 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. And Rick, we're getting to something for the start with the super chat, but let's just jump right in. Well, just a few minutes ago, Fox News announced that Tekka Kalsom was no longer a host at Fox News. Wow. I mean, what a turnaround. I mean, he was Tekka Kalsom, the most watched TV personality on TV, and it really looks like he was fired by Fox. It's hard to believe that he just left voluntarily. He really does seem, it really does seem that Fox has fired him. This is the announcement. The announcement is Fox News media and Tekka Kalsom have agreed to part ways. And listen to this talk about a cold send-off. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor. God, talk about cold. I mean, this is fantastic news. Anything that diminishes the importance and significance and role and prominence of Tekka Kalsom is spectacular. I think it makes news better. It makes information better. And it's primarily by reducing the distraction and reducing the lies of this information, the nonsense and the stuff that one has to correct and fix, and the kind of shallow interpretation of Tekka Kalsom that was pitched as conservatism or as Americanism. So yeah, good riddance. I for one, happy to see him know. Now in the chat, people are saying, Don Lemon has gone as well, which is interesting. I have no idea what the background is for that, why he's gone, and so on. I've never seen Don Lemon. He wants it twice, obviously a kind of a leftist stooge, but never interacted with him, never done anything. So Tekka Kalsom for me, much bigger, partially because he was so influential and he was so, I think, a part of shifting and helping shift and echo the shift of the Republican Party and the people tilted to the right, their shift towards populism, towards statism, towards a pro-Russia-fond policy and a statist domestic policy. This is a guy who celebrated Elizabeth Warren's economic plan, and if you don't believe me, you can go watch that Tekka Kalsom show where he talks about Elizabeth Warren's economic plan. I covered it at the time and celebrates it because of all the central planning it involves, and at the same time, again, defended the worst elements on the right from January 6th to the worst elements within Trump to the biggest conspiracy theories, which ultimately is what I think got him fired, the conspiracy theory of the so-called stolen election, and the conspiracy theories revolving around Russia, Ukraine and all of that. So, good riddance. I'm kind of happy, you know, I've been attacking him for a long time. I don't believe I had any role in getting rid of Tekka Kalsom. I wish I had. It wouldn't have been cool, but I probably didn't, but it is consistent with my view of the world that Tekka Kalsom not be there. Now, he'll find a place. He's got a massive audience. I don't forget that I predicted years ago that Tekka Kalsom could very well be a presidential candidate and could very well be a much, much more dangerous Republican presidential candidate and maybe president one day. So that could be in his future, running for president. That would be interesting, although it may be more difficult now, would it be easier if he was coming off of a high from Fox? And he could land up in a daily wire, could land up in a bunch of different things. I don't think Tekka Kalsom is going to be out in the streets. I don't think Tekka Kalsom is going to be struggling. Remember, I'm sure this has a lot to do with a settlement with a dominion. You know, I doubt that as part of the settlement, Fox committed to firing Tekka Kalsom, but it could be a number of things. One, Fox could have asked Tekka Kalsom to make a formal apology on air, because it now has this other $2.6 billion lawsuit from this other company. And maybe getting Tekka Kalsom to do an apology or something like that would make settling that lawsuit easier. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there is a lawsuit by a former producer of Tekka Kalsom and Maria Bartolomo, and that she has made some pretty, you know, I don't know if illegal, but pretty unsettling accusation against Tekka Kalsom and the way that newsroom or that program was run and attitude towards women and other things. So, so hard to tell, you know, hard to tell exactly what on behind the scenes that will be interesting to find out if we ever find out. But it's clear that this is related, I think unequivocally this is related to the whole dominion, to the whole, you know, election, the idea of the elections being tampered with, the Tekka Kalsom, that idea that Tekka Kalsom health spread. There's no question in my mind that his leaving, his departure for Fox, has a lot to do with the fact that he promoted that particular fallacy and was responsible, partially responsible for making it as popular as it became. So, yeah, good riddance. Tekka Kalsom's gone. He was the most watched host on Cable News Network. Average audience of 3.2 million viewers. That's a big deal, guys. Now, but think about this way, however many billions of dollars of profit Tekka Kalsom made Fox, partially because of him, they lost, they had to give away $780 million on the lawsuit. So, yeah, too late now, but I think they're trying to cover up the mess. The Godfather says it's also being reported that Don Lemon is out at CNN, are these related? Is there a changing of the God in mainstream media? I don't know, I don't know enough about what's going on at CNN and Don Lemon. CNN, as you know, has been under pressure and has a new CEO who has tried to reposition the network as a more of a centrist network. It was clear that he was trying to position it away from being associated and being affiliated with a kind of a left wing, kind of a left wing leftist network. Don Lemon's departure could be part of that. It was shuffling and it could be a changing of the God in the mainstream media. It could be a shift in the mainstream media. I don't think this is coordinated. It doesn't make any