 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Friday, April 19th. Hope everybody's having a good day. End of our first week on the new schedule. I'm curious what people think. Do you guys have any opinions about how it's going, whether you like the format, don't like the format? You can use the chat to let me know or put it in the comments or whatever. But we'll be going with this format for a while just to see how it goes. And then at some point we'll make a decision about how to continue. All right, let's see. Israel retaliated. Israel bombed Iran. I mean, you barely noticed because the sound was very muted. But yeah, Israel actually did bomb Iran. The Iranians are comparing it to a pinprick and have said they would not retaliate, which I guess is what the United States and Israel wanted. They wanted to bomb Iran in a way that would not cause the Iranians to retaliate. They did something very, very, very small, but supposedly very, very symbolic. Now, it could be, I mean, there was the possibility. I'm not saying this is what's going to happen, but it could be a possibility that this was some kind of precursor to what is going to happen in the next few days, or maybe Israel does something small like this every day, or I don't know. But if this is it, then this really hasn't achieved anything other than letting us know that Israel has some pretty amazing capabilities. I think everybody knew that already. I expect that even Iranians knew that already. But just to make sure, today Israel did something that would be cool out of context. As you know, Iran launched over 300 projectiles, drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles towards Israel on Saturday, and they didn't do any damage. 99% of them were shot down, and nothing really happened. And the immediate reaction was, oh, we're going to crush them. We're going to do something devastating. We're going to show them we're going to, this is all out war. We're going to take them on. And then it was a little muted. And then Netanyahu had a phone call with Biden. And I guess Biden is such a overwhelmingly authoritative, charismatic, confident, and assertive leader, the Netanyahu just said, whoa, yeah, you convinced me, we'll have to do a different path. We won't be that tough. Whoops. I don't know how I got so confused. Anyway, last night it looked like something happened. The initial reports were that three drones or some drones had attacked an Air Force facility in Iran, in Central Iran, Ashraf, which is just south of Tehran, not far from one of the major nuclear installations that the Iranians have, where the centrifuges are. And the first reports were not only with these drones, but these were like those propeller drones that you can buy at Best Buy. So there was these little drones with four spinning propellers, like little helicopters. And so those would be drones without much of a distance. It can't fly very far. So then the speculation was, whoa, were these launched within Iran? Were these launched from Kurdistan? Were these, which is on the border of Iran and Iraq? Where Israel probably has an intelligence presence or special forces presence? Where were they launched from? How did they get all the way to Central Iran? I mean, what was going on here? And what did they do? What did they attack? Of course, the Iranians claimed that they had knocked down all three of them. About two hours ago, more, I think, credible reports have come out over the last two hours about what actually happened. It turns out that Israel flew one or two airplanes, or more, hard to tell how many airplanes, but they flew airplanes all the way to Eastern Iraq. So probably through Syria, got all the way to Eastern Iraq undetected, undetected by the Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, and who knows who else. I mean, I don't know about the Russians and the Americans, but flew all the way to Eastern Iraq and where they launched three ballistic missiles from the airplanes, three ballistic missiles that all hit the target. And the target was a S-300 anti-aircraft facility right next to the nuclear facility, the Iranian nuclear facility in Ashraf, which is in Central Iran. Now, I guess this sends a message to the Iranians, we can take out your missile defense, your aircraft defense systems at will whenever we want. We can fly hundreds of miles from Israel undetected and attack you. We, with three bombs, have done more damage to you than you managed to do with over 300 bombs. So I guess all those messages are sent. It also suggests those missiles could have targeted your nuclear facility, and then next time they might. So all of those messages were sent. We can reach in, we can do it undetected. We have this amazing capabilities of planes, F-35s, S-TUMS, stealth, you won't even know what hit you. And by the way, the S-300 anti-aircraft battery, no match for the technology we have. Which by the way, you know, I don't know how to say this politely, but everybody frigging knew already. Right? I mean, the S-300 batteries have been in Syria for a long time. This is not a brand new technology. It's been in Syria for a long time. The Israelis have taken out many, I don't know how many, many S-300, you know, Russian anti-aircraft batteries. So nothing new there. Anyway, the whole thing is stunningly disappointing and pathetic. If this is it, if this is it. And I'm seeing a lot of commentators saying, whoa, Israel showed how competent it is, how able it is, it has these capabilities, it has this ability to reach. Everybody knew this. The Iranians know this. The Israelis know this. The Russians know this. The Americans know this. The Jordanians, the Syrians, the Lebanese and the Gazans probably know it as well. Everybody knows this. Nothing new was revealed yesterday except the fact, not new I guess, that Israel will not use its capabilities to actually do anything of substance, actually engage the enemy, actually destroy their capabilities. I don't know. I mean, I have no special intelligence. So I don't know anything. But I mean, no explanation I have for this. I mean, no explanation I have for the whole way in which Israel has responded to this is that Israeli intelligence is convinced that the Iranians cannot develop a nuclear bomb, that these Iranians are far away from developing such a bomb that such a bomb is not a realistic threat to Israel. And therefore Israel doesn't have to worry about that and it can play games with the Iranians for now. I don't get it otherwise. Because if the Iranians have the capacity to build a bomb and it's weeks or months or whatever for them to build a bomb, why wouldn't Israel use overwhelming force to destroy the Iranian nuclear capabilities? Why? And so it just doesn't make any sense. Destroy an S-300 battery which Israel can destroy whenever it wants to. It has nothing. Maybe they're softening up defenses for future attack. That's what I thought initially when I first heard about this. But why then take out only one battery? Why do you even need to soften them up? Why couldn't you have one airplane take out the battery and one airplane strike the nuclear facility? Or five airplanes strike the nuclear facility while two airplanes strike the S-300? It just doesn't make any sense. It maybe every day they'll go in and do one thing. But the S-300 isn't effective against F-35s. Anyway, we all know that. I mean, God, anybody who follows, sorry, anybody who follows, not everybody knows this, but anybody who follows the military capabilities, anybody who follows the Israeli military, anybody who follows knows that the S-300, the battery that they took out in Iran is not a threat to F-35s. And so there is really no explanation for this other than Israel needed to do something to appease its own internal pressures, its own internal populace, its own internal politics. They wanted to do something that didn't piss off the Americans, the Saudis, the Jordanians and the UAE and their so-called pretend allies. And that was achieved because nobody's going to be offended by this. And they wanted to do something that didn't escalate, didn't cause a regional war. But Israel should want to regional war. Get it over with. It's time for regional war. It's time that Iran gets this regime and Iran gets destroyed. It's time to call them. It's time to challenge them. When is this, when is it going to be more convenient when they have a nuke? I mean, yeah, granted, it would be more convenient if Israel was done with Gaza and out of Gaza. And that was not an issue, sure. But you're not going to be able to call the shots. The Iranians just handed you a gift on a silver platter by attacking Israel on Saturday. A massive gift. You could have gone and done anything. And mostly the world would say, you know, you shouldn't have been so harsh, but we understand. Anyway, I don't get it. It makes me super angry, super frustrated. Again, maybe there is a more subtle plan here. Maybe this is just to show the Iranians Israel can do it. And then after the Passover, that's after 30th, they go in and they do something more substantive. Maybe tonight they do something more substantive. I don't know. Maybe it's softening up the target, like somebody said. Maybe I am super skeptical about all of those. I think it's just a sign of inability to come to make the hard decisions, inability to actually make the decision to escalate. This is the kind of mentality, the kind of action, the kind of program, the kind of whatever you want, appeasement that brought Israel October 7th. This is the kind of government policies that bring Israel more danger, more harm. And this is exactly the kind of action that convinces the enemy that Israel is weak and is susceptible. And yes, it has the mightiest military, maybe second mightiest military force second to the United States, although a military like Russia could just overwhelm it like China could just overwhelm it with numbers. But it doesn't matter because it won't use it. And therefore what's the point? Anyway, there we have it. This is Israel's response, at least so far. We'll keep track of this and keep you updated. All right. I didn't notice the anniversary. There was an anniversary today until I saw this tweet and it really made me sick. Actually, it's from two days ago, but it doesn't matter because it's newsworthy anyway, even though it's two days old. And newsworthy, okay, this is the tweet. This was the tweet that was two days ago. On this day in 1975, the Cameroons liberated Kampuchea, which is Cambodia. They defeated American imperialism without falling into the claws of Soviet social imperialism. Despite the errors they made. Let me repeat that. Despite the errors they made, we need to defend them against the lies of those who obliterated their country. I mean, I want to throw up. I want to throw up, right? The Cameroons did not commit errors. By the way, a photo attached to this with these child soldiers raising AK-47s and bazookas and whatever equipment. The Cameroons killed 25% of their own population. They slaughtered Cambodians, all in the name of egalitarianism. They killed somewhere between 25% and 40% of their own population. Two million people died in the killing fields of Cambodia. This is not some conspiracy theory. This is just history. You can go to Cambodia and you can see the killing fields. You can see the skulls. They killed between 1.5 to 2 million people between 1975 and 1979, which turned out to be 25% of the Cambodian population. I guess in 75, it was 7.8. I don't know. Two million out of 7.8 is a quarter, right? That's not errors. That's not mistakes. Note this is the new left. The evil in the world is, quote, colonialism and imperialism. Even the Soviets were bad. Why? Because they exported their communism under imperialism. The evil is imperialism and colonialism. But if you have to kill 25% of your own people in order to liberate your people from the mentality of colonialism, go for it. That's okay. I mean, it is just the left today. This is just sick. Absolutely. I don't know who this person who posted this is. They could be a nobody. But something is inspiring. This doesn't just come out of nowhere. This is truly disgusting, sick, horrible, evil. The Khmer Rouge were true egalitarians who wanted to establish true, in quotation marks, equality. And therefore, they killed anybody who was, quote, unequal. Anybody who was a little different. Anybody who wore glasses. Anybody who could read. Anybody who had a college education. Anybody had a high school education. Anybody who was a little better, could farm better, could do anything better. They were killed. 25% in four years of the population was killed. The only reason they were stopped was because Vietnam invaded. Communist Vietnam invaded. Because even to the communists, this was horrible. This is just horrific. This is just unbelievably disastrous. And therefore, the Vietnamese invaded and kicked out the Khmer Rouge and destroyed their regime and ultimately left and allowed Cambodia to somehow recover. I don't think it's ever recovered from that brutality. That was 1975. Two days ago was the anniversary of one of the most horrific, brutal, ugly, horrible regimes in all of human history. All of human history. One, a victory controlled the country for four years, killed 25% of their population. This should be a global day of mourning. Give me one half of it. All right, let's see. That was my list. All right. Okay, two less awful and horrible news, but still pretty probable and awful news. Just not quite as bad as that. The Biden administration has said five days today that it is forgiving more loans. It has this loan forgiveness program. It had a loan forgiveness program that the Supreme Court ruled is unconstitutional and violated the law and they struck it down. The president did not have an authority to do it. So the Biden administration is finding all these niches in which it can still eliminate student loans, but without violating the Supreme Court. In its latest round, it has canceled $7.4 billion of student loans for $277,000. Can I apply to have my mortgage converted into a student loan? I'm quite happy and then see if Biden could. I don't know why students are getting this freebie. I now regret not taking out loans to pay for my kid's college education. The government could have paid for it in the end. I paid for it myself, which was not financially easy necessarily. Just, God, this is unbelievable. So far, the Biden administration has managed to cancel $153 billion. That's what it'd be, billion. I mean, we don't talk about millions anymore. There's no point in talking about millions. Millions is just not that interesting. $153 billion of student loans for nearly 4.3 million people. 