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I I Have on today Greg. So Mary we've got an Amish Adalja and we're gonna be talking About a conference workshop. I mean you guys help me define this They're thinking be hosting this next next weekend. We're gonna talk about the theme of the workshop is the socialization medicine and then I think Amish has about 20 minutes and he's gonna drop off at some point and Greg and I gonna stick around and talk about all kinds of stuff and of course a lot of what we talk about will be dependent on What you guys want us to talk about because you'll get to dictate that through the questions that you ask so Let's let's get this rolling. I don't know which one of you wants to start But why don't you tell us a little bit about the workshop? Yeah, so this is Workshop has grown out of a group that I started when I started at the Salem Center I've got an online discussion group called the Tom X Hendricks working group after the doctor and at least shrugged and it's a group of philosophers intellectuals and people in the medical field who are Thinking about medical freedom why we need it why we don't have it what it would take to get it And there was something I was really keen to start when I started this position because I just happened to know a concentration of really bright qualified People in the field first among them a mesh of Alja Who's on with us and some others as well and some others I met actually through talking about this on your show so we've been Talking about these issues on and off in phone groups and zoom sessions for a few years now and wanting to have a Conference for a few years, but the time wasn't right because of COVID and other things And so we're getting together for a public conference It's also going to be live streamed or if you're in Austin you can come So we stream to YouTube or if you're in Austin you can come and see it live on Saturday from 10 a.m. 6 p.m. To talk about desocializing the American medicine What it looks like to advocate for freedom in medicine why we need it and so forth Amish do you want to One of the things that I think is important is that lots of people in this community have spoken about Issues in medicine and socialized medicine and national health care and single-payer But I think they don't really quite understand the history of that that movement where it comes from what the opposition has been and What it's like today in terms of where where is government involved in medicine and where isn't it? It's more where where it's it's almost universally involved in government I think a government is you know, it's universally involved in health care And I think that's something that I think needs to be compromised because a lot of people were up in arms about Obamacare, but they weren't about Medicare Part D The prescription drug benefit or or any of the other programs that you face And I think they think of Obamacare as a turning point But it really wasn't a turning point. It really was just more of the same and I think being clear on what What what it's like to practice medicine in all the places where government kind of abuts medicine and Constrains or restricts or or has this regulatory influence on how a person practices is really important Because then it actually lets you see where are there glimmers of hope? Where is there places where you could make nudges towards the right the right? The right reforms and I think that's that's part of the goal here is to really be clear on on what it's like In terms of the government intervention in the health care industry at this point Yes, a theme of the whole conference is that Socialized medicine or collectivized government or government medicine Isn't some future threat threat or bogeyman that we have to fight off or something that exists in some other places But not here It's something we've been living with in one form or another for many decades Most significantly since Medicare passed in the 60s, but there were forms of it before then and it's grown continually since and we want to understand socialized medicine as Not some evil to be avoided in the future, but a present destructive force that can be fought We need to desocialize it and we need to first understand what it is The theme that we've had throughout our working group and why it's called the thomas hendrix group After the character and atlas shrugged is we really wanted to focus on The the fact that medicine is a product. It's produced by reasoning minds by people who need freedom to do that and everybody who's working in the medical industry and everybody who's a customer of that industry Is operating in this sphere of their life under force that's kind of incompatible with the kind of valuing and thinking That is necessary for human flourishing and for people to get produce their best work to create new values and to Be discerning about what values they want to consume So we want to take the conference kind of spell out the ways in which this force is operative What the nature of the evil is how it's destructive and then think about solutions and so the structure is I'm going to start with a talk on the general themes It's called liberating the medical mind Then amish is going to give a talk on the history of government involvement in american medicine What are the rationales for it at different times? What are the ways that it's grown over the years? What is the nature of the system that we're living under and then we're going to spend a lot of time on panels with different people from Different parts of the health care industry talking about what it's like to practice medicine today What are some of the challenges and what are some of the solutions? They have in mind for them that are first step solutions The ultimate solution of course is to bring