sense for this to be coordinated. But it could be a changing of the God. We know that at CNN, there was already a beginning of a move towards a changing of the God. And Fox just paid out $800 million, there better be a changing of the God in order to make both network more mainstream and less catering to a sub-audience and less cookie. So we'll see if this means a real change at Fox. It might not. We'll see if Lemon's departure from CNN means a real change at CNN. It might very well not. But I think certainly CNN has been somewhat explicit about the change that they seek. We'll see if that change is also being sought at Fox. All right, let's see. Wes asked, do I think Tucker Carlson will go into politics? I don't know. He said he won't, but this might change things. I don't think so. I think to go into politics, he'd have to come off a high. I think this is not the way he would want to go into politics. Spock says, hey, Iran, I can't wait for you to take a Tucker slot on Fox News. Not happening. There's no way they would ever have me on. And I'd lose them most of the audience. I mean, look at me. Tucker Carlson, every night had 3.2 million viewers. I have 61 watching live right now. I don't have the audience to make myself attractive to Fox News or CNN or any of these. I'm not, you know, I tried my hand with the Fox audience when I took over a show on the blaze a few years ago. And I couldn't grow it. I couldn't keep the audience I had. They weren't interested in what I had to say. I was too negative about the right. I was too negative about Trump. I was too pro-free markets. I was too pro-abortion, pro-social issues. I was too pro-liberty and they're not interested. I don't have a natural audience. My natural audience is you guys, and it's not a big one. It's not a big one. All right. Let's go back to our topics. Debt ceiling, you're hearing a lot about the debt ceiling. Obviously, it's in the news that debt ceiling basically is a cap that is placed on the amount of debt that the United States government can take on. And what happens is that the United States government, as we know, runs deficits constantly. Said constantly has to take on more and more and more debt. And in order to fund that debt, it has to take on in order to pay the interest and to pay for all the programs that have to keep on taking more and more and more debt constantly. To do that, you know, every certain period of time, Congress has to go into session and approve raising the debt limit. And they keep raising and raising and every year it's the same thing for years now, for decades now. They've raised the debt limit because Congress keeps spending more and more and more and nobody even thinks about maybe let's reduce deficits so we don't have to take on so much debt. So debt is ever increasing. Well, we're getting to that point where the debt limit has to be increased because government spending is out of control as always. And the amount of debt that the United States government has taken on is very, very high. And the debt limit has to be increased. Now, whenever this happens, it becomes a big negotiating tool when we have divided government between the party that holds the White House and the party that holds the House and Senate to see if you can get as much out of the other party, right? The party that holds the House and Senate or one of the houses and the other party now going to negotiating because Republicans, for example, right now are saying, look, we're not going to renew the debt ceiling unless you accommodate some of our priorities. We're just going to elect the country to go bankrupt. Bankrupt means not paying the debt. You know, if they can't raise more debt, there's no way for the government to pay for the programs. And at some point, because there's so many commitments to the government that it just can't. It doesn't have enough cash in the bank and it can't get cash to the Federal Reserve. You see, the only way the Federal Reserve can provide cash to the government is if the government issues an IOU to the Federal Reserve. But that IOU means increasing your debt. They say they can't get any money. They can't get the hands on money. So what happens is the government cannot pay its debt. And when the government cannot pay its debts, it's basically bankrupt. They have to start shutting down programs. They can't raise more. Well, they can't raise the debt. They can still pay interest on the debt, but then they have to shut down Social Security and have to shut down the military and have to shut down offices within the government. And so what's happening right now is we've already reached the point where the government has a problem issuing debt. So now they're doing accounting tricks. They're moving money around. They're playing all kinds of games to try to drag on, be able to have the cash available to pay for the basic things that the government has to pay for so they can continue to pay interest on the debt so they don't default on the debt and basically declare bankruptcy. That's what defaulting on the debt is. And they can play these games, but the question is at some point they can't do it anymore. At some point Congress has to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans are insisting that in order to do that, they want spending cuts. This is cool. This is good. They want spending cuts. This is what they did to Obama in 2011. Obama ultimately, 2011, yes, I think it was 2011. Obama ultimately succumbed. And as a consequence of that, the second term of Obama administration actually saw government spending as a percentage of GDP decline or at least stay stable. So you didn't see the crazy spending on the Bush or the crazy spending on the Trump. You actually had reasonable, I mean, still crazy, but at least not rising spending because Republicans insisted on this. As soon as they got into power, they gave it up and you saw the spending crease with Trump. Well, now they're trying to pull the same thing with Biden. So