 All right, a little technical issues. Wait there in a minute, waste something. No radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. Right, everyone. Welcome to your on this. No, it's Tuesday. I missed the interviews on Thursday. It's Tuesday, March 14, and I am particularly happy to have Peter Schwartz join us today for another interview on the Iran Brookshow. And we'll be talking about a range of topics from his book, The Tyranny of Need, to whether there is systemic racism in the U.S., to his views on the Santas, to views on politics. So maybe we'll talk about the war in Ukraine and Libertarians, and of course, anyway, you guys want us to go. So you have the opportunity to ask questions. The Super Chat is open and you can use that to ask questions about anything. Feel free to we're not committed to answering questions about anything, but you can ask about anything. We will try to answer all your questions. So you can do that by clicking on the button right below and using the Super Chat feature. And I'm going to change this to speaker view. And so Peter, thanks for joining us. It's good to see you. My pleasure. Yeah, nice to talk to you again. Good. Good. So let's talk about the book first. The book has been republished or, you know, with a new title. This is The Tyranny of Need. It had selfishness and a title before. Remind me what the original title was, In Defense of Selfishness, and the reissued title, under the auspices of the Iran Institute, which is the publisher, who's a publisher, is The Tyranny of Need, examining the code of self-sacrifice, and the alternative of rational, non-predatory self-interest. So if you look at policy today, if you look at what's going on right now in politics, some of the big issues that are going on with the Biden administration, where do you see this code of self-sacrifice manifest itself most obviously? Well, here, the better question is, where don't you see it? Every single thing, virtually every single, if you talk about politics, that everything that Biden and the Democrats advocate and have passed or are trying to pass, is based on the idea that we have some people in need in this country. We have other people able to provide for them. The people in need have a moral claim against anyone who's able to satisfy that need, and they have a duty to do so. So his latest proposal is to increase social programs significantly and to have it paid for by taxing the rich. So this is the essence of altruism, the essence of altruism which Karl Marx succinctly named as from each according to his ability to each according to his need. That is the Democrats philosophy, and that boils down to the philosophy of altruism and self-sacrifice. So we can see that in the latest tax proposals. Those of you who don't know, the Biden administration just proposed a budget for next year, including trillions of dollars of new taxes, and all of them focused on what they consider the rich in all kinds of forms, taxes on investments, taxes on income, all kinds of taxes. Taxes on Medicare, I think as well. Again, Medicare is a great example of a program that is based on pure altruism. It's a program that attacks young people for the sake of old people. Yeah, every program, every one of these social programs, the way to look at it is to ask one simple question. Who is paying for it? At whose expense are these programs being established? Because they're, see money is paying for them, whether it's Medicare or Social Security, or for giving the loans, the student loans, whatever. However, all of these programs are coming at somebody's expense. So it simply means that some people are paying for other people's benefit. And that is the doctrine of altruism is whoever has some kind of a need, an unmet need, he is entitled to have that need satisfied by people who don't have that lack, people who are able to provide. So it's a philosophy of cannibalism really. It's some people feeding off others. And there's always going to be somebody who is needier than you. There's always going to be somebody who has less than you. So ultimately, it means the people who have zero are going to be feeding off anybody who has anything more than zero. It's a doctrine of placing people at one another's throats. That is what altruism leads to. And you mentioned this as the doctrine that governs the Democratic Party. You know, Republicans and Democrats, nobody wants to touch, for example, so secure in Medicare. Is the unwillingness of so many Republicans not to even talk about Medicare reform, never mind elimination, but even reform. Is that also driven by the inability to fight against altruism or altruism that they hold themselves? Yeah, it's the fact that they do hold altruism. And they're unable to oppose it. See, it's really important to understand the very powerful principle. What ultimately, in the long run, governs the direction of politics and social policy in the country is a certain morality that is accepted by the people who are appointed or elected to implement these policies. If people think that something is morally wrong, you're not going to be able to implement it no matter how many practical arguments you make against it. So programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, housing for the poor, food stamps, all of it is based on what is morally correct. And the Republicans accept that morality. It just happens that most of the Republicans usually don't want to go so far and so fast. They say, do it slower, don't spend quite so much, don't tax quite so much, but they can't oppose it by saying it is morally wrong to say that you have to provide for the needs of somebody else. These programs have to be paid for by whoever has the means to do so and are supposed to help the people who lack the means to do so. They can't say this is a wrong morality and that's why the Republicans keep losing all the time. And even when politically they lose on the issues? Yeah, Joe, you have to look at the sort of the long-term secular trend of the economy and the politics in general. We're moving for well over 100 years in the direction of greater government control, expanded government programs, more spending, more taxation, more regulation, why? Because it is morally right, they believe, to take from those who have the ability and give to those who have the need. But what extent do you think these politicians believe that or are they catering to a population that believes that we, the people, believe that? Well, the people do believe in altruism. In other words, if you ask virtually anybody, they would say, yes, it is a moral virtue to sacrifice. That is the highest ideal. It's selfish to care more for your own interests than for the needs of your neighbor who doesn't have as much as you do. Now they may oppose it on practical grounds and they certainly don't implement it consistently. Altruism can't be implemented consistently. But the extent that altruism is not implemented, people feel guilty. They can't oppose it on principled moral grounds. And that's why it keeps growing. That's why the politicians and the opinion leaders and the theoreticians, the philosophers particularly, but the intellectuals generally are the leaders in terms of determining what is the intellectual trend, what ideas, what philosophic ideas, what moral ideas does the country follow. They are strong advocates of it and the people go along, the people don't have an alternative and they therefore almost by default accept the idea, yes, if you have a dollar and someone doesn't have it, you are morally obligated to give it to them. So Michael asks, whether you think altruism as an idea in the culture is in the decline or is on the rise or has stayed the same over the last 100 years? Obviously, its application of politics has increased, but is the idea itself more popular, less popular or the same? I don't see how it's anything but more popular. If it were less popular, you would have some significant moral opposition to its implementation. You have people getting up and writing up ads, giving speeches saying, no, we don't believe in from each according to his ability to each according to his need. We think if you've earned something honestly, you've earned wealth, that's yours. It's yours by right and no one has a moral claim against it by saying you have it and we don't, you have to give it to us. No one