freedom to this field to have a separation of government in medicine In the way we need a separation of government from every part of the economy But what are first steps in that direction that would redress some of the most pressing problems? So we have a panel on the doctor-client relationship From that point of view and a panel on Decontrolling health care and then we're going to close with a talk by don Watkins on how to de-socialize medicine the kind of Moral framing of the issue we need to to have a movement around this You can you tell us a little bit about kind of who are the people on the panels? Yes You've invited to the conference Um, I'll name them an amish you can because I have the list in front of me an amish You can comment because a lot of this was done with amish's help finding people finding the group And and he has had a lot of insight into who would be good for it, but um r s torino who? Led up americans for free choice in medicine in the 90s and did a lot of the fighting against a hillary carers. It was at the time Michael cannon who is a analyst at kato? Michael garret who's a concierge physician here in austin richard parker and amish you could talk about his History in this because you've found him for us Richard parker is an emergency medicine physician in texas who has kind of been around the objectives for some time and used to host a lot of Email groups talking about the philosophy of medicine And I think really has a lot of great insight into the evolution of american medicine And how hard it's become to be kind of a solo doctor trying to avoid that aspect of those aspects of medicine I'll mention some others Michael koffman Who is uh been involved in some ari events? He's a On the board of some pharmaceutical companies and has done a lot of work in in pharma Jared Rhodes Jared seahoffer who is the CEO of a company working to deal with the Help shepherd products through fda approval Jared Rhodes is involved in a group that's trying to shape medical policy and or educate people about it and callene smith who's a Attending an er physician in new york um One of the things that I think this list reveals and there were more people that we couldn't get just because of logistics Really well placed people in the medical industry very knowledgeable people um, there's a lot of people now who Really know objectivism well who have been trained by ari's programs who have just been in the community for many many years Who are really bright thoughtful people about applying this philosophy to their life and careers and who are um Now quite far along in careers in medicine who are highly placed who are very knowledgeable And I've found talking to all these people tremendously Enlightening I've learned a lot and I think they've learned a lot from talking to one another And this is a chance to bring some of those discussions to the public And there hasn't There hasn't really been this kind of an organization around medicine for some time There was a lot of activity around the time of the clinton administration and the clinton care issues And I think this is an opportunity to really bring some firepower to the to the medical field With the the ideas that are that are in this community and to organize it in a way that people can Exchange those ideas and we can actually come up with actionable concrete things to work on Are there also a non-objectivist attending or participating? Well of the speakers, I think michael canan Is a professor wouldn't think of himself as from cato But all the other speakers are and that was uh on purpose. I mean, I want to kind of present a a certain line On not just that socialized medicine is wrong not just that we have a form of it But what's wrong about it? And I wanted people who would have some of the kind of insights into that That come out of having thought about this uh from the perspective of objectivism And there are now a lot of such people in the world, but I'm hoping that the um The audience for it will be a lot wider than that and that will have uh more influence on people both here who come And hopefully on the live stream and of course, it'll be available to watch on the Salem centers channel thereafter So how do people find out more about this? I mean this is uh, Maybe somebody can put on the chat Put on my on the chat on on uh zoom Okay, you are well, and I will put it I will put it on the chat and the chat open Yeah, uh ray, are you doing that? Yeah, I've got it already. Yep. Okay good So, uh Anybody can come uh anybody can come on saturday. It's it's open. There's programming from From 10 to 6 anybody can come in person. They'll be lunch served And um, we're also gonna have a kind of more closed-door session on the sunday to sort of um Reflect on it and think about next step forward But the saturday programs are our public programs and we're hoping we'll get a nice turnout for One thing I think it's Yeah I was gonna say one thing that I think it's really important just for your audience or anybody thinking about these topics is Why is medicine different than other parts of your life and the values you pursue? Why do people treat it differently? Why why is it something where there's always been government involvement? Why is it seen as different as you buying a computer or you buying a car? And I think that's something that The the the group that we've assembled here is really gonna have Kind of I don't want to give away everything But kind of acute insights into that are a lot different than the mainstream because well What you'll know is when you think about the fighting that people have over healthcare republicans democrats libertarians the american medical association They're all agreeing on the fundamentals. They all think of it. They all think of medicine Different than everything