4.3 million people in America have had their loans canceled, which is still a small number because it's 9% of the outstanding federal student loan debt, or pretty much all student loan debt is federal, almost all of it. This is great for Biden. Basically, this year it appears, and maybe this is every year, but this year it seems even more so. Everything the Biden administration is doing, I mean, literally everything the Biden administration is doing is geared towards appeasing this or that portion of the electorate for the sake of buying votes. So I guess politicians do this all the time. It's just more obvious this round. He got tough on Israel because he wants to show up the ever vote. He doesn't want to get too tough on Israel because he wants to show up the Jewish vote. He wants to triple the tariffs on China on steel and aluminum because he wants to show up the union vote. Now he's doing as much as he can to get rid of student debt because he wants to show up the young people vote. It's interesting. I don't know if you've seen the latest polls, but it appears that Biden is losing young people, gaining old people. Trump is gaining young people and losing old people. I wonder if that's how it'll turn out in the election itself, but it is interesting. It is interesting that that's the way it is all moving. Anyway, yes, so $153 billion. You know where that comes from? You know where they get that $153 billion from you? So this is another just massive redistribution of wealth. There's no magic here. The $153 billion is $153 billion added to the national debt. It's $153 billion that has to be paid off with tax money at some point unless the U.S. is going to default on its debt. Our first alternative is, maybe that's what's going on right now, is that it gets wiped out because of inflation, hype inflation ultimately. But it has to be paid off somehow by somebody. Now maybe it will land up being paid off by the same students who got this off because they will be paying higher taxes when they reach their peak earning years, but maybe not. That's the problem with redistribution. We don't know who pays for whom. You can't follow the buck. All we know is right now your debt burden as an American citizen has just increased by $153 billion. Every time the debt burden increases, that is a knock on the U.S. economy that slows the growth of the U.S. economy. That's $153 billion. There's not in the private sector that the government has to now raise in debt. That is slower economic growth, fewer opportunities for salary increases, and long-term pretty much assured stagnation. The whole Biden program, the whole reason we have a decent economy right now, and we do, the economy's decent right now. It's not great. It's not good. It's decent. It's because we're buying decent now for sucky in the future. This is the point about presidents don't affect the economy in the present. It could be that some other president one day does really good stuff and nothing good happens in the economy because the economy is still struggling to overcome all the horrible things Biden is doing to it now. I mean, and Trump and Obama and Bush, because they all loaded up on this debt, and this debt is unbelievably destructive to the economic sanity of the United States moving forward. At some point, this is going to, it already is, but at some point it's going to be evident. Right now it's not evident. This is a massive drag on the economy. To do the bunny, never eat on camera. Sometimes I will tough it out. I think you guys can survive. All right, let's see. From the financially insane to the sanity of our criminal justice system. So you might have seen this story. Actually, there was a video of this that was out where a guy in New York, the guy in New York randomly punched a woman in the face, walking down the street in Grand Central Station, walking down right next to Grand Central Station and broke her nose, literally broke her nose. He was released with a misdemeanor and a, that's it. Released with a misdemeanor. Days later, the same guy punched a nine-year-old girl in the face. Alvin Bragg, who is the Manhattan District Attorney that we've been talking about a lot since he got elected way back when he said he wasn't going to prosecute even violent crimes and he wasn't going to prosecute even, you know, was it assault, has a piece in the New York Times that basically argues that what this guy really needs is what he needs is, you know, treatment for mental illness. And what he doesn't need is to be incarcerated. He really needs therapy. He needs to talk this out. He really needs to talk this out. So don't worry if a random stranger breaks your nose and don't worry if a random stranger breaks your nose, no problem there. Just chill out because he's probably got a session with a therapist and he'll walk it out and maybe he won't break noses in the future. It really is, Alvin Bragg is really, you know, we're pretty shocking if New York votes for him again. By the way, this does not contradict the fact that New York from a murder perspective and from generally a violent crime perspective is still one of the safest places in the United States. It's safer than many rural areas in the United States. It has a very low murder rate per 100,000. It has a very low violent rate, not just prosecution, but violent rate per 100,000. It just does. That doesn't mean it couldn't be lower. That doesn't mean its subways shouldn't be cleaned up and police presence increased. It doesn't mean that Alvin Bragg isn't a horrible district attorney and should be fired and we couldn't reduce crime rates even further. So even if you count assault, even if you count all these things, New York City is still one of the safest places around the country. I mean, I know that a video of a man punching a woman in the face randomly is going to evoke emotions in a way that stir you up and convince you that New York is the most violent, horrible, disgusting, awful place on the planet. But yeah, but that's why I'm here to present you with actual facts and evidence and numbers rather than letting your emotions get out of hand. It's horrible that this man did this. It's even more horrible that he wasn't sent to jail for many years. But the reality is that this is not typical and it's not the case that New York is a place of massive random violence. If it was, if it was, then the numbers would show it. The stats would show it. Nobody's hiding stats. You can't hide murder stats. You can't hide stats about violent assault. Yes, you can pretend it wasn't, but this is registered. You know, again, crime stats are per 100,000, but 100,000 New York is not particularly violent, even as compared to certain rural areas per 100,000 citizens. So if you take a rural area that might be much larger than New York and has 100,000 people, if you live there, you're just as likely or more likely to be assaulted or to be murdered at least. Murder, the nice thing about murder, nice thing about murder, horrible thing about murder, but the nice thing statistically about murder is it's unequivocal. Somebody's dead. You don't have to wait to prosecute. You don't have to find the perpetrator. The crime is obvious. They're dead. They were killed. So per 100,000, you're less likely to be a victim of murder in New York than in many rural counties in the United States. All right. You guys can shout and yell and scream and argue against the data all you want. Reality doesn't care about your emotions. Facts are what they are. Numbers are what they are. You can, again, shout and yell and scream and pretend and get upset and go red in the face and pretend that your red state is so much safer. Any edit turns out ain't the case. All right. Here's one where the police actually did the right thing. Go figure. And it's from California. God, now I know everybody's going to hate me because I just did something to defend New York City and now I'm going to say something good about California. Now it isn't. It's like Central California, which is not exactly California, not real California. Bakersfield, California, one of the fastest growing, probably the fastest growing city in California. A lot of people are moving to Bakersfield. Anyway, in Bakersfield, an activist, you know, in City Hall, went into City Hall, and she, you know, and she was really upset because the city council refused to back a ceasefire resolution in Gaza. And we know that the Bakersfield City Council is very, very influential when it comes to ceasefire in Gaza. They have a lot of influence in Hamas. And yet they refused to back a ceasefire resolution. So she was really upset, right? And not only that, but when she entered in order to participate in this city council meeting, she had to go through a metal detector, which really insulted her. So she said, this is what she said, I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all you mother F, you know what she said. You guys want to criminalize us with metal detectors. We'll see you at your home, at your house. We'll murder you. There you go. These are the defenders of a ceasefire, threatening to murder city council members, talking about guillotines and killing all of them. It turns out, it turns out by the way, just so you know, that she works at the center on race, poverty, and environment. All you can do is laugh when you read about this. That sounds like a pretty pacifist place, the center of race, poverty, and environment. And she wants to murder the city council, and she wants to guillotine all of it, guillotine them all. Well, it turns out that at least in Bakersfield, California, you cannot threaten city council members at least without actually suffering consequences. So while in New York, you could punch a woman in the nose, and it's a misdemeanor, in California threatening the city council members. I wonder if the guy had punched a New York city council member in the nose, what would have happened to him. I have a feeling he would have gone to jail for a long, long time. Maybe we don't have equality before the law. Maybe that's what's going on, right? Maybe that's what's going on. Anyway, it turns out that she was arrested, and she now faces 18 felony counts, 18 felony counts. The LA Times refers to the reason for that as quote, alleged threats. I don't know, I'm going to come to your house and kill you and murder you. That doesn't sound like a alleged threat. That was on video, telling people that she's going to bring a guillotine and kill all of you. That's not an alleged threat. That sounds like a real threat. Anyway, good to know that in California at least, at least in Bakersfield, California, if you threaten a politician, I'm not sure what happens if you threaten a normal human being, but if you threaten a politician, you actually get arrested and felony charges, 18 of them in this case. Hopefully she spends some time in jail. We'll see. All right, some more fun news items. We'll go through these fairly quickly. So we all know we're trying to electrify the world. We're trying to get electric cars out there. We need charging stations. The government, Congress has allocated $7.5 billion, $7.5 billion to building charging stations around the world. It did so two years ago. So two years ago, $7.5 billion were allocated in order to build charging stations all over the United States so we could easily convert to electric cars. Just guess. I think you'll get the number. How many charging stations have been built to date? Two years. How many of the charging stations have actually been built in the last two years using the $7.5 billion that was allocated for this infrastructure as part of, I guess, the inflation reduction act? Something like that. Miloslav gets it. Absolutely right. Zero. Zero. Not a single one yet. Now you might say, look, Iran, these are difficult. It's not easy to build charging stations and you need electricity. Electricity is hard to find. And then you need a charging station and you need to buy charging stations and that's hard. This is hard stuff. So don't be hard on the government. It's not the government. Well, let's compare them. Amazon, who, once the electrified fleet of delivery vans has installed, anybody want to guess how many Amazon has installed in also the last two years? So over the same period of time, since Congress approved $7.5 billion for this, for this, how many have Amazon installed in order to fuel, fuel, electrify, electrify. It's electric vehicle charges, three quarters. You can't install a three quarter one, zero, 13. You guys are not getting it. You guys are completely off base. What's wrong with you? Amazon has installed 17,000. 17,000. Yeah. It's a private company people motivated by the profit motive, motivated by not by doing this quickly, effectively and cheaply. You guys are strange. I don't know what's gotten into you. Anyway, 17,000 Amazon, zero government, 17,000 to zero. I think the private sector wins. All right. Talk about Amazon and the private sector. We all know that our Department of Justice and the FTC, our government is hard to work at trying to stop all these horrific horrible destructive monopolies that arise in the private sector and are really destroying the American economy and driving us horribly to a lower standard of living. As a consequence, of course, aren't we happy that Amazon, who just installed 17,000 charges to the government zero, is going to be broken up by the FTC? Isn't that amazing? The FTC, as you know, is suing Amazon, a big lawsuit. This is Lena Kahn's, like this is her wet dream. She's been writing about this since she was an undergraduate to go after Amazon and she actually is. Well, the FTC and the Department of Justice is not only going after Amazon. So don't worry. This is not just some vendetta where they're just going after one company. They're going after many, many, many companies. For example, the Department of Justice is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against, you know, this is a national security issue. This is why they're doing this, you know, against live nation in the coming weeks because ticketmaster, which is owned by live nation, the ticketmaster is the biggest US concert promoter and has leveraged its domination in ways that undermine competition for ticketing live events. And this is, of course, unbelievably destructive to consumers and to producers and to the culture of America. You know, ticketmaster has too much power, too much power. We need more competition in ticketing, ticketing. This is what your government is spending your tax dollars doing. This is how they are disrupting the lives of American business owners who are trying to make your life better by offering you an actual value. We'll talk more about capitalism in the second half of the show. We're going to do a whole section on the economics of capitalism. What are the economics of capitalism? What are the economic principles that drive capitalism? Anyway, it's not your ticketmaster. FTC is preparing to sue a block of luxury fashion mega mojo. Sorry, they're suing to block a luxury fashion mega mojo. I'm sure you're all concerned that your luxury fashion is too expensive. So that's what luxury fashion meant, too expensive because it's too monopolized. So I guess they are going to stop the mojo, trying to stop the mojo of tapestry, takeover of capri holding. Now, I have no idea who tapestry is. No idea who capri holdings are, but I'm sure some of you rich people who shop at these luxury stores know exactly who these people are and who these companies are and are now relieved that your Gucci bag or Louis Vuitton blouse are now going to cost a little less. I have no idea of Gucci and Louis Vuitton even make that stuff. Anyway, so I just wanted to reassure you that the FTC, the Biden administration, is out there protecting your interests. It will not sleep while as long as American businessmen are exploiting you, the government is on the case and they will protect you. Here's another example of the government doing a phenomenal job and another one from this one is from California. And this one I think you guys will like, although I still think that the people at the Brook Derangement Syndrome will give me no credit for this. Even though I predicted this, I've said this for years and years and years. Anyway, the California State has actually hired an auditor to assess how it's done with regard to tackling homelessness because ultimately over the last five years, California has spent California tax money $27 billion. Let me repeat that $27 billion on addressing