 No radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Hey everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday. I'm always confused during the holidays because it all seems like one long weekend it's, even though I'm walking, it's, I don't know, it's, we've got close caption running. I have no idea why close caption is running during the zooms. Somehow this has been enabled in one of the features. I don't know, maybe that's a good thing. I'm not sure. Like on YouTube, we've got close caption on everything. All right, we have our Ask Me Anything show today and we have a panelist here for the Hangout. I think, let's see, I'm expecting a bunch of people signed up. They haven't showed up yet, so I won't be surprised if a bunch of people still sign on to the Zoom. We will see. I'll try to keep, keep an eye out for them so we can elevate them to, to panelists. I think you all know how this works. We'll go through a round of questions from, from the people here today and then we'll, we will jump into Super Chat if there are any Super Chat questions and we will go from there. All right, so let's see. All right, let's start with Leonard. Oh, you're muted, you're muted. Hello, everyone. Hi, Yaron. Hey, Leonard. I guess my, I thought about this a couple of years ago. I kind of, in university many moons ago, a long time ago, I found my first exposure to Iron Rand was capitalism, the unknown ideal. I saw it in a university bookstore and thought, what is this about? At the time, I wasn't struggling a little bit, so it kind of challenged my, immediately challenged me, so I picked it up and read it. And from there, I read Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead and all that. Yeah, that's great. And my oldest daughter is actually named after, well, her name's Dagni. So, so yeah, I've, anyway, that's kind of brought things in discussion. So anyway, I came back forth, but I got interested in other things in the meantime. And I've kind of come back here, probably different things, COVID, Dr. Adalja being exposed to different things, kind of seeing the libertarian movement kind of go off on a tangent there, somehow, anyway. So, I saw you on Amy Peacoff show one time, so I thought, well, I went and checked her out, and she wasn't really active, so I checked out your show about four months ago, and here I am. Oh, excellent. Yeah, I read Objectivism, the Leonard Peacoff's book, the Opa. Opa, yes. Yes, I rediscovered that acronym. And then in one of your shows, you recommended to me to read Dim, and I did that. And I'm reminded in all this, some of the explorations I've made and stuff is basically, I'll come to my question, then I'll kind of back it up, I guess, is do we need to take the next step in evolution to move away from collectivism? And the basis for that is I know that I've heard you say a few times that you think what we need is a kind of education, kind of a deep cultural understanding of, I guess, the first two or three chapters of Opa, kind of recognizing, you know, fundamental reality and everything, but at the end of Dim hypothesis, Leonard Peacoff is a little bit less optimistic. He kind of says we kind of go back to M, back to the primitivism, back to the shaman and strong man. And I'm just wondering if, I don't know, like there's some things in evolution that, I don't know, I just, I guess, the question is, does evolution function on us today, right? Because evolution acquires that if you fail, you die. And we live in a society where we don't let failure cause you to die. And, you know, we keep around people who in the jungle might not survive and the wilderness might not survive. We keep them alive. We have a welfare state that keeps people who don't even work alive and have kids and we pay them to have kids. But it's, you know, and I don't think, I also don't, so one is I'm not sure evolution is any more operative, right? I don't think it's really operative in the sense of survival of the fittest because we've taken that out, right? Anybody could survive. You get sick, you know, the hospital takes care of you. You get a, you know, you do something really stupid, you break a leg in the wilderness, you might die, you know, you pay a bill and you get a heeled and you're fine. So I don't think evolution is operative. And the second is, I don't think it needs to be operative because once you allow for free will and reason, then we override evolution. We're basically dictating our own fate. We're dictating how things will evolve into the future. We dictate who we marry. We dictate what kind of education our kids get. We dictate what ideas they're exposed to. We dictate what ideas the culture is exposed to. So I think that biological evolution in a sense is moot for the human race. We've reached the final chapter of it in a sense because once you get free will and reason, it's irrelevant. So then the question is, what kind of evolution do we need? Because we certainly need to change. And I think here it's a cultural evolution. It's an educational evolution. It's, it's, and culture is a tricky thing. I'm going to do, I think I'm going to do a show on Friday on this. We need to have a whole generation of people raised on the first three chapters of opal. But that's not going to happen tomorrow. And it's not going to happen in a generation. And it might not happen in three generations. Maybe it'll take five generations. Maybe they'll get some of those three chapters and then a little bit more and then a little bit more. But I think our job is to keep it at the forefront so that there is a chance that over time, over many decades, several generations, these ideas start filtering into the culture. And it's not that everybody becomes an objectivist. It's that these ideas are just obvious. I mean, how could they not be? Like ASA. I mean, how controversial is that? And it just becomes part of the culture. Just like so much today, like altruism today. It's not even question. It's not like you teach altruism. It's just that everything, every movie, every book, every engagement of parent and child is based on the premise of altruism and is an expression of altruism and people just absorb it. It's just there. We want our ideas to be that. And that's going to take a long time and it's going to take a lot of work and it's going to take a lot of effort. And the question I think the final chapter of DIMM asked is do we have enough time? That is will civilization survive to allow for that evolution, that cultural educational evolution? And this is where Leonard and I maybe defer a little bit is I think, yes, that there's a good chance we will survive it. It might get ugly for a while, but we will live through that as this evolutionary process takes place. The little bit of optimism in that chapter is because of me. So he was a lot more pessimistic than he expresses there. But that's a big difference between, one of the big differences between me and Leonard is the level of pessimism, optimism, I don't know how you want to call it in the future. So I think we have to get away from the idea that biological evolution will save us. And I think we have to be, we have to focus on what it means to have cultural evolution and how that plays out and how do you influence cultural evolution and how do you change the educational system? And that's a complex program and system, right? But very different than biology. Thanks, Leonard. And we're glad to have you join our ranks. So this is, this is good. We're trying to grow, we're trying to grow, bring people back. I think a lot of people are ready and ran and kind of drift off in life and do their thing. And hopefully they come to the time when they come back to it. I think it's important. All right, Jennifer. Are you surprised by the Supreme Court ruling to keep Title 42? They just announced that they're going to keep it. Yeah, I saw that earlier. I was, see I was saving that for my news show for tomorrow morning. Oh, sorry. Okay. Am I surprised? You know, I haven't read the opinion and I noticed that Gorsuch voted with the three leftists, right? And Gorsuch in some ways, might be one of my favorite justices right now. So I'm curious what his reasoning would be to vote against it. I am a little surprised because I don't know what the legal basis of it is. I understand what the political basis is. I understand the political logic of it. And I understand the practical logic of it. That is, there is a real, there's real difficulty on the border. And they think this is at least relieving some of the stress. I don't think it actually does. I think it just, it just makes it worse in some sense. But I don't understand what legal basis they're making this claim because clearly Article 42 was passed as a healthcare measure for people not to cross over the border and bring COVID with them. And that excuse is gone. And it's an executive order. This is a court that is, I mean, maybe this is why Gorsuch voted against it, that is, that it's important to this court the, what do you call it, a division of powers? Yeah, division of powers, you know, the legislative thing and the executive does. And this is clearly the executive branch as it perpetuates this is a usurpation of the role of the legislature. So I'm curious what the legal base, I mean, I look, there's no right answer to what to do about the border because our immigration system is so messed up and screwed up. And this idea that we have to accept anybody who applies for asylum and, and that we have to, we have to give them a hearing and we have to put in front of court and this is international law and we signed up to, I mean, that's absurd. So the whole thing is, is, is, is a mess. The whole approach to immigration is a mess. And so there's no right answer. But I am surprised by the court doing it this way. You think the conservatives would be more sensitive to executive power and want to, want to tell, I mean, I, what I think they should have done is said to Congress, you've got a problem. Solve it. This is what Congress is for. Pass a law, fix this through legislation. This shouldn't be, this shouldn't be done through executive order and an old executive order that is not relevant anymore, given the changing, changing health circumstances. But that's without reading and knowing the details. I'll try to read up on before the show in the morning. Thank you. Thanks, Jennifer. All right, friend Harper. Well, it's his first time on the life here on the, on the hangout. How's it going? All right. Can you skip me briefly? Skip you briefly. Yep. I can skip you briefly. