 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 23rd of January. January is starting to wind down. Hope everybody had a fantastic weekend, ready for an exciting week. And we are back with the daily Iran Brookshow news roundups. I'll be doing them as often as I can this week. I will be traveling. I will be in Austin leaving on Wednesday, so Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I'll be in Austin. I'll try to do as many shows from Austin as I can. Probably early in the morning, 8 o'clock central time will probably be the time we'll see. How many of those I can get done, but we will try to do them on as many days as possible. Also, on Thursday night, Thursday night, my show, instead of a show, will be live streaming my talk from the University of Texas, on the Salem Center at the University of Texas, my talk on freedom in the world with the focus on Iran and China. So stay tuned for that. It'll be on my channel as well as the Salem Center channel. All right, let's jump in. No, no, Lex interview. And somebody's asking about my essay on Skeptic Magazine with Elon. It was published. The problem is to see it, you have to have a subscription. The essay will be published by the Ironman Institute in the next few weeks. So you will be able to see the essay. But the essay in Skeptic Magazine, you have to have a subscription for Skeptic Magazine. Yes, so thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. All right, let's jump in. I want to talk about tanks. We haven't talked about tanks in a long time. Let's talk about tanks. The Ukrainians desperately asking for tanks to be supplied to them by the Europeans or the Americans. But I think primarily the Europeans, the Germans, the British have already committed to giving the Ukrainians some challenger tanks, some of the British tanks. But what the Ukrainians really want and what is most easy to supply them with are the Leopard 2 German tanks, easily the top five tanks in the world, maybe top two or three tanks in the world. They've also asked for Abrams tanks in the United States. Abrams tanks in the United States is going to be a hard sell, I think primarily, because the Abrams tanks is not ideal for the terrain in Ukraine. It is a much heavier tank than either the British or the German tank. It's not really built funnily enough for the terrain of Eastern Europe, particularly not with the mud and the freeze. It's heavier, it's a robust tank, it's a fast tank, it's maybe the best tank in the world. But it is not ideal plus. Very few NATO countries have Abrams. So maintenance, training, parts, all going to be very difficult to supply. They'd have to be supplied from the United States or from the Middle East. Much more difficult to supply all that. Israel has Abrams tanks. Israel, indeed, has a lot of the supplies the United States is providing to the Ukrainians. It's coming from storage facilities the U.S. has in Israel and they're moving from Israel. So, you know, I expect, so the advantage of the Leopard tank is, the German tank, is that the tank is available throughout NATO countries, throughout Eastern Europe. It is primarily the Poles have quite a few Leopard tanks. It is the main tank, if you will, in the front line with Russia. It is a tank that's going to be easy to supply. Supply chains from Germany or from Poland are short. It is a tank that is going to be easy to train Ukrainians on because, again, it's close. All the countries that use it, the prevalence of it is used. It's right there, everything is close by. So the Leopard tank is the tank that the Ukrainians, I think, prefer and would like. They were hoping to get the United States to agree to supply Ibram's tanks and that would put pressure on the Germans to supply the Leopard tank, but the Leopard tank is really the one they actually want. It is going to be, the United States has turned down the request to provide the Ibram's for the reasons I think I stated, just a logistical nightmare that's involved and the fact that it's not ideal for the Ukrainians. The Germans so far have turned down the Ukrainians for the delivery of tanks. The Poles want to give the Ukrainians the Leopard tank, but they need permission, since they bought it from the Germans, they need permission from the Germans in order to do that because part of their purchase agreement is that they do not supply it to a third party. They don't supply it to a third party unless they get permission from Germany. So now it looks like over the weekend, it looks like the Germans will be providing the Poles with permission. So it does look like Ukraine will get Leopard tanks, they're also going to get some challenging tanks from the UK. Let me just be clear, the Russians don't have, well, we'll get to what the Russians have, but these tanks are far, far, far superior to anything the Russians are deploying in the field. They're far superior to the T-72s, the T-80s, and the T-90s that the Russians have in Ukraine. They're faster, they are more powerful, and importantly, if you're a soldier, they protect the crew much, much better than anything the Russians, the Russians are known for not protecting their own crews. These tanks, to a large extent, game changes. Those who believe the tanks are irrelevant in a modern matter field don't know what they're talking about. Tanks are the ones that open up paths of advance, the infantry comes in afterwards. You need this kind of heavy artillery, heavy weaponry in order to take land and to dominate a field. These