homelessness in California. So have they done, right? So we know that spending money on charging stations, electric charging stations by the government produces zero results. Well, what happens when California spends money on homelessness? Does it produce any results? Yes, it does. It actually does. After spending $24 billion of on homelessness, it turns out that the number of homeless people in California has actually increased, increased. It's gone up. And of course, this is obvious. If you offer homeless people a free home, more people will become homeless in order to get the free home. The more money you spend on homeless people, the more you encourage people to become homeless, people at the margin. Of course, nobody is going to give up a nice cushy house, a nice middle class income in order to become homeless to get a shitty home. But somebody at the margin is going to. So $24 billion later, the problem of homelessness in California is larger than it was before they spent the $24 billion. Not only that, but it turns out that nobody actually knows where the $24 billion went, who got them, how it was spent. All we know is more homeless people in the streets of California. Now note the California is changing its strategy. The cases before the Supreme Court will find out soon where the Supreme Court agrees with us. But the California and Oregon, Portland, the city of Portland are getting much tougher with homeless people if the Supreme Court allows them to get tougher with them. We will see if that has an impact. The throwing $24 billion. I mean, they could have just given everybody a check. But I guess if they'd given them checks, more people would become homeless to get more checks. There's no way you can't solve this problem with money. It turns out the only way to solve this problem, at least what I've been saying forever, is build more homes. Make housing dramatically cheaper by creating massive supply will drive the cost down. Don't give homeless people anything just lower the cost of housing. And people at the margin will stay in their houses, particularly if they don't get any freebies by becoming homeless. Finally, well, not finally, we got two more stories. The last one would be a positive one. I really feel good story. But this one is one more of these crazy stories. Well, it's not that crazy, I guess. It's just I want to keep you up to date. I've been updating you constantly on the CHIP Act. Obviously, CHIPs are strategic and important. And as a consequence, the United States has decided to subsidize chip manufacturing in the United States at the federal government level. This is very rare. It's very rare for the United States to embrace picking winners and losers and subsidizing, explicitly subsidizing participants in a particular industry. But the United States has chosen to do that with chips. And most of the money that was allocated for direct subsidies for chip manufacturers has now been being committed. A few weeks ago, we talked about Intel getting a big chunk of money. Since then, a bunch of other companies are getting them, including the Korean company Samsung, including the Taiwanese companies, TSMC, all on the commitment that they've made to build factories in the United States. It is kind of interesting that TSMC for a long time was complaining, bitching and complaining about how slow construction was in Arizona. And they didn't know whether they could get an undone. And the requirements were too stringent and it was too difficult and they couldn't find employees and all this stuff. And then once they got the money, I can't remember how many billions of dollars they got. From the government, they said, no, no, everything's on target. We will meet our quota. We will get this running. No problem. So everybody's playing this and playing the US government. It's just unbelievable how well they, you know, how well they do this to get these, well, I mean, who wouldn't lie a little bit to get some billions of dollars? Anyway, the latest beneficiary of this is Micron Technology. Micron Technology is out of Idaho. Micron Technology, this is a funny and interesting and amazing story. Micron Technology was actually founded by one of the potato, the potato king, the guy who sold potatoes to McDonald's, turned into French fries and became a billionaire as a consequence. He was the guy who basically provided the funding for Micron Semiconductor, which built memory chips, was the last US-based manufacturer of memory chips. It's a fantastic story. Chip Wars is a great book. It covers this. Anyway, Micron has just received $6.1 billion on the Biden administration. It's going to, it has promised to build manufacturing plants in New York and in Idaho, in Idaho, of course, that's where they're based. You know, they are building a massive plant near Syracuse, New York. Indeed, they plan over the next few years, over the next two decades, to invest $100 billion in upstate New York, which will generate about 9,000 jobs, 40,000 construction jobs, and they are making, you know, this is a $15 billion memory chip plant. In addition to that, they've got a $15 billion memory chip plant that they will be building in Boise, Idaho, which is their hometown. So the government has now, I think, dished out most of the money. We will see in about, I don't know, well, probably five to 10 years to kind of circle back and see the results of this. But what impact does the government industrial planning have? It will it turn out that the government is, I don't know, investing in the latest, you know, the old technology? Does it work out? Does it by chance work, work in quotations? Does it turn into a bunch of white elephants? What exactly happens? To all this investment in chip technology, in chip building technology, will TCMC and Samsung build the plans that they promised in the US? Will Intel recover and regain its leadership position in the chip world? Anyway, we will see. Micron still makes the RAM chips. They're against competitors, the Japanese companies, Chinese companies, the Chinese companies make RAM chips. These are not high security. These are not national security type chips. These are not chips that you have to make in the United States. Otherwise, we can't, I don't know, bomb Iran. Oh, we're not bombing Iran anyway. So who cares? Anyway, so these are not national security chips like the chips TSMC might make or the chips Intel one day will make. These are just basic memory chips that you could buy from anybody. But again, we're going to, the US government is going to put $6 billion into there because why not? Because the US government has lots of money to spend and it looks like it appears like the laws of economics are being thrown out the window. And it really does look like the US government is very good at picking winners and losers. And we're ultimately, you know, we can central plan. I mean, the whole mythology that central planning doesn't work turns out to be false, maybe. And here we are. The US government is doing a great job. All right, here is a few good story for Friday afternoon. This is a really fabulous story. This is from Pirate Wire. I recommended PirateWire.com before. This is a story written by the CEO of a startup by the name of Niles Hoven. The company is MENTAVA, M-E-N-T-A-V-A, M-E-N-T-A-V-A, which is an education technology startup that was founded in 2021. And the startup is basically a, the idea is to create a technology that will provide basically one-on-one tutors to children. That is that you will be able to replace the teachers in your school with a AI, in a sense, tutor, although he doesn't mention AI in the article, but I'm pretty sure this is AI-based, tutor that will actually teach your child how to read, how to do math. And that you will be able to customize its levels and the pace to your child's abilities. And it will receive feedback from the child. And this is, I think, the future of a lot of education is going to be, suddenly, the future of tutoring is going to be AI-personalized tutors. Anyway, this company has this product. They be building it and they expect that the launch is probably sometime in 2025. They thought they'd launch in 2025 with a small group of parents. They would try it out and experiment with it and they would work with them on improving it and before they would launch it on a much larger scale to the parent community out there. Anyway, all that has changed. All that has accelerated because on April 2nd, by the way, so this company is aggressive. They have said from the beginning that this product is targeted at kids who want to advance fast. This product is targeted at high achievers. This product is targeted at kids who can learn fast, advance quickly and be very successful. So, for example, they were planning to teach Algebra 1 and Algebra 2. Remember that in San Francisco it was not allowed to teach Algebra 2 kids in middle school. Anyway, this product targeted teaching Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 to fourth graders. Anyway, this, I guess, was disclosed that the product was going to launch with Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 as part of the fundraising. This company went out and raised money from Vichy Capital and they had a fundraising pitch, they had a deck, they had a PowerPoint presentation and in that PowerPoint presentation one of the slides had this Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 for fourth graders. Anyway, a woman by the name of Emily saw this and she freaked out. So on April 2nd, two weeks ago, basically, she appeared basically with a screenshot of this, massively criticizing, massively criticizing the idea of teaching children math fast, teaching children Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 at this age. She wrote a tweet, got answers, mostly critical of her position. She kept going. Emily was not going to be deterred. She went on and on. Why do folks want kids learning math so fast? She wrote and somebody wrote back. Somebody wrote, they want their labor and productivity to accelerate human achievement. And she was like, this is horrible. How dare they? Here's the original tweet she did. Here's a slide deck from Mintava, a company Gary Tan is invested in with his network state boys, bros, where they claim they're going to have kids doing done with Algebra 2 in fourth grade. It's called Mintava and is selling itself as cheaper than private school. I mean, she's saying this all obviously critically. And why do these folks want kids learning math so fast? They want their labor and productivity to accelerate human achievement, which she views as negative. Anyway, everybody started ganging up on Emily. I mean, literally Twitter exploded with people ganging up on Emily, hundreds, thousands of people. Now, this, I don't think is what Emily expected. It included an exchange with people like Nor Smith, who I've talked about before, about why human achievement is awesome, why human achievement is good. Emily did not like that. But the consequence of this is that many people who are answering Emily were like, how do we sign up our kids? We want to sign up our kids. Why can't we sign up our kids? This sounds awesome. We want this product. We want, we want to start using it. Why can't we sign up our kids? As a consequence of this, you know, Niles Hoven got his team together, small team in Silicon Valley, and they sat down and they said, whoa, I mean, are we ever going to have a better marketing opportunity than right now to actually launch our product? We weren't planning to do this for about 12 months, but could we launch it now? They basically decided that they would try. They ramped up everything. As you know, with startups and as you know, with business generally, they build 17,000 charges when they need to, not zero. These guys went 24-7, started working fantastically on finalizing the final touches of this. They set up a site where these parents who were super frustrated, who were asking, how do we get our hands on this, could sign up. And at 9 a.m., Wednesday morning, they launched. They collected significant money. I mean, some gazillions of dollars, thousands of dollars from parents who were prepaying. They had parents who said that they're people, not parents, they're people who said, we want to pay even though we don't have any kids, because we want to be on the waiting list for when we do have kids. Although I don't know that this is constrained by numbers ultimately. They have to scale up. But anyway, parents were just so enthusiastic that they have launched. And they've got, they were a year ahead of schedule, in other words. They have all these kids now learning how to read. So one of their programs teaches them how to read. So, yep, during these two weeks, they've manually entered all new customers directly into the production database. They build login and sign up. They submitted a bill to Apple for the app. And they got approved, which is very rare to get approved that quickly. They conducted one-on-one on-boarding calls with all the customers and set expectations because the product is not finalized yet. They manage expectations with videos making clear our software-based tutor is still a work in process. They treated pictures of the revenue. The revenue was basically zero, and then went like that, like that. They did it. This is the private sector at its best. This is what people can do when they're incentivized and motivated. Parents now have a tutor who is teaching their two-year-olds to read, and they've got the Algebra II stuff out there. So at the end of the day, they got even marginal revolution, the blog to talk about them. And, yep, this is what was on marginal revolution. The Algebra II question completely undersells mintava, which looks like it has a real chance of disrupting education because it is targeting the high achievers. It's worthwhile to click through to the slide deck. So you can actually go and find the slide deck. Just search for mintava. You can see the slide deck. You can find all of this. Thank you, Emily. It's always good to have some woke, stupid person that highlights good stuff, brings attention to it even if it's in a negative way because then all the decent people out there, all the good people out there can identify it, notice it, and then go get it. So maybe all of us should have some woke shadow, somebody shadowing us in guise of wokeness to come and criticize us and to disrupt what we're doing and get us on the right path. I thought that was a great feel-good story, a team coming together, executing, and it could be, this could be, there are other companies, this is not the only company with this kind of product. I really think that there's a good chance that education gets disrupted completely in the next few years by AI tutors who do one-on-one session with your children and teach them a curriculum that has to stand up to competition because there are going to be lots of other AI tutors out there and has to be stand up to parents because parents will observe directly what their children know or don't know, parents will be paying directly for this, so they will be accountable to parents. And this is how education will be, this is even bigger than these school choice, this is how I think technology is actually going to completely disrupt the educational establishment and make all these woke teachers irrelevant, completely irrelevant. The reality is the 95% of Americans are not woke, 95% of Americans don't want their kids studying this garbage and they just need to find their voice and they need to find alternatives and they need to find ways to do this and I think