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. We'll go to Dan. Daniel. Thank you. Back to my question about benevolence, but focusing on adults's time and tying in what Jennifer said. I mean, we have people who want to come across our southern border and make a life for themselves and everyone, whether it's Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, they're definitely afraid of these people like, like they're carrying all of them, you know, a disease that's going to kill us all and they want to bring something more valuable than gold, right? Productive people that want to live a free life and make a life for themselves here. How, how do you change that? How do you, I mean, I think Title 42 and other things are going to be there as long as people are afraid of these people, you know, they may have a bogus excuse, but as long as they're afraid of them, they're going to find reasons to keep them out. I mean, just look around you. Every single good thing we have was made by humans, right? I mean, there's nothing that didn't come from other people's work. So what do we do to, say, hey, look, this is a great thing. These people want to come in. Okay, there's a few criminals we keep out. There's a few people who have infectious diseases that we, you know, say, hang on until you're cured. But by and large, how, how do we change the view that immigrants are somehow dangerous to us all? Well, I think this is a bigger question in the sense of how do we alleviate the many fears that people have? I mean, it's not just immigrants, right? They're afraid of deregulation. They're afraid of the rich. They're afraid of billionaires. They're afraid of, I mean, we're afraid of everything. And, and, and therefore we want to control. And, and we, you know, we were afraid of COVID to lock us down. That's okay. I mean, we're just afraid. And the question is, why are we afraid? And I think, I think the fear goes to what Rand talked about is the anti conceptual mentality. And the parts of people's lives where they're not conceptual, where they are on the perceptual level. And at the perceptual level, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people are crossing the border. They look different, a little differently than me. They're going to take my job. They're going to sleep in the streets, a lot of homeless people in the streets, where these people, the immigrants, where they're going to, where they're going to sleep, they're going to sleep in the streets. You know, more of them coming in that has to lower my quality of life, my standard of living. Victor Davis Hansen told me so. And, and, and, more people competing for my job that has to lower my wages. And it's all perceptual level. It's all zero sum world. It's all zero sum. And that's to a regulation that's true of all these things. People live at a zero sum level. I mean, there's an article today by actually kind of a left of center of economists saying, the fact is immigration, immigrants raise wages. All the data shows this. And then he starts it up by saying, look, I know you're not going to believe me. Because arguments don't seem to have any impact on this issue. But the, but the reality is, and he, and then he makes, I haven't read the whole thing, but he's starting to make the economic argument for why it has to be the case that immigrants coming in and then all the empirical evidence that this is actually the case, that immigrants raise the local population's wages with a few exceptions. There are always exceptions. But, but they're, they're, except the individuals and then they're certainly not the overwhelming majority. So it's, it's, how do we raise, I mean, this goes back to Leonard's question. It's, it's at the end of the day, it's a question of how do we raise people from the perceptual level from a zero sum mentality to a conceptual level, to understanding how the world works, to understanding the win-win relationship, to understanding that there are massive net gains to be had here. And we all benefit, for example, from immigrants, we all benefit from a lot of things that appear superficially to be negative, but actually land up being positive. I mean, there was a time when people were concerned early on in this country about what the problems would be with having immigrants roaming the streets, and they came up with the system of indentured servants. You know, 12 years, and you get everything paid for, and then you're off on your own and then you've got some money and some experience. And I, you know, maybe it's not the, the, the solution for today, but it wasn't keep them out. It was, how do we benefit from this? I mean, there are lots of solutions. And I think, I think that in the, in the 19th century, the intellectual state of people was better in the sense that they just wanted to be free. I think respect for freedom has come down. Respect for the idea that individuals can take care of themselves has come down. The person of responsibility has been eliminated. So it's all the ideas that made that possible. I think the 19th century just accept people. And even that, of course, changed very quickly at the turn of the century with first, with excluding Chinese, because, because they were competing against labor competition, but then excluding everybody by 19, by the 1920s, there were massive restrictions on immigration in the United States. So it, it, it devolved away from liberty and freedom and the understanding of, you know, the non-zero sum that the actual value gained from immigration or for anything, for freedom, more broadly, it just disappeared very, very quickly. And that, that is just tragic in a disaster. Thank you. All right. Let's see. All right. Fin Hoppe, ready now? Oh, yeah. It's great to be here. Good to have you. I've been, I've been listening for like a, maybe a year and a half and best place to get really good full context news. Good. Good. I am going to ask a question for my girlfriend who reserved a question when Don Watkins was on and then, I guess, didn't get seen in the chat when she tried to fill it in later, but it happens, I suppose. But the question is, so she's working on writing and advocating for objectivist ideas through medium, and she wants to know where do you draw the line between promoting Rand's ideas and evangelizing them? Is there any vocabulary or rhetoric to try to avoid? Oh, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, I think, I think that what you want to avoid is coming off dogmatic. What you want to avoid is coming off kind of beating people over the head with the ideas or, you know, overly emotionalistic tactics of promoting ideas and then, you know, being offensive with regard to people who maybe don't come to accept the ideas, right? So I think as long as you continue to, as long as you treat people as conceptual beings, as long as you, I mean, you can be passionate, you can be emotional, but as long as you make arguments, engage in debates, you don't start beating people over the head and, you know, treating it as dogma, not engaging with them. And coming across as this is how you have to be. This is instead of making an argument for, you know, whatever, whatever principle you're debating and showing people anything. This is the important part is showing people the benefit to them of whatever it is that you're arguing. So this isn't some platonic abstraction that we're fighting for. It's not something removed. It's something about their lives. It's something that they benefit from. It's something that, you know, that relates to them and improves their life. That's that, I think, where it needs to be. I get it. I get it. I have a lot of good luck in the various Twitter threads and comment sections I have by taking rhetoric seriously and defining my terms first and then trying to communicate accordingly or something I learned from Peacoff and whichever one he talks about rhetoric and is context-shifting and agreeing to communicate on their terms without granting them their premises. Yes. And, you know, there are lots of, I mean, there are a lot of tactics on how to do that. But the key to not being is not to be preachy, and not to be dogmatic, and not to be, you know, hitting people over with a hammer of objectivism, but to engage with actual conversation and actual argument and actual reason. Rational persuasion is what we're after. Gotcha. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Adam? Yes. Because of the situation in Ukraine, I've been listening a lot to lectures from Poland on strategy and international relations. And one thing that runs through a lot of them is that the rest of the world, including Germany, has taken up American pragmatism in their educational system, which creates many people who are incapable of thinking conceptually about political and economic issues. And in fact, I read a paragraph written by someone who was a guest student for a year in a German high school and found out how this minded the Germans have become as a result of American pragmatism influence. And they see this as a strategic danger because if there is zero-sum thinking, it leads to military aggression. And of course, on the other side, they have Russia and its mysticism. And what do you think should be the strategic solution to being in such a situation? You mean the situation in Ukraine or the situation with the education? Essentially, people in Poland see Ukraine as an introduction to essentially the places with zero-sum education, with education-based either American pragmatism or Russian mysticism. The problem is Poland. I mean, this is the challenge that you have that Poland, in many respects, is much closer to to Russian mysticism. I mean, Poland is quite religious. The number one argument I always get into in Poland is over the world of religion. They see religion as essential for the defense of liberty and essential for the defense of the West. So they see Western civilization very much tied up in religion and Christianity and Catholicism. So the challenge is, yes, Germany has become super pragmatic and very influenced by American pragmatism. I mean, we were American pragmatism is influenced by Kant and German philosophy. And of course, we are now exporting back to them wokeness and pragmatism. And I think Europe generally is influenced, particularly on foreign policy, by pragmatism. I mean, that's what real politic is. There is, and the only alternative to real politic in most European countries, European philosophers, is altruism. That is what they call principled foreign policy, is really sacrifice, is the adoption of sacrifice as the means by which we go out and we bring democracy to the world. So that to them is the alternative, being democracy to the world or pragmatism. And the reality is that there is nobody out there advocating for foreign policy that is principled and yet not pragmatic. A true America first, for example, if it was an American foreign policy, there was principled that had principles but was focused on American interests. And I don't think the Europeans have a better grasp of it. Now the polls, what the polls have that the Germans don't have, is a real sense of history and a real sense of the evil that Russia represents right now. And that the Germans don't have, the Germans don't have, I mean, just a few, just two years ago, they were celebrating greater and greater dependence on Russia. What's the name? The Prime Minister of Germany, the former Prime Minister of Germany, Angela Merkel was constantly warned about dependence on Russia and basically poo-pooed it and oh, it doesn't matter. If we trade, they have this slogan, if you trade, you don't go to war, which turns out to be complete nonsense, right? It has nothing to do with trade. It has to do with freedom. So I think the solution is, of course, a new ideology when it comes to foreign policy and new way of looking at foreign policy that's both principled and self-interested, the only legitimate kind of approach to foreign policy. So a principled, self-interested foreign policy is something we need to teach the world about, but I'm not sure who is going to do the teaching. And I don't think it's going to be the polls because with all due respect to the polls, they might be very good on the Ukraine issue, but they're terrible on other issues. So they're very, very mixed intellectually, very mixed. Okay, I have a short second question, but I hope there's a second round. I think there'll be a second round. All right, let's see, where are we? Adam? Is there it? Hey, you're on. Hey. Can you hear me? Yeah, I actually did not have a question. Just hadn't joined one of these before, usually in the super chat, so just stopped in to say, huh. Cool. So yeah, nice to see you. Thanks for all the support and everything. Really appreciate it. All right, so since Adam doesn't have a question, let's go to Andrew. Andrew's been there patiently, and then we'll go to Nick. Hi, Iran. Hey. When I think of an emotional moment and objectivist art, I thought of the wet nurse's death in Atlas Shrugged. It interested me when you were remarking about Steven Spielberg in saying that you felt that he was a little emotionally manipulative. In Shinla's list, I definitely think that's the case. I don't think that's true of all these movies, but I definitely think Shinla's list is emotionally manipulative. Okay. Like, how would you differentiate between an earned emotional response in art and manipulative kind of trying to tug on your heartstrings? I mean, that is that is a difficult question. I think the earned is the key. That is that it has to in the, the plot has to lead you and the characterization have to lead you to a particular emotion. And it