tanks, again, protect their crews against anti-tank missiles, but they also, because they're fast, because they were protected, and because they have such immense firepower, they're going to be hard to hit and they're going to be hard to deal with. The Russians do not have the same anti-tank capabilities that the Ukrainians had at the beginning of the war, because they were using Western technology. The Russians just don't have technology that matches Western technology when it comes to armaments. So Western tanks, in the hands of Ukraine, will make a massive difference come spring or late winter when I expect the Russians to try to do a push of the Ukrainians to initiate a significant push into land occupied by the Russians. There is one other angle to this story, and that other angle to the story is the missing Russian tank. The Russians in 2015 unveiled a brand new next generation tank called the T-14. The T-14 Armada was supposed to be a tank that matches anything the West has. It was filled with technology. It was super advanced. It actually had all the kind of shielding for crews, for crew survivability. It was a tank that was supposed to match up with the Abrams, with the Israeli Makava, with the German Leopard and the British Challenger. And it was unveiled in 2015, and one of the surprises, I guess for many, was the fact that it has not made an appearance yet in Ukraine. It has not shown up, and the question is why? Where the hell is this tank, next generation tank that could make a big difference for the Russians in Ukraine? Well, it turns out that the tank, the T-14, I mean, it doesn't really exist. There are probably 20 of them in existence in the world. Who knows exactly the number? The technology has never really worked. They are still in development. The advanced technology within the tank, the tank that makes them the equal of the Western tanks, requires advanced chips. Microprocessors, you remember those microprocessors? Microprocessors that the Russians cannot and do not know how to produce. Microprocessors that they would need to buy from the West, and the West is embargoing them. This is a tank that is great to bring out during military marches on May 1 celebrations. It is a tank that is great for Russia files to claim that the Russians have as good a technology advance as the United States and Western Europe. But it is a tank that is missing in action when it comes to an actual war. Or just like, in a sense, the Su-57, the most advanced Russian plane that is just not in the skies of Ukraine. You know, Russian technology is just not up to speed. Russian manufacturing is not what it used to do, what it used to be. It is much easier for the Russians to be manufacturing old tanks right now than this T-14, this modern new tank. Electronics don't work and electronics require Western chips, which they don't have. I thought that was an interesting aspect of this. Again, emphasizing this idea that Russia has been in big trouble, Russia does not, in terms of conventional weapons systems, does not present a threat at all to the West. It's a different story when it comes to nukes. But in terms of conventional, the Russians present no threat to the West. Indeed, if they can't beat Ukraine, NATO would have a field day with them and could crush them in days. You know, another reason, I mentioned the Su-57s and not wanting to bring them out partially because they didn't want any of them down. It would be very difficult then to sell them or to claim to have a fifth generation airplane. I think to some extent they haven't got even the one or two T-14s that might be serviceable because, you know, they'd hate to see one of those in fire and flames. Who are they going to sell them to in the future if that happens? You know, the only people buying Russian equipment right now are countries that can't buy it from anybody else. My guess would be the North Koreans. We know Iran is trying to get Su-57s they want. Or maybe they already have S-400 anti-airplane missiles and they're probably in line to get the tanks. Syria, countries that can't buy weapons from anybody else. Those are the countries buying weapons from the Russians. It's all they got. Alright, so tanks still can be a game-changer in this war. But if they are, it's probably on the western side where the Ukrainians haven't deployed. Ukrainians, by the way, have been fighting this war with the same tanks the Russians have been fighting this war. T-62s, T-72s, maybe they've captured some T-80s, T-90s that they've been fighting with. But the Ukrainians have no advanced tanks. They have the same tanks as the Russians do. Once they get western tanks, they outmatch the Russians even though they have fewer tanks. Each one of these western tanks is so much better than anything the Russians can deploy to the field that it is, to some extent, no context. Is the picture a little crooked? Let me know if you think the picture's a little crooked. I think the camera's a little crooked. I'm going to have to work on that. Just to remind you, we are doing these daily shows on the assumption that you value them and on the assumption that they pay for themselves. 