 Let's talk about Biden. Biden issued an executive order on Friday with 70-something, 72 I think, provisions, different commands, different requests, different suggestions, and they were framed in different ways. Some of them were commands, some of them were suggestions, some of them were requests. Two, a variety of the departments of the US government and two, a variety of regulatory agencies that are supposed to be independent. So there the president can only make suggestions. A variety of different provisions that would instruct the various agencies and the various regulatory agencies, the various departments to institute a number of new policies or old policies and take certain actions. Most of them are in the form of suggestions because the president doesn't have authority through executive order to tell regulatory agencies how they can or cannot behave. But since Biden has his cronies at these federal agencies, at these regulatory agencies, there's a good chance. There's a good chance that they will fulfill some of these, some of these requests. All of these requests, all of these suggestions, all of these proposals, all of these provisions are aimed at crippling, well not crippling because markets are already crippled. They're aimed at bringing more government intervention. They're aimed at giving more central planning, more control from Washington of a variety of different markets. The whole thing is done in the name of competition. They go after agriculture, tech, pharma. They go after banks, banking, transportation, healthcare, and internet services. So a whole array of industries are going to be affected by these new proposed regulations. By the way, I warned you about this when Trump was president. One of my complaints about Trump is that rather than go through the difficult hard work of passing legislation, particularly when he had a majority Republican in the House and Senate, of actually deregulating and getting rid of regulations through legislation in his first two years, which would have made permanent the deregulatory effects that he was trying to have, really, really bringing about real sustained long-term change. There was pro-markets, there was pro-freedom potentially, if that's what you could get through Congress at that point. He chose, as many presidents have chosen, to go the route of using the regulatory agencies to tinker with the system and to make it slightly less regulated, slightly more free and use executive orders in order to achieve this and use regulatory changes but dictated by the regulatory agency itself, by the people heading the regulatory agency. The challenge with that, of course, is all of that is reversible. So as soon as the next person comes in, they flip it and they don't have to go through Congress. They don't have to fight, they don't have to battle, they don't have to compromise, they don't have to do anything. They just flip on that regulatory switch, they reverse what you did and everything that you did is for naught because it doesn't count anymore. And it's done very, very easily at the regulatory basis. And of course, almost all of Trump's good things that he did, Casparanza, thank you, really appreciate it. So almost everything that Trump did that was good was done through regulatory, through these regulatory regimes and almost everything that Trump did that is good is going to be reversed. And it's going to be reversed by Biden and we're seeing that in part of this, part of these 70 provisions that he wants to impose, many of them were reversals of things that Trump had done. All right, it's kind of interesting because in his remarks when he was signing the executive order, note how much rulemaking, how much legislation, how much government is done these days through executive order. Bush, everybody thought Bush was, whoa, Bush is so bad about this. And then came Obama who was worse than Bush and now and then came Trump who was worse than Obama and now comes Biden, who I will not be surprised at all is worse than Trump. Every president is taking on more and more and more power. Every president is using non-constitutional ways to go around Congress in order to impose their will in order to rule, to govern, to control. And it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. And of course, what we get is more and more and more authoritarianism and authority all concentrated with the president, which is exactly what the founding fathers did not want to happen. Anyway, in his comments when he was signing this executive order, Biden said, and I have to laugh. I can't read this without laughing. You will see why because he said, I'm a proud capitalist. I remember when Elizabeth Warren was running for president, she ran in opposition to Bernie Sanders, who is a social Democrat. Elizabeth Warren said that she was running to protect and defend capitalism. See what happens when you don't, when terms are not defined, when it happens where nobody, nobody in the culture has any understanding what capitalism actually is. When everything that happens today in the world is blamed or attributed to capitalism, rather than identified as a product of the mixed economy, a product of some freedom, much control, then somebody like Biden, somebody like Elizabeth Warren can claim to be capitalist. So he says, I'm a proud capitalist, but let me be clear. Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism, it's exploitation. So capitalism without competition isn't capitalism. It's exploitation. And what does that even mean? Competition is a product of capitalism. It's something that arises when you have capitalism because what is capitalism? Capitalism is freedom. Capitalism is the freedom of the individual to pursue his values free of coercion, free of force, free of authority. Capitalism is a system in which we're left free to pursue our values. And in the particular realm of economics, if you will, capitalism is a system that leaves us free to gain employment wherever we want or whatever terms we negotiate. Capitalism system free to start whatever business you want and to go into whatever field you want and to compete or not to compete, to start a business, to grow your business, to grow your business as big as it could get, to have no impediments by government or the state on doing business. That's what capitalism