 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this August, Friday, August 18th. God, summer's just coming. Hope you're having a, had a great week, having a great week. I think it's not over yet. And looking forward to the weekend, I will, alright, so I'm back for quick trip after quick trip. I'm here, well who knows, but probably for the next month might do another quick trip we'll see, but generally here, so you can expect regular shows. And yes, tonight, we have a show tonight, 8 p.m. It's going to be an American Decline, so the Causes of American Decline. And then I think tomorrow's show is going to be by China. Causes of China's decline. So today America, tomorrow China, I think that's the schedule. It's 8 p.m. East Coast time tonight. Causes of America's decline. We'll even talk about that country song again. Richmond, north of Richmond. That was fun. That was fun. I'm still getting hate mail on that one. Alright, but let's jump in with a topic I'm sure I'm going to get more hate mail on. Vivek, Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy. Vivek is rising in the polls. He's giving DeSantis a run for the money. Scott's favorite candidate who I think is in big trouble. And we saw the DeSantis's stuff was leaked. DeSantis was that the strategy for the debate was leaked. Right? And so it says, go after Ramaswamy. Go after Vivek. He knows who his challenger is. I mean the hope that everybody has, everybody running for president and Republican side has is that Trump gets sidetracked by the legal stuff, that he gets arrested, that he gets prosecuted. Something happens and he's out. And then the real battle is for second place. And right now the battle for second place is between Vivek and DeSantis. Now, a lot of candidates peak early. We've had a lot of candidates historically peak early and you think, okay, they're it. They're going to be and then they fade. So it's hard to tell if Vivek can sustain it and continue as he is. And it's hard to see DeSantis what's going to happen with DeSantis. DeSantis has a record but nobody seems to care about records. If people cared about record, then Trump wouldn't be in the first position. DeSantis record far outstrips Trumps. Everybody's record running for president right now far outstrips Trump. But they don't have a clear understanding what the record is. They don't care. I don't, you know, that's facts and reality and actual understanding of the manifestations of politics out there. But we'll see. We'll see. We'll see next time. We'll see once the debate happened and we'll see in the in the primaries. Anyway, Vivek's on the rise. And as I've said all along, you watch him in the campaign trail. The guy is energetic. He's got charisma. He's everything DeSantis isn't. You know, he's got energy and charisma. You know, he's everything Trump isn't because Vivek complete sentences. He has, he has really, you know, he's articulate. He actually makes sense when he speaks. You might not agree with him, but he makes sense when he speaks. So Vivek is a real, you know, real contrast to really all the other candidates who are either boring and dull and and versus versus, you know, somebody, you know, Vivek who's charismatic, interesting again, in ways that sometimes offend, but interesting. And he's much more charismatic than DeSantis. He actually has energy and he is very good at retail politics. I don't know if you saw him, this video all over the place of him at at Vivek at the Iowa State Fair. I mean, he's really, really devoting a lot of time to Iowa. And at the Iowa State Fair, he's rapping. I mean, he's rapping M&M. He's rapping other stuff. I don't know any of the raps. I have no understanding of the raps. But he's, he's, he's rapping. And I don't know that that appeals to caucus goers who are Republicans. I don't think so. He's in the wrong state for that. But maybe he's getting young people and maybe he can get young conservatives, young Republicans to go out to the caucuses and vote for him and do something. So but, but we've got a Republican presidential candidate rapping on stage. You got to be impressed. You got to be impressed. So now whether, whether Iowans can get behind somebody with a name like Vivek Ramaswamy, I don't know. We can hope that those factors don't play. But who knows? Anyway, here is Vivek's 10 principles of truth. This is a tweet he put out. It's truth in all caps. 10 truths, I guess, that we should all abide by that, that are, you know, that are just true, that there's no doubting, there's no questioning. One, God is real. I mean, he knows what he's doing, right? I mean, I don't know if this guy's religious or not. He doesn't look religious. He doesn't sound religious. But maybe, maybe, but God is real is number one principle. All right, he's got the evangelical vote. He's got the Catholic vote. He's got the religious vote. He's, he's nailed it. He's good. Second, in order to just make sure he's got that vote. Number two is there are two genders. You know, some of us were confused. So that's good. So there are two genders. Three, human flourishing requires fossil fuel. I mean, you go from God to, I don't know, you got God and two genders, you know, right down the line of every conservative politician has to say that to Alex Epstein, Farsal fuels. This is great. Supposedly Vivek, I didn't hear that from Alex, but if I've heard from other sources, Vivek is in regular contact with Alex Epstein. So on Farsal fuels, Vivek is probably going to be the best you're going to find. Four, reverse racism is racism. Absolutely. Five, an open border is no border. Isn't it? Even if you