technology is going to give them that, so I'm super excited about this. All right, that is the news for April 19th. That's about an hour, all right, so we've got a news hour behind us. Okay, I'm going to answer questions now and then we're going to talk about capitalism. I told you Friday shows will be positive, positive means a positive topic, not necessarily so capitalism, how it works, what it works, it'll be a more capitalism 101 class, economics 101, how does capitalism work, how does it get the results that it gets? All right, let's look at some of these, some of this Q&A and follow it. All right, Jennifer, thank you, $50, really appreciate the support. We're way behind guys on the fundraising, don't know what's going on today. Let me also thank, before we get to Jennifer, John did do a $20 sticker to start us off, but I don't see any other stickers. Oh, Gail, Gail, thank you Gail for the sticker. Please consider supporting the show again. This is value for value. The show is supported from contributions from you, can do this show certainly and can do this new format. If we don't meet our targets and we've met our target once over the last four days, so let's see if we can maybe make it 50% at least and it's going to have to be a majority in order for us to really kick this off. The targets, by the way, do not exceed really the cumulative weekly targets that we had before. It's just divided up differently. And maybe if we can't raise the money this way, we'll have to think about changing formats again to find ways that do get us where we need to go ultimately. All right, Jennifer, thank you Jennifer. Regarding climate effects on temperature, I think cold can make one irritable or heat can. The human mind created AC and heating to allow you to live wherever you want. I think having such choices helps you to keep a benevolent attitude. There's no question that that's absolutely right. I mean, when you have to deal with real cold, it's not conducive to, I mean, look at, you know, the Eskimos did not produce much. It's just not conducive to real creativity. And I think the same is true of real heat. People in the desert, people in, you know, the Africa or South of Asia, pre-air conditioning, it's just very difficult. It's one more element in which you have to one more element of nature that just puts constraints on you and, you know, makes it difficult for human beings to survive. As I've said in the past, nature, you know, is doing everything it can. I mean, nature doesn't do anything in a sense, right? But it's doing everything it can to kill us and to make life uncomfortable. You know, we have mosquitoes and bugs and it's very difficult to find food. It's very difficult to kill animals. We're just not very accustomed to this, to our environment. And, you know, but this is the genius of human beings because we're free will, because we can reason. We invent air conditioning and heating and we turn what is a horrible environment, what is an anti-life environment, what is an anti-benevolence environment, what is a just a very difficult conditions under which one survives to comfort, to, you know, an environment in which we can be productive and which we can be creative and which we can think and which we can produce and which we can create. Whether it's cold or heat, we live today in some of the most extreme weathers. I mean, look at, look at, you know, people live in some of the coldest places in Scandinavia, in Canada, in Alaska, and they do fine. And people live in Las Vegas. And they do fine, Phoenix. They do fine because they have air conditioning and they have heating. And yes, I mean, every time you see one of these heat waves or cold spells go through the world, I mean, it's just, I mean, the real response to that is, wow, isn't it amazing how well we survive? How comfortable life is in spite of this, in spite of this. And this is really the message. And we should, this is the message we should really be pushing is not, oh my God, a heat wave, and oh wow, look at human beings, look how amazing we are in our ability to, in spite of that, survive and thrive. Let me see, I'm going to answer this one question because, even though it's out of order, because Greg, Greg Salamieri on the chat has answered it, so I might as well, and that chat will disappear in a minute. So this is a way for me to be able to let Greg answer it. So Frank asks, Daniel Dennett died, even read his work on pro free will and consciousness. He was affiliated with Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, maybe Harry Binswanger knows him. Now, I, you know, I don't know much about Daniel Dennett. I know some and I know his affiliation with the New Atheists. But Greg writes, Greg, who is a philosopher, University of Texas in Austin, Greg writes, Dennett was the worst of the New Atheists regarding free will, whoops, regarding free will, he was a compatabilist, compatabilist, compatabilist, there we go, he was a compatabilist. The same for determinism that most philosophers today hold, the same MOF, MOF, I'm not sure what MOF stands for, somebody will tell me in a minute what MOF stands for, that most philosophers today hold, yeah, I mean, thank you, Greg, that is great. I mean, I was going to say something very similar, I don't know the details, but I thought his, I think I've seen at least one talk of his on free will, which I thought was really bad. And, you know, he was very well regarded. He seems to be well regarded in philosophy, but in terms of what I've seen, yeah, I mean, it didn't further the cause of free will, certainly. And it's very difficult. I mean, this is true of all the New Atheists. It's very difficult to further the cause of atheism. If in the same breath, you are denying free will, and therefore ultimately denying human reason. That is, it's impossible to, I think, for serious people out there who experience free will, who know that free will exists, to take a view seriously that where the idea is, if you're a New Atheist, you have to not believe in free will. That's what New Atheism demands of you. And that's somewhat the impression people like Sam Harris and others have given it. That is, this is kind of a necessary, if you're an atheist and, well, free will is just one of those mystical things that only through mysticism can we explain it. God, that does a lot of damage. That does a lot of damage. And it's one of the reasons, I think, one among many, that maybe the biggest reason that ultimately the New Atheist phenomena peed it out and has now disappeared. Great continues. The issue with, well, the issue really is, I can't pronounce this word, but the issue with compatabilists, I have to think compatabil, and then compatabilism, the issue with compatabilism is that it purports to be for free will, but it really isn't. Yes. I mean, it seems like a really bad explanation of free will. So it says that there is free will, okay, but then defines it away. And I wonder, does everybody understand that, Greg? That is the people out there get that that's what it's really doing? Is that that's what it's really doing? Because when I watched, then, it seemed obvious to me, but then I'm coming at it from a particular philosophical perspective. But does the world get that that's what they're doing? Compatibilism. Compatibilism is. All right. Well, while we wait for Greg's answer, thank you, Frank. Greg says, well, most philosophers agree with that position. That is, most philosophers think that compatabilism is right. That is, and that it is the only defensive free will. So they agree with the defining free will away. All right. All right. Not your average algorithm. Thank you, Greg. Appreciate it. Did you see the Muslim Arab Israeli, Yusuf Hadeh, who supports Israel, was punched in the face outside of Colombia? Did Israel let Iran off the hook? I did not see that he was punched in the face outside Colombia, but it doesn't surprise me. You will be relieved to know that 108, I think the number was of protesters in Colombia yesterday were actually arrested, actually arrested. So that is a good thing. And it is, with regard to Israel letting Iran off the hook so far, absolutely. So far, absolutely. Very unimpressive, at least to me, I'm not sure to the Iranians. Very unimpressive what Israel did last night. So I do think they've left them off the hook. Let's see. Also, not your average algorithm. Is too much empathy a sign of altruism? Well, I mean, I don't know. You'd have to, you'd have to concretize what too much empathy actually means. It probably is just because altruism is so prevalent in our world that most people exhibited in one way or another, and it manifests itself with a lot of people through empathy. But as I've told you many times, altruism manifests itself in all kinds of ways, right? Altruism manifests itself in the world in the rejection, the implicit rejection of altruism through narcissism and hedonism. It manifests itself in guilt. It manifests itself with large amounts of empathy. But I think to the extent that the empathy is debilitating or to the extent that the empathy causes you to want to self-sacrifice, if the empathy causes you to feel guilty about something, then yes, then it's a sign of altruism. The empathy in and of itself, and again, too much, I don't know what that means, but there's no question that it really is a question of what is the empathy, what is it leading you to want to do? What action is it, what thoughts does it lead you to have? That's how you can discover whether it's driven by altruism or not, or whether it doesn't lead you to feel guilty, doesn't lead you to want to sacrifice, doesn't lead you to fill in the blank. That will determine more than anything whether the empathy is rooted in altruism. Bradley, to what degree is a man's self-esteem dependent on his willingness to physically defend himself? Is this different for women? By the way, I did, I did you get the email I sent recommending a book. I don't remember getting that email. Maybe send it again, Bradley. And now it doesn't mean I didn't get it. I might have gotten it, flagged it, and forgotten about it, but send it again just in case I appreciate it. I don't think a man's self-esteem is dependent on his physically ability to defend himself, not in a civilized world. Certainly in a pre-civilization world, much of your self-esteem, a significant amount of your self-esteem might have come from the need, the ability to defend oneself because you lived in a state of anarchy. Anarchy generally, anarchy elevates violence, anarchy elevates the need to physically defend oneself. And if under anarchy, which is the state of human existence for most of history, human beings needed to survive, needed to be able to defend themselves, needed to be able to physically strong, needed to be able to use a sword well, needed to be able to have the stomach to murder people, to kill people, not murder, kill people, right, in self-defense, which is not easy. But that's a sign of lack of civilization. Part of what civilization is meant to do, part of what the civilizing aspect of civilization is, is the elimination of the need to physically defend oneself. It is the reaching a state where your life, the physical threat from others is so small that you don't really think about defending yourself 99.99% of the time. You just don't think about it. Like, when I, you know, walk around town, even in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I'm not thinking, I'm not on alert for somebody, you know, even in New York City, which I know you guys think is a haven for violence and crime, I'm not on guard, even at night. And the fact is the reality is, don't tell this to my enemies, I couldn't defend myself if somebody attacked me. I, again, don't tell anybody, but I do not know Krav Maga. And I don't think it's affected my self-esteem when I order, the fact that I cannot physically overcome most physical threats. Indeed, the only way I would really be safe, feel safe in a violent environment, is if I wore a gun on me. But I never think about it. I mean, and I travel all over the world, including, I don't know, Rio de Janeiro and places that are relatively, relatively violent. And yet, because we live in a civilized world, the rates of violence are very, very, very, very low. In spite of what Ken would like you to believe, in spite of what Scott would like you to believe, they would like to believe this, by the way, only because Biden is president. As soon as if Trump ever becomes president again, believe me, New York City will be the most peaceful place on the planet. They will celebrate how peaceful the world is when Trump is president. It's only because the Democrats in power, you know, and I'm sure they think that every city controlled by a Republican is like the most peaceful place on planet Earth. But the reality is that I just don't, I don't, the probability of getting mugged, the probability of getting attacked physically in the United States today, never mind in Europe, is so low, is so low, that it's not really, for the most part, not worth thinking about. Most part not worth thinking about. Now there's some places, I don't know, I'm not going to walk in the middle of the night, although even St. Louis is getting less violent, but I'm not going to walk there in the middle of the night. Right? So there certainly are places in which you want to consider it, but for that to affect your self-esteem, your self-esteem in a civilized world is determined by your ability to produce, your ability to use your mind, ability to reason with the goal of producing, with a goal, with a goal of creating, with a goal of feeding and taking care of your material needs. And that is a product of your mind that is not a product of your Krav Maga skills or your product of whether you're carrying a AK-47 or not. I do not want to live in a world where I need a concealed weapons permit, right? I don't want that. I want to live in a world where I don't need one. I used to have a concealed carry permit, right, in California, but I never carried. I never, ever carried because I don't want to. I don't want to think about it. And because the probabilities are so low, it's just not worth considering. Just not worth considering. I will be in New York, by the way, on Mondays, so I can try it out myself, see if I get punched in the nose in New York City. All right. So anyway, so yes, in a civilized world, no, you don't need, masculinity is not about physical strength or being able to defend yourself. Masculinity, particularly in a modern world, is about shaping your environment to fit your needs and to satisfy your needs. And while your needs, one of your needs is security, that security in a civilized world is already taken care of. And what you now have to do, and where your self-esteem actually comes from, is to build, to create, to change your environment, to fit the kind of life you want to live. And you can be very successful in that and have zero physical ability in terms of fighting, right, in terms of self-defense. All right. Okay. Just a reminder, again, that this show is supported from contributions by you. You can support the show on Patreon. You can support it with urunbrookshow.com, urunbrookshow.com slash membership. That's PayPal. And you can do it if you're watching live by Super Chat. And yes, it would be great if we got close to our goals every time we did this. Liam, will Iran respond brutally? Or was Israel counterattacks so mild and pathetic the Iranians could sweep it under the rug? If this is it, Iranians will sweep it under the rug, no question. And Iran, look, Iran is responding every