I know, Scott, you are literal. Leonard did not use the term woke in DIMM. What did he use? He used the fundamental philosophical principle behind woke and by the entire left today, which is egalitarianism. You should all read the chapter on egalitarianism in DIMM, which describes the modern left to the T. And it's just a question of how that egalitarianism gets expressed and the extent to which they are willing to go to apply it. But it's egalitarianism, which Leonard Pickup calls the most evil, destructive ideology possible. There's nothing more destructive and evil than it, and that is woke. Woke is one application of egalitarianism. But he says, and I agree with him, it cannot win because it's not an integrating ideology, it's a disintegrating ideology. It's all against all, and you can see it in the very nature of intersectionality. Who's more oppressed? We're now constantly struggling, fighting among each other. And then of course, the oppressor, the people who you want to subjugate are the majority in the country, white people. That'll go cross well. That's a winning strategy. It just won't win. Now, it will destroy the country in the sense that in not winning, as Leonard points out, it will set the terms for a M2, a misintegrated ideology to take over religion, nationalism, the flag. It's not an accident that the response to woke has been national conservatism. It's not an accident that the response to woke has been integrationalism. It's not an accident that the response to woke has been, you know, get away with anything as a president populism. These are all the backlashes, and what the right to still not found is the right combination and the right person with the right kind of charisma to unify it all under the flag and under the cross, under whatever to create an M2 ideology that everybody can rally around. So egalitarianism is unbelievably destructive because it brings about two things. Everything it touches, it destroys. And because the people rejected at the end of the day, the alternative will be some kind of authoritarianism from the right, which will be less destructive than if woke took over, absolutely. But woke, I don't think will ever take over. Anyway, that's, you can disagree with my theory or you can disagree with my application of Leonard Peacuff's theory. You can even disagree with Leonard Peacuff's theory. I have no problem with that. You can make choices, you can analyze it, you can figure it out, you know, but I've, I mean, pretty clear about what my ideas are, my interpretation of Leonard's theory. I'm not speaking for him. I'm not speaking for them. This is just me trying to apply his theory to current events and reading based on my reading of them. Your reading of them is different, great. And you could disagree with them. And you could think, you could disagree with Iron Man who thought that communism would never win in the United States. And I agree with that. I don't think the left, the woke communism, left agenda will ever win in America. I think what wins in America is right wing fascist authoritarianism. That's what I think will win. All right. It's not even the left that got you rally around lockdowns. It was Trump. Trump was the initial cheerleader for lockdowns, not the left. God, red states locked down really quickly. And the first state to unlock down was Georgia and Trump criticized them. So, you know, this whole way in which you guys think about, or you guys, Scott thinks about left and right, is just perverse. It's just not right. Would Bitcoin becoming an ETF make it more likely to be regulated or corrupted? Yeah, it's going to be regulated. That's exactly the terms under which it becomes an ETF. That's the way it becomes regulated is it becomes, the more conventional, the more they bring it into the system, the more regulated it will become. Ed says, how do you think Relay will be able to deal with union of government workers? You know, I don't know. Let's ask that to the economist, the Argentina economist when he's on here. Ed, that would be a great question. Because I really don't know. I don't know enough about Argentina. He's got to deal with the Argentinian Congress, the parliament. He's got to deal with the unions. He's got to deal with the employees of the state-run entities. He's got to deal with the other thing he did recently was just a few days ago, was not renew the contracts of 5,000 government employees or contractors. Everybody who got a contract in 2023 was not renewed for 2024. And now they're going back to see who they can fire from previous years. Oh, as an Israeli, what topic should I emphasize on posting on social media to explain the Israeli position better to offense from the US in Europe? I think it's the extent to which Israel is a free country and to the extent to which the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are fundamentally opposed and undermined in every respect, the foundations of Western ideas, of individualism, freedom, reason, so attack, so constantly attack them on how unfree they are in every respect, philosophically and politically, and intellectually and politically, and how free Israel is, and emphasize the good in Israel as in contrast to the evil in Hamas. I mean, you could have just a series of posts of just positive, negative, positive, negative, positive, negative, positive, negative, positive Israel and negative Hamas, just like that. I think that those contrasts would be amazing. I am something, Apollo, who says, I can't make out what that is. Daniel says, what would you say to someone who says, holding Palestinian civilians is collective punishment and evil? I'd say they don't understand what evil is. It's not my responsibility to protect Palestinian civilians. They have a government, the government has betrayed them, the government has attacked me. My only responsibility is to defend my people and the fact that Palestinian civilians are in the way and for me to protecting my own people, that is unfortunate. It's unfortunate for them, but it's the fault, 100% fault, existentially and morally of Hamas. So the people holding the Palestinian civilians are Hamas. It's not an issue of collective. You're standing in the way of the, let's say you're completely innocent. I don't wanna kill you, completely innocent. You just happen to be in Gaza, visiting relatives, you're not involved and you happen to be there. But behind you is somebody who in order to defend my life, I have to kill, the bullets gonna go right through you. Sorry, that's the reality. I believe in self-defense. I don't believe in sacrificing my own interests because some civilians on the