250 is the target for each one of these morning shows. We've hit almost all shows, but I'm just reminding you for those of you. So again, if everybody puts in chips in, $2.50 right now, we're easily there. So everybody watching live right now and people are coming in and out. All right. Document gate. I don't know what this will be called in the end. But every time somebody goes wandering into one of President Biden's offices or homes, they find more classified documents. It's really pretty amazing. There's supposed to be rules and regulations that prescribe what documents you can have and what documents you can't. Clearly, Trump and Biden walked away from the White House, Biden when he was Vice President, Trump when he was President, with a stash of documents that they had no authority, right? Legitimacy and taking. They're all over the place, it turns out. And with Trump repeated requests to deliver them to National Archives failed, you know, he handed over some, didn't hand over others. With Biden, it's just like almost like become a joke every time accidentally. They go into some way, they find more. The Justice Department went into his home this last time. He is cooperating. I don't see what choice he has. So the FBI didn't get a warrant and stormed the place, but they did go in and they spent something like 13 hours in his home digging through everything and they found more documents. I wonder, I wonder what if, you know, I wonder if there's a little fire going, the fireplace is going strong in Obama's home and in the Bush home. And document burning is going on because anybody want to bet that if we actually went into Obama or Bush's homes, we'd find more classified documents? I mean, think about it. These are the bastards that will find you and even put you in prison for now filling out some regulatory form, right? These are the bastards that have find American banks. I'm just giving this example because it's an example top of my mind, but we could use a million examples like this. These are the bastards. They find some of the America's largest banks, most successful banks, hundreds of millions of dollars. Why? Because staff at the bank was using their private messaging to communicate with one another when they were supposed to use only corporate email or Slack or teams or whatever it is that they're using, which by the way, the company has by law supposed to preserve all communications, I don't know, for five years or whatever, so the regulators can come in at any time and scan them. Now, it's not that in the personal messaging that the people communicating about business did. It's not that anything they said was wrong. It's not like they conspired to do something wrong. It's not like they were committing fraud. It's not like they violated anything. It's just that they were using the wrong messaging app according to the regulators and as a consequence, the company had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars. How many people in jail because they filled out the wrong regulatory forms or did it wrong? How many millions and millions and millions of dollars of people paid the IRS because they have not filled out their tax forms right? And these guys, like everybody else, there's so many rules and regulations, there's so many classified documents, there's so many nonsense that they took some documents home. And nothing's gonna happen to them, but if we get caught, if we get caught with anything, the whole weight of the US government falls upon us. I mean, it's just outrageous the things that politicians get away with that nobody seems to care. I mean, the thing about it at the end of the day is, I mean, the media cares a lot about this primarily because they feel like they were betrayed by Biden because they went all out to attack Trump. And now they feel like they're betrayed by Biden because Biden was doing the same thing. But nobody cares. Do you think anybody cares about this stuff? Do Republicans care that Trump had a bunch of classified documents? No, the Democrats care that Biden had? No, not at the end of the day. Nobody cares. And what is the punishment gonna be? Slap on the wrist? I mean, there's no way they can indict two presidents, you know, and then go search previous presidents. But you beware if you misread, you know, a paragraph in the thousand page regulatory regime governing a particular activity within your particular business, and you're in big trouble. This is the problem in this country. We have too many rules, too many regulations, too many controls, too much ability of the regulators and the powers to be to decide which ones to enforce and which ones not, which people to go after and which people not to go after. Is it surprising our politicians don't play by the rules? No. It's just disgusting the way we as productive members of society, as business people, as people that actually make the world move forward. It's disgusting how we are all treated and the level controlled imposed on us. You know, these documents risked the national security, the fact that they're sitting in these people's homes probably, how big of a risk, who knows. You know, again, most of them shouldn't even be classified. My guess is 90% of classified documents shouldn't be classified. I've told you before, these are our servants. These are not our masters. They shouldn't be keeping secret from us unless there's a clear national security reason to do so. The problem is today, everything the government does is framed, or not everything, but a big portion of what the government does is framed in terms of national security. And, you know, TikTok is a national security threat. TikTok, national security threat to all of you. I mean, those videos of cats and those videos of, I don't know, people jumping off of cliffs or whatever it is that they do on TikTok. You