far, Biden is saying, don't buy it. You guys are not going to let the government go bankrupt. I don't believe you. So they're playing chicken right now. So the Democrats are basically saying, we're not going to give you the spending cuts. Republicans are saying you don't want spending cuts. Fine, we'll let the government, we'll let the government go bankrupt. Now, just to put it in proportion, the spending cuts, nothing big, nothing substantial, not really spending cuts, mostly just slowing the growth of increasing spending, suspending less than what was planned, but not actually cutting anything. So this is not a revolution. This is not shrinking government. This is just slowing the growth of government. Democrats are saying, no, Republicans are insisting. And right now they're playing chicken. The chicken, the game of chicken has accelerated because it turns out that April tax revenues came in lower than expected. So Americans paid less taxes than the government expected as I didn't, by the way. So I don't know who these Americans are, but I paid more taxes than I expected. Anyway, as a consequence of that, the government has less cash to play around with. It's brought up the chicken date, the date in which the government will stop being able to pay its bills, stop being able to pay its salaries to employees, stop being able to write checks for Social Security and stop being able to pay interest on the debt. That is accelerated now. It's either end of July, which was the more optimistic date. Now it might be early June. Early June is just around the corner. Congress better, there better be some kind of deal between the administration and Republicans. You know, if not, I'm fine with that, too. I don't think it's a bad thing for the United States to not pay interest on its debt for a little while, let the debt holders sweat a little bit. The fact that the United States government is acting and behaving in massively irresponsible ways in terms of government spending. Yes, this will evolve government shutdown, among other things. Maybe this will actually increase the pressure on Democrats and Republicans ultimately to reduce spending. Maybe this will increase the pressure on Congress to actually be more responsible. So I'm cool with actually a shutdown. And I think Republicans should stick to it. You have to, at some point, draw a line in the sand, no more spending. And Republicans have a majority in the House. They should at least use that. It would be nice if they had also a majority in the Senate for this kind of thing, but they don't, which is good on other fronts, but bad on this front. So let's see what happens. It's going to be interesting to watch. That's a quick rundown on the debt ceiling. OK, two quick foreign policy issues. And then I'll go through your super chat questions. Well, about halfway to our goal. So please keep them coming. And almost all the questions today have been $20 questions. So keep them coming. $20 questions, you know, six of them and we'll achieve our goal. So please keep them coming. We have missed our goal on both types of shows now for quite a few shows. So which worries me. But so maybe today we can make the goal and and you can, you know, reduce my level of of of of of sweat for income. All right, let's see. ISIS, as predicted, the craziness of withdrawing from Afghanistan without winning the craziness of withdrawing from Afghanistan, handing it over to our enemies, the insanity of withdrawing from Afghanistan and basically with a tail between our legs, which Trump and Biden are both responsible for, the consequence of that are dire. And the consequence of that are basically a reality in which Afghanistan is now being used by both ISIS and al-Qaeda as a base of operations for for expanding terrorist attacks, including terrorist attacks against the United States, at least at this point, just in the planning phases but in training camps and other other mechanisms. Now, ISIS is not popular in Afghanistan. The Taliban are fighting ISIS, but the Taliban are not very good at this and they're not very motivated. At the end of the day, there are not that many differences between ISIS and the Taliban. But ISIS is expanding its influence within Afghanistan. But it's also still very active in Syria and Iraq and very, very active in Africa and we'll get to Africa in a minute. Very active in Africa. It is way off its its peak. If you remember its peak in, I don't know, 2012, 2013, 14, where it controlled basically big swaths of Syria and Iraq. And as a consequence, there were major terrorist attacks in Europe and and and everything everywhere else. Trump did not knock out ISIS. I mean, by any by any storytelling, I mean, the Russians had more to do with knocking out ISIS in Syria than the Trump. But anyway, ISIS is still there. The ideology is still there. Somehow they still have money being funneled from the Gulf States. Money is still going out there. So so no, there is ISIS is gaining strength. Some of the intelligence reports that were leaked from that from that leak a few weeks ago. Show the concern of the intelligence agencies, the US intelligence agencies regarding the increased activity of ISIS and al-Qaeda, by the way, coming out of Afghanistan. The fact that Pakistan is kind of on the verge of collapse as a country. It is bankrupt. It has hyperinflation. Remember, this is nuclear power. It has massive terrorist problems within the country from a Taliban-like organization. You know, and it is we face real challenges from Islamists. We've forgotten about Islamists. We've ignored Islamists for the last, I don't know, five, six, seven years. But they are still there. They haven't forgotten about us. They can they think about the span of time in terms of their impact on the world in terms of generations. They are still there. They still have cells in the United States and in Europe. And it's just a matter of time before they observe a weakness somewhere in the Middle East. And they, you know, they