is saying that. You don't see any such public statements. It's unfortunately that it's really it's only objectivism that says explicitly that altruism is a wrong morality and the alternative of racial self-interest, which is a key pillar of objectivism, is advocated only by objectivism, but we'll get people to come around sooner or later, if we live long enough, if the world lasts long enough. Yeah, I was going to say. Michael Ross has the altruism finally in order to get their way. Did they finally weaponize envy or guilt? That's an interesting question. I think guilt more is the more dominant factor because guilt is aimed at the people who've earned the money that altruism wants to drain them up. So envy is on the side of the people demanding sacrifices and the wealth is on the people from whom those sacrifices are being demanded. If the productive people who, as I say, honestly earn their wealth were able to say, I don't feel guilty by not supporting the needy. I don't recognize their moral claim against me. It's my wealth. I've earned it. It's mine. The envy would have no means of achieving anything. It's the guilt that makes the enviers able to extract the blood from the producers. And this is an advanced point about the sanction of the victim. Yes, exactly. It's when an evil is able to be implemented culturally to succeed over long term, it's because of the sanction of the victim. The productive people are, in effect, agreeing with their destroyers. They're not able to say, stop. You have no right to do it. They go along with it half-heartedly, mildly, but they're ragged along and unable to mount a principled protest. So Gail says, I love your book, Too Any of Need. In your experience, what is the most influential quick reply to refute altruism? Or is there any? Well, a quick reply, you want something clever, but just bear in mind that altruism is a moral philosophy. It's a doctrine that has enormous ramifications. And it's not something that can be refuted in a sentence. Now, if you want to make a clever remark, you could think of something and say, well, I'm against altruism because I don't believe in cannibalism. And then that would lead to a discussion if the person you're talking to is actually interested in an intellectual discussion. But it's a philosophy. And it requires an alternative philosophy, a philosophy of rational selfishness. And it requires understanding what that philosophy is. It's more than a sentence or two minutes that will be required to refute the false view. So what is it that makes it so difficult for people in the culture to adopt rational egoism? I mean, altruism is really entrenched, and it's a part of our culture, and it's part of everything. But for those of us who read Ain Rand and read Atlas Shrugged, I mean, it changed us so immediately. But what is it that's so difficult for people to grasp? The crucial barrier, I think, which Ain Rand said, and which I agree with, the crucial barrier that people understanding what altruism is, and more importantly, what selfish is, what rational selfish is, is that it's a package deal. Both altruism and selfishness are taught to people as a package deal, particularly selfishness. People think selfishness means cramping over other people, not respecting their rights. They think thief, criminal, atilla, the hunt, those are people who are selfish. Whereas if you want to refrain from stealing other people's property or murdering them to grab whatever you can, you need to be Mother Teresa. You need to sacrifice. So to them, the alternative is either sacrifice yourself to others and be like Mother Teresa, or sacrifice others to yourself and be like a criminal or, you know, Jack the Ripper. They don't see that the true alternative is to be an eater. The true alternative is to be a self-supporting, self-respecting individual who deals with other people by trading value for value. He doesn't expect them to sacrifice themselves for him, and he doesn't sacrifice himself for them. They, in any transaction or any dealings that they're engaged in, each receives a value in exchange for giving up a value. It's a win-win situation where both parties benefit as against the idea of self-sacrifice, where really both parties ultimately lose. So it's this package deal. People cannot get the true meaning of selfishness. They equate it, as I said, with trampling over other people, and they equate altruism with being nice to your neighbor with benevolence, with, you know, if your neighbor's house burns down, offering him a, you know, meal if you can, offering him a thought to sleep in overnight if you can. That, to them, is the meaning of altruism rather than cannibalism. Altruism actually is because altruism says the moral justification for your existence is you're leaving up what you have for the sake of others. The moral justification is self-sacrifice. Altruism is ultimately, it's a morality of death. That's what people can't get. Yeah, I mean, I think, I guess what frustrates all of us is that even when you go through that with people, and even when you unpack the package deal, it's so hard for them to retain it. They might even get it for five minutes, and then they lose it after a while. I mean, the power of package deals and theistemology of package deals is very difficult to overcome, it seems. Yeah, it's especially, and it's getting harder and harder because unfortunately, as a product of our deteriorating educational system, people are increasingly unable to think, particularly to think in principles. They're very concrete bound. They don't know how to determine whether something is true or not. They just, they go on the internet and they think whatever they want to be true, they think is true. Trump says the election was stolen. They find 100 websites that repeat this. They can't figure out how to arrive at independent conclusions by an independent process of reason. So it's very hard to convince them of an issue that requires them to think out of the concrete bound box that they normally think in. So we just, we need people who are better able to think, and the people who are able to think, which is often the professional intellectuals, are the ones who are most adamantly opposed to entertaining and alternative to their mysticism, collectivism, altruism that drives their ideas. Yeah, I mean, it strikes me, this inability to think, it strikes me as more prevalent in the culture now than I've ever seen it before. You know, Tucker Carlson plays this video presenting the January 6th. There's a bunch of tourists walking through the house in the Senate and he edits video and he puts his own dialogue on top of it and everybody just accepts it as reality. Yeah, I think in politics, unfortunately, both Republicans, Democrats, whatever, it has deteriorated into much more over tribalism. There's no significant interest in finding out what is true. It used to be much more. People were interested in that and there was debate about, you know, legislation as being proposed. Is it good? Is it bad? What will it achieve? What are the consequences? Now it's just tribalism. If you're in the Democrat part of Congress, the leaders want to build past, the Democrats have to vote for it. Republicans want to oppose it. There's no interest in determining what actually is an objectively good policy, what's objectively true. And that's the descent into tribalism that's unfortunately accelerating today. Yeah, and it's, I mean, obviously for professional reasons I've been following what's going on with Silicon Valley Bank and it's fascinating to me. So people's explanations for it. Well, the Democrats, it's completely predictable. They're coming out and saying, well, it's deregulation. Deregulation calls this Trump in 2018 in a bipartisan bill. They deregulated a tiny little bit, which is complete nonsense. And even the Federal Reserve has said it's complete nonsense. That Republicans are explaining it and they're saying the reason Silicon Valley Bank failed is because the board is diverse. They have this DEI and they have this diversity training and they're focused on all this woke stuff. So they weren't running the bank instead, they were busy with this. And neither was interested in the actual truth and what has actually happened at the bank, what decisions were made, and to what extent, those decisions to what extent, the Fed to what extent, what