watching them and you providing TikTok with your information and your habits of watching, that is a national security threat. So everything is a national security threat. Everything is a national security threat. And therefore, everything is accessible to government and everything is possible for them to come after us with everything. All right. Debt ceiling, just quickly on the debt ceiling, you know, we're going to be talking about this more because this is going to keep coming up. And we'll keep coming back to this over and over and over and over again, I guess, because it is a story that is going to play out from now until May. So the government has approved to issue a particular amount of debt, a particular number, a dollar amount of bonds that it issues. The problem is that the United States government has since, basically since 2000, been running at the deficit every single year. And the deficits have only grown and they're massive. And what that means is that the government has to borrow every year, it has to borrow more. So the debt has to grow so that the government can finance its own activity. That means that given that there is a, that is by legislation a ceiling on how much they can raise, they have to keep coming back to Congress to ask them to raise the amount of debt they can actually borrow, the amount of bonds they can actually take. Now, a big chunk of the borrowing that the government does on a regular basis is to pay, to pay off the bondholders whose bonds are expiring in any given month and to pay interest on the bonds that are actually outstanding right now. And this is, this is what constitutes default. What constitutes default is when the United States government cannot pay interest anymore on its debt. And the reason it cannot pay interest anymore on its debt is because it has to take on debt in order to pay the interest payments. Now it could instead stop paying social security payments, stop paying Medicare payments, it could stop paying the military, it could stop paying redistributing wealth. It could do a lot of things and continue to pay off the, to pay interest on the debt. But, you know, it's politically disastrous to stop paying social security. It's politically disastrous to shut down the government. They will try and they will try, you know, and if the Republicans don't actually vote to raise the debt limit, then the government might shut down for a period. And when it's shut down, it doesn't pay wages. It doesn't pay other things. And as a consequence, it can't print more because the government doesn't directly print money. The Federal Reserve prints the money. And the only way the government gets the money is by issuing debt that the Federal Reserve buys. And when the Federal, and that is debt that is added to the debt ceiling. So the debt is increasing. So the way we've created the mechanism by which we've created in this country is that the government doesn't directly print money. The government has the Federal Reserve print money and it issues debt, which the Federal Reserve buys, thus giving the government the new money. So still need to raise the debt ceiling in order to make this happen. So Congress, the way the law is written today, Congress keeps having to ratchet up the debt ceiling so that the government can continue to function. Now, the idea is that if the government doesn't function, if we have a shutdown, if the government doesn't send out checks, if the government doesn't pay its employees, if the government doesn't do its thing, then the economy will go into a tailspin and the world will end because we know that our lives depends completely on the government itself. Every time the government shuts down, it doesn't seem like the world ends at all. But it is true that a government default on the debt would make it very difficult for the government in the future to raise debt. People would now not view US government bonds as risk-free. They would actually view them as risky. That would mean they would charge a higher interest rate in order to buy those debts. That means the government would be able to raise less money and the money it raised would be more costly. So there's this dance that happens, I think every year, basically where Congress has to raise the debt ceiling. And the administration has to ask. Now, when Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, they just raise the debt ceiling. No problem. If Trump wants to spend money, cool, raise the debt ceiling and then spend as much money as you want. God forbid we Republicans stop it from doing that. We don't believe the deficits matter anymore. But when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans suddenly discover that debt is a bad thing. They suddenly discover their fiscal conservatism. They suddenly discover that maybe it's time to restrain government. I often say, I've often often often said that Republicans are much better opposition party than they are a party to govern. And then they use raising the debt ceiling. We'll see what this Congress does. But the idea is with Obama what they did in 2011 I think it was. What they did was they used the debt ceiling raise to get concessions from the administration. And the primary concession was to cut spending, or at least to reduce the growth rate of spending. And that's what Republicans claim that they want to do this time. They want to reduce spending. Now we will see when the rubber hits the road, if that's actually what they're going to assist on, I