day. Every single day. Rockets from Hezbollah are flying into Israel. Every single day. That's Iran. So, you know, the world, Israel at its forefront is playing a massive game of evasion, of self-delusion, of pretend, like a three-year-old. Let's pretend. So, that is the reality. And the reality is that Israel is under attack by Iran every single day. And has been since October 7th. Hamas, Iranian operatives. That was an attack by Iran. And to view it any other way is to evade what's actually going on. To evade the dynamics in the Middle East. To evade the real threat to Israel's existence. It is Iran. It has been Iran for decades now. And unless Israel is willing to deal with it, it will continue to be Iran. And Israel is clearly not willing to deal with it. Andrew, where is Vivek getting the idea that Trump will eliminate millions of bureaucrats? Is that a delusion from idolatry? I mean, my guess is that Trump tells us to Vivek. You know, Trump tells him he's going to fire all these people. But, you know, Trump talked about draining the swamp. Remember when Trump talked about draining the swamp? To drain the swamp, to really do that, you would have to fire tens of thousands of people. Maybe hundreds of thousands of people in the government. Hundreds of thousands of people. But Trump gave no indication in his first administration that he would do any of that. There's no reason to believe he would do that in the second administration. And this time, I think he will fire a lot of people, but he'll just replace them with his own people. So as I said at the time, what all Trump did was swap, swap the swamp animals, swap the swamp animals. He replaced some swamp animals with his own. And I think in a second term, Trump will do more of that because he'll have more people that he has, right? He'll have many more people, many more people than he has, than he has. Vivek is not going to be VP. I said this from day one, and I will stand by that. I will put money on that. No way is he going to be VP. Now JD Vance might be VP and there will be one more giant reason not to vote for that ticket. Oh my God, if JD Vance is on the ticket, God, that is the M2. Trump was never M2. Trump was never the big misintegration. Trump was never going to take us there. JD Vance, Josh Hawley, they are the real enemy. And I think JD Vance is probably the front runner right now for VP. Vivek, no way. Scott's been wrong pretty much on everything this year with regard to elections. And he's desperately, pathetically wrong in Vivek. There's just a zero chance. Trump will not elect anybody, will not take anybody who's more charismatic than he is. Katharine Dawson, Schellenberger, this AM gave the state of unfree speech, including help US government has given Brazil. I haven't seen that, but that does not surprise me at all, at all. Yeah, I mean, the Brazil Twitter saga, which we talked about early in the week, last week, I can't remember, is ongoing, is ongoing. Brie, I just bought some silver options. Now I'm post-spending taxpayer money on solar. Brie is for inflation. Brie wants more government spending. Yeah, if only the timeline worked exactly that way. JDogg, how you on, is inflation always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, as Milton Friedman said? Oh, God, it's more complicated than that. It is a monetary phenomenon, right? But in a financialized world, what a monetary phenomenon is, is a problem. It's not obvious, right? You can print money and hide it away, and it doesn't have the kind of impact you'd expect. That's what happened with QE. That's what happened with the great financial crisis. At the end of the day, inflation is a mismatch between aggregate demand and aggregate supply. And demand is dictated by how much money we have in our pockets. And supply is dictated by how much stuff is being produced. Now here I'm talking about inflation as in prices going up, and not any prices going up, but systematically prices going up across the economy. Prices of airfares could be going up through the roof, but some other price could be going down. So price inflation means systematic increases in prices. Ultimately, a result of the amount of supply, the amount of stuff being produced being, let's say, constant, and the amount of money in the economy increasing, people bidding more to get the restricted number of goods. And so that's one possibility, right? So for example, you increase the money supply a lot, but it's not going into producing more goods. It's just because it's just artificial. It comes in on the demand side, people are trying to buy, prices go up. That's exactly the kind of inflation we've experienced over the last three years because it was a consequence of the Trump Biden massive spending during COVID, basically helicopter money, giving people checks, those checks and went out to search for goods, and you did it, what caused inflation to be even exaggerated, was you did it during your time where supply was actually crunched because of COVID, because people weren't allowed to work. I talked about this at the time. You're not allowing people to work to produce stuff, but you're giving them more money to spend that has to cause inflation, and it did. So that is inflation. But it's complicated by the fact that inflation can be caused by expected inflation. That is people's expectations about the money supply in the future, about monetary policy in the future. So it's a monetary phenomena, but not quite in the obvious way. That is sometimes people, if you expect prices go up, they do go up because what happens if I expect inflation, then I start pricing products higher and higher, and everybody does because everybody knows inflation is coming. And the higher the debt is, so in this sense it's a fiscal phenomena, the higher the deficits are, the more debt the government issues, the more people assure inflation is coming in the future, the more they start pricing inflation today, again, the more inflation you get. And in that sense, inflation can be a fiscal phenomena. That is the work of a Cochrane, John Cochrane, the economist, is that inflation can be a fiscal phenomena because of people's expectations caused by fiscal deficits. All right, Jay Dogg, your views on workaholism. At first I felt let down by my father's constant work focus, leaving little time for me, but as I've grown older, I've come to value the importance, enjoy work and bring. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know what workaholism is. You're not addicted to work. Sometimes people use work in order to focus on work in order to escape personal problems that they have. It's the only place they feel happy, they hate their personal life, they hate their families, whatever. That is all possible, but I wouldn't call that workaholism. Certain words, I seem to struggle to pronounce, it seems like. So I don't view it as something you're addicted to, certainly. And I don't view it as, for most part, negative. Now you have to figure out why you're working so hard. Are you working hard because you love it, because you enjoy it, because it's a challenge, because it's fun? Or are you working so hard because you feel a need, a drive, an anxiety that is driving you to work hard? That will determine whether it's healthy or whether it's unhealthy. That will determine the level of health that is involved. All right, Max, $20 question asks, well, $20 Canadian dollars are not quite as valuable. The king of objectivism, Tucker Carlson, was on Joe Rogan looking forward to your view soon. Max is being cynical. That's his third Super Chat. Thank you, Max, for your Super Chat. Yes, I haven't seen Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan. God, I don't know if I have the patience. Maybe if somebody has some good clips, you could send me some good clips of it because I can't sit through three hours of Tucker Carlson. That is too much. But if you send me a few clips of it, I'm happy to analyze short clips of Tucker Carlson. Daniel says, is it truly a failure if my goal ends up not being a value, all things considered? I suppose it is in the sense that I invest the time that I can't get back. But I had to learn it wasn't a value. Yes, I mean, I think that's absolutely the right approach to take. But you have to also recognize that you spent the time. Could you have predicted it wasn't a value? Could you have known it wasn't a value? It's something to analyze and think about and consider when looking back at why, you know, what happened, what the considerations were. But I think it's true that you had to learn it wasn't a value, but could you have figured it out earlier? So yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Michael says, did you see Prager going after Tucker for his anti-Semitic agenda? No, I didn't. Good for Prager. Maybe Prager is good for something after all. I pretty much written off Prager and, you know, Dennis Prager more broadly. All right. So, you know, Prager is one of the real bad guys, right? Because he has Prager, even different than people like Ben Shapiro has actually come out and said, you know, you need, you could only have morality if you have religion. Morality is completely dependent on religion and you can't really be moral without religion. So, that is a thousand times worse than any good thing he might stand for, than any positive he might advocate for. Prager is just awful and is so shallow and yeah. I mean, he happens to have some ideas that I agree with, but on anything that goes a little deep, he's shallow, pretty pathetic. I almost went up and introduced myself to him at this conference, at the Jordan Peterson conference I was at and then I thought, God, why would I do that? I just find him so, you know, unpleasant at the end of the day. All right. Shifting hats, shifting brains, shifting orientations. We're going to leave the news behind. We're going to leave your questions behind. We have no more questions. We're done with the questions for now, but feel free to ask because there will be, there's plenty of time still. We still have an hour and a half potentially for the show or longer potentially. It's up to you how long the show goes. It depends on how your answers go. Okay. So, in a week and a half, got it, so a week and a half already. In a week and a half, I have to deliver an eight hour course on capitalism. So, eight classes, each class is one hour on capitalism for the Peterson Academy. This is Jordan Peterson's online program, right? This is his online program where they hire, from what I understand, they hire people like me to come in and do eight hour courses. They tape them in very professionally. You do this in a studio. They tape them. They package them, and then they will go on this website, petersetacademy.com, I guess. And you will be able to listen to those. You'll be able to buy a subscription to this platform and be able to take as many courses as you want. You'll pay, I think, a monthly subscription. At least that's my understanding of how it's going to work. It hasn't launched yet. This is all pre-launch. It was supposed to launch, I think, at the end of last year, but for whatever reason they've delayed the launch. Anyway, I've been hired and they're paying me, I can say a good amount of money. I've been hired to do two courses. One on capitalism, one on finance. So, I've been doing the one on capitalism in a week and a half, eight hours, and the one on finance at the end of May, which will also be eight hour and eight hour course. So, I'm in the process of thinking through and figuring out what this is going to look like and what I'm going to be talking about. I've never really given an eight hour presentation on capitalism. I've given lots of one hour presentations. I've done it on finance, but I've never actually done a full thing on capitalism. So, right now, let me see if I can find this. Let's see if I can share this with you. So, this is what I'm thinking right now. And really, part of what I'm trying to do, part of what I want to try this out on you or try pieces of it out on you and see. And as I do it, I will learn and try to make it better. I mean, unfortunately, it would be much better if I could do like a practice run on the eight hour course and then do the real thing. It would be a lot better because I know that I get better every time I do a particular topic and content. I just get better. I learn from it. I refine it and get better at it. So, I thought that I would try it on. So, here's basically my outline as it stands right now. Well, anyway, this is approximately. Class number one is going to be what is capitalism? What is capitalism? Where did it come from? How did this thing appear? And what is it? So, we'll talk about the Enlightenment and we'll talk about the ideas that led to the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution without getting into all the history, but the basic idea and then what it is, property rights and kind of a basic understanding kind of what is capitalism? That is lecture number one. Lecture number two and it's both. So, what is capitalism? Where did it come from? And then lecture number two is going to be, well, how did it do? How is capitalism done? Right? And this will be actually lecture two and lecture three. So, lecture two will be how is capitalism done? And here I'll go over a lot of history, the Industrial Revolution, American, the 19th century, north, south. We'll talk about Asia. We'll talk about Japan, you know, the Asian Tigers. We'll talk about China. And then what are the alternatives to capitalism? And in that, we'll talk about socialism, fascism and what happened to them. This is class number three, how they failed. We'll talk about Sweden and the mixed economy. So, we'll talk about the alternative to capitalism being the mixed economy and that is what we have today. What we have today is capitalism. So, lecture number one, what it is. Lecture number two, was it successful? And they said number three, what are the alternatives? Lecture number four, right, lecture number four is, how does capitalism work? That is, what is the mechanism by which it works? How does the economics of capitalism actually work out? What is it about the process that leads the kind of results that we talked about, the innovation, the production, the high standard of living, all of that. So, what are the economics of it? How does economically this capitalism work? That's lecture number four. Lecture number five is all the economic objections to capitalism, things like it causes poverty, it causes inequality, it destroys the environment, it brings instability, it's cronyism, it's monopolies, exploitation, slavery, all of those things, all of those things would be kind of the economic objections. And then, so that's lecture five. Lecture number six is going to be all the philosophical objections to capitalism, altruism and the rejection of reasons. So, those are going to be the primary philosophical objectivism. So, we'll go through how capitalism and altruism incompatible, and therefore people have to either reject altruism or reject capitalism, they choose to reject capitalism, then we'll talk about how reason and or denial of reason and capitalism incompatible, and you have to choose one or the other, and how denial of reason has to lead to a rejection of capitalism. So, that's six. And lecture number seven is going to be the philosophical basis for capitalism. So, this will be the positive case, the positive philosophical case for capitalism. What is capitalism rest on epistemologically, it rests on reason, what is it rest on morally, it rests on self-interest, and what