actually caused this, which is my point. It's a terrible thing. And it's reinforced by all these intellectuals and the media particularly. The same, you know, you have this train, the train wrecking. And immediately, the Democrats say, well, obviously, it's because there wasn't enough regulation care of in fact, that was caused by something that the regulations that were supposedly lifted would have affected, which they didn't, they don't care whether there's actually anything in the air that's toxic. So it's, I mean, this has always existed, but it's just to me gotten so much worse that this obliviousness to the truth. And I have to say that in Trump, there's no small blame for this. If you want the archetype of obliviousness to the truth, there's your guy. Yes, I think he took it to the next level. We always knew politicians lied, but he relished in lying, and he was fine with lying. When he was caught, he didn't care. It was just a, you know, truth didn't matter as long as he attained his goal, which is the essence of pragmatism, right? Yeah, Trump took it even farther. I don't think it's accurate to say he didn't care whether he was saying the truth. I think he has no concept of the truth. The truth is, whatever he can get people to believe, that's the truth to him. So he's not embarrassed if he says one thing today, the other another thing tomorrow. You know, in the past politicians at least had some shame, but they were worried if they're going to get caught. He doesn't care if he gets caught. It doesn't mean anything. It's exponentially worse his attitude towards the truth than what most politicians used to have way before him. So, unfortunately, all the topics I have today are negative. If anybody out there wants to ask some positive questions or some ways, some positive issues, go ahead because this is going to be depressing show otherwise. So one of the issues, obviously, Democrats have raised a left more broadly, has raised the cultural left more than anybody else is in particularly, you know, during the BLM riots demonstrations and then riots in 2020 is this whole idea that in America we still have or we have systemic racism that there is that there's somehow embedded into our laws into our system of governance system of economics. You know, racism is embedded into all of that. So it's systemic. Do you get a sense? Is there any basis for that? Is there any basis of truth to that? Yes and no. So let me explain that. Let's start the way you have to start first of all is by understanding what does racism mean? What they say racism is systemic in this country? What do they mean by racism? Well, in fact, the proper meaning of racism is judging an individual not by the choices and the actions he has made or taken, but by the racial lineage he comes from by his skin color, by his membership in this racial collective. That is what racism is. Whether you choose to then reward people because of their race or punish people because of their race makes no difference. It's judging people by race that's the essence of the evil of racism. Now when the left says America is a systemically racist country, what kinds of things are there? What is their view of racism? Their view is racism is not simply judging people by race rather than by the individual choices and accomplishments, but racism to them means a sort of selective, a racist egalitarianism. They think whatever somebody of one race has, somebody of the other race has to have as well. There can't be any difference in outcomes between one race and the member of one race and the member of another. So for example, if one year the Oscars fail to nominate any black actors for an Academy award, that is taken as evidence of racism. If art galleries have more, disproportionately more artworks, paintings, sculptures by white artists than by blacks, that's racism. And the remedy therefore is to get rid of some of the white artists and replace them with black artists. So if more black people, proportionally more black people are shot by police than white people, that is taken as racism. And the facts don't matter. Now just as it doesn't matter whether this artwork by a white person is in fact better than the artwork by a black person, it doesn't matter if proportionately two or three times more crime is committed by black people than white people and therefore it's obvious that more of them will be engaged in encounters with the police and be shot. That doesn't matter. If blacks have something, lack something that whites have, whatever the reason, that is racism. So when they say therefore that America has systemic racism, that is what they mean. They mean these kinds of the failure of egalitarianism is a sign of racism. Now, can I add one more point? Because I answered yes and no to your question. I have to see the yes part. So there is no anti-black racism, anti-black discrimination, systemically in America, which I can go into further evidence of that, there is no embedded and trenched discrimination against black in our institutions. There are obviously fringe groups that have it. There's still a KKK, there are bad boys. These are people who meet in basements. They don't like op-eds in the New York Times editorial page, whereas the other side does. Now, why do I say there is, there's a yes to that question? Because there is systemic racism in America. It is except that it's anti-white racism. Every affirmative action program, the voters, the special privileges, the idea that in Boston there's a cardiac hospital that has a policy by giving priority to admissions by blacks rather than by whites. You have the former, the mayor of Chicago who's going to be removed soon, who's going to not have a second term. She's leaving Lightfoot. Lightfoot. He can hold a press conference and say whites may not attend, only black. All of this is based on altruism, but it's racism. It is judging people not by what they actually are individually, but by race. And all of these programs where university admissions and hireings are influenced by the race, the color of the people involved. That is, quote, reverse racism, but it's actual racism. So the irony is that the very people who are accusing America of systemic racism are the ones who are actually implementing it and are the ones most guilty of the evil of racism. And this is a consequence of the fact that they equate racism with power. That is that you can only be racist if you have power. Racism to them means the majority in power oppressing the minority who lacks power. It's not the issue of judging individual by skin color because they do that all the time. They endorse that. They advocate it. I think that's good. Big promoters of it, yeah. Yes. So they have it. They've perverted the meaning of racism, and therefore it doesn't apply to minority groups who are supposedly lack the power to run our institutions. The real irony is that when they say there's systemic racism, what is the system that they think gives rise to this racism? What's the system that they're actually denouncing? Well, it's the system of individualism. It's the system of capitalism. It's the system of judging each individual by merit of saying, I'm going to hire the person best qualified for this job. I'm going to admit to Harvard the person with the best test scores, not the person who's race supposedly entail some special treatment. And that's what the left proposes. That's what the individualism, which is the opposite of racism, is what the left regards as racism, and that's the ultimate perversion. And part of the tragedy here is that, unfortunately, America did have systemic racism a long time ago. And part of the way to cure it was this so-called reverse racism and institutionalizing that with affirmative action and aspects of the civil rights bill. Yes, that's what the left wants. It likes what the left has succeeded in doing. But if you look at the history of our country, the left points to the fact that slavery and Jim Crow laws, and certainly they existed, and certainly they were evil, and those were institutionalized racist policies. But we had a civil war where hundreds of thousands of soldiers died fighting the racist South, fighting slavery, and what greater sign of a country's rejection of slavery could there be than being willing to go to war in order to prevent and to eliminate it. Now, it wasn't immediately