put tanks there, but allow immigrants in. Is it not a border anymore? So fair days of logic here and there. What could you do? Six, parents determine the education of their kids, of their children certainly should parents need to get more involved. They should take the reins of that education. Seven, the nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. I mean, tell that to Genghis Khan. I don't know. I don't know what to do with that. Greatest form of governance known to mankind. Governance for what purpose for it. I don't know. And does this include Muslims who have multiple wives, car rooms? I don't know. Anyway, eight, capitalism. Capitalism, we got the word in. We got the world in finally. But notice what he uses capitalism for, right? Capitalism lifts people out from poverty. That's why we have capitalism. I always wondered what the moral basis for capitalism is. It lifts people out of poverty. So we got we nailed that one. At least they use the word capitalism, I guess. There are three, oh, nine. There are three branches of the US government, not four. Good one. This is against the regulatory state, the alphabet agencies. That's the fourth branch of government. Maybe you could even expand it to include the Federal Reserve. I wonder if he'd go there for probably not. And 10, the US Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history, only when it's interpreted based on what the actual Constitution meant. So it has to be interpreted correctly. But yes, to the extent that it is interpreted correctly, it's good. All right. What do you do about this? I mean, what a mishmash, right? God is real. Gender is okay. I mean, these are the number two, the one and two in your 10 principles, right? Flavishing question, fossil fuel, we get to 10 on that one. Rosary says investors, that's good. An open voter, snowboarder, fail. Apparent determined education, children, yeah, absolutely should. Anyway, should. Nuclear families, the greatest form of governance known to mankind, really struggling with that one. I mean, capitalism lifts people from poverty. That's got to be a six at best. There are three branches of the US government, not four. That's good, but it would be good if, like, there are two genders that's pretty clear cut. Why not say the regulatory state, the alphabet agencies must be disbanded. They are unconstitutional. That would be clear. And okay, so anyway, a mishmash. I don't know what to make of Vivek. You know, he's getting support from some interesting characters. I spoke to somebody who is, okay, so this is the thing. Yeah, anyway, let's see Vivek in the debate. If Vivek, we'll see what he says. We'll see how he focuses the debate. I'm interested in this guy, because I think a lot of it is show. I think the bad stuff mostly is show. I think is mostly good, as good as one could expect in the world today. But the bad stuff is there mainly because he has to appeal to the base. He actually gave a good explanation for why he would pardon Trump, which is reasonable. I think his explanation is reasonable. He'd pardon him because to unify the country, you need to unify the country. So that's reasonable. I'm watching. I'm watching. I keep ruling him out because he says really, really stupid things. But I'm still watching him because I still want, I still want to see what actually, how that actually works out, right? All right. Mike, thank you. Really appreciate it, Jonathan Honing. Thank you. Please ask questions. We don't have a lot of questions going on. Please ask questions. Okay, let's jump in. What do we got? Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, the investment bank is hiring hundreds of people, hundreds. Guess in what department? Where are they hiring hundreds of people into? Like the investment banking branch, the backing out of consumer banking. They decided that selling a consumer bank was probably a bad idea and they were attracting from that. So where do you think they're hiring? With literally hundreds of people in their compliance division. They're hiring people to bureaucrats, file pushes. They're hiring people in a compliance because they're somehow, they're getting pressure from the regulators. They're being told that, you know, nothing formal yet, but they're being told, they need to fix some stuff, they need to correct some stuff. Here's a bank that's been at the forefront of American finance for a long, long time. More recently, it has, it has struggled, it is struggling making money, some of its units are struggling, the culture inside of it. People have questioned as it's moved away from its old partnership model and it's struggling. It's trying to figure out a business model for the, you know, 21st century. It went into consumer banking because it got a bank charter and if you remember 2008, it converted into a commercial bank so it could be bailed out by the government. So it could be part of the big bailouts and then it tried to be a commercial bank and it can't. It doesn't have the skill set. The partners, the senior people, they are not attuned to what it takes to run an actual bank. So they're back to being a investment bank, but what works, what doesn't work, all this is going on. And they're trying to figure it out and where do they have to focus all their time? Where do they have to focus all their energy? Where are they hiring hundreds of people in the compliance division? Because regulatory supervisors are pushing and prodding and investigating and challenging and keeping everybody over there on their toes and everybody's worried. And yeah, and this is what you get. So yeah, the regulatory