else. They just argue a little bit about some of who's in power who's not in power Who's reimbursements are higher or lower? They don't actually think about medicine As a as a commodity they they and I think that's something that's come out That's going to come out in this conference that I think is unique about other conferences Or other groups that have tried to kind of incrementally Stop some of the the government intrusion into medicine They're not doing it in a in a wholesale manner. They're really just kind of Uh Kind of arguing over little details that don't really matter in the I think even the the more libertarian commentators who might be more Alert to the economic aspects of it and who um might think of medicine more as a product, which of course it is Don't have the moral framing that we're going to bring to it So medicine is an achievement of the human mind And it requires thought at every level on the thought of the patients and the thought of the doctors Very importantly on the parts of all the business people involved There are business models involved here as an insurance company or the private practitioner doctor As a hospital as a lot of other things that haven't ever come into existence because nobody's been free to do them And we want to think about all of that kind of thought that goes into formulating products and formulating values What premises are at large in our society? That prevents us from leaving people free to do that and what are the effects of that on all of our lives? Yeah, so pb one of the listeners here says I'm an orthopedic surgeon I can tell you it's nearly impossible to make a living without relinquishing all control To largely socialized hospital systems most of my patients have no idea how bad it is And this is the topic you've really brought to my attention The difficulty of functioning outside of the system why it's only available to people in certain professions And it's something we're going to talk about on one of the panels, but do you want to say a little about it now? Yes, if there has been this burgeoning movement for concierge medicine and direct primary care or paying cash But you have to recognize that that's only done by permission and only for very certain specialties is it actually viable because Because of the way medicare's regulations are you cannot charge a medicare patient? Even if they're not even even if they've opted out or they're not doing medicare They're coming to you for cash payment You cannot charge them anything different than what you would charge a medicare patient So you so what ends up happening is you you end up restricting Who can actually use any of those more free market types of medical care? And if you're a specialist that needs to be in a hospital and work in a hospital situation It's impossible because almost all hospitals are going to be taking medicare dollars And if you take medicare dollars that comes with strings attached So what they've done is that yes, there are these little slivers But it's nearly impossible for that to work outside of maybe primary care doctors pediatricians psychiatrists Bariatric surgeons plastic surgeons dermatologists. It's not something that eyes an infectious disease doctor or a critical care doctor could even come close to Having a parallel system. It's just not Viable with the way medicare has crowded out and it's controlled all of medicine and has since the 1960s And one of the things that we're going to talk about is what would be some of the smallest Incremental changes that could be made that would start to liberate up that area of medicine and move us towards a system where doctors aren't so isolated from their patients financially Where there's more shopping going on where there's more Thinking about the value of procedures and and more of the kind of respect that comes with a trade relationship Rather than a relationship where medicine is doled out to one as one's pittance Which is what we have now West Writes I work with healthcare data Any thoughts on HIPAA regulations and how such rules limit progress and innovation? I think clearer laws and property rights related to data would improve things Well, I definitely think HIPAA Well, I think so HIPAA has many different facets to it But one of it is that people want their health data to be private and I and I understand that But what's happening is that so many innovations get blocked because that law Or as it's interpreted is very constraining or how lawyers in hospital systems or healthcare systems interpret it is very constraining and I think to see the full revolution with with artificial intelligence and machine learning and all these big big data analytics You're going to have to make sure that HIPAA is not inadvertently stopping that from happening because there's so much Out there that we could learn about people on a population level genomics All of that is going to require a lot of data crunching So HIPAA has to be something that's not seen as an obstacle And unfortunately it often is seen as an obstacle or it becomes an obstacle Because of ambiguity and how things are interpreted and because of lawsuits and and because of how The government penalizes people for certain data So that that has to be part of the discussion of how we move to 21st century medicine by modernizing some of those Laws which may have actual purposes. HIPAA does have real legitimate purposes But I think we want to make sure that it's actually as narrowly constrained as it is So it doesn't actually end up harming. What could actually benefit all of us in the future? Yeah, it strikes me that it has to be a revolution in terms of how we treat data personal data anyway because I mean healthcare is just one aspect of this but this Every we look data our data is being used and uh, there's a lot of ambiguity