don't know if they're going to expand this into all the other kind of claims and demands that they have of the Biden administration. But if Republicans can actually get the Biden administration to agree to restrict the growth in spending, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, that will be a small but significant achievement. It actually has positive impacts on inflation because it suggests that debt is not going to grow quite as high as one would expect it. And it generally will have a positive impact on the economy more broadly. This is counted to Keynesian and the New Keynesians who would like to see the government spend as much money as they can. Or the modern monetary theory is just one government to spend, spend, spend. We've seen the inflation consequence of that. So we can hope that there's enough rationality within the Republican caucus to insist and that the Biden administration will ultimately compromise on some kind of limitation on spending. That'll be truly, that'll be the best outcome possible. So I actually like this idea of the debt ceiling because it forces people to have to raise, it forces Congress to have to raise it. And it gives Congress some power over, you know, since they won't discipline themselves, some, you know, forceful mechanism by which to force the executive branch to be disciplined. We will see, we will see this. It would be ideal, it would be ideal if Republicans when they controlled all houses and executive branch actually restrained spending significantly, reduced spending dramatically, and actually got this budget into surplus. That would be cool. That would be very, very cool. But, you know, chances of that happening or what, one in a million. All right, we got over 100 people watching live right now. Don't forget to like the show before you leave, please. That really helps with the algorithms that helps spending the show and getting it out there. So please do that. Also, we're about $144 short. So if everybody in the chat did a buck 20, a buck 30, a buck 50, we would get to $100. So, to our goal of $250. So please consider supporting the Unbook show with a small contribution on the super chat, $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $100. All of them make a difference and all of them help us get to our goal. So please use that feature. Okay, last quick item and then we'll go to the super chat questions. You can also ask a question with $1, $2, whatever. So please, please do so. Let's see, tech layoffs. Tech companies are laying off significant numbers of people. You know, for the first time in its history, Amazon has laid off 18,000 people. They haven't laid off anybody since really 2001. Google, Facebook, Microsoft. The only big tech company not laying anybody off is Apple. You know, all these stocks have been batted last year in the stock market. All valuations have come down dramatically over the last year from the highs at the end of 2021. You know, it is really, really interesting. Tech companies dominated the 20 teens. The largest companies in the United States. Some of the largest companies in the world were America's big tech companies. These companies basically spent the last 12 years building the Internet as we know it, building our tools to use the Internet as we know it. They have globalized the Internet. They have gotten a vast majority of the world's population onto the Internet in the United States. They have brought Internet to use to above normal. They have built it out. They have created the operating system, Microsoft, Apple. They have created the tools, the iPhone. And they have created the killer apps, the social media, that have made social media and shopping online, which is Amazon, which has made the Internet useful for almost the entire population. This is what has driven up the valuations, which are justified. They have made an enormous amount of money. All of these companies are immensely profitable, with the possible exception of Amazon. They are hugely profitable. They must have, of course, built the infrastructure in terms of cloud computing to make the Internet ubiquitous and everywhere and accessible to everyone, everywhere at all times of day, all times of day in any place in the world, or in almost every place in the world. So these companies benefited enormously by creating the Internet as we know it. But they have reached, in a sense, they have reached some kind of level of saturation. We're already on the Internet. We're already doing the main things one does on the Internet. Growth from here on is a challenge. It's not obvious where growth comes from. And this, I think, is what has really sunk in in the 2022 Internet, or tech kind of correction, as you might call it. Facebook is as big. It could grow somewhat. But how much bigger could it grow? The same with all of these. Everybody's already using Microsoft software. Everybody's using, everybody has an iPhone. Everybody's using Apple. Yes, there's growth potential, but it's restrained. Is there a new killer app? Is there a new killer product? Is Apple going to release something that is going to so increase sales that it'll compete with the iPhone, ultimately, as the dominant? Nobody can see this. Nobody can see this as anything dominating, right? So what you've got is, to a large extent, these large tech companies hitting their capacity. Again, not to say they're not going to be profitable in the future, but it also suggests that scale has its challenges. Growing so big and