state, this is the regulatory state in action, sucking productive resources into unproductive activities. Just destroying production, destroying productive activities. So all Goldman Sachs needs is more supervisors, more regulators, more compliance people, more people to look over the important function that the bank serves in allocation of capital, look over their shoulder. Just horrible, disgusting, but what you'd expect in a regulatory state, particularly in a regulatory state, hates banks and hates, you know, these are the rich guys, north of Richmond, that a culture and a political class that hates institutions like Goldman wants to, hates big finance, hates pretty much big everything, hates small finance too, won't let small finance do what they want, wants to regulate, wants to control, wants to centrally plan. This is who we've got running Washington these days. So mortgage rates, you might have noticed a way up. Mortgage rates up, fixed rate, 30-year mortgage rate is over 7%, around 7.1%. This is the highest rate it's been since April 2002. People, I mean, it's a little, it's somewhat funny because people think this is the end of the world, the mortgage rates being at 7, and it is pretty bad. I mean, my mortgage rate is not quite half of that, but almost half of that, on a pretty large loan. But the reality is that I bought my first home in 1995, I think it was, maybe 1994, 94, 95, and mortgage rates were significantly higher than 7, were higher than 7. I can't remember what I paid, but I paid more than 7%. And we survived. It wasn't easy, but the big difference I think is between now and the 90s is while interest rates were higher back then, certainly in the early 90s, the house, the cost of a house was dramatically lower, dramatically lower. So if you look at something called the affordability index, excuse me, affordability index, this index of how affordable housing is in the United States, it's almost at an all-time high. The reality is that, and I've said this over and over and over again, nobody listens to me, but I've said it for over 10 years now, not enough housing being built in the U.S., not enough housing being built. So housing affordability is at the highest it's been in 40 years since the mid-1980s, and because not only is the price high, but mortgage rates are high. So you're paying a lot of money and you're taking out a big mortgage and you're paying out a large interest payment on that mortgage. And while wages and everything else have gone up as well, the cost of housing has gone up much faster than anything else. And what really is preventing this, causing this, as I've said over and over again, is the lack of construction of housing, the lack of construction of housing units. What causes this, you might ask? Well, it's zoning and regulations and controls. It's green regulations that don't allow you to build in certain green zones. It's height regulations in places like San Francisco that don't allow you to build upwards. It's not in my backyard, don't develop anything here, regulations that exist all over the country that don't allow developers to build. It's shortage of labor. It's the fact that it's very hard to find construction workers in the United States because of regulation of immigration. In other words, housing regulation, immigration regulation has caused a massive, well over 10 million, I think, shortage of housing units in the United States that is not only causing at the low end homelessness, but is causing at every level just the difficulty of paying for the house. I think people are starting to realize this. I think there's beginning of realization. By the way, London is just like that. It's London, Tel Aviv. Every city where housing is super expensive in the world, and Tel Aviv now is the most expensive city in the world, every city in which housing is super expensive is because the government controls and puts a choke on the amount of housing to be built because otherwise supply and demand would match. More demand, greater supply, prices would come down, but they don't come down because the demand is there and supply cannot match because it's artificially constrained. Anyway, the consequence of this, of course, is a lower standard of living for everybody, and that's sad and unfortunate. People are trying to do something about this. New York City, for example, is trying to rezone Midtown Manhattan. If you know Midtown Manhattan, a lot of skyscrapers are built for businesses, a lot of banks, a lot of other businesses, all office towers, office towers, office towers, office towers all over the place. New York City is rolling out a plan to convert vacant offices into housing units. Phase one of this is about 20,000 new housing units. Now, this is, of course, requires, not only the mayor approve it and the council approve it, but this has to go to lawmakers in in Albany, the state of New York has to give it, it has to give it a thumbs up, and right now it's, I'm just seeing a headline here, this is funny. Impact the market in the city. It says, the headline says, there are more realtors in the United States right now than homes for sale. Wow. Anyway, it needs to go to the mayor and to the governor and everybody, but they're trying to rezone and the bureaucracy's fighting back. They're trying to do the same thing in Boston and San Francisco, where they've got a lot of vacancies in office buildings. They're trying to convert office buildings into condominiums. That is very expensive. We're into housing units, I'm not sure exactly what that means, but that is very expensive, but it's cheaper than building a new