 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Oh, right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Wednesday, February 28th, though everybody is having a fantastic time, fantastic week. This is tomorrow is the 29th. Doesn't happen only every few years, right? So a slightly longer February than usual. All right, let's jump in. Yesterday there were primaries in Michigan for both the Republican and the Democratic Party. Donald Trump and Biden won by big margins. Donald Trump won 60, basically 65% of the vote. Nikki Ailey got something like 20, I think 68% of the vote. Nikki Ailey got 27% of the vote with most of the votes. I mean, almost all the votes counted already, resounding victory for Donald Trump. I mean, all the more reinforces the fact that we've, I think everybody already knows that Donald Trump is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party, I guess, unless something happens. He goes to jail or something weird happens. That is pretty much a done deal. Warning signs for Trump is in spite of the fact that everybody knows he's going to win. In spite of the fact that Nikki Ailey is really, is not gaining any kind of increasing support and that support is not significant. Of course, she lost her home state. She lost the state in which she was governor by 20 points. So the fact that she's losing Michigan by almost 40 is not surprising. The one warning sign for Trump is that he's not winning by big margins. He is almost an incumbent at this point. And the reality is that Trump is not getting the votes of what they're calling college-educated Republicans. And the question will be, is Trump going to rally those people when it comes, when election time comes, November comes, will they vote for him, will they stay home, will they vote for Biden? That, at the end of the day, is going to decide the election is what some of these swing voters actually decide to do. People who don't like Trump really don't like Trump. Not just people who say they don't like Trump like Scott and others, but people who really don't like Trump. Will they ultimately vote for him in spite of it? Is there a vote now for Nikki Haley, just a protest vote, but at the end of the day, they are rallying around Trump? Or will they stay away and not vote for him? That will determine it, particularly states like Michigan, where things are very, very, very, you know, very close. And when Trump won Michigan in 2016, he won it by 11,000 votes. When Biden won Michigan in 2020, he won it by 150,000 votes. But at the end of the day, those are small numbers. Certainly the 11,000 could swing easily one way or the other. And that brings us to Biden. Biden won 81% of the vote, but Biden is really running unopposed. I mean, the two other candidates, the Democrats, the Dean and whatever her name is, who suspended her campaign already, they got single digits insignificant. But a third category actually did quite well, and that is the none of the above category. The none of the above category basically has been in a Democratic primary, is basically designated as a protest vote. And 100,000 people voted none of the above to protest basically. Joe Biden's position on the Israeli, on Gaza basically. The idea is that Biden is way too friendly to Israel, 100,000 votes of progressives, and of many, many Arabs who live in the state of Michigan, voted none of the above, so voted against Biden. Now, the question is what's going to happen again in November. The same question we have for the Republicans is applicable for the Democrats. Will those 100,000 vote for Biden? Because they figure Trump is worse and they'll vote for him anyway, in spite of the fact that they disagree with him about what he's doing on Israel. Or will they just stay home and say, you know what, this is such an important issue for me, that I'm not going to take the risk and I'm not going to vote for Biden, and I'm going to stay home and 100,000 votes could give the election to Trump. And Michigan is a relatively big state. It has quite a few electoral college representatives. It's an important state for both candidates. If you're going to win, I think you need to win Michigan. So the fact that on both sides, the question marks about how solid the support is within the U.N. political party is interesting and important, and it's something to watch in other states as well. Michigan was particularly interesting because of the Arab vote. I think Nikki Haley is going to get 25% of the Republican vote in other states as well. I don't know that she'll do much better than that. Her best shot was in New Hampshire and in South Carolina where she got a significant, she got more like 45% of the vote, or 35% of the vote, but I don't know that she's going to get much more than 25% anywhere else. And then of course, same question, can Donald Trump get those votes ultimately? All right. That was Michigan yesterday. TikTok, TikTok, our favorite social media platform. TikTok and Universal Music are in a big, big fight, right? So Universal Music basically, TikTok pays Universal Music for their catalog of songs. That makes it possible for creators on TikTok to splice up those songs and use them for their short one-minute videos and do all kinds of stuff with those songs. And that is a huge value for the TikTok, the TikTok, what are they, you know, users, right? But TikTok is also really, really important for Universal because one of the things that does is when there's a new album that comes out, Universal is the largest music publisher in the world, when a new album comes out, they can count on TikTok fans to splice up the music and put it out there and people come familiar with it and they want to go and stream the full song. And that's, it's a huge part of the marketing campaigns now is to use TikTok as a platform to introduce the music to fans, to the general public, to the millions and millions of people who use TikTok on a daily basis. Anyway, TikTok and Universal have not come to an agreement about renewing their contract. TikTok is