is it rest on politically rights and limited government and in a separation of economics from state. And then, well, I'll end with some kind of formal definition for it. So, this is going to be the program. They have not restricted what I say. This is definitely going to be a program that says that to the extent that you reject reason, to the extent that you reject reason, you undermine capitalism, and you will not be able to defend capitalism. This is why Jordan Peterson was so pathetic. I think pathetic is the answer, and anybody who wants to disagree with me, go watch the debate. In his debate with Zizek, in terms of defending capitalism, he was really, really, really bad. And this is why, because he can't defend it, because he can't talk about its philosophical roots. He can't defend it on that, and he doesn't understand economics of it. And he doesn't understand economics of it. So, the idea that you go on as somebody else's platform, you have to appease them, you have to cater them, you have to soften your own philosophy, you have to disengage your own mind in order to make them, to suck up because they're paying you is absurd. When I taught at a Catholic university, I didn't become Catholic. When I taught at a Jesuit university, I didn't become a socialist. I mean, it is nuts, and it is despicable, despicable, that anybody would even think that that is an appropriate thing to do. More Scott, you know, just bizarreness and ridiculousness, the idea that you have to cater to the people that invite you. I went to Tea Party, conferences, and told them exactly what I thought about their ideas. I mean, if you can't, if you don't have the balls, the guts, if you're such a coward, as you will adapt your ideas to whoever the audience is, then you are exactly that. You are a coward. You are a coward. All right. Let's, you know, so let's talk about one of the classes, a class that I've never really gone through in terms of actually teaching. And I'm kind of, I want to play around with a little bit of the structure of it. So this is an experiment for me. I will remind you that you know, this is done. You know, I can't do this without your support, and we've already been going two hours, and John just made that two hours a little bit more profitable. But it's still, we're still only about halfway to where we need to be in terms of actually justifying this. So please consider supporting the show. You don't have to ask a question. You can just use a sticker. You can use a sticker for a dollar, $5, $100, whatever. You can use a sticker. So, yeah. All right. So what is it? What is it at the end of the day that makes, at the beginning of the day, at the end of the day, what is it that makes capitalism so productive? What is it about the economy under capitalism that, you know, makes it possible for us to be as prosperous, as wealthy, as rich, as well off as those who live under capitalism are? What are the fundamental philosophical, or sorry, what are the fundamental economic principles that make this possible? Well, what is the fundamental, what is the fundamental challenge? What is the fundamental question the economic asks us? What is the problem that, if you will, economics is trying to understand, is trying to solve, is trying to big forward? What is the fundamental problem at the end of the day, really, of human existence, of human life? What does human life require? Well, human life requires that we produce, we create, that which we consume. We are not a being that just goes out there and discovers the means of its survival. We're not a being that just goes out there and knows the means of our survival. We are being uniquely among all animals that actually has to produce our values, that actually has to produce that which allows us to survive, to thrive, to flourish, to be human, to live as human beings. So the first thing one looks at from an economic perspective is the question of production. What needs, what needs to exist? What kind of social organization? What kind of social system allows for production? And how does it do so? Now, what is capitalism? Capitalism is a system that leaves people free. It's a system that by leaving people free, it unleashes the human mind. The human mind needs freedom, the absence of physical force in order to be able to function, in order to be able to think, to integrate the evidence that it accumulates through its senses and apply it to the challenge, the problem of existence, of producing the values necessary to exist. So capitalism leaves individuals free to produce, but more importantly it leaves them free to innovate. It leaves individuals free to discover their values, to figure out what their values are, what they should be, what they could be, what is possible. It leaves individuals free to use the ingenuity in order to create new products, new things that didn't exist before. Capitalism leaves the innovators free to innovate, whether it's the creation of the steam engine, whether it's the creation of the sewing machine, whether it's the creation of the semiconductor, the chip, all the different elements that today are responsible for our modern technological world, all of those had to be thought of. Somebody had to innovate, somebody has to create, somebody had to make them a reality. So I'll just comment on a chat. Marx was not the first one to coin the term capitalism. Capitalism was coined before Marx, but we'll leave it at that. So the first and foremost thing that capitalism makes possible is innovation. Innovation at every level of production, every level of production, natural resources. Think about how we used to get natural resources. Chop down trees, dig into the ground. Today we have massive machines that could dig into the ground. We have extraction machinery. Soon we will be sending robots into mines and thus reducing the risk to human beings basically to zero. And of course it is human ingenuity, innovation that has resulted in the creation of new natural resources. Yes, I said that right. The creation of new natural resources. Before the middle of the 19th century, oil, you know that black, gunky stuff that today fuels our civilization. That black, gunky stuff before the middle of the 19th century was not a natural resource. It was a natural pest. It was a natural pollutant and indeed reduced the value of any property on which it was found because there was no use for it. It was just black gunk coming out of the ground. It polluted, couldn't grow anything on the land. So even natural resources in a sense are products that the human mind actually creates, actually comes up with. It takes whatever nature provides us. That's wrong. It takes whatever is in nature and reshapes it for human use. And that is, that is what innovation is all about. That's what ingenuity is all about. That's what entrepreneurs and innovators and businessmen do. And that's what capitalism gives them the, in a sense, freedom to do, freedom to do. And by protecting their property rights, it allows them to benefit directly, personally, individually. It makes self-interest, the self- interest of the entrepreneur, the material self-interest of the entrepreneur and the spiritual self-interest of the entrepreneur completely consistent with production, with the production of the material goods necessary for human flourishing. So entrepreneurs go out there, they innovate, they build, they make money doing it, but they also have fun doing it. It's a challenge. It's something that stimulates their mind. It's something that engages them, challenges them, and therefore spiritually fuels them. And of course, materiality benefits them all because of the concept of property rights, which capitalism, of course, protects. So on the one hand, it gives them the freedom and protects them from the initiation of physical force by their neighbor. But innovation, it's important to note, is not only limited to, for example, particular products from natural resources all the way to finer products that we might use. Innovation is also applied to organizational structures for the 19th century. Basically, there were two forms of organization for business. One was partnerships, and one was basically government charters that allowed you to do certain things by government permission. And you had to apply, and it usually came with some kind of monopoly power, some kind of exclusionary rights. And that allowed for some economic progress, but was very limited. Partnerships can only grow so big. They have a hard time raising capital, growing in terms of the amount of money they can raise and therefore invest. They're very risky to the partners because they have full liability. Each one of the partners is liable for the debts the business takes on. They have a finite life. When the partner dies, it's hard to find a replacement, not conducive to large capital intensive and long-living productive organizations. A government charter goes against the whole principle of freedom. It goes against the whole principle of property rights. It requires permission, but capitalism is a permission less society, permission less. It also restricts the freedom of others by giving you a charter, by giving you exclusivity, other people don't get. So one of the great innovations of the 19th century, innovation by the way, just for this crowd, libertarians for example hate, is the limited liability corporation. This is a legal structure which allows for the raising of large quantities of capital. It allows for the development of professional managers. It allows for the separation of control and ownership from management and ownership. As a consequence, it can raise capital from lots of people. They can trade in the shares that they get in exchange for the money. It can exist forever. It does not have a limited lifespan. It does not depend on any particular person. And where anybody is willing to buy into this company because they know that all they can lose is the money they provide. That is that they are not liable for the debts of the business itself. That's why it's called limited liability corporation. So that innovation could not have come up without the creativity, the innovation, the thinking of free people in a free economy, thinking about property rights, thinking about how to create the best structures that allow for maximum innovation, maximum production over time. And then finally, and I'm not going to talk about this much, we'll do it. This is going to be another course on this. Innovation also extends into the realm of finance, into the realm of how these companies are financed, how the allocation of capital happens throughout an economy. So fundamentally, but the fundamental here is capitalism leaves innovators free to innovate. It leaves innovators free to innovate and create businesses around the innovation, to connect with capitalists, to fund it, to fund their projects, and to connect with customers who view their product as values. That is how capitalism fundamentally functions by connecting entrepreneurs, businessmen, innovators with the capital necessary to grow their businesses and with the customers necessary with the customers who then, who are the valueers, who are the people who consume, who value what is being produced, whose lives are being improved by the very fact of production. And it leaves every step in that process free for people to figure out, innovate around, to shape. It frees every single interaction. It leaves it free to be voluntary. It makes clear that none of those interactions is allowed, is force allowed into. Now, the consequence of this freedom to solve the problem of production is that people indeed specialize. This brings us to the second big cause of why capitalism is so effective. And that is a division of labor. People can now specialize in what they know, in what they can get better at, at what they are particularly good at. And they can, by, by specialization, as a Smith has shown, economists have shown over and over and over and over again. Though what happens when you specialize is you dramatically increase, you dramatically increase the productivity of your labor. If all you do is make one thing, even if you're better at making all things than anybody else, if all you do is make one thing, and let other people make the one thing they are best at doing, even if their best is not as good as yours. But now they've specialized in their best. And then you trade with them. Everybody is better off. It's better after, it's better off, and it's obvious to us in a modern society. But remember, this is not always so. Doctors be doctors. Ship manufacturers make chips. And even there, there was a division of labor. There are some companies that specialize in making chips. Other companies specialize in designing chips. Other companies specialize in using chips, Apple, for example, but it also designs chips. But then there are companies that only design chips. And then specializing in building the equipment that makes the chips. And then there's another company that specializes in making the mirrors that the equipment manufacturer uses to make the equipment that makes the chips. And if somebody tried to do all those things, they would never advance as fast. They would never advance as far. As when every one of those is specialized, every one of those is focused on the one thing that they do best. So the division of labor is huge, but it's not, it's, it's, it's multi-dimensional here. Division of Labor just simply economically, it's obvious that people who specialize, if everybody specializes in something, the world is a better place, we're all better off, the economy runs smoother, more wealth is created. But there's something much more important going on underneath us. Before the Enlightenment, before capitalism starts taking off, people didn't have a choice about the work they would do. People didn't have a choice about what they would specialize in. In a pre-enlightenment era, everybody had to survive. Therefore, everybody had to do the things that were necessary in order to survive. There were, everybody had to be a farmer, had to grow the food that they would consume. You had a, you couldn't specialize, or you could only specialize in one thing. Now, there was some craftsmen and others, but even they didn't get to really choose what they did. They gotta be, they, they were in that profession because their father was in that profession, because his father was in that profession, because their father was in that profession. They belonged to guilds who were stricter, who could enter, and those guilds determined the rules by which this hereditary process happened. Individuals couldn't choose the work that they did. So while there was some division of labor, it was minimal. And as a consequence, one of the consequences of that was no innovation. And of course, over long periods of time, there was no real economic growth. It's only when we liberated people by allowing them to choose, to make choices about their own life, to make choices about their own profession, to make choices about how they wanted to live. In other words, freedom for the first time in human history, capitalism for the first time in human history, allowed people to choose what they wanted to become, what they wanted to do. Now, you can see that today. We are wealthy enough so that a child can be asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? 