about how it's being used what it means um one of the kind of central themes in my thinking about this and am I thinking about a lot of issues in politics lately is That there are a lot of areas that need fresh thought and they need fresh thought every generation as new technologies develop as new business models develop as new ways of interacting develop uh, and we want to be sure that we have the kind of Society that's free for people to do that thinking to come up with new ways of interacting And then to make money from doing it because you can't do that thought You can't do that experimentation if it has to be a sacrifice to do it or if you're not ever allowed to implement it And so there's a lot we don't know and what does it mean to have the freedom to do that work? Well, one you have to not be um In a system that's so regulated that you don't have options and two you have to have rights to property protected in that case the property might be data and What we need to think about is what are the right kind of contractual relationships concerning data? What are the property rights and data? I think we need to think about that for a number of different reasons concerned with privacy And what's the general framework that needs to be worked out around those things that would allow people to uh Create and own what they create Yeah, I mean Absolutely because we we have no ability to predict what markets will actually come up with what people will actually invent and and think of in terms of solutions these problems um And it it's it's the freedom to to allow people to come up with those solutions And then test them out uh in the marketplace is is what we're looking for um All right, so people can register You know if they're there can they ask questions? I mean is it going to be interactive? Yes, it's going to be there for those online as well I don't think it'll be interactive for those those online. We don't have the setup for that It'll be streamed and people can watch it and maybe someone will call out a question to us If they're watching on their phone But basically there'll be questions from the audience the panels will involve A Q&A as well as the talks, but it will basically be I think a mostly spectator experience if you're online A more interactive if you're in person again, I'm hoping people will come and join us there And um, I'm hoping this will also live on on the on the internet of the research Great anything else uh aimish On the conference No, I think that you know, hopefully this is again the start of something really That will continue on and and lead to further discussions and actually And actually a movement to to fix some of these these problems and to set the framing correct So I hope that people find it of interest and and that as I said That we keep the momentum going after this conference. Yeah part of what I was trying to do here is seed or maybe reboot Uh an objectivist oriented medical freedom movement And I think we are we're well situated to do that again We have a lot of expertise in medicine a lot of expertise in in the field of medicine and every That is in the business of medicine as well as in in you know, as actual doctors Every time I do an appearance around this show someone reaches out. We just said someone in the chat Who's interested and if anybody wants to get in touch, please please reach out to me or to aimish And we have a few young people who you're younger people who are really interested in making in doing this kind of work going forward Ray sure who is uh helping me to organize for the conference and who's online with us is now I think a junior fellow at ai or it's just started there and wants to um Pursue this line of inquiry working on medical policy He's going to be hosting the serving as the kind of interviewer or moderator for the panels We have a young woman who's gone through the oac who is uh working in a position on these issues at kato Not sure if I should be naming everybody. Um, but uh, who's also going to be at the conference and participating so we there And again, there's a network of people already So I'm hoping we're in a position to share ideas to start things going into to bring a particular frame of thinking about About force and freedom to an issue where it's really important for all of our lives Do you um, you expect it to start an organization around this like they used to be? I'm I mean, we already have this this discussion group that's sort of informally doing it Americans for free choice in medicine. I believe still exists as an organization Although it's not very active and I'm hoping this will lead to a reboot of it But that that'll have to be more in the hands of some of the others than me I'm just setting the framing for it. Yeah, we're helping you just American for free choice in medicine still does exist They have a website. I'm actually on the board of Americans for free choice in medicine It's just not as active as it once was and I think there is an opportunity to rejuvenate its activities as well with uh with this group Good. Well, the orthopedic surgeon who wrote on here Definitely wants to get in touch with you guys. Is there a way to get in touch with? um To reach me at the sound area at gmail or um, do you want to erase given his email address? Maybe reach out to ray um, yeah, I can give him raise uh email address for now and uh, so pb write Write to this email address that I'm posting in the chat or anybody can write Uh to that and if you want to get involved in any in some way Uh, this is raise email address and then he will forward your email to the relevant people And uh and provide you with information and I will I will put the link to the event and uh raise uh email in the description below After the show, I'll add it to the to the description as well