not willing to pay Universal what Universal wants in terms of use of the music on the platform. There's big disagreement and basically Universal has now withdrawn all its music from the TikTok platform. And that is creating problems for Universal artists who are counting on that platform to, you know, to leverage the new albums as they bring them out. But it's also creating a problem for TikTok in terms of the amount of music and the kind of music that is available for creators on TikTok, people who publish on TikTok, the kind of music that they have available. So it's going to be interesting to watch the relative power of each as they struggle to figure this out. This is the negotiating, so it's just a business negotiation. But that business negotiation is telling us a lot about the state of social media, the state of maybe the music industry, the relationship between the two and how that is evolving. Clearly, TikTok is becoming a bigger and bigger and bigger power in our lives in this world and certainly within the music industry. So yeah, Universal deployed what's being called the nuclear option by withdrawing all of its music, all of its music. TikTok, by the way, if you look at TikTok, about close to 80%, maybe over 80% of videos on TikTok have music. Similar numbers on YouTube, a lot less on Instagram, a lot less on Facebook. YouTube and TikTok really have embraced this idea of using music for their creators to put stuff on. You might have noticed a few of the shorts that I published recently, actually are musical soundtracks in the background, trying to figure out how much value that adds, how much more views that creates. It's so far not definitive, I don't think, but certainly that is something that I think both TikTok and YouTube encourage in doing. All right, ransomware. So you know what ransomware is, right? I mean, ransomware is where... Where is this article about ransomware? It's disappeared on me. All right, I guess I don't need it. Here it is. All right, so ransomware is when a company hijacks, when a company hackers, hijack the server of a company and then say, okay, and basically, let's say, freeze it and make it impossible for the company to function because the hackers are controlling the computers. And then they basically say the company will unfreeze the computer, will let you access the computer if you pay us money. And there are being some big, big cases of ransomware, infrastructure companies in the United States, a number of other companies. A lot of the ransomware that you hear was not a lot of the ransomware you don't hear about, right? Companies negotiate the ransomware, they pay them off, and they try not to make a big deal out of it. They don't want to let the public know they're vulnerable. They don't want to let them know they're vulnerable. So a lot of it is undisclosed. It happens often. Anyway, there was this big operation called Black Cat, AlfV, where they were responsible for some of the biggest ransomware cases in the United States. And the U.S. Department of Justice went after them. And about just before Christmas, they announced that they had one, that they had been able to disable the Black Cat ransomware network. They basically foiled their attempts against hundreds of victims. They seized the dark web sites that Black Cat had been using for the extortion. And they basically completely disrupted the Black Cat ransomware group and the Justice Department was patting themselves on the shoulder. They've done it. It's worked. Well, two months and a week after this happened, guess what? Black Cat is back. New servers, new hacking techniques, new ways of getting around it. And for the last seven days, the Black Cat has held hostage at the medical group a change healthcare. It's crippled its software in hospitals and pharmacies across the United States, leading to significant delays in drug prescriptions for an untold number of patients. The outage disclosed as a Black Cat attack by Reuters represents a particular horrific episode because of the impact on healthcare and because of the impact on people's health and because of how long it's already lasted. But more important than that, I think what it indicates is that law enforcement is, I think, not approaching this in the right way. Certainly, that you can't just disable these people. You can't just take their servers away and do stuff like that and think that you are going to shut them down and eliminate them and they will go away. Behind Black Cat are human beings. These human beings are making the law. They're criminals. And unless you put them in jail, they will keep doing what they're doing. It's like you've got a bunch of, I don't know, armed robberies. And what you do is you take all the arms away from them and you say, yeah, I want, I stopped them. I've taken their weapons away. Guess what? They go buy new weapons and they're back doing armed robbery. You can't just deal with the tools. You have to deal with the people. Now, I don't know what's involved in identifying who these people are, who these hackers are, where they reside. I don't know what's involved in trying to get foreign governments to help. Maybe they're in Russia. Maybe they're in China. But you'd think there is a way to shut these people down. This is what the government should be doing. I don't know, special ops, whatever. Shut them down. Make the consequences to them so horrific that they will never try it again. They're violating the individual rights of Americans. They are criminally active in the United States. There has to be a penalty for that and a penalty to the individuals responsible, not just to the tools that they happen to use. Once somebody attacks the United States, it's not just enough to defend. You have to go and get them and prosecute them or get them, right? How exactly do you do that? I'm sure it's difficult. I'm sure it's complex, particularly in a world in which there are so many bad actors. But this just proves there's just no way around dealing with the source of the