400 years ago, nobody was asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Basically, you either formed a land, you did what your father did, if you were in some kind of profession that's not the right word, some kind of guild or some kind of work, tech work, you did, oh, maybe you became a soldier if there was a war going on. But there was no choices involved. There was no, hmm, I want to be a fireman. No, I want to be a doctor. No, I want to be in finance. No, no, I'm actually want to go study programming. Division of labor, what underlies the division of labor is the freedom of individuals to choose. And therefore, some of the benefits of the division of labor come from the fact that people now are choosing to do what they like doing, what they're motivated to do, what they are spiritually incentivized to be doing. And therefore, you're always going to be better at doing something you love than doing something you hate. So one of the reasons the division of labor is so effective and continues to be effective in the world in which we live today is because people choose the work that they want to do and that choice allows them to choose to do something that they find hopefully and find enjoyable, and therefore they can be even more productive than they would otherwise be at doing it. So capitalism allows us the freedom to innovate. In the name of production, and innovation is behind every step of production. It is what drives production. We're not still making widgets the same as we did 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, or 20 years ago. Constantly improving, constantly increasing efficiency, productivity, and therefore creating more wealth, raising quality and standard of living. So capitalism allows, but also capitalism allows for the division of labor. It allows people to choose the labor they want to do. It allows people to choose the area they want to focus on. And then once people specialize, once people focus on that, then you get the massive benefits of specialization, which accrue again to all of us, but accrued primarily to the individual who now gets to do what they love. And because of capitalism protection of property rights, they get to make a profit on what they do. They get to earn something for what they do. Capitalism, of course, because it's a system in which we can only deal with one another voluntarily, is a system of trade. It's a system in which we trade value for value. We don't take, we don't steal. We have to negotiate. We have to figure out what is value X worth to me. And that starts with what is my time worth to me. How valuable is my time? And therefore, we negotiate for our wages. We negotiate for what we're going to get as compensation for the time, the effort, the skill, the innovation, the expertise that we provide our employer, let's say. But it's voluntary. If we don't like it, we walk away. Capitalism by protecting property rights and contracts makes it possible to plan long term and to have trades that go on over the long run, but also articulate how these trades can be dissolved. I buy an iPhone for a thousand dollars. It's because to me, it's worth more than a thousand dollars. To Apple, it's worth less than a thousand dollars. It's win-win. Capitalism allows us to discover and to engage in win-win transactions. Transactions in which everybody is a beneficiary. Transactions in which we can pursue our own self-interest, not at somebody else's expense, but indeed pursue our own self-interest where the other party with which we are trading is benefiting as well from the same transaction. And of course, as we have a greater, a greater, greater division of labor and more and more and more and more trade between the different people who are specialized, we gain more and more and more and more wealth. And you can see how a system like that, given the innovation and the production that is happening, elevates wealth, elevates quality of life, elevates standard of living, and allows people to choose their values and go and pursue them and gain them. Trade also works, as does the division of labor, both the division of labor and trade, work more effectively. The larger the number of people you're talking about. If you have five people engaged in specialization and trade among each other, it's better than all five of them being, having to produce everything themselves. But you can only get so much wealth. There's only so much expertise that goes around among five people. There are only so many values that those five people can create. But when they've turned into 500 or 5,000 or 5 million or 5 billion, every time you raise the number, the growth becomes exponential. The amount of values being created becomes exponential. And the number of minds being oriented towards problems related to production, to the creation of the material well-being, and the spiritual well-being, art, and other things that we need in order to survive the greater the benefit. This is why globalization is such a huge benefit to humanity, and always has been. From the beginning of trade, trade was not just within the tribe. Even going back to Africa, tens of thousands of years ago, there's evidence to suggest the tribes were trading between each other across vast geographic areas. Greece and Rome, one of the great benefits of the Roman Empire, is to establish one system of trade for a much larger population across a vast geographic area. And even then, there was trade, there was engage between the Roman Empire and other civilizations, India, even China, far, far away, because the benefits are massive. One of the things that capitalism promoted, allowed for in the 19th century and to this day is global trade, global division of labor. We don't just have division of labor within a particular arbitrary set of borders. We have a division of labor on a global scale, eight billion people specializing, eight billion people doing what they love to do, what they really want to do, what they're good at doing. And then they get to trade with one another. Then they get it to exchange value for value and win-win relationships. Now, it's not across five people or five million people, it's across eight billion people. And as a consequence, the amount of wealth is immense and the growth in standard of living is dramatic. So freedom, capitalism, liberates the mind to innovate, liberates us to choose our own profession and to trade with one another free of courage and free of force, free of an authority. It allows and it leaves us free then to engage in the entrepreneurial activity that innovators do engage in, the business activity, the business of creating and producing. It also encourages us to form into groups, associations, corporations, entities that allow us to maximize our productive capabilities, that allow us to benefit from each other's knowledge, each other's specialization. Remember, we're not only trading in material values, we often trade in knowledge, knowledge of markets, knowledge of just knowledge of products, knowledge of technologies, knowledge of the stuff we need in order to continue to innovate and to continue to progress. One of the great advantages with which we live today is that today we have a relatively advanced division of labor society. We've got some problem with innovation and with entrepreneurial activity because of the degree of regulations and controls in which we find ourselves, we are not in a free capitalist society. But one of the things we do have is the ability to communicate, the ability to share information, the ability to benefit from the 8 billion minds working at the time. Now that ability to benefit from the 8 billion minds and the 8 billion people producing, consuming, active in the world, we get that benefit through the ability to communicate with one another, to talk with one another, to engage in activities. But that also includes somebody in India writing an interesting book that I can then buy and read and all the consequence of the interactions between us. And that happens because minds engage with one another, minds engage with ideas, minds engage with knowledge. But there is another way that this happens that is almost like magic. This is what I think ultimately people like Adam Smith, when they talk about the invisible hand, talked about. And that is the ability of markets of producers and consumers in vast geographic, dispersed areas to impact the decisions of one another without even talking to one another. And the means by which they do that is through the price mechanism. The means by which they do that is through individuals in every place demanding and supplying the goods that they need or the goods that they produce. And all of that information for millions and millions and millions, billions, trillions of transactions that are happening on a day-to-day basis. The transactions that are involved in production, the transactions that are involved in getting raw materials, the transactions that are involved in then taking that produced products and getting it to market, the transactions that are involved because that's the transaction, right? You have to ship it, you have to get it to the place, you have to market it, you have to display it. And then all the transactions that happen between the seller and the buyer, every one of those transactions is intermediated by a price, by a price in which the buyer and supplier negotiate where they are willing to transact, where the relationship, where the transaction is a win-win for both parties, where both are gaining a value. And those prices filtered through the economy. And they basically are sending constant signals. The price of semiconductors is expensive right now. What does that mean? That means that the demand is outstripping supply, okay? Well, is supply constrained? If something happened that destroyed the bunch of supply, okay, let's assume no. Then what is going on? Why is the price going up? Because maybe demand has increased. Oh, demand has increased. What does that mean? That means people are putting more and more emphasis on chips. They're buying more and more products that include chips inside of them. The value for a consumer is not the chip, the value is the iPhone. The value is the computer. The value is your car, which has lots of chips in it. The value is your refrigerator. The value is all the things that you have chips inside of them, okay? So people are valuing things that have chips in them more and more. They're demanding more and more of those chips. Well, that means the chips are valued. And it means that we need, that there's an incentive now because the price is going up to provide more. So more investment goes into making more chips to meet the demands of the chip, of the producers that need those chips. Changes in wages, changes in raw materials, demand for them or the supply of them or just, you know, something goes out of fashion. We don't need it anymore. I don't know. At some point, the prices of typewriters must have plummeted. Nobody needs them anymore. We've got wood processors. So companies that made typewriters went out of business. People who owned typewriters put them in the cellar, put them in a trash heap, stopped using them. So prices coordinate the economic activities within an economy. And again, it is freedom. It is capitalism. It is property rights that makes that possible. That is, people out there acting in their own self-interest without asking for permission, buying and selling the things that they value based on their own hierarchy of values, based on their own preferences, based on their own desires, based on their own wants, based on their own thought. And it is that that those billions of people transacting away, which is then driving a price system, a price signaling mechanism that determines where investment is made, what products get produced, what products get dumped, where resources are allocated. Nobody sits on top making those decisions. They happen because of the division of labor, because prices serve to communicate this kind of information across the entire system. Capitalism allows for capital, labor, goods to move, to go to where they are going to be optimally used, to where they represent the highest value. It is why capitalism is the most efficient system. It's because efficiency is built in. Efficiency means the satisfaction of values at the least cost. Well, that's the whole basis of the system of trade. It has a constant ongoing feedback mechanism. Prices, supply and demand, people's values are ultimately what drive the economic system that is capitalism. All right, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to stop there. I'm curious what you think. Any feedback, any input, anything missing would be appreciated. Need for more examples. That was like, I don't know, 45 minutes, 40 minutes, something like that. 40 minutes probably. But I'd have to do that for now. Now I'm worried that I have too much material. Too much material. And there's still a lot I want to say just about this issue. I mean, there's a whole issue of incentives. There's the issue of competition. There's the issue of cooperation, which I think is a much more important feature of capitalism than competition is. There's the issue of what drives it all ultimately, which is self-interest. And the fact that capitalism liberates self-interest. It liberates the individual to pursue his self-interest. And maybe that would be the way I frame it. Maybe I frame it in the context of being self-interested, of a self-interested being. And then I have to talk about the alternatives and why they fail. So the evil of central planning and the distortion of bad incentives. All right. So there's, yeah, I mean, the big challenge here is to figure out, God, over eight hours, what material to cover, what's going to get bumped up, how, prioritizing what I want to cover and what I want to include. Andrew says, you know, this relates directly to what I'm taking it. Your talk was brilliant, but do you think people today have the attention span to focus on long speeches? Or is your attitude that they're trying to appeal to a minority who do? I mean, you know, the Peterson Academy, where this is going to be featured, is all going to be eight-hour courses. It's all going to be eight-hour courses built around eight segments of one hour each. So, you know, the people who are going to be there are going to be self-selecting, self-selected to be people who are interested in taking eight-hour courses. It's like when you, you know, if you listen to the teaching company, right, the teaching company provides these, some of them are brilliant courses. I don't know if you've ever looked at teaching company catalog or listened to some of their classes. Some of their classes are really, really good. And, you know, people who, there's a huge market for this. There's a huge market for long format content. And I think that's what Jordan Peterson is going for. He's not going for Prager. He's not going for short videos. He's not going for five-minute sound bites. He's going for real intellectual content about deep topics. Think about Jordan Peterson's own lectures that are long and often rambling, right? But, you know, I think he's got an eight-hour course on the summit on the Mount, Jesus' summit on the Mount. That's going to be interesting. But, you know, I, this is what it's going for. I mean, if you go to college, if you go to university, you're taking an hour lecture, right? So, there has to be an audience for, at the universities and there were audience elsewhere. John says, Hakuna mata, Lion King, part of your world, the little mermaid, color of the wind, Pocahontas, Yuan, I wanted to give you some options this time. Would you please pick one of these three Disney songs and review it for me? Happy Friday and a good weekend. I owe you guys dozens of songs. I know