can't, it shouldn't rely on, in a sense, I don't know what to call external stimuli, external knowledge. So I think, I think, for example, any movie in the Holocaust is in danger as a work of art, not as a work of documentary, but as a work of art in danger in just using the fact that you're going to be emotional about the Holocaust, you know, at least some of us are going to be, and not, not doing the work necessary to justify the emotion on the movie's terms, but in, in, in using what you know about the Holocaust and your view of it. Now, I look, I don't think you won't hear me say this a lot, but I don't think I'm objective about Shinla's list. I don't think I can be objective about it because I come into that movie with a lifelong baggage, a lifelong, you know, knowledge about the Holocaust, emotion in the Holocaust. I personalize it because, you know, if I were there, I would be dead. I mean, it's obvious, right? It's not even a question, right? If I, it's, it's very, and I was, you know, most of my family was there. And, you know, not that I have any particular connection to that family, but it's just that thought of, I could have been there. It would have been this easy for me to be there. So it's very easy to get me to be overly emotional in a movie like that. So I don't know that it's fair for me to say that I think that that movie is emotionally manipulative. It was for me, but it might not be for the people. Can I ask you about another Spielberg scene and how you reacted to it? Sure. What about the scene in Saving Private Ryan when he goes to the cemetery with his wife? Yeah, I mean, that's a good, that's a good example. Again, that's, it's, he's, he's, he's got the whole patriotism thing going and he's appealing. He's got the audience revved up. But it's not, it's not on its own terms. It's, it's using a broader context and external context to get you to cheer up. And I teared up in that scene, right? But not because he'd earned it. He hadn't earned it. He hadn't earned it. He was leveraging off everything else. Now, compare that. I think Spielberg's best movie, and this will be controversial, but I think among movie critics anyway. I think my favorite Spielberg movie, and I think his best movie is Amistad, which is, which is, I mean, other than E.T., right? On the serious side of his movies, I think his best movie is Amistad. And I highly recommend watching it. It's an amazing movie with amazing performances. And it's very emotional. And, you know, and I think the story is not well known. It's not a story you really know. You don't really know the characters. You know what's going on because it's about slavery, but it's, it's, it's, you don't actually, you don't see slaves, slaves in the background. So that I think it's super effective, super dramatic. And from my ideas perspective, you know, maybe his most convincing, I mean, there's a speech that Quincy Adams gives, which is completely fictional, but it's a phenomenal speech. I wish I'm American president would give a speech like that sometime. He does it in a court in front of the Supreme Court. So I highly recommend Amistad. I think it's, by the way, I just watched Spielberg's current movie that's in the theaters right now. What's it called? Something, I don't know, you'll find it. It's, it's a family name. It's, and I found it very entertaining and very rewarding. Again, not, not super deep, but quite interesting and entertaining. The fab, the fablemen's, the fablemen's. It's kind of an autobiographical movie. It's about Spielberg's childhood and his family. And I thought it was, it was very well made and interesting. And yeah, I mean, elements of naturalism, significant elements of naturalism, but overall quite good. But it has to own it. It has to build up to it. And if you see the drama in Amistad, you can see how Spielberg knows how to do that. I think in E.T. he owns it, right? Because you fall in love with E.T. with this little creature and this little boy. You're falling in love with them. There's no external context you have to be. You don't know any extraterrestrial aliens. You know, you don't have a context for this particular child. So you, you fall in love with that. Whereas, and this is the problem with doing historical drama. You've got to now earn the stuff that's happening rather than leverage that external context. That's the best I can do. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks. All right, Nick. Okay. I got a question on, on a topic you briefly talked about last time with the, the book you read on, on chips. Yeah. And I wonder if it's a complex issue because I wonder if we can, I wonder if, is there any possibility we can do a show or you can comment on it more extensively on all the, all the major companies in the space like Taiwan Semiconductor is supposed to be the foundry of all chip makers. There's Broadcom Qualcomm and Intel, which is a legacy chip maker. It's, it's an interesting, yeah. And, and, and it's not that that they're all, they're, they're not all pure chip makers. They have other businesses. So it's, it's, they're, what I'm saying is they're both into hardware and software. So it's an important space. It drives the whole economy. And it'd be nice to understand that space because it's very, it's very important. Absolutely. And that's why I did that show on chip or most of the companies you mentioned, don't fabricate chips. They design chips. Okay. So even AMD, AMD used to be Intel's number one competitor and used to design their own chips, used to fabricate their own chips that fab factories, they fab chips. They don't fabricate chips anymore. When you buy an AMD computer chip in your computer, it's probably TCMC making it. Right. So what they do is they send the design to TCMC and TCMC fabricates the chips. TCMC's business model is they don't design the chip. They build based on your specs. So for example, I just read today, this is a big news, is that they're just having a party in two days on, on, on, on Thursday, TCMC will have a party to announce that they are going into mass production of three nano something, milli, something chips. First three, you know, I don't know what measurement this is, but it's very, very, very small, right? Nanometer. Nanometer. Thanks. The first nanometer is simpler than I thought. I thought it was something more complex than that. But yes, nanometer. So these are three nanometer chips, first ones ever to be produced in quantity. They will be producing them primarily for Apple. The M2, you know, more advanced M2 chips are going to be three nanometer. Huge advance. This uses the latest technology out of the Dutch company that I mentioned during the show, ASML. And it's designed completely by Apple, right? TCMC did not design these chips. Apple designed the chips where the transistors are, what the links are, what the gates are, whatever it is, the chips involved. Apple designed it. TCMC just fabricates it, just makes it. But they're the only people in the world that can make such a chip. There's no company other than them in the world right now that can make a three nanometer chip. Now Samsung is close behind them in Korea and South Korea. So Samsung is number two in chip design, but they're not, but they're not yet at the level of TCMC. AMD chips are five nanometer, but AMD doesn't fabricate their own chips. Intel fabricates their own chips, but Intel is way behind. It's probably three, four years behind TCMC. They've just invested a huge amount and they got a massive government subsidy getting a massive government subsidy from the U.S. government to invest to get to the point where they can compete on three nanometer chips. So there's some chips that are being made by some smaller companies, mainly older chips or memory chips. But the kind of chips that a state of the art TCMC dominates the market right now, and Samsung is a little bit behind them. So what happens if something happens in Taiwan with the Chinese with a Taiwan semiconductor? And I mean, I know they're building in Arizona. This is my whole point. I mean, I made, I made what I think was an important new point about foreign policy, U.S. foreign policy during that show. I said for the first time I've ever said this, I think the United States has to commit to defending Taiwan and basically should as part of national security, should be installing Patriot missiles, anti AM missiles, anti missile missiles all around TSMC to help with the rest of the island of Taiwan, but just protect TSMC, right? I mean, I think that's a national security. It's the same reason that Leonard Peacock said that the United States should have never let the Arab countries nationalized oil. It's not just a massive violation of private property, but it's a strategic asset of the United States. We need it in order to survive. We need it in order to be who we are. We need energy. The same now is relevant for chips. We need to be in a position where nobody can threaten TSMC, TSMC, Taiwan semiconductor. But the Biden's credit, he committed a whole bunch of books. Yeah, in Arizona, was it Arizona? He's building a brand new building. They're building these chip facts, but they're small. It's a tiny fraction of the chip supply of the world. It will be, I mean, what's good about it is it will be able to supply chips to the Defense Department, but you couldn't build this in the United States. We don't have the labor force for it. I mean, people think, I mean, still read books and read that American corporations go to China because of cheap labor. And that's nonsense. You go to China because you can hire a thousand engineers in a day. I mean, America doesn't produce engineers, not a lot. And unless we get a lot of immigrants, we don't have any. So we go to China because they have massive numbers of engineers. You go to Taiwan because they have a workforce that is willing to work in a semiconductor plant that is highly skilled and highly able to do that. We used to make those investments. Intel, for example, used to be the leader. But Intel lost its way about 15 years ago for a variety of reasons that are interesting. When the engineers die off and the MBAs take over companies, they don't always do too well. And Intel's trying to fight their way back, but they're even having some three nanometer chips built for them by TSMC, some of the processors. And Intel's trying to integrate ASML's latest technology into their chip manufacturing, which is ironic because Intel was the company that first said we need these ultra UV chip manufacturing. And they actually ultimately, they did all their basic R&D, and they ultimately basically gave that to ASML because it's not what they do. They couldn't design these things in-house. They asked ASML to take the project over and to do it, and now Intel has fallen behind and can't even integrate. And of course, now the government's stepping in and giving subsidies. And this is the chip bill that passed Congress $250 billion, which involves a lot of subsidies to things like TSMC to build factories in Arizona and to Intel to improve. But these companies are having a hard time coming back. The science here is not easy. It's not an accident that every few years, they come out and say Moore's Law is dead, and then everybody's convinced Moore's Law is dead, and then there's a technological breakthrough, and they keep adding capacity to these chips. But the science is so advanced now. I mean, you literally are manipulating atoms. It's not about molecules. It's about atoms. And that's pretty wild. That's pretty wild. But yes, I agree. It's a hugely important industry, maybe the most important industry outside of energy, and it's concentrated in Southeast Asia. It's Taiwan and Korea. And if you lose Taiwan and Korea, the world is in big trouble. I'm sure we could build the capacity not at the same quality very quickly. You could probably build capacity in terms of numbers of particularly older chips, but it would be a huge blow. And this is why Taiwan is so, right now, so important to U.S. interests. It's why we need to put more aircraft carriers into the ground, why we need laser technology. I