problem, which is the people involved, rather than just its superficial manifestation or the particular tools that they happen to be using, which can always be changed, updated and redone. All right, just another update on antitrust. It's not just Lena Kahn at the FCC, but the entire Justice Department, the entire Biden administration has dedicated itself to fighting corporate America and to trying to do what it can to restrict, control, diminish the power of big business in this country of large corporations. Justice Department just announced today that they have launched an antitrust investigation into United Health, which is the largest U.S. health insurer, actually my health insurer, and a leader manager of drug benefits with a spalling network of doctor groups. So they are investigating in particular the relationship between United Health Care and Uptim Health Services arm, which owns physician groups, with the idea that there seems to be a conflict of interest here, right? The physician groups should make the services available to other insurance companies, and they do most, I think they do. Are they given preferential treatment to United Health? United Health, after all, owns them. And so the government is going to protect us from doctors who might be biased towards using the insurance company that owns them versus other insurances. So this is not just size, market dominance, but collusion, you know, preferring one company over another, therefore suppressing competition. So they've been interviewing doctors and other health care providers and other people who work for Uptim with the idea that there's something ominous going on here. God, I mean, insurance business, health insurance business is so heavily regulated. Everything they do is so controlled. There's so little opportunity for them to be creative and to innovate and to do new things. United is trying to do that by buying Uptim with these doctors' practices and trying to find ways to innovate in a space where innovation is basically be crushed by regulation. And here we got the government wanting to crush even the little bit of innovation that they are doing today. So it just doesn't stop. United Health Care also wants to purchase a home health company and met the size of about $3.3 billion. And the Justice Department is inquiring, inquiring and considering trying to stop that deal as well. I mean, the problem in America is if you become too successful, if you grow too big, if you are too ambitious and you come up with innovative ways in which to try to extend your market and to create more profit opportunities, the regulators are going to come after you. They're going to try to shut you down. It is really horrific what we should encourage is the elimination of regulations, make insurance a truly competitive business, allow insurance companies to offer a wide variety of different plans. By the way, most of the regulations here are not at the federal level. They're at the state level. And the state level basically forces insurance companies to offer everybody a one-size-fit-all product. And as a consequence of that, there's very little innovation. It becomes a commodity. What do you compete over? One of the great ways in which we could innovate in the healthcare space is allowing insurance companies to compete about the profits, not just the price, but also the product that is being offered. So, but it's just so far gone, right? It's so far gone. Right now, by the administration is in the process of investigating or suing Apple, Amazon, Live Nation Entertainment, Alphabet, Alphabet's Google unit in particular, among those of the high-profile ones. But as I said, they've got cases in United Health and many other companies. This is one of the most aggressive anti-business and aggressive in terms of antitrust, what do you call it, governments that we've seen in a very long time. It really is a shift that started under Trump of getting more aggressive in terms of antitrust regulations. I think this is here to stay. It doesn't matter who wins the next election. Both Republicans and Democrats are committed to elevating enforcement of antitrust and enforcing it in ways that it hadn't been enforced in the past. So you can expect a lot more antitrust enforcement. It would be nice to get rid of Lena Kahn and this particular Justice Department, but it's not like we'll get any much better under whoever the next president is. It just seems like, yeah, if you care about freedom, if you care for free markets, in particular freedom in economics, we're just going to have to wait for the American public to change its mind about it and to make it a priority and to make it something important. Right now, the American public does not care about economic liberty or put it another way. They don't particularly want economic liberty, and therefore that's not a priority for either one of the political parties in terms of who they're nominating and what their agenda is going to be. All right, babies, or the lack of babies as the case may be, South Korea just announced a fresh, that they've just set a fresh record, a fresh record on the world's lowest fertility rate ever recorded, right? Which is now, the number of babies expected per woman in a lifetime has fallen to 0.72, 0.72 replacement is 2.1, 2.2, something like this is 0.72. This is massive shrinkage, and it's down from 0.78 in 2022. The number of births in South Korea, a country of 50 million people, the number of births slid by almost 10% to 230,000 out of a 50 million population. South Korea shrinking the prospects of the future, reversing this is going to be hard. The government is very interested in finding ways to encourage women to have babies, but it doesn't seem like anything really is working. All the incentives, all the provisioning, all the government's efforts, the same thing by the way happening in Japan. Japan, the number of babies born in Japan fell for an eight straight year and has set a new record in 2023. The number of births is the lowest number, no, the