other side will die. They will die and their death is on the hands of Hamas. Bradley, how do you know your limits and honesty, honesty, gauge your potential? I mean, introspection and experience and really trying to be objective about yourself, which is hard. One of the hardest things to do is be objective about yourself. But did I succeed? Did I fail? Why objectively? What did I achieve? What did I didn't? There are intelligence tests, what do you call it? Ability tests for abilities. But also you can improve on a lot of those. But you have to think about it. You have to really work on it. But the main thing really is introspection and honesty with yourself, integrity. Real, be really honest with yourself. And push your limits. You think this is the limit, push it. And see, oh, yep, it was my limit. I can't go beyond that. But try. Until you try, you won't completely know. Is there a difference between woke and PC? Not really. Woke is the more modern version. And I think woke is a more sophisticated version in the sense that it's built on a whole ideology that came about during the PC era. That in the PC era was implicit and today is explicit. And that's the whole ideology of oppressor-oppressed, which already existed in the PC era, but politically correct era, but was more implicit. And now, I think in our era, it's more explicit. It's more explicit. Apologies, is there a link between an increasing narcissistic culture by social media and woke egalitarianism? I don't think so. I think that narcissism is a consequence of altruism more broadly in the culture, of a lack of, because of altruism, basically the development of cynicism. Altruism breeds cynicism because you can't be moral, really, if you're altruistic, because altruism demands of you what you cannot supply, which is your life. So you become cynical. And cynicism is just together, cynicism is fodder for narcissism. You're cynical, you abandon all values, you abandon all morality, and you become a kind of a pragmatic, self-obsessed narcissist. Because it's all there is. You don't wanna be, you do not wanna sacrifice. That's the virtue, right? You do not wanna be out there as a sacrificial animal. So no, I think woke egalitarianism is just one more thing. People rebel from into narcissism. And the challenge is to provide people who rebel from woke, who rebel from altruism, provide them with an objective moral code. Something that provides them with solid virtues and values that they can live for rather than narcissism. Quentz-Wickens, Biden banned a Russian caught fish. What is this moral? I mean, he banned a lot more than that. I don't know what that means, Russian caught fish. I assume he banned importation of fish into the United States. I mean, it's moral if you define Russia as an enemy, which he hasn't. The whole regime of sanctions, I think is stupid, and ridiculous, and immoral. And at the same time, I have an embassy in Moscow. I think you have to define Russia as an enemy, bring back your ambassador, which I think is completely legitimate to do. It is an enemy. And then ban trade with Russia. Not ban this, but not that. This a little bit, not that a little bit. You either ban or you don't ban. Anything in between is immoral. So yeah, I think banning fish, but not oil, or banning fish, but not nuclear material is immoral, is wrong, is stupid, and if they're an enemy, don't trade with them, period. If they're not an enemy, then you have, as a government, no power to ban people from trading with them. The only power you get is if the other country's an enemy, and that's the power to protect the individual rights. Thank you, Fred Hopper. I appreciate that. Thanks to all of you. Rafael says, hi, Iran. How did physics transition from Newtonian principles to Heisenberg uncertainty? Did Kant influence the shift? I mean, that's a question beyond my pay grade. We'll have to get Keith Lockich here to talk about that. But I think fundamentally, yes. It's fundamentally Kant. If you read some of the physicists who were responsible for this shift, Heisenberg being one of them, but Kent, the guy, the other kind of quantum mechanics guys, they're very influenced by Kantian philosophy. And so that is a direct impact of a kind of Kantian philosophy, right? But we'll have to get a physicist who knows philosophy to answer that one. Matthew, is it the teaching of history that makes the biggest difference with today's kids? With woke being a combination of egalitarianism with the specific reading of cherry picked historical fact. Yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it. I don't think you can separate that out. Kids are not being taught to think. So you're not teaching them math. You're not teaching them how to read properly. You're not teaching them science. So by not teaching them science and math, you're crippling their ability to reason and think and be logical. And then you're teaching them false history and you add all that up. Yeah, you get emotional spewing ignoramuses, which is what the kids are today and egalitarians are just scooping them up. But it wouldn't be enough just to teach them history. You have to teach them to think and you have to do that through kind of science and math. I mean, it'd be good to teach them proper literature too, which would give them a real sense of ethics through the heroes of literature. Optimistic pessimist says, a good book on the failures of altruistic philosophy is What's Wrong with Benevolence by David Stove. I haven't read that, but I recommend Peter Schwartz's book. What is its name? Peter Schwartz on Being Selfish, so which I think to a large extent is about what's wrong with altruism. In defense of selfishness, that was easy. Why the code of self-sacrifice, you can get it on Amazon. Why the code of self-sacrifice is unjust and destructive. I think that's the best book in terms of showing the destructiveness and the lack of justice, the injustice of self-sacrifice. Now, I mean, excluding, I guess, Atlas Shrugged and the Fontaine, but yeah, it's a great book that shows that, right? The code of self-sacrifice is unjust and destructive. So, highly recommend Peter Schwartz's book on that. You can find it on Amazon. All right, thanks guys. I'll see you all tomorrow at about the same time for the News Roundup. Don't forget December 31st, 1 p.m. East Coast time. And thank you to all the superchatters for allowing us to reach our goal. Thank you to all the superchatters for making this month one of the best months we've had ever. And maybe, if December 31st goes well, the best month we've had ever, I will see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.