exploit that. As long as the Iranian regime is alive and well, as long as the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia probably are supplying these extremists with with with funding, the Islamists, the jihadis, the Islamic totalitarians are just waiting to pounce. And as we'll talk about in a second, Africa is a major front for them and has been out for a while. The United States is doing very little. Once in a while, you hear about a mission in Syria to take out this leader, that leader. You're not going to be successful by taking out a leader here, a leader there. This this requires destroying their capacity to wage any kind of terrorist equitivity against the United States and Europe. That means completely disrupting their ability to get funding from countries like the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia. It means destroying their capacity to hold ground, which means either lying with allies or doing it yourself, taking ground away from them. In Afghanistan, it means the United States needs to be active in terms of searching out their training bases, searching out their command and control centers and crushing them. And I would include the Taliban as one of the enemies of the United States, which should continue to be crushed, even though we don't have a ground presence there as we shouldn't. And then we need to keep a real eye on Pakistan. These are real issues. I, you know, so these issues that could have real consequences to the United States, it costs us little. To keep kind of disrupting them on kind of a low flame. It costs us a lot less to do that than to back off, let them build up the capacity to do another 9-11, which would be a lot more costly to the United States long term than picking them off and disrupting them and destroying their capacity really to do anything substantial to us in the years to come. All right. Let's see. So relevant question here, but anyway, I'll skip those. I'll take them when we do the Q&A. OK, quickly. You're hearing a lot about the war in Sudan yesterday. The United States did a special operation to get an American personnel out of the embassy in Khartoum in the capital, Sudan. We talked about it a little bit on Friday. I think the biggest story here is Africa more generally. Right now in Africa, there is a real battle going on between the three superpowers or the three countries that would like to think of themselves as superpowers in the world today. And each one is using a different tactic in order to win. And it's going to be very interesting to see which one actually wins the game of influence in Africa. Unfortunately, Africa is ruled today by force. It is ruled most of Africa. Most of sub-Saharan Africa and most of Saharan Africa is ruled today by authoritarians, by gangs, riddled with civil wars and is in real distress. Now there are exceptions. There are countries that are exceptions. But a big chunk of Africa is basically ruled by force. And the United States, Russia, and China are all vying for influence in Africa. Vying for influence for a couple of reasons. One is natural resources. There are significant and substantial amounts of natural resources anywhere from lithium to gold. There's gold in Sudan. Two other rare materials in the center of the Congo. And Africa is a natural resource rich continent that hasn't been exploited anywhere near, let's say, some of the other parts of the world. Africa is also an upcoming continent. It's a continent that has not yet industrialized. It is a continent that has not yet become wealthy. Influence is still yet to be determined where the Africa, a more wealthy Africa of the future will be more aligned with the United States or more aligned with China, more aligned with Russia. And so there's something to gain. And there are some signs in some parts of Africa. Wanda, Botswana, and others of some wealth creation, of some industrialization, of some growth. And it shows kind of the potential that could happen in all of Africa, which I think has enormous potential. If the world A treated it right by opening up trade with them and second by stopping to create monsters in Africa, which the rest of the world constantly does. So three different tactics in order to gain support in Africa. Russia uses the brute force method. It is basically putting troops on the ground all over Africa. Not Russian troops officially, but what you have is the Wagner Group, the Wagner Group, which is a paramilitary private contractor. Think of American, much bigger, much more independent. Run out of Moscow. It is the main fighting force that has been fighting to the side of the Russian army in places like Bakhmut in Ukraine. Well, the second largest concentration of Russian fighters as part of this is in Africa. They have large numbers of troops all over Africa including in Sudan where they have contacts with both warring parties but where they have a lot of interest in securing the gold mines in Sudan. In Central Africa they are responsible to large extent for the black diamonds but for other natural resources they try to use force to occupy them. They ally themselves with local gangs, local insurgents, local terrorist groups and they work with them to secure natural resources. They provide these local groups with weapons, training, money and the local groups provide them with the natural resources that make some of the oligarchs in Moscow very, very rich. Russia has a lot of contacts in Africa from the days of the Cold War when the Soviet Union was dabbling in Africa organizing coups, overthrowing regimes and trying to establish socialist communist regimes all over Africa. Part of the reason Africa is still poor is because of everything that the Soviets did in Africa during those years. So that's Russia's approach, brute force, typical of the Russians. Go in there with brute force. China's approach is different. China's approach is ingratiate these African countries to you but also make them indebted to you. And here China has