number of marriages is the lowest number. The number of marriages fell 6% to under 500,000. That's the lowest number of marriages in Japan in 90 years. People are not getting married, they're not having sex, and they're not producing babies, producing babies. The government in Japan again is really worried, trying to create incentives, status policies to encourage childbirth. The United States has seen a crash in the number of children, number of babies being born, and we're seeing that, of course we've talked about this across the West. I'll do a whole show on this because it is, there is a fascinating question about why and what could be done to reverse it, if anything should be done to reverse it. But why is it happening? Is it good? Is it bad? But certainly from a purely demographic perspective and a status perspective, a collectivist perspective, these numbers are horrible and governments are flipping out and demographers are flipping out. But much more interesting is the question of why? Why aren't people having babies? And why in particular are they not having babies in a country like South Korea, which is newly rich, relatively doing well, and in Japan that maybe is not newly rich but is stagnated for 20 years. So, two countries that are different in that respect in terms of what's happened economically. On the other hand, South Korea, South Koreans work more hours than any other people in the world. They don't have time for marriage and sex, maybe. But interesting cultural phenomena and interesting that it's happening across different cultures. You're seeing the same thing in Russia, you're seeing the same thing in Italy, in Catholic countries, Italy and Spain. You're seeing the same thing in the United States to a less extent of course. And okay, what do you do with that? Where do you go? Where do you go from here? The real question is why and what are the right policies? Countries like Hungary are dramatically subsidizing babies that is having a very small impact. It stopped the decline of births, but it hasn't had a significant increase in the number of babies either. It's just slow increase. So what is the solution? We'll talk about that on a future Yuan book show. All right, finally from China. Oh, I will say one other thing. I didn't list this. For those of us who are Apple fans, like me, who buy everything Apple, who have most of Apple's products, who, you know, everything where there's an option, it is Apple. Apple announced or it's been announced, even though Apple never announces formally, that the Apple car now is dead, that they have stopped producing Apple cars or stopped planning for an Apple car. Apple was supposed to and has been working for over 10 years now on a electric car, a self-driving electric car, supposedly, or at least an electric car. That has been shut down. That project has been shut down at least for now and Apple will not be producing a car. It doesn't at all surprise me. Right now, the electric car space is super unprofitable. The electric car space is unbelievably competitive. The electric car space is dominated now, is going to be dominated, is already dominated by China. BYD is selling more electric cars than Tesla. I think in the years to come it will sell a lot more electric cars than Tesla. It is building factories in Europe, in Mexico, in all over, in South America, all over the world. The Chinese are going to dominate electric car production. They are going to do what the Japanese did to regular internal combustion engine cars in the 1970s. The Chinese are going to do at an even faster rate, I think, on the electric car front. And it's not just BYD, the number of other countries following behind them. They have huge economies of scale. Most batteries called batteries today in the world are produced in China, so they have huge supply chain advantages. And that might change in the future. Building battery factories in the United States where the United States can compete in their production is questionable. All these batteries are being built with US government subsidies. Tesla is cutting prices. Ford is basically saying, ah, we'll produce electric cars, we're not excited about it. The Europeans are trying to realign around electric cars, but it's not clear that they compete. By the way, BYD just announced or just revealed a new car, an electric supercar, $225,000, a Ferrari-like electric car, something Tesla doesn't have, a Roadster Tesla is talking about now. Oh, yeah, no, we'll get on that. We're going to have one next year. So it looks like Tesla is even playing catch up with BYD. Now BYD, everybody complained a few years ago about quality. That was true of Japanese cars initially. Quality will get better. And again, they have economies of scale. And China, in China itself, China is faster transitioning to electric cars than any other country I think in the world. So anyway, this is where we are. Apple is not going to make a car. I am crushed. I was going to be one of their first customers. I wanted an Apple car. I'm not going to get an Apple car. I'll have to settle for those goggles and pretend I'm in an Apple car or something like that. Alright. Xixi, talk about China. Xixi has a problem with finance, surprisingly enough. Xixi is cracking down on bankers. Bankers across the board in China are seeing their bonuses slashed, their salaries reduced in the name of what Xixi calls common prosperity, i.e. Galitarianism, i.e. a return to more kind of communist, egalitarian kind of ideology. Xixi doesn't trust financiers. He doesn't trust them. He thinks they're hedonistic. He doesn't see why they need all this money. They live lavish lifestyles. And it's time to rein them in, particularly at a time where the Chinese economy is struggling, but even in the future, more and more it appears that China in the future will basically have be dominated or maybe even exclusively have government banks and government insurance companies. There was a real moment there before COVID where it looked like China was going to