that I'm trying to, right now, I have to admit, I am focused right now on getting this Peterson course done. It still requires a lot of work. So, what I just did is a little off the cuff, but to really nail it and to get it into an hour and to make it interesting and to make it stimulating and constructive, it's going to require still a lot of work. And that's one out of five, right? That's one out of five. One out of eight, sorry, one out of eight. So, it's going to be, it's, there's a ton of work still for me to do. I've got just over a week to do it. So, yeah, I mean, the ones that are, so anyway, I will get to all your songs. I've got two movies well over a dozen songs and one painting still to review. That will probably be after I get back from Miami and do this. And so that will probably be in a couple of weeks. But I do know I have a list. I have it all down there. And I promise I will get to it and I will cover it all. Thank you, John, for the support by contributing $100 for the song reviews. That is a huge help in getting us to our target, but we're still, we're still off a little bit. So, please consider that. All right, Shazmat, it's true that Vizini, the boss, needs physique, the employee, but not nearly as much as physique needs Vizini, the Princess Bride book. That's pretty good. But that's a great point that I need to make here in the, you know, yeah, the role of the businessman versus the worker. That's a really important point to make again about capitalism and about, because this comes up in the critique of capitalism about exploitation and the question is, do I make it here or do I make it when I talk about exploitation? That's the other part about structuring these courses is to figure out when to say what I want to say. There are lots of opportunities for it. I have a feeling I probably have enough material here for 16 hours and not eight. And the biggest challenge is I've actually suggested doing a part one and part two, but they wanted to get one out of, they wanted to get one course in the can before they approve a second one. But there is definitely enough to say here that could cover easily two courses easily. Andrew says, instead of matter, how is capitalism the system that rewards acts of rationality and punishes sin? Yes, absolutely. One of my bullet points here is incentives. Yeah, I mean, it rewards real production. It rewards adding value. It rewards having the foresight, the thought, and the willingness to work hard in order to actually produce. And it penalizes laziness. It penalizes emotionalism. It penalizes lack of thought. It penalizes lack of thought. Stephen Hopper, I gave a super sticker at the beginning of the show. Thank you, Stephen, for $20. This super sticker is for the economics of capitalism lecture. It was excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. You guys are too easy an audience. You need to be tougher on me. Mary Benz is going to be tough on me. How do you intend to motivate your class? That's a good point. Good point. I mean, the class generally is going to be motivated around something happened 250 years ago. Look how rich we are today relative to back then. Generally what people think or what people attribute this to or the name they have given to the system that arose 200 years ago is capitalism. Maybe the most important thing we can do right now if we care about human progress and we care about human prosperity and flourishing is to understand what that system really is, how it led to where we are today, and how we need to preserve it. So that's going to be the motivation for the whole class. Then the question is how do I motivate this particular class, the class on the economics of capitalism. It's a good point because I didn't really do that, right, which is something I harass anybody who takes my public speaking class nonstop about you have to motivate. And I think the motivation here is going to be we've just talked about, this is the previous classes, how successful capitalism has been, how it's raised the standard of living quality of life, how over the span of 300 years it is completely and utterly changed the world so it's unrecognizable today. How did it do this? What is it about capitalism that makes that possible? So I think that's and maybe I need to restructure this. Yeah, maybe I need to restructure this. So we need to explain, okay, so here's what happened, productivity went up, innovation went up, the standard of living went up. Look at what happened in America, look what happened in UK, look what happened in China when they introduced a little bit of capitalism. All of that, yeah, all of that I can do, do all that. Okay, but why, why did any of that happen? So we know capitalism did that, but why did it happen? So the why, to answer the why we need to get into these issues, and maybe that's a lot more time, maybe that's two classes not one about what it is that made it possible for capitalism to produce these kind of results. Yeah, I think that's right. So that's the motivation. How did we, how did this happen? Is it just a fluke? What is it about capitalism that guarantees almost that we will be successful? Melbourne says rich may be off-putting. I don't see why we're all rich, even the poor rich. I can show that they have running water, they have flushing toilets. Many of them, most of them, overwhelming majority of them have air conditioning. They have automobiles. Some of them even take trips to Europe once in a while, hitchhiking, maybe, maybe staying at hostels, but still, they get to see Europe. How many rich people did that 100 years ago, 200 years ago? So no, rich is important because it's not, but yes, the fact that you are like these of our child both is hardwarming, but hardwarming, but really where we are today in the 12th, 21st century, a little trivial. I mean, it's not just that you survive childbirth. You are likely to live well into your 90s in pretty healthy shape. Your child might live into his mid-hundreds, you know, a hundred and something quite easily and live really, really well. And anyway, I will be covering all of that real in detail, how life is better, all of that life expectancy, child mortality, just the way we spend our time today, the things that we do, the ability to enjoy life more, the time that we have, all of that. I will be spending a lot of time in the first, second, and third classes. So that will be all already done. Now we're talking about, okay, how does it happen? What's the mechanism? And the mechanism is entrepreneurship, a division of labor, price mechanism, all the things that we talked about, that's the mechanism by which it happens. And the motivation is I'm trying to explain why it is that we don't have child mortality at the rates that we had back then, knowledge. But I still have a lot of work to do to get this into shape, where I'm happy with the lecture that it will produce. It's nowhere near the quality which I would like it to be in terms of integrating the kind of stuff that needs to be integrated in order to make a case for the economic system and explain the economic system of capitalism. And again, tie it into the whole arc of an eight lecture course. But that's the work we're doing. I've got some of the classes, I know exactly what I'm going to do and they completely worked out and I'm in great shape. This one, I'm glad I had an opportunity to try it out on you guys. And I know where it's missing, where it's lacking, what needs to be improved. And again, we've got eight of these that I'm going to have to fill. Speak to my ARI friends for tips. They get tips from me. What are you talking about? All right, anyway, this is going to be fun to put it all together. Volta says, thanks for the Mentava story, of course. Yeah, I loved that story. It was great. Iel says, what is the definition of economic fascism? You know, I don't know what the form of definition, but economic fascism is that system in which the means of production are nominally owned by the private sector. But they are controlled by the government, by the people in power. That is that the owners of the means of production have the illusion that they have private property. That is, fascism preserves or maintains or creates, maybe creates is the best word, creates the illusion of private property. Private property, it's pseudo private private property. You have deed on the property, but the government can take it away from you anytime. You have a deed on the property, but you need permission to do anything with that property. Oh, it sounds like what we have today is kind of fascist. Yes, we're much closer to fascism today than we have to socialism. Socialism is when the state or some other entity owns the means of production, labor unions own the means of production. In fascism, the state doesn't own the means of production, but it completely controls them. In other words, it's equivalent of ownership, but it's indirect. And that's the sense in which socialism and fascism are very similar. One is more honest than the other. Socialism is much more honest than fascism, because socialism recognizes the reality that control means ownership might as well own it all together. Communism is just consistent socialism. Communism is consistent socialism, by which all the means of production are owned by the state or by the public in quotation. But more than that, it's a totalitarian ideology where everything, all human decisions, are geared towards the preservation of the totality, towards the state, the parliamentarian, whatever it happens to be. And who says, follow up, here's the difference between you and these other people who give long talks you on. Your content is more challenging to general audiences. Yeah, but that's true. But my job then is to simplify it, to make it less challenging, to make it more entertaining, to be more funny, to be more interesting, to be, to give lots of good examples, to connect it better for them into reality. So that's my job, because my content is more difficult. As a teacher, if I want to be a good teacher, then my job is to make it interesting for those people who are maybe less able, less skilled, less to sit through an hour lecture. I don't know. So yeah, any feedback that suggests how to do that is incredibly valuable. But basically, I need to come up with some great examples. I need to concretize it. I give lectures all the time. My lectures are typically under an hour, although often I find myself that they've gone an hour even when they don't realize it. They're typically 40, 45 minutes. These are going to be an hour long. I'm more worried about how much material I have. Right now, I'm worried about organizing it in a way that fits into eight sessions and about making it entertaining and interesting and stimulating, as you said, so that people are engaged. I take it, Andrew, you found that too challenging, maybe too abstract, too difficult for people to connect to and that it needs to be made more accessible in some way. All right, everybody, I will keep you updated on my progress. I'll definitely keep you updated on how it goes. Two hours and 45 minutes today. All right, and thank you, Jack. Thanks for the stick up. I really appreciate that. Let's see, what else did I want to say? Oh, next week. So tomorrow there will be a show in Hebrew. For those of you who understand Hebrew, we'll be doing a show in Hebrew. I'm merely focused on what's going on in Israel, Iran and all of that. On Monday, Monday I'll be in New York, so it will not be a regular schedule. I will do it in the evening. I don't know exactly when, 6, 7, 8 p.m. east coast time, that range. So there will be a show on Monday. It will be in the evening. Then Tuesday, I mean, meetings all day in New York, I will try to do a short show during the day in between meetings if I have the time. But there is a possibility that there will be no show on Tuesday. Then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday will be the regular schedule as we, the new regular schedule. And then the week after that, I'm actually in Miami to take the Peterson thing, so the schedule will change again for that whole period. Whoa, Shazbatt, what's that? All right, Shazbatt just got us way over the target. Thank you, Shazbatt. He says, I would like you to review two monologues from the show Andor. We'll send links. Good. I mean, Andor's actually a show I watched and I liked. I enjoyed. But you asked a question the other day about a character in Andor that I just didn't remember. I would have to actually go back and review the show. But monologues are going to be easier. And I could watch the episode to get full context. Frank says, capitalism is the, whoa, suddenly questions are coming in. Just as I'm wrapping up, Frank says, capitalism as the pursuit of value monopolies, Edward de Bono, as the antidote of socialism interventionism. Capitalism, you know, is the pursuit in a sense, there is an aspect of capitalism or question that is the pursuit of value monopolies that is you know, the ability to provide somebody with value. And that in that sense, your monopoly in that sense that you're the only person providing them with the value. And you have a, you know, that you successful to the extent that you establish a monopoly. Apple is the only producer of Apple products. That's a monopoly. They've gained, you know, Peter Teal talks about this. I don't think that's essential of capitalism or far from it, right? It's there. That is, it is about the pursuit of a monopoly in the production of values. But that's not essential of it. And it's not an antidote to socialism and interventionism. Socialism interventionism. Capitalism doesn't develop as an antidote to that capitalism developed as a result of freedom. Capitalism is a product and the manifestation of freedom of individual liberty and individual freedom. It is a product and manifestation, not of an antidote to capitalism and interventionism, but an antidote to all forms of authoritarianism, all forms of imposition of force on mankind. Thank you, Frank, $50. Really, really appreciate that. That's very generous. Richard, too much course content is much better than too little. Perhaps you could put advanced content into a later course. I suggest leading with a story to hook your audience. Perhaps Meribens could write it for you. I don't do stories. I prefer to lead with and to motivate with something real from their life that they might be curious about, that they might be interested in. By the way, if you would like to be at these classes, if you'd like to be in the audience for these sessions, you can still apply. Let me know. Send me an email at youronbookshow.com. I can send you the information about applying. I posted a few times on Twitter. I don't know if anybody used it, but you can apply to be a member of the audience at these sessions, which hopefully would be a lot of fun. All right, everybody. Thank you. I really, really appreciate it. Really appreciate the support. Thank you, Charles Botts. Wow. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, others for doing. We did, John did 100 plus because he did more than one. And thank you, Jennifer, for starting a software like 50 bucks. That was great. And everybody else who did stickers, thank you for the $20, all the way down to the $1, $2. Thank you, Meribens, for reminding me that you have to motivate every lecture, of course. And I will see you all on Monday, probably Monday evening. And from the beautiful, amazing dynamic city of New York, and relatively safe, much safer than it used to be, much safer than it was in the 1990s or the 1980s. Talk to you soon. Bye.