built ports and established means of transportation and built infrastructure all over Africa. Much of that funded with loans provided by the Chinese, loans that at least sometimes these governments default on. Now I don't think China intends them to be defaulted on because China's lost a lot of money on these defaulted loans. But even when the loans default, it buys the Chinese influence. So China is very influenced through mercantilism, through empire building in the style of, I'd say, 18th century empires. Economic influence, economic debt, building of infrastructure, ingratiating the population to the Chinese by those mechanisms. And that's been very successful. You see a lot of Chinese companies all over Africa. For variety, for example, Huawei, Huawei, the telecom company and the other ones, Z-something, they dominate all telecommunications in Africa. Of course, they also, that provides the Chinese with spying ability on all of Africa. They get all the communications from Africa that they want. Basically, one of those Huawei routers is sending information to Beijing, sending every night, sends everything. ZTE, thank you, ZTE is the other Chinese company. China owns, strategic ports in Africa. China owns natural resources in the more peaceful places. China is not putting troops in the ground. It's not funding insurgencies. It's not doing, it's not playing the Russian game, right? This is, it's doing it, it's doing it through dollars, through a mook and to list methodology. Finally, there's the United States. Not sure what the United States is doing. The United States is, has a big presence in Africa. It tries to compete on infrastructure with the Chinese. But most countries will tell you that the Americans actually have more strings attached than the Chinese do. Human rights, minimum wages, all kinds of things like that. The Chinese just want money, just want a good deal. So there's a real, you know, there's a real, you know, challenge. You know, the Americans are just not providing that much. They're not playing the military game, although special forces are in many African countries, but they're usually very focused on one target, usually Islamists, usually trying to clean up Islamic cells in different places. Kenya, Uganda, even Tanzania. I remember the U.S. Embassy was blown up in Tanzania, I think, and in other places. So U.S. special forces on the ground there, which we could talk about, doesn't make any sense, but they're there. But those are the three powers. I think of the weakest of those is probably the United States in terms of its commitment. But certainly China and Russia are committed to trying to see and trying to access the natural resources in Africa by different means. Anyway, I thought you'd find that interesting. A lot of talk with Sudan about Africa. The Sudan conflict is going to affect a lot of Africa. And Russia is deeply embedded there. China is embedded as well. The United States less so really only focused on the battle against El Shabab in Somalia and the various Islamist groups out there. Alright, let's see. That's kind of interesting. Alright, what else do we... So we've covered everything I had planned. So let's jump into the Super Chat questions. We've reached our goal. So thank you everybody for helping us reach the goal. Happy to go over the goal, but let's start with Timothy with 55 euros. Thank you, Timothy. Yaron, thank you for all your work. I appreciate it a lot. Second time listening live. So finally a possibility for Super Chat. Yes, first time Super Chat for Timothy. Thank you. Really, really appreciate the support. As someone with minimum investment expertise, do you think ETFs are a good option? Also curious about your opinion of ETFs? Yes, I do think ETFs are a good option. I think ETFs are the way to invest. It used to be indexed mutual funds, but ETFs are cheaper ways to get the same indexing. I think you should seek... None of what I say is investment advice. It's just general personal finance kind of guidance. What you should do, particularly if you're young and you're investing for the long term, not to buy a car in six months, but for the long term, what you want is a highly diversified low-cost portfolio. ETFs are a great way to build that. You can get an ETF to the S&P 500, an ETF for European stocks, an ETF for emerging markets, and spread your money out that way and have high diversification and then just sit on it for decades for retirement or to buy a house or whatever you need. Long term, that is the way to invest. Unless you have specific expertise, something specific where you think you have an edge on the market, where you think you can beat professional markets and then professional players in the market and then you can dabble in individual stocks, but generally ETFs are the way to go. And again, not ETFs, very narrow ETFs, but the broad, diversified ETFs. So that's how I think best in a quick Q&A. And we'll be doing a show soon, maybe while I'm on the road in the weeks to come on personal finance. I think I haven't done one in a couple of years, maybe two, three years, so I'll be doing that and we'll be talking more about diversification, how to do it and talk about ETFs as a tool for that. All right, Dragon Henry has been waiting a long time for, he asked a question before the show even started, two-part question about selfishness. He says, your view of selfishness is based on what is ideal for an individual, that whatever a person does that is beneficial to themselves is selfish. The definition of selfishness from Google is, quote, lacking consideration for others concerning, concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure. Would you say this argument is one of semantics? To me, you conflate selfishness with rational self-interest, but to me selfishness implies irrationality thoughts. Yeah, I mean, there's no question and implies that the question is, is it? And this is the problem we have. Find me a word that Google defines as, concerned