be an innovator. China was going to have real breakthroughs in the field of finance. Ant Group was going to go public. They were going to be one of the largest finance groups in the world. They did both direct peer-to-peer. They did insurance. They had stock brokerage. They had a bank. They were going to be one of these finance conglomerates that really was going to dominate. And they were really innovative. This was a company started, spun off I think from Alibaba, Jack Ma, and all of that collapsed. If you remember when Jack Ma disappeared, Ant Group was prevented from going public and then it was broken up. And now it looks like, just like in other fields in China, now it looks like the government is going to dominate finance. They're going to clip the wings of the private sector. They're going to eliminate it. It's really going to be interesting what happens in Hong Kong where you have a lot of private banks, a lot of private financial institutions. China ultimately will destroy those. And again, at the end of the day, they'll have government-run banks, government-run insurance companies, other even banks, and other even insurance companies at that point. And the private sector is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking in China, and that of course is going to be about a much more difficult situation for the Chinese economy. The Chinese economy will suffer. It will not be able to grow as fast. They won't have as much money. And that of course will also cripple Xi's ambitions militarily, where's the money going to come from to continue modernization of his military and to grow it and to get it ready for a war with the United States or a war to take over Taiwan. Anyway, China is heading in exactly the wrong direction, but I'd say join the club because so is the United States and much of the West. So over the last year, private banks and brokerages in order to be nice to the regime and not upset them, they've been cutting, slashing bonuses and travel perks for staff and young Chinese are rethinking careers and finance and looking for other things to do. But of course, this is happening throughout the Chinese economy. And as the Chinese economy stops growing, as people's savings gets destroyed, the savings that they had in real estate, that market is being crushed. And as the potential job opportunities in the private sector disappear because everything is moving towards to being government-run, Chinese society is really, really, really changing. A lot of dreams are going to go away. You'll see a greater and greater exodus out of China. Again, I doubt that America will be smart enough to exploit that to get all those brains to come to the United States. Although some of them will go and try to sneak in illegally, as they are right now, the number of Chinese trying to get to the United States illegally, as I've told you before, is growing exponentially as more and more middle-class Chinese just want to get out of China, just want to get out of China. All right. Thank you. That is the news. I will now turn to your questions. Remind people that they can ask questions to in the Super Chat. We have a bunch of them, so no problems. But if you want to support the show and ask a question, use the Super Chat. You can also use stickers. Paul, thank you. Ryan, thank you. Shelly, thank you. And Zach is a new member. Thank you, Zach, for becoming a member. Stephen, thank you. Sylvanas, thank you. Thanks, all of you guys, for doing stickers in support of the show. And if you want to support the show monthly, you can do so on your onbookshow.com.slash membership. And on Patreon. I really like people subscribing on Patreon. It is my preferred platform at this point. So if you don't mind using Patreon, please use Patreon to support the show. All right. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Don't forget to share. Don't forget to do all the things. Comment, subscribe. Join the chat. The more chat activity we have, the more YouTube loves us. And I've been told that we have quite a bit of chat. That, you know, people do, your onbookshow does get a fairly high level of engagement relative to other shows. So please do even more. Do even more. All right. Let's jump to the Super Chat. John, for $100. Thank you, John. If drugs were legalized, could a businessman who created a legitimate empire selling cocaine have the same level of pride as someone like Howard Rock, knowing that he sells tools of evasion to self-destructive individuals? Same question, but for a peddler of religion. No, he can't. So there's no question. It's not about the money. Now, I'm going to argue that it's not possible to make a lot of money in the drug trade and the, you know, in the cocaine trade because cocaine is a commodity. And competition would drive down profit margins. So while today the cartels make a lot of money, that's because the competition there is this very little competition. And the competition, there's a competition of force. But in a true free market, the profit margins will be driven very close to zero. But even if he could make a lot of money, no, because what he's selling to people is a disvalue, is a disvalue in the sense of value as life affirming, right? So there are two meanings for the term value. One is just that one, that which one acts to gain or keep, and that could be anything, life affirming or life destroying. And there is the, you know, egoistic concept of value. That is, it has to be that which would act to gain or keep in the pursuit of one's own life. And he knows that what he's doing is destructive. And as a consequence, I do not think he can have pride. I do not think he can have the kind of self-esteem that hard work or Steve Jobs or anybody like that has because of the fundamental destructive nature of what he is doing, right? Now, I think that's also true of a religious preacher who is lying in order to get the money, who's deceiving, who is making stuff up. Yeah, I mean, particularly the pedal of religion is a con man. And con man have