dominant is challenging. The fact is, over the last 10 years, 12 years, there has been no company that's gone public that has become a dominant player in the Internet with the exception of Facebook. All the other big companies were around before that. But they're all big now. Difficult maybe? More difficult to innovate? More difficult now? They've spent the last 10 years not only innovating to the point that they're able to, but also buying all the innovative companies. What happens to them from now on are these layoffs a sign that maybe there's competition on the horizon? All of Congress's obsession with antitrust and breaking up big tech is VR going to be the next big thing? I'm skeptical about VR's ability. I mean, it'll be profitable, but is it going to be the big thing? I doubt it. Anyway, it's interesting. This is something to watch. Is there going to be a turnover? Are we going to see more money flowing into... I mean, already a huge amount of money is flowing into startups, but are some of these startups going to come out and really challenge any of these companies? So that is, I think, the big question mark. It is interesting. Also, a lot of these software engineers that have been laid off, I don't know if you've seen charts of what software engineers make these days, but opening salaries in Facebook and Amazon and many of these companies start out opening just out of college at close to $200,000. Senior engineers can easily make over a million dollars a year, not just in Amazon, Google, Facebook, in many of these companies. A lot of these people are being laid off. A lot of people staying in these companies now realize they can be laid off. There is that possibility. A lot of these people are going to find jobs. There's no shortage of jobs. There are plenty of jobs. But these jobs are not going to pay as well. The whole industry is going through, I think, a shakeout. I think 2022 started it. 2023 we'll see an acceleration of it. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens in tech in 2024-25 in terms of the dominant players, in terms of the upcoming companies and where many of these engineers land up. Automobile companies, financial institutions, even construction companies all looking for software engineers all trying to gain programmers. They've been priced out of the market so far. Now they'll be able to hire these people at lower wages than these people have had in the past. But still, they'll still be making a lot of money. Don't worry about them. But it's going to be a real shift, I think, in where technology is heading. And I, for one, am curious on where this all ends up. I don't think that the big tech success is just a monetary phenomena. It's just a matter of what a bubble. I don't think these were particularly bubbly stocks. I think the real bubble was in the medium and small technology stocks, Zoom, for example, and others. I think that's where the COVID bubble or the monetary policy bubble was. These companies are real companies that create real products that change lives and that add real value. They will continue to do so in their next decade. But they're not going to be able to grow as fast, partially because of sheer size. And they are not going to be able to be, I think, as profitable in the past and you will see a new generation rising up in the next 10 years to challenge their status. Anyway, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun as markets always are. All right. Thank you, Frederick. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Rand. Really appreciate that. $50. Thank you, Kevin. And thank you, Vladimir and Alan and Colleen and Iron Mercad. I appreciate you guys' support. Let's see. So we've got Super Chat. We're like 66 bucks short. We have 114 people watching 50 cents, pretty much where everybody gets us over their hurdles. So if some of you put in two bucks, we should be, you know, 30 of you put in two bucks were done. So maybe there are 30 people out of 114 watching who are willing to contribute two bucks, three bucks to the Iran Book Show, two or three bucks to Iran Book Show to get us over the hurdle. All right, Shay, if NATO countries are going to spend so much on Ukraine anyway, wouldn't it be cheaper in dollars and lives to just crush Russia directly? No, because the real worry is if the NATO gets involved directly with Russia, that Russia does launch nuclear weapons. So if Russia feels threatened by all of NATO and if Russian feels like, thinks that it is at war with the West, with the entire West, it might escalate to nukes. Look, the Germans are so afraid right now, they're afraid to sell tanks, to give tanks to Ukrainians because they're afraid of Russian escalation. Now, every step of the way from the beginning, they've been afraid of escalation. Everybody's been afraid of escalation. Oh, we can't give them this. They'll escalate. We can't do this. They'll escalate. We can't support this. They'll escalate. And so far, Russia has not escalated. It's not capable of escalating without using nukes. And I don't think Russia wants to use nukes. I think Russia is afraid of using nukes for a variety of reasons which I've talked about before. But look, in a different world, Russia would have, you know, a robust NATO that actually stood, was willing to stand up to Russia. Russia would have never invaded Ukraine. You know, but that is not the world in which we live. Again, I don't believe the United States should be part of NATO. I think NATO should be a defense