chiefly with one's own well-being over lifespan, you can add. So take away lacking consideration for others and take away profit or pleasure, which connotes short-term, in the minds of most people, connotes short-term and women worship. Focus in on well-being, on real well-being, not even rational, don't even put rational in there. But just, I'm looking for a word that means, concerned chiefly with one's own personal well-being. Now, you won't find that under self-interest in Google, self-interest will ultimately be the same thing. Lacking consideration of others, concerned chief, it's the same. It's the two words for the same meaning, the same thing. There is no word for it because the people who write out dictionaries, the culture that we have, our intellectuals are uninterested, uninterested, in providing us with a word to express what you want to call rational self-interest. But rational self-interest is both a mouthful, it's not one concept. I'm looking for one concept. Just simple, forget rational, just simple, concerned chiefly with one's own personal well-being. Well, that would be being rational. You know, if I was concerned with my personal well-being, I'd have to be rational. And you might add long-term well-being, well-being over lifetime. I want a word that represents that. Now, I believe that selfishness is the perfect word for that. Because self-lessness means unconcerned, unconcerned with one's own well-being. That's exactly what self-lessness means. What's the opposite of unconcerned with one's own well-being? Well, the opposite of that is concerned with one's own well-being. What's the opposite of selflessness? Selfishness. I mean, it just strikes me as the perfect word. It's a word that is misused by the culture. It's a word that is misused not because there's a better word somewhere else, rational self-interest. But because they don't want there to be a word for concerned chiefly for their own long-term well-being. Personal, personal well-being. They don't want there to be a word because they don't want you to consider the option. They have two possibilities right now. Selflessness, moral ideal, or what? Lacking consideration for others. Those are the two alternatives they want. And I want there to be a third alternative. Forget about others. I want it to be considered chiefly with one's own personal long-term well-being. I want a word for that. And the only word I can come up with is selfishness, self-interest, egoism. Those are all words that they object to. And they're never going to like it and they're never going to accept because they don't want to accept that such an alternative exists. They don't want to believe that that is possible. And then, you know, we all understand that that means being rational. Now I think this comes at the heels of yesterday's show on selfishness and Patrick Bent David. I encourage you guys to watch that show. I think there's some good content there, particularly if you're confused about this issue. Patrick Bent David certainly do. But look, the culture defines lots of things wrong. Look at the definition of capitalism. Look at the definition of socialism. The definitions are just wrong. So should we just give up on the definition? Should we just give up on those words because definitions are wrong? I mean, where is the word that captures a political, social, economic system based on the government's protection of individual rights, primarily property rights, where all property is privately owned? What's the word for that, if not capitalism? But capitalism means a system that's mostly has markets where the government regulates a little less than you. I mean, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren claim to be defenders of capitalism. So I don't go by Google's definition, particularly in contentious words, that have real meaning, not meaning out there as a mystical, the word as meaning, but meaning in a sense that use. What else am I going to use? And what they want to do is prevent you from having a concept for that so that you can't hold it in your mind. Dragon Henry also says, I appreciate your show very well, thought out points of view, even if I don't always agree. I would be shocked if you guys always agreed with me, particularly those that are new to the show. And so I'm glad that you sometimes disagree. I hope that over time, over years maybe, you come to agree with me more and more, but I'm sure I make mistakes. So those you should disagree with. All right, Rimo says, can you mention some anti-takeover strategies? For example, Pac-Man crown jewels defense. I don't even know the crown jewels defense, which you believe should be allowed in a free market or should all strategies be illegal due to fiduciary duty? Well, I think it's the opposite. I think all strategies should be legal unless they are deemed to be, you know, none of the strategies in other words should be protected by law. The problem with these strategies are that they are protected by law and there should be an avenue to go after them for violation of fiduciary duty. Now, do I know every single one of these strategies if they constitute a violation of the fiduciary duty? No. But that's why shareholders should be in a position, should be allowed to sue companies for engaging in such strategies. And shareholders should be in a position and then courts should be able to say these are the context in which these strategies work. These are the context in which these strategies don't work. So I don't think you can have a list and say in all cases these strategies are wrong, these strategies are okay. And this is why I think government should stay out of it. I think this is up to the relationship between shareholders and management and ultimately to the court system to decide when a company violates its fiduciary duty and what's within the fiduciary duty and what's without the fiduciary duty. Now, I happen to think that a lot of these defenses are useless in a real free market because in