talked about yesterday this morning on the show that the U.S. has developed these lasers to knock down the hypersonic missiles that we need to invest heavily in that. I mean, basically, I believe right now that the whole orientation of defense departments should be, how do we stop China from taking Taiwan? That should be the reason we built a particular weapon system. It should be the kind of, I think we need a lot of anti-missile defense system. We're learning that across the world. This is crucial. That will help us deal with the North Koreans. Imagine if we, with a laser, we could, every time they test the missile, we shoot it down. Every time they test the missile, we shoot it down from far away. But these high-powered lasers, you can do that, maybe. So these are the kind of things that we need to be thinking about from a foreign policy perspective, the centrality of Taiwan, at least until that whole chip supply chain gets diversified. Of course, Taiwan doesn't have an incentive to do that because they want us to defend them. And therefore, they want to maintain their strategic position vis-à-vis the United States. Did you say you dedicated a show last month on this? I did a whole show on the chip book. Well, I got to watch it. Yeah, it's called Chip. What was it? I can't remember. It's got chips in the title. Chip Wars. Wasn't it Chip Wars? Chip War. I don't think that's the name of the book, but I don't think that the show is named that. But if you scan the shows from the last couple of months, it's easy enough to find. Okay. But yeah, I think it's a, you know, I go through the history of chips. And first of all, I recommend the book. It's my 2022 book recommendation, is Read Chip War. It's really, really good. It's well-written. It's interesting. I don't, again, I don't agree with everything, but it's super interesting. And the story, and he has this little bit of, you know, he recognizes the heroism of the businessman who created the chip industry. So he has that awe towards them, which I really like in respect from an author. All right. Thank you, Nick. Debbie. Hi, Yaron. Happy Merry Christmas. And Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Well, yeah. And of course, I'll be here for the New York show. So I have a, well, happy day. I signed finally after almost two years, my divorce papers. And yes, that's a happy thing. But it got, you know, the whole process has gotten me thinking because there's the less happy part is how much it cost me in terms of like lawyer fees and the settlement that I have to pay since most of our assets were my assets. So it got me thinking about the purpose of marriage. And I don't mean should we abandon long-term relationships, not at all. But the actual legal construct of marriage, is there a rational basis for that? Like, or should people, because I know that historically marriage was about, you know, religious, there was a religious element to it. And it was also a transaction in which the father handed over the woman to the husband as property and things like that. So all that stuff's out. So is there a reason for actually getting married in a legal sense? I think there is, but I think that it's done wrong today. So I think there is in a sense that a marriage is a complex relationship that has to do with finance assets, potentially children, most marriages have children. So it's a complex arrangement. And if you didn't have a contract, then when you came to splitting up, you would have the same legal fees and fighting each other. Oh, no, this money's mine, that asset yours. But what should happen, I think in a more rational society, is what the government would do is it would basically present you with a framework for a marriage contract. These are the kind of thing a marriage contract needs to cover. These are the kind of issues it needs to address. What happens when you have kids and you get a divorce. But then you have optionality. And then when you get married, you choose the type of contract you have, because all it is, all marriages from that perspective is a contractual arrangement. It's a contractual arrangement that specifies the financial and the as it relates to children arrangement. And that's what, you know, or pets or whatever other assets might exist. And it's really there to to make the divorce less cumbersome, not more cumbersome, to make it simpler. So I think you would have five different standard marriage contracts, or 10 or whatever, and you would choose before you got married. And that would be a good discussion to have before you got married so that you had a, you kind of got your things together. You could even incorporate into it a prenup, right? So the prenup could be built into that marriage contract. And you would have a contract for that reason. That makes total sense to me. And I agree. I think that's the only thing I came up with as well. It basically would serve the purpose of a prenup in a way because you're saying out at the outset how you're going to disposition the relative properties and then. But you want some principles to guide how the property that's the wealth that's been created or the wealth that's been accumulated over time, you want to be able to have some standards by which by which you determine these things. So when the time comes, anyway, there's some objective standard or some agreed upon standard, which is, yeah, I like it. I agree. Yeah. Thank you. So good. And I guess congratulations. Thank you. Yes. Yeah, I, you know, it's not, it could be a 50 50 split if you start with nothing, but it might not be it. It might, you know, I think that that if you left it up to the market to come out with varieties of contracts, you would come up with interesting contracts and you would come up with interesting deals. Alright, let's see. Let's do some a couple of super chat questions. And then we'll return to our panel. I've got two $20 and above questions. So let's start with Michael. The saying that human beings are social creatures doesn't necessarily imply imply collectivism. It's a statement recognizing the fact that if we isolate, we are miserable. Happiness comes from deep selfish connections and experiences with other individuals. I mean, not completely. So it usually doesn't play collectivism. That is, people define human being as a social animal. And what they mean by that is a form of collectivism is always almost always used as a collectivistic statement, even if you could imagine that it's not. But there's a there's a deeper sense in that I don't think that your happiness comes from deep selfish connections and experiences with other individuals. You know, your happiness comes from your pursuit of your values. And there can be periods in your life where you're completely happy. And other people are not a value just then and their friendship or so on. You're focused on single-mindedly, I don't know, building this building single-mindedly, designing this chip, whatever it happens to be. And right now you don't have time for other people. And yes, you're benefiting from other people because you're working with them and so on. But that's not your focus. Your focus is your happiness is coming from the experiences you're having dealing with the particular problem that you're trying to solve. So I think it's again, it comes from the culture, this idea that ooh, you have to have deep connections, otherwise you can't be happy. I don't think that's true. I think there are a lot of people who are who go through at least a period in their life where they don't have that deep connection and can be perfectly happy. I do think other people enhance our lives. I certainly think that the deep connect, you know, romantic relationship or friendship are massively adding to human life. I think the other people are adding to human life through trade. So there's a massive benefit to human life of living in a society. But that doesn't make us a social animal. That doesn't make us a social creature. We're a rational animal. We're a rational creature. That is what defines us. That's what characterizes us. And the more rational you become, the less you depend on other people. And the less you depend on society, but the more you can enjoy other people. And the more you can benefit from society. So it reduces that dependency and it reduces that, I don't know, you being a social creature. And yet the benefit society has increases. All right, hopefully that was clear. Harper Campbell says American culture values extraversion and self-promotion. Most sensitive shy young people, mainly boys, who don't fit in can become nihilistic. Whereas European and Asian cultures don't have the implicit pressure to be grandiose. I'm trying to think if this is true. You know, so I didn't grow up in the United States, but I did live here. I did attend two years of high school in the U.S. and I certainly was not an extraverting, self-promoting, grandiose person. And to this day, when I do tests, I always test as an introvert. So there's a sense in which that is true. But the choice to be, in a sense, nihilistic doesn't come, I think, from that. And there are plenty of nihilists, by the way, in Europe. Just think of all the people in Europe, spray-painting paintings and smashing gas stations and doing all the stuff in the name of, let's end the use of gasoline now. Today, tomorrow, talk about nihilism. And that's much more prevalent in Europe than it is in the U.S. So I'm not sure there are more nihilists in the U.S. than there are in Europe. I think there are more nihilists in Europe than there are in the U.S. So I think that maybe it affects people's self-esteem, maybe it affects who rises to the top, at least early in high school, maybe it affects some men's view of women. But I don't think it affects, I don't think it's what causes nihilism. I really don't. And again, I don't think that Europeans are any less nihilistic, if anything, more so. I think there are more Americans who are idealistic than there are Europeans. It's easy to perceive our culture as worse. Yes, is that it? Can I ask a follow-up on your introversion? How do you deal with being around people as much as you are being an introvert? I mean, that's a hard question. It depends on the context, right? So first of all, you know, teaching is acting. You go out on stage and you do your job, right? You do what you're supposed to do. And when you're dealing with people, you do it. It's your job. So, you know, it's not that I hate it. It's just that it doesn't come natural to me, and it's not the most comfortable thing in the world. So when you have to do something that's not comfortable, you train and you get good at it. So you just do it. But if I walk into a cocktail party where I don't know anybody, you're likely to find me in some dark corner somewhere talking to myself, you know, or looking for the one person in the audience I know and hanging out with them. I'm just not, I hate cocktail parties. I don't like that environment. I don't like. Now, on that end, if I'm the sense of No, I'm not usually I am. So I usually avoid them, right? So even if I go to events where there's a cocktail party, I, you know, so I have no problem standing in front of a group of people talking to them. I have no problem talking one to one of people. But I could do that much easier when I'm in the sense of attention. And not when I'm a stranger. So if I have to walk into a room full of objectivists, that's easy because everybody knows who I am. And it's just, it's just, it's just work. It's just, it's just what you do. It's just, it's easy. But if I have to walk into a room of strangers, like I do for my hedge fund business and stuff, I don't know, I don't know what to do. I have no clue. I don't know how to relate to people. I mean, if I get into a conversation with somebody that it flows fine, but I don't know how to initiate. I don't know, you know, it's, I feel uncomfortable emotionally. That's the introvert in me comes out, right? But if it's, if it's an event, now the other thing that happens is when I go to an event where, you know, there's a bunch of people and I'm the center of attention or