the self-esteem of crooks. And I think that that would be the case. That would be the case here. Harper for $50. Wow, you guys are very generous today. I appreciate it. Is it fair to say most mixed economy jobs are miserable? People can't imagine the type of exciting, rewarding forms of jobs that may exist under lots of fear. I suppose a tech field gives us a glimmer of the realm of dynamism. I don't know. I mean, I really don't know. Certainly jobs would be better. Certainly we'd be more jobs and they'd be more interesting, but most jobs, most jobs today miserable. I mean, I'll ask you guys, you guys out there working in the world, I've never had a job that I could say was miserable. I think a lot of what a job being miserable is what you bring to it, right? But here, Jennifer says her job's not miserable. She works for Ford. So she works for a big company and she enjoys it. So I don't think that. And I do worry that we hear something that happens among objectives, not accusing you, Harper, of this, but it does happen with objectives. That, you know, we accept a miserable job or we accept a miserable life or we accept stagnation and say, well, what can you do? It's a mixed economy. It sucks. And I don't buy that. There's still enough freedom in this world. There's still enough freedom right now to be able to do things that are exciting and interesting and fascinating and non-miserable. Don't blame the mixed economy. If you can't find a non-miserable job, then you might not be looking for the right places or you might have the wrong attitude towards the job. But don't blame the mixed economy. I think it's a mistake and I think it doesn't do you any good. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. You can still be an engineer in this world. You can still build bridges. It's not as much fun as it would be in a free market without the regulations, but you can still do it. You can still, certainly, the tech industry is an example of where they're exciting, fascinating jobs. Look at SpaceX. Look at going to Mars. I mean, somebody has the audacity to go to Mars in spite of the government, in spite of the controls, in spite of how much capital is sucked off in the form of taxes to the government. So, yes, much more could be possible. But I wouldn't start from we're miserable today and it could be amazing. I'd say it's good today and it could be amazing. Liam, if the Palestinians were given a state today, it would be seen as a reward for October 7th. Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And also it would be weird because in a sense they had a state in Gaza. Look what they did. So what are you giving them? You're giving them a place from which to plan and deploy people to be able to do another October 7th? And clearly, the Palestinians don't want a state. What they want is river to the sea. What they want is the whole territory. So the whole thing is just an exercise in fantasy, an evil fantasy at that. Start Michael says, a window tint law is legitimate. Is there a threat to officer safety if they can't see inside the window? It probably is a threat to officer safety, but I don't think those laws are legitimate. Officers have to deal with safety issues in lots of environments and you don't curtail people's freedoms in order to reduce being a cop is dangerous. Now, if you have tinted windows, be prepared for the police to be more, I don't know, tough with you. They might approach your car with a hand on their revolver. They might be just a little bit more weary when dealing with you. So, you know, if you're going to have tinted windows, there is a price to pay. Certainly when dealing with the police, but no, I don't think the laws are legitimate, even if they do increase the risk. Lee, thank you. I assume Alexei Navalny to be a hero. That is until an altruist agreed on the basis of he sacrificed himself for the cause. Should granting heroism to Alexander Navalny hinge on his motive? Yes, but I don't take the motive to be he sacrificed himself for the cause. It's not like he committed suicide for the cause. What he did was fight for freedom, fight for better Russia. And in fighting for better Russia, he took on massive risk, just like soldiers on a battlefield take on massive risk. And he died as a consequence of that risk. And the altruists are going to see that dying as a sacrifice. And we might see that dying as a risk you take in your battle for freedom, but freedom is an important enough value that it's worth the risk. You could also say something like Navalny probably made a mistake to go back to Russia because his fate was almost sealed. But that doesn't diminish the fact that he was a man fighting for the right thing in the face of tremendous odds, showing incredible courage, incredible courage. And that is heroism. And if he ultimately that slipped into or included him sacrificing and maybe even thought in those terms. You know, I don't think that is the deciding factor that I would say, oh, well, he's complete idiot and therefore I can't view him as a hero. I'd say like most heroes, he's mixed. Most heroes are mixed. No hero out there is perfect in terms of every aspect of what he does and his motivation. Why are you calling me old, Silvanus? Look how young I am. How many old people do you know that has this kind of energy and can do this many shows and can talk for this long and everything? So no, I'm very, very youthful. We can get up on a stage and emit as much energy as I do several times a day sometimes. So no, in spite of my age, I'm not old. I don't know. I'm sure Silvanus said it in some context for the, of some comment, other comment that's being made up there. Anyway, this is youthful, you're on wait another 20 years, then you'll be able to call me old and I'll be I'll be slow talking slow one show week. You know, I'll be doing it from my wheelchair, maybe 30 years from now that'll be that'll be the run book show 30 years from now you're on from his wheelchair. So you guys speculating how old I am. Don't you know how old I