condo building. So interesting and we'll watch that 20,000 new units in New York as rents in New York are going through the roof, through the roof. Interesting. Population numbers, at least for 2022, saw New York shrinking, rents going up. Who do you believe? The economic factor or some polling about population, I believe the rents. Rents going up means more people are moving back. One of the explanations people have is that people are moving back, but they're not willing to share their apartment with other people. They've been out somewhere in America where it's cheaper. They're used to living alone and so fewer people per apartment, but rents are going through the roof because demand is going through the roof and demand is coming from somewhere and it's coming from people moving back to New York City in spite of how bad you guys might all think it is. All right, remember that we did a thing and did a show in 2020-2021 on will New York come back? Will it ever be the same? It's not exactly the same, but it certainly has come back. It certainly has come back. New York is humming. Midtown is not because of all those vacant office buildings and that's why this push to convert those buildings into residency, but as soon as you go into outside of Midtown it's packed. It's packed. Tourists are back. Shops are open. Yeah, it seems to be doing quite well, not like San Francisco. All right, a paper published by a research group based in the UK at University of East Anglia. What they did was they asked Chad GBT a survey on political beliefs. So they put together questions of political beliefs. They asked GBT, what do you think the liberal parties, a typical liberal would say, what answers would it give to these questions? So it got Chad GBT to tell you what kind of a leftist answer to a series of political questions would be. And then they asked Chad GBT the political questions without asking, without telling it from a left, right, middle perspective, give you answer to the same set of questions. Well, it turned out that the answers Chad GBT gave as if an objective answer matched up pretty closely with the answer it gave when it was prompted to give the leftist view of the answer to these questions. And of course the conclusion is Chad GBT is significantly tilted left. It's tilted left in the United States, United Kingdom and Brazil. So it gave answers that fit much more Lula than they would Bolsonaro or would everybody else. So Chad GBT is biased to the left. Now this of course is not surprising. It's not surprising not because the algorithm, the people programmed, the algorithm programmed in a way is to deviate it towards the left. It's not because the companies that run Chad GBT or whatever these things are are generally a leftist. It's not surprising because the left dominates the content on the internet, particularly what you would categorize as prestigious content. Journal articles, long-form articles in places like, I don't know, the Atlantic or the New Yorker. Anything that Chad GBT might have been exposed to, the reality is that those spaces are dominated by leftist writers. They're probably more leftist on substacks. They're just more leftist intellectuals. And therefore there's more leftist production. And therefore if the algorithm is just going by in a sense, democratically, by a number of voices and maybe tilted by prestige, it's going to be leftist. So Chad GBT shockingly is leftist. Of course, he uses the media and the media is biased. So the dominant media, the big media, the media has watched the most overall, if you add them all up, is going to be tilted towards the left. So Chad GBT is leftist. Beware when you ask it a question. Just like when you listen to the news, don't just accept the answer. Accept. Accept. When you listen to news on the Iran book show, news round up. All right. By the way, Ashton just came in with a $99 question. So he's moved us very close to goal, but we're still about $68 short. So three and a half, $20 questions would get us there. So that would be great if you guys were there. All right. Quickly on Iran, I talked about this earlier in the week. Biden administration is engaged actively in negotiations with Iran, both in Qatar and in Oman, where they're sitting down and trying to negotiate a whole string of things from Iran's assistance to Russia in the war in Ukraine, to Iranian American citizens held in Iran in prison, which have now be released into a home thing, to assets frozen, Iranian assets frozen in the west, to the nuclear, of course, Iran's nuclear deal and developing nuclear weapons and everything else. Of course, the one thing I'm sure they're not talking about is the treatment of women in Iran, but then the United States doesn't care that much about stuff like that. Even the Biden administration claims to care. So there's a lot of discussions. It's unlikely that we get a deal. That is a one-pay, a one-document deal where that covers everything, particularly the nuclear program. It's more likely we get like a soft deal. The Iranians say, okay, we'll release your prisoners. You release our $6 billion. Then we promise to slow down the centrifuges. They won't go quite as fast. We'll promise, cross our hearts, swear to Jesus, Muhammad, or anybody you want us to, that we won't develop nuclear weapons anytime soon. We'll just slow everything down. As you know, as I've talked about in the show, Iran is close and out of Saudi Arabia. That tension has been reduced significantly. The war in Yemen is kind of on a low flame right now. So Iran is trying to play. Oh, the other factor is that Americans are trying to get