eliminated. You had Jim Crow laws for a long time, and those were eliminated. But if you look at the trajectory, what is the trend for, since slavery began and since it was overthrown and since the Jim Crow laws were abolished, the trend is for less and less discrimination against blacks. More blacks are in positions they never were able to go in before, whether it's positions as police officers, or as police chiefs, or as baseball players, or as opera singers. They were used to be banned from this, and now it's commonplace. In the 50s, I think it's 5% in the poll, 5% of people only approved of interracial marriage. Now, the majority of Americans approve it. It's a non-issue. So all of these signs that racism is no longer institutionalized, it is no longer accepted by the institutions of our culture are ignored and dismissed by the left, and that's a real evasion. And I think, sadly, what's happening is you're going to see more racism on the right as a response to the racism of the left. Yes, I think so. The tribalism on both sides is growing. And yes, as a reaction to this, you know, to anti-white racism, the growth of anti-black racism may start to increase. But as of now, it's still important to note that it is not endorsed by the institutions that influence our culture. You could never get up on a college campus and preach white supremacy. You can get on a news program, not even on Fox News, and say blacks are inferior to whites. You would never get a platform that is not accepted by all the people who control the ideas of our institutions. It's regarded as morally abhorrent to claim white supremacy. I agree, although I see it already have been eroded quite a bit in places like Fox News. I mean, Tucker Carlson could talk about replacement theory of immigration and get away with it, and it's accepted. And five years ago, or 10 years ago, that certainly would have been So let's switch topic. Unfortunately, not to something more positive. You have moved to Florida. So you're now a resident of the state of Florida. So you, I think, are more exposed to Rick DeSantis and Governor DeSantis than most of us. I'm curious about your views of him. I mean, he seems to be, for many Republicans, he seems to be the savior, the guy who's going to save the party and win, and he's viewed as efficacious. And I don't think anybody thinks he's charismatic, but everybody thinks he's efficient. So what is your assessment, both in comparison to Trump, but more importantly, just objectively, is Ron DeSantis good? I'm repelled by DeSantis. People are attracted to him because he opposes the left, he opposes this so-called woke culture. But he has no idea of what that opposition needs to consist of. He is not a friend of freedom at all. And let me explain what I mean by that. He cannot distinguish between private action and government action. So, for example, during COVID, he was against vaccination mandates. He was against having the government require everybody to get a vaccine. Now, I think that's a valid position, not necessarily for government employees like hospital nurses and doctors who are in public hospitals. I think it's perfectly appropriate to require that type of vaccinations during the night of COVID. But other non-public employees, he was opposed to having them be required to get vaccinated. That's fine, agree with that. But he, as part of that package, also prohibited private companies from requiring their employees to be vaccinated. So because he doesn't want the government telling you whether to get a vaccine, he said it's the same thing. I don't want your employer to tell you whether you should have a vaccine. Now, that is a terrible equivocation. An employer has the right to say, as a condition of employment, I want you to have a vaccine. I'm afraid you're going to infect my other employees. I want my business not to have to face that threat, whether he's right or wrong. That's his right to make that decision. It's his business. This is his right to determine how much he wants to offer you and you can reject it as a salary. It's one of the conditions of employment. You're free to reject it and work somewhere else. But DeSantis makes no distinction. This is the essence of fascism. I'll give you another example. DeSantis posed legislation to forbid elementary grades in public schools from raising gender issues to first and second and third graders, which is fine. But Disney, which is based in Florida, came out in opposition to it. Their executives said they disagree with that. So DeSantis decided, well, you can't disagree with my policies. He punished them. He took away their complicated tax situation that they were in. He took that away from them as punishment for speaking out against his proposed legislation. Now, there too, that is such a quintessentially fascist mentality where if a private person disagrees with you, you, the government authority, I'm going to punish him. I'm going to set the forces of government against him. So I am very opposed to DeSantis. He is certainly better than Trump. How much better? I'm not sure. But it's terrible if he becomes the only alternative to Trump. There are much better alternatives to Trump in the Republican Party, I think. So who of the potential candidates out there, who would you think is a better alternative to both of them? I was afraid you'd ask that. Yeah, I know. Well, I find it hard to get enthusiastic about anybody. I don't even know all the candidates, but let Nikki Haley, for example, I like a lot of things about her. But she, like almost every other prominent Republican, felt compelled to embrace Trump during the height of his influence. And are reluctant, including her, are not reluctant to withdraw that support even when Trump is holding, even after the January 6 riots. She is reluctant to distance herself from Trump. So if she does, I think she's a good candidate. She did a lot of good things, particularly in foreign policy. Who else is a candidate? I don't even know who else is a candidate. So I might vote for her if she actually runs in the primaries. I mean, potentially there's Pence and Pompeo and all part of Trump's administration. So there's almost nobody from outside. Maybe the governor of Virginia, Junkins. Yeah, I don't know him. Yeah. But it would be great to find either one of two types of people. Either someone was one of these never Trumpers from the beginning, who seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth, or I would even be willing to have a Trump supporter who turned against him after January 6. If they did that, I'm willing to vote for them. All right. So we have a lot of questions. So let me go there and then we can see if we've got other topics we can talk about. But let's do some of these. Ian says, okay, just appreciation for Peter for starting and writing the intellectual activist. Well, thank you. Thank you. That was a long endeavor. I was very, very proud of that. That was 12 years of life. What? As you should be. And I said, yeah. Thank you. So Adam asks, please contrast the law of Portugal designed on enlightenment principles after the fall of the dictatorship with English law naturally evolved from trial by combat. Is our war and drugs a consequence of the latter? Well, let me give you a surprising answer. I have no idea. No idea. Zero. Any views on the war and drugs? Sorry? Any views on the war and drugs? I mean, it's a big issue right now with going into Mexico and going to war with Mexico, going to war with the Mexican cartels or treating them as terrorists. Yeah. This war on drugs is and has been such a disaster. It's exactly like prohibitions. I actually liked the war on alcohol in the 20s and 30s. People are going to be right to be self-destructive. If somebody wants to believe in God, he's entitled to somebody wants to believe that two plus two is five, he's entitled to the government can't stop him. All the government should do is to stop people from violating other people's rights, not from destroying themselves. So this whole war on drugs, A is morally wrong. It's a violation of a person's right to take even whatever it is, cocaine, heroin. If you want to become an alcoholic, you have the right to do so. It's your life destroyed. You can commit suicide if you want. And the consequence, the terrible consequences that it just has enhanced the power of criminals. It gives the