am. I thought everybody knew how old I am. I am indeed 62 years old, but almost 63. I'll be 63 very soon. But a very youthful 63 and planning to live to be 150 in great shape. Otherwise I'm not planning to be 150. What was the reference? What reference did I use which is old? Did I use an old man and old reference? Okay, you'll have to tell me what what reference I use this old. I have to update my references, although the reality is that given my lack of engagement with popular culture, I just can't use at least popular cultural references that are common. I don't listen to popular music. I, you know, revolver versus pistol who used revolver. Anyway, I don't know what you guys are talking about. Liam apparently rewarding terrorism is now a priority for the left for the fall left, which Biden feels the need to cater to will a lot of Jewish and black vote go to Trump this time. I don't know. I don't know. I there is a real chance that you will just see a very low, a very low participation rate in this coming election, because nobody is happy with either one of them. Like 2020 was the highest participation rate since the early part of the 20th century. And I think the reason was that people hated Trump. And Biden was like, eh, okay, we're willing to take Biden because he's middle of the road, nothing. Right. I said revolver games. I don't even remember saying it. But so, but this election, nobody's excited about voting for Biden. Nobody likes Biden. Even his court doesn't like Biden. Trump is not president. So there's less of a, I hate Trump's, I'll vote for whoever. I just think the participation is going to be low. And then the question is, who can bring up, who can bring up more? Now, I think that Trump can bring up at his base, right? The base will all show up. But Biden will bring out a lot of independence and even some moderate Republicans. But he might have a hard time with his base. So how that all plays out in terms of the actual numbers, I think it's going to be very, very interesting election. I do think Republicans, though, are going to have a hard time. I think the Republicans have set themselves up for having a very, very, very hard time this coming election and in the elections in the future. Look at all these, look at all these midterm, these elections, special elections, where Democrats are just rolling over Republicans. And I happen to think, and I've said this before, that one of the biggest factors is abortion, and now with the Alabama ruling, God, the Democrats are going to milk that for all that is. You know, Republicans are anti-IVF. The Republicans want to destroy people's ability to have families and babies, and that is really going to hurt the Republicans. And then the other one is the other reason that Democrats are rolling over is just the obnoxiousness of Republicans, particularly in the House, just being obnoxious and being unproductive and obstructionist and not getting anything done without an agenda, without a goal, without something that they're striving towards. Richard, Iran, you'll know you're old when you shake your cane at regulators, yelling at them to get off your market lawn. Oh, God, oh, it's like a cane and not a walker. I'm okay. It's the walker that scares the bejesus out of me. But that's at least 30 years out. So I'm not worried. We've got 30 years before I have to do any of that. You know, we will see. All right. We got a lot of questions. Let's keep going. Michael, why was all South America colonized while most of Africa was not? Well, Africa was colonized. It was all colonized, but it was colonized very differently. You know, it wasn't colonized. It was colonized by European companies coming in and European government being set up to rule over the places. Europeans didn't move to Africa. They didn't go to Africa and set down roots there. I mean, the exceptions, as I said, South Africa, Algeria with the French, some British and Kenya and Uganda, but nowhere near the kind of numbers of Spaniards and Portuguese and ultimately Italians and Germans and others who went to Latin America. I think, you know, I don't know exactly, but one Latin America from the beginning was perceived as a land of gold, was perceived as a land of adventure. And a lot of Spaniards and Portuguese went there for that and then the British. Look at the British occupying North America and colonizing it and allowing people in. I think a lot of it had to do with just a sheer amount of free land. It could be one of the reasons South Africa was colonized in that way while the rest of Africa was not settled, not just ruled but settled. South Africa has a lot of very open spaces with a lot of fertile land for agriculture. I think the same is true of places like Argentina and Brazil. They have a lot of just land. I think relatively speaking, the Americas were relatively unpopulated, relative to Africa. I think Africa was much more densely populated by natives. So you had to deal with the natives in Africa, which you had to deal with less, few of them in South America. It might also be a more hospitable environment in terms of, you know, Jennifer says lions in terms of, but the Amazon is not particularly hospitable. And indeed, Europeans, with the exception of one city, Manaus, in Brazil, the Europeans didn't really settle in the Amazon. They left it as is. They created the city of Manaus primarily because they wanted to harvest the rubber trees in the Amazon. But other than that, they didn't do much with the Amazon, even in Peru and, you know, kind of the northern part of the Amazon. There are no settlements up there. All the settlements, all the cities are down by the coast, which I don't think there were many natives there. I think the natives were more in the Amazon. You know, the Spanish were also particularly brutal in terms of eliminating native populations. So they just slaughtered them. I think for whatever reason, with the exception maybe of the Belgians who were the most brutal colonizers, I think I've read of, they didn't do the same thing