organization for Europe. Europe is the one facing the threat, not the United States. A robust European NATO, Russia would have never invaded Ukraine. They would have been too afraid. And if they had, they would have been crushed very quickly. But sure, it's much cheaper for NATO to take care of it as long as they know and can guarantee the Russians won't use nukes. But I don't think the Russians want to use nukes, but they might have to if they feel like they're coming from Moscow. Andrew Tucker Carlson's conspiracy, the establishment wants to replace Biden with Gavin Newsom and is getting him up to take it forward. I don't know, read the documents. The media is unusually critical. A case of broken clock being right once a day. You know, the media is critical, I think, because the media is upset, because they went all out on the Trump documents and they feel betrayed by Biden. Could it be that the, quote, establishment? I don't believe that. You know, the idea that the establishment is this sophisticated, that they would launch attacks against Trump and Biden on the same issue in order. I don't think it's going to work, A, because the American people don't care about it enough. And second, I don't think this is the problem with conspiracy theories. People are not that sophisticated, and when they are, they're not very good executors and they're not very good keeping secrets and they're not very good at doing this stuff. So I think the probability that this is some conspiracy theory is weak. I'm sure there are a lot of Democrats that are happy about this because they don't want Biden to run and to the extent that this can become something that, you know, prevents Biden from running. It prevents Biden from running. I think a lot of Democrats will be very, very happy. But the establishment is too, look at the establishment's trying to discredit Trump in the eyes of Republicans forever. And by the way, the establishment would love Trump to run. I mean, the best thing that can happen to the establishment is if Trump runs, because Trump is likely to lose. They wouldn't try to stop Trump from being the Republican nominee because pretty much every other Republican can beat a Democrat, but Trump can't, so they would actually try to... So, God, conspiracy theories just don't make sense if you actually trace them through. And this one I don't think is right. Joe says, would active commissioning of odd be a viable way to influence cultural change? Objectives seem to tend to classify and criticize already existing art and trends while wealthy leftists pay for and encourage new modern art. I mean, yes, absolutely. I think encouraging the creation of great, romantic art of art that is truly transformative, but this is the point, has to be good art. So I think commissioning good art, don't commission objectivist art, because there's no such thing as objectivist art. But if try to commission good art, if we can commission good art, build good art, if American corporations created, you know, barred great art and filled like the public spaces with good art, if wealthy individuals barred great romantic art and put it out and supported good artists, I think that would change the world. I think that would change the world. So yes, absolutely, we should be commissioning art, good art and displaying it so that the world can see what great romantic art looks like and what a pursuit of values it looks like. All right, guys, we're $46 short. We should be able to make $46. That's basically 30 cents from everybody listening right now. So I hope in the next three minutes we get it because I only have four quick questions. Ian says, do you think Silicon Valley, San Francisco is the new Detroit? No, I don't. Every indication is, for example, in San Francisco, I just read a story this weekend that people are moving back into San Francisco, partially because some of the tech companies are now requiring people to come into the office, partially because San Francisco, in spite of everything, and I keep telling you this about California, is an amazing place to live. Silicon Valley, I don't see property values in Silicon Valley plummeting because they still demand. Silicon Valley is still where the venture capital is. It's still where the network effect exists in terms of tech. It's still where everybody in the tech world at least needs an office, if not a major office. Silicon Valley and San Francisco are not going anywhere. They will take a hit. San Francisco has shrunk quite a bit since COVID, but it's supposedly growing again. It's still true. The immigrants want to go there. The people from other parts of the country want to go there to Silicon Valley, so no. I don't see that. Maybe in 30, 40, 50 years, if you think about how many people the big tech is laying off as compared to how many people they're employing, it's still the numbers are small. And remember, there's a massive shortage of engineers in this country. So those people are all going to find jobs. They will find jobs. They won't find maybe as lucrative of jobs. And they won't find jobs in this particular, you know, in the kind of companies that they have worked with. All right. I guess you guys don't want to help me make the 250 today. All right. Brie, last three questions. Brie, I have to report the comedy flow survey. It is part of the GDP. This is at the bottom of email. Your response is required by law. Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's a million things you have to do that are required by law that if you don't, there are real consequences unless you're somehow in the political class and you can walk away with classified documents and you can take them home and you can show them to your friends and you can show them off to whoever. It just shows how the ruling class, our leading politicians left and right, care nothing about us, care nothing about the rule of law, care nothing about consistency when it comes to the rule of law. Michael says, why have most philosophers in history been anxious and neurotic about existence? I don't know. I really don't know why that is. Maybe it's the fact that they're neurotic and so on that leads them towards a profession like philosophy where they're not as penalized for being neurotic. Maybe the psychological problems lead them in that direction but I don't know. I'd just be speculating. Adam Campbell says, cowboys lose, eagles wins. What a great Monday. Good for you, Adam. I'm glad your team's won. I guess the 49ers won. There's Silicon Valley again. I guess everybody hates the 49ers because of the Silicon Valley company. Yeah, glad you had a good sports weekend. That's always good. All right, with $30 short, Jeffy says, enjoying Fowler season four. Yeah, I am too. Massive holes in the story. It's pissing me off a little bit, particularly the last two episodes I watched. So the holes in the story are pissing me off. Anyway, that is my main criticism so far but it's still edge of the seat, exciting, thrilling. Fowler is like, no other show you'll watch anyway. It's nonstop action and intensity and it might be a little bit of 24 but in some ways much more realistic, much more real life, much more gritty but as intense and as exciting and as you have to binge watch it, like we're staying up until midnight every night because until we literally fall off our chairs, can't watch any more of it, we keep watching. So I think by the time I go to Austin on Wednesday, I'll have finished season four. But it is, it's very good. I encourage everybody to watch Fowler. There are four seasons now, all on Netflix, great binge watch television. All right, last question with $13 to go. All right, there we go. John has just solved that problem. Top three investing books for the average Joe. God, I've done this before. I don't know. I mean, I highly recommend, even though I don't agree with some of the stuff in it, I definitely agree with the investment recommendations. I highly recommend random walk down Wall Street. What else? I'm trying to look, you know, you guys need to stop asking me these kind of questions because I don't retain them. But you know, I will try to get back to you with some others. God, I can't remember. Yeah, anything by, you know, by the guy who, anything that advocates for the average Joe that you shouldn't day trade. Everything that advocates for buying a well-diversified portfolio and sitting on it. Don't day trade because you can't beat the pros. They're pros for a reason, like I don't go on a basketball court. I try to play with LeBron James. Don't go into the market and try to play with, play with the Warren Buffets of the world and the J.P. Mogans of the Goldman Sachs and the Citadels and the rest of the, kind of the top of the hedge fund industry. You're not going to, you're not going to come out a winner. All right, let's see. John says, my girlfriend recently lost someone close to her and knowing I'm an atheist asked me what's wrong with having an illusion that someday I'll be able to see my loved ones again. I didn't try to argue, but I'm curious on your take. Well, because any illusion is fundamentally corrupting to your commitment to reality, commitment to reason, commitment to logic, commitment to facts. It basically says, when I feel like it, when I feel strongly enough about it, I'm willing to put aside facts, put aside logic, put aside reason and engage in delusion, engage in whim and engage in emotionalism. And if you put your consciousness, if you put your mind on that kind of standard, on that kind of, you know, basically set commandment, if you will, then you will screw up in other parts of your life. You will apply that to other parts of your life to your own detriment. You can't be picky and choosy about these things. You're either committed to reason or you're not. People who are halfway or a little bit become more. And ultimately, ultimately, what happens is that you just don't live as good of a life as you could otherwise. You're giving up, you're destroying your capacity to live. Religion isn't serious, religion is destructive. Religion is something that undermines your ability to be happy, your ability to have self-esteem and your ability to actually take control of your life and make it the best possible life that you can live. So it's not a commandment, but it is a reality that once you negate, once you undermine your use of reason in any field, you undermine your use of reason in every field or in other fields, and you undermine your own life. That's just a fact of reality. It's an absolute, not because it's a commandment, it's an absolute because that's the way reality works. All right, everybody, thank you. Have a great rest of your week. I will see you all again tomorrow at the same time, same place. Thank you all for getting us to the goal. Hopefully, we can keep this up. And those of you who would like to support the show on a regular basis, monthly ideally, you can do so by Patreon, subscribe star, or you're on bookshow.com slash support.