gains the same way that prohibition created a lot of these gains because they were providing something that there was a demand for that was illegal. All these gains in these cartels that kill so many innocent people are fostered by the government's policy of illegalizing drugs. So rid of that, you have an enormous benefit, including a lot fewer people being killed. And it not only increases the power of the criminals, but it also increases the power of the government and it gives them the tools to violate our rights in a variety of different means. I said something controversial. I'm going to get a positive question somewhere. Yeah, this one is calling me on something I said last show. So Papa Campbell wants to call me to the mat on this. Ayuan, did I hear you correctly last show saying it is proper for the government to initiate force in nuclear power plants to force them to buy insurance. Isn't their rational self-interest to do that anyway? So I'll just answer that and then if you want to comment, Peter, I mean, I don't know if you agree with me or not. So yes, of course there's a rational self-interest to them to do it anyway, but the point I was trying to make is if you engage in an activity that can objectively be seen as risky and we can debate whether nuclear power plants is risky or not, but if you engage in an activity, you know, I can imagine a court requiring you to at the very least buy insurance to provide some kind of guarantee that somebody is overseeing, some third party is overseeing the activity and in a sense making sure it's not risky. So but it has to be objectively risky. It has to be something that a court finds as a threat to neighbors or to people in the area. And by the way, I don't consider the initiation of force. No, I would slightly disagree actually. Leaving aside the question about nuclear plants themselves which are not at risk, which are much safer than virtually any other power-generating entity. So leave that aside. But let's say you find some activity which is objectively dangerous to the neighborhood. You know, somebody is hairlessly producing dynamite, whatever. If that's the case, I don't think the issue is insurance. I think the government can shut it down. If you are presenting a risk, you don't need to wait till the plant explodes. If there is in fact an objective risk to passers-by or neighbors, the government can either shut it down or require it to institute safety procedures. But insurance is just paying back to the damages done. And if there is the threat of damage, I don't think you have to wait till the damage is done. Yeah, I agree with that. I think the issue here is if somebody is building a dynamite plant in my neighborhood and dynamite is risk-involved. And I don't know that there's anything specifically that they're doing that is going to result in explosion. Obviously, if they're engaging in risky activity that is explicitly risky, the government can shut them down. I think the marketplace provides a mechanism and that is insurance because insurance doesn't want to have to pay out. And it could be that the neighbors, I can imagine a situation where the neighbors can take it to court and the court is looking for a way to make sure that this plant is indeed safe and insurance would be a mechanism to do it. But exactly how you define these things is not easy. And this is why we have courts. If we had the rational legal framework, a lot of these things are easily dealt with. They're far less complex than they seem. Adam says, even if you convince the productive about the evils of altruism, how can you possibly convince those in need, which seem to be the vast majority these days? Oh, but you don't need to convince them. The power of the needy is only the power of the productive. If you look at Atlas Shrug, what happens to the world when the productive people go on strike? You can proclaim your need from now till Tuesday. What's going to happen? The productive people say, talk all you want. My wealth is mine. I've earned it. I'm entitled to it. You're not. What are you going to do? You want to come to me with a gun? I'll build a better gun to defend myself. So this is this is important. Why you raised the point, Yaron, about the importance of the sanction of the victim, power of altruism by definition, because you're saying here you've got on the one hand productive people who make life possible, who produce all the wealth, produce all the values. On the other side, you have people who don't have anything. They lack it. They're living in hobbles. They don't have their homeless. They're poor. They don't have food. Who has the greater power? Who is dependent upon whom? And once the productive people withdraw their sanction, which means once they recognize that they do not have a moral obligation to sacrifice themselves for the sake of those who lack what they have, then they're out of their power. Then nothing can be done to them. Yeah. And it's not a numbers game. It's not who has the most people involved. It's who has the most power in a real sense. And that power comes from production. It comes from their ability to produce and live. Okay, Liam says, how do we, yeah, go ahead. No, it's a, you know, hen productive people have more influence than a thousand nonproductive people. The nonproductive don't have anything by definition, except their need. Liam says, how do we get people to invest in the pain of transitioning away from the mixed economy to a fully free one? A lot of job losses and stock market swings will occur until unregulated supply and demand alight themselves properly. Yeah, that's true. There is, there is going to be dislocation, but, but I think one important principle, which I think I ran stated, which I agree with, is to deregulate in pairs. In other words, excuse me, let's say you're deregulating, take away certain regulations on business, take away certain regulations on individuals or on, on, on labor. Let's see, well, be a good example. You can get rid of the minimum wage, for example, and then eliminate any restrictions and immigration. You want to, it's a mistake to think that let's call it deregulation as the, as the label for the whole move towards capitalism. It's a mistake to think that deregulation is going to have this act of effects in a short run and you just have to wait 10 years or 20 years until the positive effects come about. Now, if you get rid of rent control today, for example, so you will have people who are now in rent control departments having to pay more rent and find other apartments, but simultaneously, you're going to have many people who could not find apartments moving into those at market rates and having a place to live. Whereas before, maybe they, you know, they had to remove six other roommates because there's a housing shortage because of rice controls. So there, every deregulation, whatever dislocation there is, will always have a positive counterpart and it will not take that long for the positives to take effect. No, I think that's right. And if the deregulation is done smartly, and what I would do is I would deregulate those areas that are going to produce wealth quickly and effectively first, so that you get a thriving robust economy and then do the ones that might put people out of jobs and temporarily and things like that, because then they're losing their jobs into a thriving economy. So there are lots of opportunities for them. There are lots of ways to do this in a way that is going to be win-win really for everybody in the short run. We all know it's win-win in the long run, but even in the short run is a win-win proposition. That's great. You should write an article like that. I did one of my shows, I did a pretend state of the union, you know, instead of what Biden said, what would be my program for the first four years of a deregulatory thing. It's fun to think about because it's a nice fantasy at this point. It needs to be an article. Yes, I agree. I need a co-author. Clark asks, is there an altruistic motive to bans on doctor-assisted suicide, as though everyone has a duty to suffer and sacrifice like Christ on a cross, have the power to choose when to end your life is selfish? Yes, definitely. One of the very destructive aspects of altruism is its view of human nature. Altruism regards people as inherently hopeless, dependent, incompetent, incapable of taking