in Africa. They didn't go into countries and just eliminate the existing population and bring in Europeans to replace them. You just didn't see that in Africa. Again, a little bit of that happening in South Africa, but not. So, you know, why? Not clear because, you know, Africa was known well before the Americas were known. But Africa was not colonized until late. Africa was colonized in the 19th century, whereas South America, America's were colonized starting in the 16th century. So why did the Europeans wait until the 19th century to colonize Africa? I think because they were afraid because in Africa, the tribes, the peoples there, they posed too much of a risk, too much of a threat to the Europeans coming in. Whereas in I think in South America and in North America, it was very sparsely populated, so it was easy for the Europeans to just come in and settle it. That's the best I have. I'm not an expert on the history of either place. But I think that's pretty good. Catherine says, would it be useful for none of the above and undecided to write in Nikki Haley? Well, but these are Democrats. So in Michigan, so it would be, but just vote for Nikki Haley, but they're not going to because they don't support Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley is even more pro-Israel than Biden. Nikki Haley is actually the only candidate out there that's actually pro-Israel. I don't think Trump is pro-Israel. He hasn't said almost anything about what's going on in Israel and what he said has been questionable and dubious in terms of which side he's on. And Biden is not pro-Israel. So I think Nikki Haley is actually the only pro-Israel candidate. So the Arabs wouldn't wouldn't do that. I think if you're voting, you're voting the Republican primary and vote for Nikki Haley, please expand on the altruism of the U.S. Air Force man, the guy who put himself on fire. Well, what can be more altruistic than that? You're killing yourself to bring attention to a crisis that really has really no impact on your own life. And now you're not live anymore. So suicide for the sake of a cause that is irrelevant to anything in your life. That's the epitome of altruism. That is the, he is the essential self-sacrifice. Doesn't get any more than that. James, most people are mildly dishonest. Total honesty is a rare bird indeed. Yep, it is. It is. Tabasco or chaluta hot sauce? I don't particularly like Tabasco. So I'd have to go with chalula hot sauce. So that's all my favorite hot sauces. My favorite hot sauces are typically made by the restaurants I go to and they're typically fresh and they're typically, I don't know, the ones I like usually have habaneros as their base. I also like just chopped suranos and chopped jalapenos. I like jalapenos generally, you know, just sprinkled into the food. But I don't like the vinegary hot sauces, which Tabasco has. Anyway, Liam says, I really hope you're able to go it on Piers Morgan's show when you're in London. And then Piers is constantly looking for moral equivalency where it doesn't exist. Yeah, I know. I will try. I don't know what the odds are. I have no idea. When if Chinese fully translate, transition to EVs, they will need a lot, they will need a lot more coal plants, which they're building, by the way, building huge number of coal plants. It is ironic that the EV revolution will pump way more carbon into the atmosphere. Yes. I used to call, and I don't think I originated this, but I used to call electric cars, coal cars, coal cars, because they run on coal. I mean, they don't run on electricity. They run on coal. Coal is what used to produce the electricity. Savannah says, no offense, just your references are old. Sorry. I didn't even pay. I didn't even notice that I said the word revolver. I'm not sure why I said it in what context. But anyway, my references, I'm sure old here. I mean, they're old in terms of years, not old in terms of spirit. Roland, here's to living to be 200. Absolutely. Sivanos just roll with it. We're making more engagement. I did not comment on your thing to stop you from engaging. I commented on your thing because it was funny, and because I figured if I commented on it, we'd get even more engagement. So I'm all for engagement. So I wasn't an insult to Sivanos. I have no problem with the comments you made. I did not take it personally. I was not troubled by it. I was intrigued because I couldn't see what the reference was, why suddenly I was old. But yeah, you'll learn if you haven't yet, you should. You can't really insult me. I mean, it's very difficult. So I'm not insulted. I'm not offended. I'm not, you can't offend. It's very difficult to offend me. So just you roll with it. All right, Stephen Hopper, I will send you an email after the show to reserve a place in your public speaking seminar after O'Connor in June. Excellent. And then if it, whatever, did you get a chance? No, I haven't looked at it. I did copy paste it. It is on my to-do list. It's just my to-do, I'm slow on my to-do list if you haven't noticed. But I will promise I will get to it. All right, everybody. Thank you. Let's see. Today is Wednesday, so there's no show tonight. There will be, though, another new show tomorrow and tomorrow evening. Tomorrow evening. I will be interviewing a doctor who specializes in IVF, specializes in alternative ways to reproduce babies, and is a senior guy at Columbia University, a senior guy with this kind of practice. And he's going to talk about the whole IVF phenomena, what this Alabama court ruling really means. Is an MBO a human being? If they continue IVF under this Alabama court ruling, what will that do? I think it should be really interesting. I'm looking forward to it. We'll learn a lot. We can all sit back and learn a little bit and enjoy an opportunity really to learn something new. So join me for that. And with that, I will say have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you all tomorrow. Thank you to the Super Chatters. Don't forget that. Thanks to the Super Chatters. You guys.