one of the centers of attention, it also exhausts me, right? I'm also wiped out from it. So interacting with people exhausts me. It's not, it doesn't give me energy, right? And it's the opposite, right? So some people going to that cocktail party gives them energy. That's what really gets them going. And to me, it's the opposite. Yeah, it's, it's, there are some parallels with the brand, by the way, in that, in that behavior, there are some parallels with the brand. I don't score high on introversion, but I, you know, so when they do those tests, I score very mild introversion, right? So I'm not, I'm not way out there. But, but I'm, but everybody expects me to score extra votes and I don't, you know, the standard question is what would you have to be at a cocktail party or reading a book in your room? And that's so easy for me. I mean, yeah, I need to read more books. That's my general general hypothesis. All right, let's go to the panel. The order is all shifted around on me. So let's start with Daniel. At the end of 2022, we talked a little bit about interest rates and inflation. And I don't remember the exact numbers. I think I threw out there's something like, do you think it's possible inflation could be at 5% or 8% or 10% by the end of the year? And it seemed a little possible, but maybe a little sketchy. What did I say? I'm interested if my predictions came, if I was right, I don't know. I think you were a little non-committal, but so I'm going to ask where, where are we going to be? What is the Federal Reserve going to continue to hike short term rates? Is inflation going to go away in 2023? What's, what's your forecast? I mean, it to a large extent depends on your theory about inflation. And one of the things I've concluded over the last 15 years is that inflation is a much more complicated phenomena that we always believed it was. It's, it's, it's not just the quantity of money partially because we don't know what the quantity of money really is. And I think I've talked about this in the past. What is money and where, you know, how do we, how do we measure? What is M2? What should include it? What shouldn't be included? Is it the right measure? Is M3 the right measure? Is M0? Given, given the digital nature of money today, how much money is in the economy is not clear. It's very hard to track. It's very hard to monitor. And then of course, there's the velocity of money. So it's not just money, it's the velocity. And, and, but then there's also the whole expectation school out of Chicago that says it's not just the amount of money. It's what people expect about the future that determines, can determine inflation. So if I expect that more money in the future, I'd spend more money of today and drive up prices because I'm expecting to have more money in the future. So that's another aspect. And then the final aspect, which, which has always been present out there, but but I think because I read John Cochran more, he has elevated it because he has what he calls the physical theory of inflation, where his argument is that inflation is really being driven by people's view of the national debt of the government debt of government debt. And the question is, can the government pay back the debt and will it pay back the debt? And the more people become convinced that the government cannot pay back the debt and will not pay back the debt, the more they drive inflation up. So through expectations. So the inflation expectations go up and therefore inflation goes up. So if you, if you buy into a more complex theory of inflation, then it's not clear that interest rates going up actually reduces inflation. Arguably, for example, if interest rates going up increases national debt, which it will, because the interest payments on the debt become massive, they're already massive, they become astronomical. It could actually increase inflation because people, people think the government can't pay back the debt. The only way they'll do it is by printing a bunch of money and therefore inflation in the future is going to be high. I might as well raise prices now in anticipation of the fact that it's going to happen in the future and you get inflation now instead of in the future. So it's, it's, it's really complicated. This is why I think all of macroeconomics in some sense, macroeconomic planning is bogus. There is no such thing. And, and you, because you can't do it, there's too much, too much. It's too complex. And, and it's too dependent on human, human beings responding to incentive expectations, not just about what they do about the expectations about the future. It's too complex in, in, in a sense. So it's another reason why we shouldn't have central planning. So what do I think about next year? I look at the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill. Remember that's just a, that's just a fraction of the actual spending, right? Spending is closer to $5 trillion because it doesn't include Medicaid and Medicaid and all of that stuff. On every front, the $1.7 trillion increased government spending significantly, 8%, 10%. In the face of inflation, these politicians looked straight in the face of inflation, saw it arise all around them and said, eh, let's spend 10% more this year. So that, I think if the physical, if this physical aspect matters, and I think it has to I think that's inflation. The Federal Reserve still has a massive balance sheet. That is, there's still massive quantities of money out there in the economy. Is it all being expressed in a current increase in inflation? Maybe I don't know how to tell, but maybe not. If you look at the 1970s, the myth of the 1970s is Fed didn't do anything. Inflation just went out of control. It's just not true. The Federal Reserve on a number of occasions raised interest rates, thought it got inflation out of control, lower interest rates, only to see inflation accelerate again. And I wouldn't be surprised if that's what we see here. You're starting to see inflation slow. Maybe it is slow even more, you know, it is slow to, I don't know, 4% later this year. At that point, the Fed will start lowering interest rates. And now I'm making a longer term prediction, and then maybe in 2024 inflation is back. Do I think we're going towards hyperinflation right now? No. Do I think we're going to have a double-digit inflation by the end of the year? No. Do I think the Fed is pretty committed in this round to increase interest rates significantly? Yes. Do I think we're going to hit a recession? Yes. Although, I mean, the numbers coming out right now, you know, employment is strong. In spite of all the layups, employment is very strong. And inflation, the last number in December was very low. 0.1 monthly is very low. So we'll see in the first quarter, how much I think it'll jump up. We'll see what happens. Usually the fourth quarter inflation numbers are lower. They were last year as well. That's why I think I was hesitant at the end of December, because inflation seemed to be coming down from the earlier in the year, but then it picked up immediately in the first quarter. And I might pick up again. I think we're heading to 5% Fed funds rate pretty quickly here in the first quarter. I think 5.5%. I think inflation will start coming down. I'm surprised, and I was going to talk about this on a show, I'm surprised that we don't have a deeper recession. Where are all the zombie companies that we're told exist out there? Where are all the refinancing that people can do at these higher interest rates? Why are companies not going bankrupt? I don't see any spike up in bankruptcies, which is shocking, given the change in interest rates, a bank shielding them. Something's going on that I'm missing that is not showing up in bankruptcy numbers. But I expected a lot of bankruptcies by the end of this year, and we haven't seen any really. No big one. I mean crypto, but that doesn't really count. So the monopoly money has gone away. But I'm not seeing the zombie companies that I thought the Fed was popping up. I don't see them low interest rates popping up. I don't see them refinancing going back. Now maybe that happens next year. Maybe that's the recession. I'm still waiting for the zombie companies to happen. PPP loans are gone a long time ago. They've gone. Government hasn't bailed out anybody since COVID. Maybe they have cash reserves. Maybe they're sitting on that, but at some point I'll have to. So I think we're going to have a recession. I think inflation will be down, but I don't think it's the last we've heard of inflation. I think there are too many similarities to the 70s. And I think until government, here's the hope. The hope is that with the Republican Congress, they will suppress spending. They will suppress the spending. But if you look at how many senators voted for the 1.7 trillion, it's not obvious. Now in the House, they're tougher. So maybe the House of Representatives being under Republican control will restrain Biden. And if they do, then that could have a positive impact on inflation going into the second half of 2023. And I think we agree that the Federal Reserve is likely to overreact to anything that happens, raise for too long, too much, and then cut very drastically, and then potentially raise again drastically. Yes. I don't think this is over. And it's not simple. And I do think there is a fiscal element. So I do think that I would watch Congress. If the sense out of Congress has spent, spent, spent, then inflation will sustain itself. If the sense out of Congress is, okay, Republicans are now a good opposition party and they're going to object to spending, then maybe inflation is more under control. Thank you. All right. Let's see, Jennifer. Jennifer is muted. Jennifer, can you hear me? I can't hear you. Okay, you can hear me now. In regards to movies, about when you were discussing emotional reactions and how they're generated in movie, when you were talking about aliens, I know you, you like those movies and I understand why, but like for me personally, I can't watch stuff that's really gory and violent. I just can't handle it. And I wanted you to compare that to the kind of thing I like as far as scary stuff goes. Like, you know, Ron certainly did the Twilight Zone. He also did this show later, I think in the 70s called Night Gallery. And there was like one on there, for example, where they didn't show actually anything scary, particularly, it was all sort of in your head. Like they were the guy, the murderer, the dead people he murdered were coming back to get him like coming back out of the grave. But you don't really know whether they really were or whether he was imagining it. And the fear was in your own head. He made you scare yourself with your imagination. And to me, that's, that's a very clever way to do it. And I prefer that kind of thing to actually seeing, you know, the gore and stuff. Yeah, no, I get it. And usually I do too. There's very few gory movies that I like. I usually don't like horror movies. There's something about alien. And I don't know if I saw alien for the first time today, if I tolerate it. Alien is very dark. The first one is very, very dark. So it's very difficult to watch aliens. I found a lot easier to watch partially because it has this energy that Sigoni Weaver gives it and James Cameron's direction gives it, that prevents it from going dark. And even though it is very gory because of the nature of the alien, because it's moving constantly, and because she's so heroic and so admirable, that I can overcome the goreiness of it. But I completely get it. I think it is a way in which it's much more effective when you don't actually see the gore, when it is all in your head. Thank you. There's a scene in one of my favorite Japanese movies in Akira Kurosawa's a movie called Kagamusha. And it's a massive battle scene. And you see the beginning of the battle, you see the host is charging, and then you don't see anything. And then what you're watching is the faces of the characters who are on the sideline watching the battle. You don't see a thing. And you know what's going on, but you can't, you don't see any of the