the Iranians to attack our bases less. God forbid, please don't attack us. Don't kill Americans. This is, again, the mightiest military force. Iran is selling a lot of its oil to China these days. So that relationship is better. So I think this is why the Biden administration is trying to step in there. It's trying to not only deal with Iran, but also deal with the growing influence of China in the Middle East growing. I don't think it's that big, but growing a little bit. Anyway, all of this is happening. A complete sellout. This is a play of weakness. And just what I guess what you'd expect from a Biden administration. There's no America standing up for itself. There's no America demanding. There's America negotiating with one of the most evil regimes in the world today and probably giving them a lot of what they want. Talk about evil regimes and talk about, if you remember the protests in Iran and my guarded optimism at the time, which turned out to be not guarded enough, I guess. Iran has just arrested 12 female activists in anticipation of the protest movement's anniversary, the anniversary of the death of that young Iranian woman, Masha Amini, a 22-year-old who was killed, murdered because her headdress did not fit quite right according to the morality police. It just showed a few extra strands of hair or something like that. So they have now arrested 12 known activists primarily in the northern region where this is, where I guess there is more, there's more energy around opposing the regime. Amini died in September of last year and that resulted in months of nationwide protests. The regime is afraid of a resurfacing of those protests and as a consequence, they're arresting young women right now in anticipation of those protests. All right, quickly we'll go to the super chat questions next. Quickly we're short about 60 bucks, $320 questions would do it. So asking questions would be great because you get to stir the conversation in your direction. You can also use a sticker to support the show. We've got 87 people listening live, it wouldn't take much for us to get to where we need to be. So still consider supporting the show value for value and so we keep these shows going. All right, Ashton, haven't seen Ashton in a while but Ashton always brings the bucks. So Ashton for $100, what about the American Revolution was revolutionary? What specific ideas are different from the French Revolution? Oh, pretty much everything. The American Revolution is the exact opposite of the French Revolution. It is the counter-revolution. I mean, French Revolution is a counter-revolution to the American Revolution. The French Revolution was inspired by Voltaire. Sorry, not Voltaire, God, I can't believe I said that. The French Revolution was inspired by Wousseau. It was inspired by Wousseau. It was inspired by a an egalitarian, not just in politics, but egalitarian throughout life, a hatred of anything resembling kind of individual liberty, individualism, freedom. Sorry, I said, not Voltaire, Wousseau, inspired by Wousseau. Anything inspired by individualism, individual liberty, individual freedom, individual production, capitalism, it wasn't really a term then or wasn't really understood then, but that kind of liberty and freedom, individual rights, the concept of individual rights. The American Revolution is a Lockean revolution and if you had to bring in a Frenchman, it's much more monoskew than Wousseau. Monoskew, Voltaire, Diderot, the real enlightenment. You see, I think Wousseau is the anti-enlightment. The French Revolution is the anti-enlightment revolution. It's the anti-individualism revolution. The other thing about Wousseau, importantly, is its anti-reason, which is always anti-individualism, is almost always anti-reason. It's anti-reason revolution. So they reject reason. They are for primitive emotions, the return to nature. Everything that Wousseau spoke about were all the same in the state of nature. And again, there's no production in the state of nature. There's no reason in the state of nature because in the state of nature, we're like animals. There's no civilization in the state of nature. Whereas the American Revolution is a revolution of civilization. It is, it was the Chilean in that sense. It is individualistic and it's very pro-reason. Think about Thomas Jefferson's declaration about reason. So Locke is the guy behind the American Revolution. The idea of reason, the idea of the individual's importance, and the idea of individual rights, individual rights, which is the founding concept of the American Revolution. It's the founding idea of the American Revolution. And if you look at the declaration of revolution, it's all there. The right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and then complaint against the king. All these complaints against violation of rights, real rights. Now, if you read that complaint against the king, you'll notice that our government does all those things as well. So we're praying for a revolution as well. Thank you, Ashton. Really appreciate it. But of course, you could talk, I mean, it's possible to talk for hours on this. I think Bradley Thompson at some point was going to write a book comparing the American and French Revolution. I think he's gotten distracted, but I think that was the plan at some point. All right, the Godfather, 50 bucks. Thank you, Godfather. Illinois passed a law regarding entrepreneurial kids. It attempts to save kids from financial abuse by parents. What is the parent role in kids' entrepreneurial passion? Can you comment on a financial abuse by parents and how objectives would