a real free market I don't have to announce my intentions. So in a real free market I can go to a company, buy up its shares, not let anybody know that I'm buying up the shares and get 51% of the company, walk into the CEO's office and fire them. These defenses are only made possible because when somebody reaches 10% of the stock, they have to by law in the United States at least, announce their intentions. That is, let the company know if they want to do a takeover and bid for the takeover and then the company can respond by buying out their shares, buying other shares, doing the Pac-Man or clown jewel or all these other defenses. But that is only made possible by the SEC, by a legal system that is primarily focused on protecting incumbent managers and not on protecting shareholders. And that's what you need to get rid of. In the 1968 security laws, it goes back to all the state regulations that came about in the 1980s. We need a true free market and in a true free market none of these takeover strategies actually work. They collapse or they never get engaged with because you don't have time to engage them. The next step is what happens if government defaults and goes bankrupt? Well, it has to shut down, it means it can't pay its debt, it can't pay. And it means that in the future, debt will be a lot more expensive for the government. The interest payments will be higher, which means the government will have to take on even more debt just to pay interest. So it's bad for taxpayers as well because in the future it will be harder to raise debt. But it could actually ultimately serve as a way to discipline the government, force the government to slow down its growth or to even shrink for a while because private markets just won't buy their debt. Now they could also cause inflation to the extent that the Fed buys a lot of the debt and thus monetizes the debt. Brie asks, related to this, could the Treasury Department print more currency without issuing more debt, paying people in cash and circumventing Congress? No, that's not how it works. The actual printing of money happens at the Fed. The Fed is the one that issues currencies, not the government. And the only way for money to move between the Federal Reserve and the government is through the issuance of IOUs, through the issues of debt securities. So there's no way for the government just to print money. It can print money, but it has to issue an IOU at the same time. That's the system we've had since 1914. Wes says, do you think there is a significant chance that DeSantis will not run for President? I think there is. There's probably a 30% chance that he doesn't. He had a bad week last week. There certainly is a chance that he decides that it's not worth it, that he'll wait it out, that Trump is too much of a monster to handle, and that he'll just wait for four years and run again in four years under the Shum Center Trump will lose, or that even if Trump wins, he'll be Trump's heir. I think it's still a low percentage. So I put it at 20, 30%, but it's not as non-zero, non-zero possibility. I think he's basically sounding everybody out now. And I think that what's happening is the sounds are not good. People are not giving him good positive feedback about his candidacy. Whoops. Volta says, just finished listening to the selfishness episode on the podcast. Enjoyed it. Great. Thank you. Really appreciate the support for that one. Let's see. Jennifer says, children should stand up to bullies. But if the bully is actually using force, stealing your lunch or punching you, the child should be able to get help from an adult, right? I was discussing this with some people. Yes, absolutely an adult should help. But to access that help, the child is going to have to, usually, because they're usually in a setting where the adult is not immediately there available. They're going to have to fight back. And maybe I'm using too much personal experience here. But I always fought back with the bullies. I always punched them back. Even if I got beaten up, that is what triggered the adults to step in and do something about it. And it usually meant that the kid would leave me alone forever, because they didn't want somebody to fight back. They're too cowardly to do that, even if they're bigger than you. And second, the adults probably told them, stop this. Don't do it again. And it probably had an impact on them. So I think it's a combination of the child standing up, which they should, and the adults stepping in and helping out. Particularly, yes, particularly agree with you when it comes to physical force. The adults should definitely step in. Richard said, do you think the U.S. credibility in Africa is undermined by the historical association of capitalism, colonial war? It seems this confusion comes from the hypocrisy and consistency aspect of colonial regimes. Yes and no. I mean, the fact is that the United States did not have much colonial presence in Africa. It had more of a colonial presence in Asia with the Philippines, for example, than in Africa. So I don't think that's the main reason. I think the main reason is that Africa, because of the colonial history, but also because of the influence of the Soviet Union and because of the chaos that all of that generated, Africa has been ruled by authoritarian kleptomaniacs who've stolen their wealth and destroyed the continent and destroyed its capacity for proper politics. And the United States comes in and says, what we want is we want you to establish the rule of law. We want you to establish property rights and we want you to establish these things. One is the United States over the decades has lost its credibility regarding that because it has become less and less capitalist and less and less credible in terms of free markets. And secondly, the second reason, the problem is that these autocrats don't want that. So they'd much rather go to China who gives them money with no strings attached, gives them money without having to have