slaughter, you don't see any of the killing, you don't see any. And then once the battle is over, the camera sweeps across the battlefield, and what you see are the remains of the dead, the injured, the horses, you know, just the horror of the whole thing. And that's so much more powerful than any battle scene I've ever seen. I usually, if it's TV, I usually fast forward the battle scenes. I find them super boring. So, because you know, you know exactly what's going to happen. And I want to know how it finishes, you know, what the conclusion is. And I don't care how in particular they die. All right, thanks, Jennifer. Let's see, Leonard. Okay, I could go a million different directions with all the stuff we've talked about. But just a couple of comments and then a contextual question. Yeah, Frank Shostak, I haven't looked at him lately, but I found it from the Mises Institute for Economic Things. He's got quite a thorough analysis of things like money supplying stuff. I have to look again after a lot of discussions here on your show. I mean, I would say that the Austrians often, and I don't know, Frank, so maybe a lot of the Austrians don't have an understanding of finance. And the lack of understanding of finance and the lack of integration of finance hurts and world is dominated, I think, to a large extent by finance makes them weak on the whole issue of money. Because they don't see that there are a lot of things that don't initially appear as money that might actually be money or used in the markets as money. But I think when Mises describes the business cycle and when the Austrians describe the business, it all makes sense in a much simplified world, but in a world in which it's hard to grasp what money is, because when fiat money, and who knows what the Fed is doing, where banks are keeping trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars on reserve, trillions of dollars on reserve, it's much, much harder. Are those reserves meaningful, are those reserves money, are those reserves, are they, if they deployed tomorrow, we know what would happen, but would they deploy tomorrow? So it's, I haven't seen any one of these economists, including the Austrians who predicted who most almost all of them thought there would be inflation at the financial quite during the financial crisis and afterwards. Almost all of them thought there'd be inflation right after COVID. Very few of them predicted inflation this year, or if they predicted inflation this year, they only were right because they predicted inflation every year for the last 20 years. So that's what I'm really curious about is where he was at. Yes. And did he predict inflation during the financial crisis? Because most of them predicted inflation when QE was started. And QE, quantitative easing by the Fed, did not result in inflation. And that is super interesting. And you could say, well, all the money went into financial assets, but that is not exactly right. That can actually, you can't actually stain asset inflation without affecting other forms of inflation because where's the money sitting? If I, if I buy a stock from you, then I get the stock at a high price, but you get the money now, what do you do with the money? You buy a stock from somebody else, but at some point, somebody takes the money and does something with it, that should be reflected in inflation because they're getting a higher and higher amount because of asset inflation. So I don't, I don't buy that it's asset inflation. Something else is going on to prevent a QE from becoming inflationary. And yes, we might be able to explain it today. I think bank reserves have a lot to do with it, but did they predict that? Did they see that? Did they understand that when it was happening? Yeah. Yeah. There, and then there's large bankruptcies and stuff like that. How that, what that does to the velocity of money and that type of thing. Yeah. But they want, I mean, the fact there's a government bail everybody out, so they haven't been large bankruptcies in the last 15 years. Yeah. Not as many as you would have expect. There should have been massive bankruptcies. Yeah. So I, and then just kind of defend the evolution thing. I guess maybe I was including also like some things that can be transferred information transfer beyond genetics. Like there's some stuff indicating different habitual behaviors can go generation to generation, you know, genetic switches, you know, in environment and things like that. But we'll get to that. I guess the final, my question is, is some, I agree with you. And I really is probably one of the things that kind of got me to stray from objectivism in the first place was that kind of the, I guess, Ayn Rand and Leonard are a bit pessimistic in some of the things that they see occurring over time. And I guess I'm kind of like there is a wired up magazine edition with the big giant happy face on it. I think it was 10 years ago that said the whole world's going to be great human beings will, will master everything. And I guess I'd mean more that way, actually, because I don't know, maybe my question is, is that am I naive? Because I see things like probably one of the reasons I fell in love with my wife is that she's kind of a natural objectivist. She has a little bit of Catholic guilt. But other than that, it's no bullshit with her. Right. So it's kind of just the facts, ma'am. She's that type of person. So there's people like that out there. One thing that was weird in recent experience I had is it seemed there's a whole bunch of socialists like quoting Ron Paul, which, you know, and the quotes that not the stuff that kind of said that you should have your individual agency, you should, you know, like they weren't, they weren't like some of them that you talked to, oh, we can't trust people to do this. We must, you know, regulate, regulate, regulate. They kind of, so there's, there seems to be this some thread among people that they, and maybe it's some, you know, as horrible as a, as some of the imitations of the American constitution are putting entitlements, slipping entitlements in there since, since it was done. And some other countries have implemented different constitutions, despite all that, there's that element in there that human beings have at least the right to their own personal agency. So I don't know, am I naive to believe that eventually that reality will prove the. No, but I think I'm grand and then if you got always said that eventually human beings will come around and, and, and everything will get straightened out and we will, we will experience, you know, real liberty and real freedom and, and all the benefits associated with that. It's not the eventually that the argument that the debate might be about. It's what is the path to that eventuality. And is that path going to lead us down some horrific periods in between, right? Is it, is it now we're just going to cruise from this point on, we're just going to cruise to some kind of objectivist ideal society. And I don't think you can put it on cruise control. I don't think it'll happen by itself. But it's not clear that we won't go through dramatic ups and downs, that the things won't get worse before they get better. Now I am on the more optimistic side of the objectivist movement. So I think that because this phenomenon is global, it's unlikely the whole globe is going to descend into dark ages. But could America descend into chaos, civil war, barbarism, destruction? Yeah, I think so. I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. And I don't, I'm not necessarily saying it's likely, but could it happen? Yes. But I generally think that there are incredibly productive people out there that produce and create. I don't trust socialists to claim they believe in individual sovereignty because it means nothing to them. Because as soon as you make something, they want to take it away from you and redistribute it. So where's your individual sovereignty there? They immediately negate it. I don't particularly trust Ron Paul either. So I have a deep distrust of libertarians, particularly the Ron Paul kind of libertarians who I think have instituted kind of a subjectivism over moral values. And with Ron Paul, it's also combined with religion. So if I look around the world and I look at the intellectual map out there, I see two things. One, I see what in philosophy everywhere. I see very few allies intellectually with us, very few. But I also see a lot of human beings on a day-to-day basis living their life in a self-interested, productive, interesting, dynamic way where they're taking agency over their own life. And the intellectuals are trying to rob them of that in many respects. And the battle is, can we get to them before that initiative, that agency is destroyed? I think mankind will survive, and I think it will achieve ultimately what we want it to achieve. I just don't know how long it'll take. I think it'll take a long time because I think you have to, I mean, you talk about habituate certain traits, epigenetics, and I don't want to get into epigenetics because I don't really understand it or know it. But culturally, clearly, there are cultural phenomenas that are, that you embed in the culture and that are passed on from generation to generation to generation. And I think objectivism will win until we habituate certain of our ideas into the culture and they get perpetuated from generation to generation. And that just takes a long time. Evolution is slow. Cultural evolution as well as biological evolution is slow. Yeah, I just, I enjoyed the fablement too, especially, I guess there was another example is his girlfriend and Christian. Yeah, completely wacky girlfriend. He made room for her personal, what she was personally interested in. Well, because he wanted the experience of sex, basically, but whether they had sex or not, you know, you're a teenager, I don't think you're as picky as you probably should be or as picky as we become as adults. And she made room for him because she was fascinated by who and what he was and it was a fling for her, right? I mean, she dumped her as soon as she went to college. So, but yeah, I found the movie charming. It's got in it, in it, what it really, I think his character is Radba Ball, the young kid who is committed to pursuing this career of being a filmmaker and sticks with it and goes through. And the other thing that it does, this is the, what I thought the movie really, really does well is it illustrates the power of art. It illustrates the power of art on the different characters in the movie. It illustrates, I found a scene where the jock in the high school is pissed off at him because he makes him look too good. That is a wonderful scene because it's so true. Because it's, that's the power of art. It reveals in a sense to you, you know, a depth about yourself that you, you know, you're willing to, you have to confront certain aspects of yourself that you wouldn't otherwise confront unless you were facing this image in the arts. Anyway, I recommend the movie. I think it's, I think it's an enjoyable movie. You know, it's not one of his great movies, but it's certainly a good movie, I think. I enjoyed it. All right, let's see, Adam, thanks, Leonard. I have two things to say about movies and TV. First of all, I had read the Schindler history before the movie. Yep. And I imagined the movie would be with a character like Patrick McGowan directing himself, and a theme and plot very much like the Scarlet Pimpernel because the real Schindler really enjoyed the game of fooling the Nazi officials. Yeah, I mean, the movie was it was anti-heroic. There was no heroism. Yeah, instead Spielberg made a very boring movie and an incredibly boring movie out of what could have been a tremendous work. I agree. I mean, one of the shocking things about Schindler's List is how Schindler, if you follow the movie, you can go, oh yeah, he's a hero, but the movie doesn't make the point that he's a hero. There's no case to be made. There's nothing, there's no heroism portrayed in the movie, not really. So yes, I agree with him. I agree with him. Yeah, okay. The other thing that I wanted to say with respect to something you said about fresh lending on you is that along the DMZ in South Korea, there are these coin operated binoculars, very powerful, that people look into North Korean villages. And so the North Korean villages on the border are made to look like they're much better off than they actually are. Yeah. And so your one objection to it, I think, is something that in retrospect, it seems obvious that they would allow a lot of smuggling into the border villages in order to make them look more civilized than life in North Korea actually is. Yeah, but it's a movie. It's not supposed to be a reflection of exactly how reality is. Yeah, but showing you the horror of what North Korea is like, and I think it kind of skirts around. That wasn't the theme, but what astonishes me is that they can have a whole TV series with a dozen episodes, chock full of references to We The Living and Atlas Shrugged, and there's an audience that can actually understand that. No, that's pretty amazing, particularly given that I was in, you know, given the conformity of that culture. That culture is so conformist at the same time. And it's also the culture that made squid games. So something's happening in South Korea, which is very interesting. They make some of the best and some of the worst TV shows in the world. Okay, thank you. Sure. Either way, on Spielberg, I think Spartacus is his best film. Spartacus wasn't Spielberg. Wasn't Spielberg? Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick. He was a little kid. He was very young when Spartacus came out. It's Stanley Kubrick, 1961, I think. And yes, that is definitely Kubrick's best movie. Yeah, okay. That's what I meant. Sorry. No problem. All right, let's see. Andrew. After Trump went to dinner with Kanye and Nick Fuentes. Well, he didn't go to dinner. He'd go right into his house. They were at his house. Oh, okay. And Mitch McConnell said, I don't think the American people will vote for someone who has dinner with that company. That wasn't good enough as a statement. There was no moral element. And, you know, I thought the Republican Party just doesn't get it. You know, I'm wondering, I've heard some mixed things since, to be fair, that they are grappling. How do we respond to this midterm flop? And what, how do we identify ourselves going forward? So I wanted to get your read. I mean, I know it's preliminary because it's kind of just happened, but what's your early read on how they've responded to that failure? Oh, God. I think they have recognized that the candidate quality matters, that there's certain crazy nuts out there that they shouldn't include. I'm not sure they can identify what crazy nut means or how to differentiate them from, let's say, somebody who's just free market, but they've recognized there's a certain type of candidate that just, they probably won't get elected. I don't think they have moral condemnation involved. I don't think there's any kind of understanding of how deeply evil some of these candidates were and what that turned that the Republican Party took, how evil it really is. I think they're basically pragmatic. So they will take a short term next election. We need better candidates. You know, if we can suppress Donald Trump a little bit, we should do that, but we can't offend his people. We can't offend his constituency. We have to be nice for them. So I don't think they've learned anything. I don't think anything has really changed. I think the Republican Party is just as corrupt as it was a couple of years ago. I don't think the midterms have really taught them anything except this general notion, oh, we should really think about better candidates. But what does better candidates mean? And if their constituency, the vocal constituency demands something different, will they shift back to it? So I don't expect much from the Republican Party to improve in the near future. I don't see it. I think the whole a way of, I don't know how it happens, but it all has to collapse somehow. I don't know how it happens, but the people running the political parties today are all destructive to America and destructive to the political parties themselves. And I don't see how they get out of that. Thank you for saying that the number one thing that the Republican Party needs to learn is to rediscover character. And do you connect? Do you think they're making any sort of connection in saying quality of the candidate matters to character or is that too? They're pragmatists. You just got to pick people who can bullshit better. Yeah, but I don't think there's any, in the 90s, you remember with Bill Clinton, character matters. That was the big campaign slogan. And of course they lost. So the lesson they learned is, I guess the American people don't care about character, because Bill Clinton won, even though he was being impeached and even because, of course, to Republicans, you can basically ball that character to the issue of sex. So you could be a lying, cheating, stealing SOB, but you have sex with one woman the whole of your life. You're a good guy. Well, can I make an amendment to that? They don't even care if, personally, you adhere to what you're saying. They just care that you mouth, you know, because, as we know how they live. Yes, but they have this weird sexual morality that overwhelms almost everything else. And it's, yeah. All right, let's see. Thanks, Andrew. So speaking of a weird sexual morality, I've recently come across a book by Christopher Hitchens about Mother Teresa. And I had no idea how evil she was. Yep. Like she was truly like an elsewhere Tui of Christianity, like some cross of a medieval fanatic and elsewhere Tui. I mean, I had her categorized in my mind as something like your run of the mill welfare status type of mentality, like doling out food to the poor. She celebrated suffering. She deliberately went out of her way to prevent any kind of mediation of or mitigation of the pain of these people who are dying in her wards, because she wanted them to feel suffering. She she spoke out about what a beautiful thing it was that the poor would accept their lot. And what a blessing it is on earth that there's been so much suffering from the poor and and how militant she was about birth control and abortion. Yep. Absolutely militant, even if it's the life of the mother, you know, the whole nine yards, it's just truly shocking to me. And the fact that other than Hitchens, like I don't know of anyone else who's criticized her or said anything, well, yes, of course. I mean, I guess outside the objective is community like a mainstream voice. No, they don't Hitchens was incredibly brave and incredibly courageous. And I give them a lot of credit for coming out and publishing that book and talking about it and publicizing it. I mean, yeah, you did God's work. But you know what's sad your own is and I think maybe this is part of why it didn't have as much teeth is that near the beginning, he says something about that this is a continuation of a conflict between those who know they are right and claim the mantle of heaven, and those who are guided by the poor candle of reason. So basically, you know, we can just try our best to know something maybe with this little candle. Yeah, that's not very appealing. But that's a great tragedy. Yeah, it is that people who reject religion also rejects the efficacy of reason certainty of knowing you're right, like that moral confidence and everything. So you're choosing between this just blast skepticism and this rabid medieval fanaticism. But I of course, I think also people look the other way because she was like away for them to virtue signal. I mean, she of course, she propped up by sanctioning all these like the baby doc duvalier and all these ghastly con artists and dictators and frauds. But people want it's like she gave them some kind of vicarious way of feeling like they're better or more moral and by saying, Oh, she's so great because she's altruistic. And and people don't look into anything you do if you're a loudly pronounced altruist. So that that that was something I tied into Sam Big and freed because he was a member of the effective altruist movement. Oh yeah. And it's like a he's I don't think he's anywhere near as evil as Mother Teresa. No, but um, but it was the same kind of thing. It was like, Hey, I'm doing good. All I want to do is give my wealth away. And so in his own mind, well, it's okay by cheating people and then in this is the difference between him and Mother Teresa, he bought a penthouse. He participated in his orgies and did all kinds of other stuff with private planes. You know, how did he I mean, the guys accused of fraud and yet he had $250 million to pay for his bail. I don't quite get that one. But it's assets are not being frozen, I guess. But he yeah, it's he's not as evil as Mother Teresa because he doesn't embrace it quite as fully because she was evil partially because she suffered her own life was suffering. Her own life was was a was a was a complete disaster. And he used it more as a front. She wasn't a con artist. She believed this stuff. It's what partially made it evil made her evil. Yeah. Yeah, although she had been flying around in private jets and things like that. She felt it. Anyway, I guess that was just something kind of interesting that I wanted to share. Because I figure a lot of people just don't know what it what she was really about and how evil she really was. The books called the missionary position. If anybody wants to read it, which Christopher Hitchens, that's his sense of humor and you're a good writer. So yes, it's a good book. I recommend everybody to know more about what Mother Teresa really is like. And yeah, we miss intellectuals like Christopher Hitchens in spite of the fact that he wasn't consistent. He was he was good in some things. He was excellent. He was really excellent. All right. Thank you, Debbie, Nick. Yeah, I wanted to know if your views on crypto, not so much cryptos is straightforward. You know, it's monopoly money, like you said, but if you've used your more agnostic in the past, semi agnostic, now with the FTX scandal, the exchanges where they're not segregating the money, they're using it for other purposes. There's no due diligence. And you know, as you have your views evolved, I mean, is, for example, Bitcoin seems viable. I mean, it's being used. But do you have any additional thoughts? Are they going to involve where evolved where maybe gold is attached or to it? I mean, I think the blockchain and crypto is a viable technology for doing something. But we don't yet know what. Is it money? I don't think so. I mean, I don't need Bitcoin. Why would anybody use Bitcoin unless you live in China and you need to get your money out? So, okay, so it's I've always said Bitcoin is great for illegal transactions. It's not cheap or effective or efficient for anything else. Have you ever used Venmo? Venmo is like magic. I like putting your name and I send you the money and it appears on your phone and you have it, right? And it's there. It costs me zero. It costs you zero. And we just I just paid you. So and by the way, you can pay for the Iran book show with Venmo and it's actually the most efficient way to do it because I get, I get everything. I don't pay anybody anything. Can you use it for large transactions? No, but that's only because of regulations. That's because of the regularity. But that's the whole issue because I can, like I've told you before, I can do 30,000 in Bitcoin. It's there in five minutes. Yeah, but you pay a transaction cost. It's not cheap. Sometimes no, no. Sometimes I lose. Sometimes I gain 200. It's a small, you take the average for the day. Oh, in terms of value, yes. But there's also transaction costs, right? No, no, no. To move it across. No, no transaction costs. I'm telling you, I do it all the time. Sure. I mean, I can do a wire transfer. It costs me 15 bucks and the money just goes to where I need it to go. So the point is it's not necessary. And it's, it's, you know, the real fear is that we get, ultimately we get a Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve digital currency, which is where I think we're heading or China's already experimenting with a central bank digital currency, because that's the most efficient and the government gets to track every last dime you have. But you'll be able to move it. You'll be able to do it in any size. And so I don't think Bitcoin is going to be, is going to replace the dollar. I don't think it's going to become money. The common means of transaction, it's good for doing illegal stuff. It's good for getting around regulations. It's fun. There are a lot of people committed to it. A lot of people are passionate about it. So it's not going to zero anytime soon for all of those reasons. But is it going to have a killer app? Is it going to have something that everybody's going to want to use? I don't see it. More likely that'll be Ethereum or some other crypto that we haven't yet had that we don't know of that'll combine some kind of smart contract with a means of transferring value with maybe some other features that it'll have. I think we're still looking for the killer app for crypto. And until they come up with a killer app, it gives you privacy. But the fact is 99.9% of people don't care about privacy. They give the information to anybody who wants it. Look at Facebook. Look at Twitter. Look at everywhere. I put my credit card. My credit card is all over the web. You got to find what is crypto really good for. And I don't think they found it yet. And I'm not surprised by FTX or any of this stuff. This is all kind of the you have to cleanse the system out of the junk and you have to get rid of the obvious fraud. And over time, if there is anybody who is, if there it really is an application, if there is, if there is an is there, if there's a there there, then it will arise out of this mess that FTX and others have created. So I don't have, I just spoke at a crypto conference and I basically said, you guys are the expert until you create an app that I actually want to use, I'm a skeptic. I just don't see what the point is. You guys are playing almost all the exchanges are there to exchange one cryptocurrency for another cryptocurrency. So you're just exchanging fiat money. You're just, you're just playing at speculation. All you're doing is speculating about the value of something that doesn't have any link to reality necessarily. So you have to have an application. And until there's an application, it doesn't mean much. Do other objectives hold the same view? I don't know. Is there alternative? I mean, are they, are they, do they, it's an interesting subject of it. Have they talked about it or? I haven't seen many. I think most of them, I think most of them still don't, there's some objectivists who are big Bitcoin fans and are committed to Bitcoin. So there's, I'm sure within the objectives community, there's a variety of different points of view. Okay. Thanks, Nick. Fan Hop, if you want to change your mind and ask a question, it's your turn. Otherwise, yeah, go ahead. All right. I just wanted to give a brief how I came to YBS and Objectivism and all that. Right. Because I don't have character limitations for once and it's great. I don't have to botch the grammar. But so I came up with this idea of if you keep what you earn, it's kind of like a neutral and then giving to charity is like a plus one good moral thing and stealing is a minus one bad moral thing. And I told that to one of my friends and he was like, you should check out Ayn Rand and hooked me up with the 42 minute recording of Ayn Rand's what is capitalism and just freaking blew my mind. And this was around like March, 2020 when COVID kicked in and the line I was working on at my job shut down from it. And they had us doing odd jobs for everybody else. And I could have my headphones. And then I got Opar. And then I was like, man, I do not make enough where I'm at. And I have an opportunity to go somewhere that pays a lot more. And then I seized on that. Thanks to Objectivism. And now I make a lot more money. And I can give like 100 a month to YBS and super chat often. And I moved to a bigger city with better stuff going on plus boring. So yeah. And and then I found you're on Brooke because of it was like a lecture on allies. And you talked about libertarians. But I think my favorite takeaway from that one was your you were talking about the virtuous poor and the virtuous rich versus the non virtuous poor and the non virtuous rich. And that kind of hit home for me really hard. Good. And yeah, so that's all. And then and then also while I was integrating Opar, I was getting on VR chat and trying to teach like four to five people what I've been learning, like a few times a week. And that helped and they asked good questions and stuff like that that really helped me accelerate. So yeah, but I guess as far as a question goes, you have you have Apple TV. Do you have any opinions on John Stewart used to be on Comedy Central's Daily Show? I ask about him because watching his Daily Show on Comedy Central where he sat hired all of news media like not he didn't seem biased about it. And he often added a fuller context to the clips they took out of context like on Fox News and on CNN and stuff. And I thought that was really helpful. But I don't know what he's about since he's left that. And I was wondering if you heard anything of him or have any opinions? I mean, he's he's generally always been quite laughed. You know, he he made fun of the left often, but he's generally quite laughed. I don't know what's happened to him. I haven't followed his career. I didn't watch his show a lot because I found it quite biased, not so much democratic, Republican, but biased against capitalism and, you know, my views on what freedom really implies. So I was pretty sensitive to that. Fair enough. Yeah, I guess my value out of him was. Yeah, my value out of him was. And he was funny. There's no question he was funny. Yeah, quite talented. But, um, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You too. All right. Let's do some super chats here. Run through these and then we'll call it an eight. Almost two hours. James Taylor says, I read an article saying that the next 20 years in the world will see the first trillion in. Is this probable? And is it a good sign of economic health or cronyism? I don't know. It really depends. It depends who it is. If it's Vladimir Putin, it's a sign of cronyism. If it's, I don't know, Jeff Bezos is probably a sign of economic health. You know, I don't have a sense in which to tell over the next 20 years. Yeah, I mean, I could see, you know, if today there are people who have a hundred billion, a trillion is a thousand billions. They'd have to be 10x richer over the next 20 years. Yeah, that's definitely possible. But I don't know if it's going to be a sign of economic health or not because it depends who the trillionaire actually is. Were you one of the cool popular kids growing up or were you more of a loner? I think I was a little bit of both. I certainly wasn't one of the cool kids and certainly not when I was in America. But I had friends. I wasn't a loner. I always had friends. I was pretty active. I was active in sports. I hiked a lot. I did stuff. But my mother also used to complain about me that I read too much. You don't hear mothers complain a lot about that. You're on go outside and play. You're reading too much. That was a common statement coming out of my mother. I guess I probably was a loner, but I never felt like a loner. I don't think I was one of the cool and popular, but I wasn't one of the geeks either. I was somewhere in between, I guess. I don't know. It's hard for me to... And the culture was different. It was different when I was in the US and different when I was in Israel because the culture was so different. And I also, I moved a lot when I was kids. I was always the new kid in town. I was always the new kid in the school, which never helped. Liam says, before I discovered Ayn Rand Objectivism, I felt hot with anger, anxiety, and frustration, yet unable to articulate why Ayn Rand may have been the greatest introspective of all time. Yeah, I agree. She's a great introspective, which made her a great novelist and a great philosopher. And in a sense, a great psychologist. Jason, in an annual State of the Union address, is an annual State of the Union address a worthwhile government task? How could they be better in a government focused on individual rights? Well, they could be better in any government. The State of the Union addresses the most boring, stupid things you will find. I mean, they're just horrible. They should be shorter and they should be principled. That is, what is the condition of the country? And within the scope of what I'm supposed to do, what am I doing about it? And what do I expect you, Congress, to do about it? It's not a laundry list of all the things you would like. It's not an opportunity to have people stand up, all the victims that you have helped. It's an opportunity to carry your virtue signaling and your altruism and all of that. It's an opportunity to talk to the country and say, this is how we're doing. And these are the problems. And to the extent that I am responsible for helping solve them, here's how I plan to do it. Here I'm doing it. Here's how I plan to do it. They're super boring. They go over an hour and the laundry lists. No principle, zero principle in any of the State of the Union addresses. I think in a rational society, they'd be very short. Casey says, great range of topics today. Looking forward to your yearly wrap-up. No questions. Just happy tuning in. Thank you, Casey. Really appreciate that. And Paulo says, what happened as a result of your chat with Scottish libertarians? I don't think anything happened. I'm not sure what's supposed to happen. Hopefully, some of the people who are at the chat or at the talk or something became better defenders of freedom. I don't know. I don't know that anything more real than that happened as a result of the chat. I don't have any, you know, I've been to Edinburgh now a number of times to give talks. I don't get a sense the Scottish libertarians are excited about me and I'm motivated to rally forces around what I have to say. So I think they're offended by the fact that I'm not an anarchist. And I'm not a pacifist. It's a problem for libertarians, even Scottish ones. All right. Last questions. Oh, yes. If we have a horrific recession, will Fed do a stimulus similar to the pandemic or bigger? Or will they hold back out of fear of causing more inflation and distortions? Many in popular publications blame Fed for current problems. Yes. I mean, I think that what the Fed will do is it'll start lowering interest rates. I don't think you'll see massive bailouts the way you did during COVID or during the financial crisis. I think they will let this one in a sense run its course that they'll lower interest rates, but they will let it run its course given the interest rates. I don't think you'll see the kind of massive unless it turns into something where the Fed thinks we're heading towards a great depression and they stop pumping money into the economy like crazy. So it really depends on how it evolves into a recession. I know my answers and economic issues are not very satisfying because the future is the future and therefore not knowable in the present. We can speculate about it. We can but particularly in economics, there's so many variables that it's very, very difficult to make confident predictions. It's a huge amount of uncertainty. Future is the future. It's not the present. All right, guys. Thank you. On December 31st, we'll be doing our yearly wrap up. We've got a 10k matching for all super chat. We'll start that on December 31st at 2 p.m. In the meantime, tomorrow we'll have another new show and on Thursday I'll be interviewing Tara Smith. It should be a lot of fun. Tara Smith is always really, really interesting. So that'll be a I'm sure a good show. So join us for that. And in the meantime, I will say good night and I'll see you tomorrow, morning, if you choose to join. Bye, everybody. Bye.