view parenting? Can you comment on the law itself? I can't comment on the law itself because I haven't seen it. I haven't read it. I haven't read anything about it. So this is the first time hearing about it. But look, I think the state, government, should stay out of parenting, period. The only role the state has in parenting is to protect the child from physical abuse, being beaten, kept in the closet, real physical abuse. If parents don't send their kids to school, you could argue that's intellectual mental abuse. State has no business. If parents don't let the kid do his lemonade stand, don't let the kid work, that's not child abuse. It's, you know, we have to be very, very careful because as soon as you let the state in, as soon as you define abuse as something other than physical, then the state now becomes, the child's guardian in the state now can tell parents what they can and cannot do with the kids, which I think current Democrats and Republicans want to do. They both want it to be in parenting in different ways. So I can't see, I don't see the link anyway for the law, but I'll try to look it up and I don't see the link in anything you've written in The Godfather, but I'll try to look it up and comment on it in a future show. But until you're, you know, independent, which is 18 according to the law in most states, parents control your money, they control your activities, they set the rules. Now you can, I think in all states as a teenager, go to court and say, I want to be free of my parents. I want to be emancipated. And then you can be emancipated and then you control everything and the parents can't control you at all. But that, you know, that requires you to do something to show the court you're adult enough, mature enough to be able to handle your own affairs. But generally, I am not in favor of the state, government, any form of government, state, local, federal intervening in parenting for good or evil, for good or evil. You know, the only time they intervene is if there's real abuse. If a child actor makes money, a child can't sign a contract. So it's not, it's not his, it's his parents. I mean, that's just the reality. Now, you know, maybe you could make a different argument, but I don't see, I don't see how, right? I don't see how it's enforceable. Now again, a child at a certain age can ask to be released from his parents. All right, Andrew, my biggest issue with, so far with Vivek is he thinks Trump was a great president. If character matters for president, what can we imply about what he thinks of character if he has an un-categorical endorsement of Trump? Look, it's hard to tell whether Vivek is doing that because he really believes it, or whether he's doing that because that is what is required in order to win the Republican nomination. I don't know, and I don't know how to separate it out, but I agree with you. But, you know, everybody's defending Trump as president. Every single one of the Republicans, including Nikki Haley and DeSantis, they all think Trump was a great president. They all say that. So he's not different in that sense. You have to, that's kind of a starting, they all start at that low level of trying to appease the base, which is, you know, should not be appeased because, well, I mean, but you win, you have to. What can you do? But, you know, I have a problem with his religion. I have a problem with stuff he says about Ukraine. I have a problem with how he deals with, you know, just that he tends to be too chameleon-like, depending on who he's talking to. He sounds different. He can be a populist. He can be pro-capitalist, pro-markets. He can be, depends on who he's talking to, and I worry about that because I don't know what he really believes. Oil W says, how did Singapore get so rich? Some argue that government intervention regulation led to financial success, re-land acquisition, central province fund, national wage council all lead to their financial success. No, I don't think so. I think fundamentally what happened in Singapore is that what led to its success is, in spite of all those things, the success was really led by the fact that in crucial areas, it basically was unregulated or very low regulations in certain types of manufacturing at a certain point in time. You know, housing is super regular, but other forms, other areas are not. You know, we'd have to go deep into Singapore's history, but it is rich in spite of all the government controls and regulations. And if you look at the way industry started out in Singapore and how it dominated particular forms of industry early on, they were completely unregulated. How finance came into Singapore and finance was completely unregulated and low taxes, and low taxes particularly for finance companies, the kind of industries that Singapore wanted to attract. So yeah, it was way too interventionist, but it intervened usually to favor businesses and intervened usually in ways that were relatively less harmful. And it stayed out of the way mostly. Ashton says, Johan, I feel like the reactionary right is going to violently explode in the next election no matter what the results are. Don't you think the biggest threat to American liberty and the rights of man comes from the religious fanatical, impulsive, gullible, idiotic right? Yes. I've been saying that, how long? How long have I been saying that? I've been saying it for years since the alt-right came about. I mean, yes, absolutely. I think the biggest threat to American liberty is long term going to be from the right, whether it happens as fast as you think I don't know. But yeah, my biggest worry is that religion wrapped up in a flag is kind of the thing that will unite Americans around a authoritarian. And I don't know if that happens in 2024, probably not, but in 2028, 2032, hard to tell. And they're becoming more and more insane. Absolutely. I mean, I think the fact that so many of them are not just backing Trump, but insanely supporting Trump, passionately supporting Trump suggests something very, very wrong with this country. The success of these overwhelming success of right-wing pundits who just in terms of so much of their agenda are statists through and through suggestive of this. And the growth in conspiracy theories. Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor who had a resign, I think even before he took office, is going around the country. He was a huge promoter of that big conspiracy theory that was big. And then now he's promoting some combination of this religious fanaticism. He speaks mainly of churches, religious fanaticism with political conspiracy theories, with a call to basically focus some kind of, you know, a theocratic revolution in this country. So, you know, watching him, yeah, watching him is really, really scary. And, you know, just look up Flynn. And I think that's absolutely right. All right. We have, thank you, Ashton. That was another $100 or way above Target, which is great. Michael says, Vivek and the guy from Argentina are beginnings of a free market wave. I'm skeptical. I don't know that Vivek is a free market wave. I don't think that's why he's rising. I don't think anybody in America right now cares about free markets. I don't see it at all. Argentina, yes, because they've hit bottom. Hit bottom. All right. Let's see. Oh, I see there's a, you know, Ashton has hit a nerve with some people on the chat. Good for you, Ashton. Go after them. Yeah. A Buyan and Scott need to be reminded of the real threat that exists out there. Michael, almost all ideas wrong. God. No, I mean, how could this building still be standing? How could the world still be functioning if that was true? Maybe you could say philosophical ideas. Maybe, but maybe, maybe, but even then, hard to tell. Maybe in the humanities or most ideas in the humanity you are on almost all ideas, I think you said, I don't think that's true. We wouldn't be able to be surviving if that was true. Michael says, I'm noticing a lot of philosophy students in college are aware of Rand and the philosophy of challenge as the philosophy of challenge. A philosophy professor starting to mention her as opposition to Kant. It's definitely a good sign that people are aware of her. It's definitely a good sign that they're aware of critique of Kant. I'm skeptical about whether that is being introduced in philosophy classes, but you in college, you probably know more than I do about what's being taught in college. And I, so I don't know, but it's definitely a great sign that people are aware of I ran quite philosopher and quite philosopher that argued against Kant. That's a huge leap forward that that and a necessary one step in the right direction. Michael says, how was I ran so shockingly precise? Well, because she was a genius and because she really, it was important to us as she spent real time on working at it, on really figuring it out and thinking it through thinking it through. And it was super important to be super precise. So she devoted the resources, the focus, the mental effort to doing it. Michael says, are most people capable of thinking deeply? Oh, I don't know. Most people today, probably not. And most people capable if they, if we had a decent educational system, probably, I think, I think the answer to that is yes. But we don't. So most people can't think deeply today. Michael says, have you have me lay me lay going off and collectivism in moral terms on national television is quite a sight. Yeah, I mean, this guy's really been influenced by an rent. He's a huge genuine fan. He's read everything. And he he he stands. He's definitely an opponent of of at least this vision of collectivism. His religiosity suggests that there are other visions of collectivism. Maybe he wouldn't be so against anti. But yeah, this is this is interesting. If nothing else, it's gonna it's gonna make the Argentinian election the most interesting election for a long, long time. And if he wins, it'll be really fascinating to see what he can get through what he can actually do and the level of success and how the world responds to that success. All right, I have to run. I got a tool called class to teach. Thank you, particularly to Ashton, who came in with like 200 bucks today. So thank you, Ashton. You know, the question about the American right is a question I keep returning to. It's a question I keep covering in this. In this tonight, I'll be talking about tonight, I'll be talking about the decline of America, American decline. What's going on? What's happening? Why is it happening? Who caused it? And what are the real threats? So this issue of the American right and its role in all of it and its role in the in a current moment in the decline is important that we're going to be talking about that and where we head from here. Now I'm going to be a pleasant show. So today we're going to talk about tonight, 8 p.m. We're going to talk about American decline tomorrow at 3 p.m. east coast time. We'll talk about China and what's going on in China. Every day there's news coming out of China about the economic and cultural challenges and struggles that are happening there. It's going to be really, really interesting. All right. Thanks everybody and I hope you join me tonight and see