is. There's nothing capitalism in definition of capitalism, the characteristics of capitalism that directly relates to competition. Competition is just a feature. If you leave people free, what happens? They compete with one another. Why? Because there are opportunities. There's money to be made. Various people want to pursue the same profession, the same avenue, the same business. But if it turns out in a particular realm, let's say that in the realm of, I don't know, space exploration, there's only one entrepreneur who's interested in space exploration. He's the only one building rockets to go to space. I mean, even there we've got today competition. But imagine a world in which Elon Musk was the only guy and Jeff Bezos and what's his name? Branson and a few others were not interested. He was the only one. Only one wanted to put money into it. Capitalism doesn't say there's nothing in capitalism and its theory and it's any attribute of capitalism to say, oh, well, that's a failure of capitalism because they must be at least five companies in every realm to go out. You know, to do something. Maybe the reason there's only one is because this particular business is not very profitable and nobody can conceive of it ever being profitable. Maybe there's only one because nobody cares. Believe me, if going to space became a value, something that profit could be generated from it, even if there was only one start that started out going to space as soon as the value creation aspect of it became real, there would be competition. Even of course, a lot of money to enter because developing rockets is super expensive. People would do it. Thank you, Kirk. Really appreciate it. So competition is not an essential element, an essential component, a way in which we categorize capitalism. Capitalism is not the system of competition. Capitalism is the system of freedom. Is it where we are free to compete or not to compete? We are free. Pierre, thank you. Thank you. That's $50. That's incredibly generous. Eight more people like you and we reached the $400, $400 goal that Ali has. So thank you, Pierre. Really appreciate it. What was I talking about? Yeah, competition. So part of the challenge is that when we study economics, when everybody is taught economics, and we study, there's a chapter on competition and monopolies. And it is taught that an essential characteristic of markets, free markets in a sense of capitalism is competition. And that to be efficient, to be productive, to maximize social well-being, to maximize utility, to maximize participants' well-being. The competition has to be perfect competition. Now what is perfect competition? Well, perfect competition, according to those who promote it, is competition in which all companies produce the same product in any field. Everybody has equal information, equal knowledge, equal ability. And if any particular company raises its prices or produces a product that's slightly better than what they had before, everybody else will and can match them immediately, instantaneously. Now, not only is that stupid and unrealistic, right? I always tell audiences, take that section of the economics book, rip it out, that whole chapter, and put it in the trash, because it is literally, it's not worthless, it actually has negative worth because it does damage. Because not only is that unrealistic, you cannot have perfect competition. But you wouldn't want to have perfect competition. Under perfect competition, there's no incentive to innovate. There's no incentive to improve. There's no incentive to grow. There's no incentive to do better, to be better. Under perfect competition, all companies, there's no Apple. There's no inventing the iPhone. And if they do invent the iPhone, they never make any money on it, because everybody else invents the iPhone at exactly the same time. All companies ultimately in perfect competition have profits of zero. They have just enough to pay their expenses. Note, the perfect competition fits in perfectly with the notions, even though the people who developed it were neoclassical economists, not Marxists, it fits in perfectly with Marxism that claims that ideas, management, senior management, produce nothing, generate nothing. Because if every company can instantaneously innovate, can instantaneously match your innovations, then you've done nothing. It's a recipe for stagnation, and it's a bad fantasy. It's an evil fantasy. And of course, the flip side of perfect competition is monopoly. Monopoly is where you don't have perfect competition, or oligopoly or whatever. You have very high concentration. And where these companies now can charge what they want, they don't have competitive pressures because other companies can't match them. And as a consequence of that, quality drops, and prices only go up. Now again, this doesn't happen, even when companies have massive market shares. Take Google, that has a massive market share. Prices at Google have not gone up. How much are you paying for your Google? You paid zero 20 years ago, and you're still paying zero. So standard oil had 93% of the oil refining capacity in the US in 1873, and prices went down every year, and quality went up every year. Because that's how businessmen behave. This idea of perfect competition and monopoly, that section in the economic book, is just horrific, and does massive damage, massive damage, is destructive, is ignorant, and is unfortunately the only section of the economics book that politicians paid any attention to in school. It's the only section they seem to know anything about. And therefore, you see them constantly talking about the evils of big tech, of monopoly power, and Biden doing this is, you know, bad enough. But Republicans, particularly when it comes to technology company, are completely on board with all the provisions that Biden is going to institute, with the push that Democrats are doing in the House and the Senate, and this is going to be through legislation. And this is going to be impossible to reverse. So there are five bills in Congress right now that have bipartisan support to regulate and control big tech. Five different bills, bipartisan support. Don't tell me you're Republicans or these angels. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. 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