care of themselves. This is why the welfare state and the regulatory state will hand in hand that both based on a certain view of human nature that requires government to not only feed people, give them, you know, an income to survive, but tell them what kinds of food they should eat and what kinds of exercise they need to do and what they should, what's dangerous and what isn't. So when it comes to the issue of assisted suicide, the many state, the regulatory state says we have to be concerned with the person who can't take care of himself, who can't come to an intelligent decision about whether to end his life. The basis for the all regulations set like the FDA. The basis of the FDA is it's not to prevent fraud, which there are readily enough laws about that, it's to prevent people from using their own judgment, going to their own doctors and deciding, did I take this medicine or not? Is the risk worth the benefit worth the risk based on his own individual situation? The government says, no, you can't decide that the FDA has to make one rule for everybody because people are inherently incompetent and irrational. And it's not just that everybody is irrational. Even if most people are able to do it, we have to sacrifice the people who are able for the few who are unable. That is the whole again, the premise of altruism. So when it comes to assisted suicide, the altruists say there are going to be some people who don't know how to make this judgment properly. They're a little sick, they're depressed, they're going to kill themselves, we don't want that to happen. We need to ban anybody from committing suicide from having assisted suicide. So yes, it does stem from the altruist view of human nature. And you think there is a certain emphasis on, you know, you're suffering, who cares? I mean, it's... Part of altruism is about demanding that you suck, you know, pain. Yes, altruism is an outgrowth of Christianity, believes that the focus on removing suffering, this is what many hardcore altruists believe, this focus on removing suffering, on living life, pain-free, on finding new drugs that will make your all sicknesses and let you live, you know, 50 years or 100 years longer. That's a selfish orientation. Your goal in life is not to have joy, to partake in achieving values and being happy. Your goal is, you know, bestowing, take whatever God decides to inflict upon you. If you're suffering, it's because God has a plan for you. Don't think that you know better. So the interest element which says the desire to alleviate suffering is selfish, stop it. All right, Michael, I can ask, is the term reductionist an anti-concept? It's often thrown at me when I make the case for objectivism during philosophical discussion, as though identifying general cause and effect relationship is reducing issues in an overly simplistic way. Yes, I think reductionism, if I understand the question correctly, is the opposition to reducing something complex to something simple, in effect reducing the variety of concrete to one overriding or underlying principle. You say it's an attempt to avoid, to criticize simplistic answers. Simplistic is an anti-concept. That is the same idea. The idea that it is something wrong to make something complex into something simple. There is a legitimate concept of oversimplification, where you make it, you take it too far, but just the very idea that a complex thing can be reduced to a simple thing, that's what's called being simplistic. And that's an anti-concept. And if that's what reductionism is, yes, that's an equally invalid and destructive concept, anti-concept. And ultimately, what knowledge is, is reducing to reality, is being able to take those abstractions and pointing at things in reality that make them. You know, man isn't like an animal. Man lives by grasping concepts. Every single concept you have from table to light acceleration, the most complex scientific concept, is reductionist. It's reducing a number of concretes to one single unit. So if you're against reductionism, you're against concepts, which means you want, nor the reductionist, you want to reduce man to the level of an animal. That's what the reductionism would amount to. So Frank asks, what is the connection between altruism and risk aversion as the basis for government control and regulating the results produced by unpredictable individuals? Well, that's a vague term. Risk aversion, it's relation to altruism is what I was referring to earlier. Normally in a pre-market, each individual decides what risk he wants to undertake. There's nothing, no such thing as a life that's risk free. Everything you do when you're from crossing the street to driving a car to playing tennis, entails the possibility of something going wrong. And you therefore are deciding each time is the risk worth a benefit. The rather is the benefit worth the risk. And you are the only one who can and is entitled to decide that for yourself. We have a regulatory state, a nanny state, which says we want to eliminate or reduce risk. We're not going to allow individuals to decide what rugs they should take for their illnesses, what food they should or shouldn't take, etc. We're going to make life risk averse. And obviously, what they're doing is making the individual undertake risks he doesn't want and forbid him from undertaking the risk he does. So if they forbid him from taking a new drug, for example, which he goes to his doctor and the doctor says, you know, you're sick. This new drug that the FDA hasn't approved would help you even though there are side effects and the guy's willing to take it. The government says, no, we're going to make you risk averse. So he is now undertaking the risk of getting sicker, which he didn't want to voluntarily do, but the government forced him to. Yep. So Adam asks, on the point again, on the sanction of the victim, the productive have no gulch and the needy have larger numbers to control power in government. So how did the productive then sustain themselves if they have no, we live in a democracy, right? So people can vote to take their stuff. Well, here's a very simple way. Get the productive people, let's say you have, you're going to have 500 Hank Reardon's. Okay. And they've all been convinced that they have a right to their well, that productiveness is a moral virtue, that altruism is evil. They will start doing what Reardon did during his trial. They will start issuing statements of opposing government intervention in their lives, opposing government regulation on principled grounds. And if you have 500 or 1,000 of these people, imagine 500 Reardon speeches that he made at his trial, imagine the effect that would have. It's very easy to think that the problem with the mixed economy is numbers. There are more people in need than there are people who produce the well. It is not an issue of numbers. It's an issue of ideas. It's an issue of how articulately, how persuasively are you able to convey certain ideas? Look at Iron Man, she's one person. How many people have she influenced by one person? If you had, you know, 100 Iron Man's or 100 Reardon's or 100 John Gold's, it's an intellectual battle that you don't need to have a Gold's Gulch for people to withdraw to. We're not at that stage in our society. It's still relatively free. You're still free to write books and to issue up ads and to give speeches. The problem is we don't have the writers and the speech makers. That's the problem, not that the needy are too many. All right. Andrew asks, he says, attempting a positive interlude, he says, would you describe your most intellectually stimulating experience with Iron Man in person? My most intellectually stimulating, well, I had only a couple of interactions with Iron Man. I wouldn't call anyone intellectually stimulating because we got into an argument. So should I give them the story? Yeah, tell them the story of the argument. This doesn't quite answer your question. But when I was running the intellectual activist, this was the second year in 1980, right after Russia had invaded Afghanistan and the 1980 Olympics were scheduled to be held in Russia. So through an intermediary, Iron Man offered to write a little article for me about why we should boycott the Moscow Olympics, which I published in TIA in, I think it's in the spring of 1980. I remember the exact issue. And I thought, you