elections, give them money without having to respect rights so without having to allow women to vote, allow women to go without a sharia, whatever, sharia law, whatever. So it's America's virtues that prevent it from having influence and America's weakness. America does not assert itself. America doesn't project strength. The world looks at Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and it sees a diminished America. America doesn't stand up for itself, doesn't really do anything. It even looked all the way back to Vietnam. And as a consequence, countries in Africa don't take America that seriously. And then second, because we ourselves don't live up to our supposedly explicit ideals, why should they? And they call us in our own hypocrisy. Okay, Richard also says, what are you optimistic about on the political front if anything, are there any countries that you see as trending in the right direction? No, in America I'm not optimistic on anything on the political front. There's nothing out there other than the fact that Americans continue to seem to want some real centrism. They want a pause in the Cultural War. They want it to stop. They want an economy, a government that acts economically responsibly. They don't want lesbic capitalism, but they also don't want woke socialism. What they want is something, and that at least buys us time. In terms of other countries, I don't know. I was for a little while optimistic about the UK no more. I don't see any country in Europe significantly moving in the right direction. Yeah, it's really hard politically to find an area of optimism and to say, yeah, this is heading. I used to be optimistic about China a long time ago no more. Yeah, I just don't see it. Andrew says, what would you say about the apparent existential injustice of a scoundrel like Trump being able to accomplish so much as he has? Well, I wouldn't call it accomplished exactly, but yeah, I mean, Trump has been incredibly successful. That is tragic. It's sad. It's disappointing. It's depressing. It tells you a lot about the state of the world. It tells you a lot about the influence the left has had on the right, both as an anti-left instinct that the right has developed. And also, I think the right has become postmodern. So I think the right has adopted postmodernism. And just a bannerman in America of common sense of any idea of founding principles and any idea of liberty, Trump symbolizes all that. He is the end result of a completely utterly bankrupt right that is sold to the left in the name of attacking the left. We're going to use government power to stop woke. I mean, that's selling out the left. That's giving the left everything they ever wanted, government power. Okay, Richard, final question. What happened during the Korean War? God. In World War II, we fought to win, true and dropped a bomb on Japan, but then refused to do so in Korea. Is this simply explained by the USSR possessing nuclear weapons? No. It had everything to do with the fact that nobody actually knew why we were in Korea. World War II was clear. Japan attacked us. We had the will. We had the clear determination to fight a war of self-defense. We were defending in Korea. We were defending against some, you know, communist force. It was primarily Chinese, not Russian. China didn't have a nuclear weapon at that point. And the will to win, the will to fight was gone. And the altruistic instinct of sacrificing for the sake of the world peace, sacrificing for the sake of the South Koreans and the Vietnamese, kicked in. I mean, World War II was a war that was defined from the beginning by FDR as we are fighting this to win. This is a civilizational war in which we must win. Korea War was just a war we got entangled in with the leadership of the United Nations to defend some people, South Koreans who most Americans didn't know. We just fought the Japanese and for most Americans, Koreans, Japanese, same thing. What are we fighting for? What American values? And that's right. So we fought half-heartedly. We didn't quite know what we were getting into. We didn't quite know what we were doing. We let it get away from us and we lost the war. It would have been perfect if we had not fought that one, not for Vietnam. Just imagine all the lives and all the capital that had been sustained in the United States. Think of the prosperity that the United States would have generated as a consequence. I feel sorry for the South Koreans, you know, who have become a free, wealthy, successful, amazing country because of American sacrifice. But we sacrificed. And we sacrificed our own long-term well-being as a consequence. And there would have been no Vietnam without Korea. It got us entangled in it. And this is why we're much more likely colonialists in Asia than we are in Africa. All right, thank you guys. I'm really happy to say we crushed our target for today. I'm not sure about a show tonight. I might do a show tonight. If I do, it'll be late, like 8.30 or 9.00 p.m. East Coast time. But I might do a show. If I do a show, the topic will be something like, what should we do about China? In other words, and not so much. Yeah, how do we face the Chinese challenge? I've just finished another book about China's 5G, Huawei, China's use of Huawei. What do we do about that? What do we do about 5G? What do we do about chips? What do we do about China and technology? And how do we handle China? So if I do it, it'll be tonight, 8.30 or 9.00 p.m. If not, I'll do it from the road. I'm hoping to squeeze it in tonight. I still have to decide if I want to go that late. So it will be late, probably 8.30, not 9.00 p.m. Alright, thank you everybody. I will see you all maybe tonight. If not, I'll definitely try to do a show tomorrow morning. There will be no show tomorrow night. I'll be on a plane tomorrow night. And I am leaving tomorrow for basically four weeks, three and a half weeks. And I will be doing shows from the road, internet, God's willing. I will talk to you tomorrow.