know, obviously I wasn't going to edit her. I didn't change anything. So we were discussing how the article would be placed in TIA. And I told her, you know, by the way, I'm going to have a little bioline saying, you know, Bi-Iron Rand, and the Bi-Iron Rand is the author of the, you know, best-selling Atlas Shrugman, The Found Head. I think that was what I wanted. And she took offense at that. She was very angry at it. She was, she regarded as an insult because she thought I was pandering to her audience because her audience knew what who I ran was. I didn't have to tell them. It's as though I was pretending that I was kind of distancing myself from Iron Man. I didn't expect my audience to know who I ran was. So she got very, excuse me, she got very insulted at that. We had a, you know, long disagreement. It was very, I'm not a long, you know, 20 or 30 minute discussion about her on the phone. And obviously I agreed. I said, I'll take it out. If that's what she wants, I'll take it out. But it was not a pleasant discussion. But I have to add that the next day we were on the phone again, and she was very pleasant. She didn't, you know, regard this as end of the relationship. She was fine, you know, and I wanted to pay her for the article. She didn't want that. She sent her stamps when she gets, she collected stamps. So if I got stamps from foreign countries, I would send it to her. So we ended on a good note, even though it's not quite what I would call intellectually stimulating. I think Andrew got what he wanted. So that was good. Alright, let's see, we've got a bunch more questions. I don't know that you have an answer to this one. Which Marvel DC superhero villain has the most objectivist characteristics and why? Okay, I do not know the Marvel villains or heroes. My comic book reading days ended with Superman and Batman when they were actually heroes, not when they were turned into, you know, moody, neurotic, anti-heroes that they are today. So can't answer your question. Do you want to ask me about DC comics from 50 years ago? I could answer you. I think people, Iron Man, you know, I don't know. I didn't even read comics when I was a teenager, so I'm completely out. You literally deprived childhood. I really did. Not Marvel or DC, so I'm completely deprived. Alright, James asks, are gun control laws motivated by altruism? Since a few lunatics shot up a school, law-abiding gun owners must altruistically sacrifice their own gun rights for the common good. Yes, if you're talking about gun laws of the kind that are advocated, such as banning guns entirely. So I'm certainly a poster. I am not opposed to certain gun laws. I think guns are a special situation because when you have a gun, you possess a gun, you're announcing you intend to use force against someone else. And that the government has a right to say, well, okay, you have a right to have the weapon because it was a legitimate use for it in self-defense when there's no police around so it can't prohibit guns. But it has a role, for example, to prevent guns from being sold to minors and then guns from being sold to felons. So it has a role in the sale or possession of guns that it doesn't have with any other product. It's not like, you know, you own a baseball bat and it can be used to kill somebody, therefore, we're going to control baseball bats. There's a legitimate use for baseball bats. There's the use of guns by its nature is to initiate force against somebody. And you want the government, therefore, can say, we want to make sure it's being used in self-defense. But to complete the answer, the advocates, those who want to ban guns entirely, yes, they're based on the whole regulatory premise that I discussed earlier that, well, some people are capable of using guns irrationally, therefore, we're going to prevent people who will use guns rationally from decrending themselves. That is based on the altruist view of man as helpless and dependent. Frank asks, does altruism have the presumption of purity because it can never be used in itself of being predatory or parasitic? Why? It's an empty parasitic. Well, this is exactly what is up to the proper the defenders of selfishness to point out that altruism is parasitic. There's nothing more parasitic. Altruism feeds off the productive. Altruism says, if you have produced a value, you have to give it up. If you lack a value, you're entitled to lay claim on the energies in the life of those who have produced values. What is more parasitic than that? What is more parasitic than cannibals who say, your meat, I'm hungry, I'm going to eat you. That's an altruism. Right. So not your average algorithm, I ask. Do you regard people who have inherited wealth and never have to work as parasites since they're not producers, although they did acquire the money through voluntary means? Would I regard them as parasites? If you mean that, literally, if you mean somebody who engages in no productive activity at all, if someone just sits on his couch, watches television all day, you know, and has got these gold bars in his basement that he periodically sells, yes, I would regard him as a parasite. He's living off the efforts of others, his, you know, the people he inherited the money from, even though it's not forced, it is still parasitic. Narcissism doesn't necessarily entail force. If you have a mooching relative living off you, Philip Reardon was a parasite of Hank Reardon. He wasn't using force. He was using altruism as guilt, but parasitism does not require force. Wyatt asks, are libertarians really so bad? Have you perhaps painted libertarians with too broad of a brush? Well, you know, libertarianism is another one of those package deals that people want to interpret in their own way. Now, remember the original force of the concept of libertarian, I think I'm correct in this, applied to free market economists, you know, Henry Haslett and Von Mises, they were labeled libertarian because they were opposed government intervention in the economy. That's if libertarian were restricted to that usage, that would be a legitimate concept and it'd be fine. The problem is it's not restricted to that. Libertarianism now, the hardcore libertarianism means people opposed to government and then they don't differentiate between legitimate functions of government and illegitimate functions of government. So it's not that they are anti-statism, as much as they are anti-state. Those libertarians, and I use the term libertarian to encompass them for this reason. Even libertarian entities, organizations, people who reject anarchism, who say they approve of a police force and of a military, many of them nonetheless regard anarchists as allies in the fight for freedom, like Cato Institute for example. Now they've become much more soft core and moderate, but still they regard anarchists as fellow travelers. They don't agree with anarchism necessarily, but they do regard them anarchists and libertarians as agreeing on, let's say, 95% of the issues. So they say, okay, we'll disagree on the 5% where they want to get rid of the police, but we'll agree on 95% where they want to get rid of government everywhere else. And that is a terrible mistake. I gave a whole talk on this at OCon last year. It's not that libertarians or anarchists, it's not that anarchists are 95% correct and 5% wrong. They're 100% wrong because even where they agree on, let's say, getting rid of the FDA or the FTC, they're doing it for the wrong reason. And the right answer for the wrong reason is the wrong answer. So that is why I'm against very much, adamantly against libertarianism because they ultimately undercut capitalism, particularly in their foreign policy, where this hostility to the state manifests itself and they're against virtually any military activity, military action by the United States, they allow the left to smear capitalists as warmongers and interventionists because of this infusion and package dealing that libertarianism has helped create. So the worst enemies are the people who are nominally your friends. So like the religious conservatives claim to be for capitalism, they're worse enemies than the outright liberals who openly oppose this capitalist. They're the same with libertarians. Yeah. And I think one of the manifestations of that right now is their attitude towards Ukraine and Russia and their overt support of Russia because it's opposed to the US and the West and they hate the West more. Yeah. And they hate the left and the left, to that was taken over from the Western culture and therefore a culture like Russia, which says we're not going to promote transgender rights. We're not going to promote gay rights there. We're going to have traditional religious values. We're going to phrase the Catholic, the Russian Orthodox Church, those that gains praise, that elicits praise from these Republican and it's a terrible, you have to distance yourself from them. Send me up to distance yourself from almost everybody today, unfortunately. They are very anti-America, which is also a libertarianism. The father of libertarianism, Murray Rothbard, was a real anti-American. He was in the 60s and 70s at the height of the Cold War when Russia was ruling half of Europe. Eastern Europe where the Eastern European countries were under Russia's thumb, under Russia's dictatorial rule and Rothbard at that time declared, even though Russia may be internally a dictatorship, it's the most peace-loving country in the world as against America, which is the most warmongering. That's where this libertarian perversion begins. Absolutely. Michael asks, are Catholics more altruistic than Protestants? Is Judaism the least altruistic religion? I don't know. I don't have a strong view on that. I think that Judaism is a little bit more this worldly than the others. There's a focus. Material success is not as denounced in Judaism as it is in other religions. Judaism promotes learning knowledge and not just religious knowledge, but it praises learned people. I'm not a whitewash, because it still is a religion and it still is destructive, but I would guess it's a little bit more this world worldly than Christian religions. And you don't have an opinion about Catholics versus Protestants? No, I don't. I don't. Protestantism started as being more anti-worldly than Catholicism, but how it manifests itself now, I don't know. Michael asks, does altruism lead to power lust and evasion, or does the desire for power and evasion of reality lead to the creation of a scam that is altruism? It's a mistake to think of a dominant philosophy, a dominant morality as having its influence by virtue of its being a scam. In other words, you're thinking that nobody takes altruism seriously. It's just a means of leaving other people dry. And that's not true. That is true that people exploit altruism. It's true that there are people drawn to altruism for that purpose. But people believe altruism is a valid principle. People believe that it is moral to say everyone according to his ability, to everyone according to his need, that is a valid principle, regardless of whether there are people who just don't believe it and use it as a scam, as powerless. It's effect exists because people take it as true and take the reverse. If we got to the point where people would understand that it's not true, that it's ridiculous, that it's a perversion, that of course it's not true. The fact that you produce something means you have to give it up for someone. If people realize that, altruism would go away. What are your thoughts on the equivocation between charity and altruism? Yeah, as I said, altruism prevails to a large extent because it's a package deal. People equate it with benevolence and people equate it with giving charity, which means, in its proper sense, giving money that you can afford to give to someone who deserves it, which means someone whose misfortune is not the product of his own actions and choices. Excuse me. It means not giving it to some homeless bum who spends his money on alcohol and drugs. It means if you think somebody has gone through some suffering and it's not his fault, like your next-door neighbor, his apartment is flooded. He didn't do anything and he's out of an apartment for a few days and you want to help him out and you have the means to do so and it's not a real sacrifice, then fine. But the crucial point is the person receiving the aid has to do something for you. Namely, he has to say thank you. He has to say it's a gift. He has to take it as benevolence, not as a moral duty, not as a debt that you're paying to the person in need. If he does that, then it's legitimate under certain circumstances to give charity. If the recipient, however, regards it as his moral entitlement, then you should never give to such a person or an organization. Steve writes, excellent show despite depressing content. Thank you, Steve. Okay. I don't know if you want to answer this question. We've only got two questions left. I don't know if you want to answer this one. I'll read it and you can decide. Is the objective standard a fraudulent organization as the Atlas Society? They both can't explain INRAN's ideas properly. No, I don't really want to talk about that. I think they are opposed, irrationally opposed to the people at the INRAN Institute, people I admire and respect, including their own. So I have nothing but disregard for that whole objective standard organization. All right. The last question, I think we've kind of talked about this already, but how do you view the political landscape in 2024? Are you still glad you voted for Biden? Do you think DeSantis is doing a good job in Florida? Well, I've talked about DeSantis. So as to the first part of the question, am I glad that I voted for Biden? I'll go even further. I'm glad that I voted for Hillary in 2016. Very glad. I wish she had won. I still wish she had won. And I think I've been proven right. Trump has emasculated the Republican Party. I don't know if that's the right verb. He has destroyed whatever good, as meager as that was, whatever good there was in the Republican Party, as an opposition to the Democrats and the leftist, Trump has destroyed that. And so I'm glad Trump lost in the last election. I hope he doesn't get the nomination next election. Had he not won the 2016 election, the battle for freedom even in the political realm would have been much more in our favor than it is now. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And you can see that maybe it's so obvious, for example, right now in the discussion of entitlements before 2016, Republicans talked about reforming entitlements. They talked even about completely reforming Medicare and turning it into a vultures system. They weren't as radical as we are, as we would like them to be, but they're at least moving in that direction. Now there's no discussion of that. No debate. It's untouchable. It's completely untouchable. And partly it's, you know, the better people, the handful of better people in the Republican Party have been ousted because they could not embrace Trump, like Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan, whatever his flaws, he was among the better people in the Republican Party. And he left because he could not stomach Trump and Trump made him go. And there were a number of people like that. The Republican Party is left with the dregs. So you're not going to have very many people fighting for genuine reduction in government. They have to disassociate themselves entirely from Trump and find a replacement. All right. So we need to end on some kind of positive note. Absolutely. Yeah. So positive note is we have a very positive event coming up in the summer, which is OConn, where people are, you're invited to attend. You're going to hear positive values. You're going to hear interesting ideas. Yaron will tell you again why he's optimistic about the future. So please, here's a positive note to end on. It's like a week's retreat into Gold Scullch. I'm an enjoyment. And it's in Florida. It's in Miami. It's going to be, it's in a nice hotel. It will be too hot, but still. It will be too hot and humid. But you're in the hotel. Who leaves the hotel during COVID? During COVID, during OConn. COVID on the mind. So yes, it's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun. So over the 4th of July, we can come spend it with us. And can I hold up my book once more? And it's available from Amazon. Read it and reread it. Yes. You can find it on Amazon or any other online bookstore. It is available there. So order it. All right. Thank you, Peter. It was a pleasure. My pleasure. We'll have to do this again soon. Absolutely. Thanks, guys. Thanks for all the support. And I will see you all tomorrow morning. Bye.