Great. All right. Thanks guys. Uh, thanks amish All right. I'm gonna love Thanks ray Uh and greg is gonna stick around and we're gonna talk about um Whatever you guys want to talk about uh, but also, you know, kind of what I want to talk about which is um So the the show I I was telling greg this earlier or emailed him earlier and said the show I wanted to do today, but I didn't I didn't know if I had an answer to it So I I was dreading actually doing it Was is there any hope? Um, and this comes of course following my show yesterday on uh, I and hosie le And uh, and just just everything has been happening Since october 7th on top of everything that's happening in the world beyond october 7th ukraine and everything else and uh, and uh But but october 7th in in many ways I don't know how you think about this greg but it brought home so many of the issues that we're facing And and more the response right so the the action itself was not surprising It was in the sense of israel's failure to stop it but but it wasn't surprising in the sense of the brutality But it's the response in the world particularly by the masses not so much by the by the uh by the politicians but more by the uh by the The people out in the street that has really been quite shocking The extent of it again not too surprising but still um You think that what happened on that day is so repulsive that they would at least hesitate But it seems like from day one they were out there so Yeah, I mean if what you think about that and then and then we can catch is they hope I mean mainstream american politicians have said the things you would expect them to say that have been Not inspiring but you know What you would expect in finish and have some element of moral resolve and horror At what happened and so that's as you would expect and you would expect there to be a fringe of You know hard leftist professors and other nihilist sorts among libertarians and others who would uh in effect take the hama side But the number of people on the streets how widespread this is The protests on campus the the levels of them how many people in in england just the other day that is Not a you know 180 from what I expected, but it's larger than I expected and it's really disheartening Yeah, it's uh I think particularly on universities I I guess There's a sense in which we should have expected it given given the left's dominance and given the nihilistic nature of the modern left It's still shocking to actually see it and it's shocking to see it It Related to such horrors in real life. That is these people can be Stupid when they're abstract and when they're talking about General ideas and and maybe when they're canceling joe and schmoe and whatever over minor trouble things but To defend rapists and murderers and butchers and and and just the butchery of of Hamas and defend a system that that's so Treats women the way it does and it's just to treat gays the way they do You would think just a concrete horror of it would would would hold them back, but it doesn't and how well developed the Or well entrenched the the anti-israel narrative is so that it's not well It's complicated and things are difficult and whatever which is I think what most people probably think who have um Some hesitations about israel's defending itself, but the israel's an apartheid state. It's illegitimate. It's it the the the level of How widespread and entrenched this this narrative is and it's a narrative that I I think is just tremendously unjust and Not found that in facts, but and that I knew was around but just how thick on the ground it is Among among young people is I should say it's just someone reporting from a campus Yeah, um, there's always been a you know a post a palestinian students group that was out from time to time with their posters and so forth I saw that last year. I know there have been more activities on Texas's campus. There was a protest the other day and and some things reported in the newspaper and and it's troubling but it's not Like I myself have not encountered very much going on on campus just walking around campus. I encounter it much more Um in other circles that I go when I go to play music with people how many people are Uh at a park where I play music out there were some people with you know, I'm not I'm not but uh palestinian solidarity shirts right after 10 7 when when it's surprising the the kind of facebook and and other posts I see from people and and and what I see on the internet generally is um Larger than what I see in in real life enough so that I would think that You know the world is in twitter and you can be too online If not for the fact there are hundreds of thousands of people uh in london and other places Yes, I mean there is there is the risk of of uh be caught up in kind of the bubble within social media that that emphasizes outrage and emphasizes the most radical and crazy stuff going on and um And and and the scale of the london for itself The scale of of the london gathering speak for itself Yes, yes, and and and pictures we saw on on veterans day In new york and in other cities and and uh taking down american flags during veterans day I mean it's just it's just the evidence is accumulating that this is not a trivial It's still likely a small minority and and should that Make us feel any better about what is going on Well, it depends how the rest of the country reacts to it and I think that still remains to be seen I think most people are taken aback by this Are horrified by it and the more that the the people that um Are protesting uh in favor of solidarity with the palestinians the the less they distance themselves from hamas The more they chant from the river to the sea the more there are these episodes of tearing down the fliers of the of the hostages and the children uh The the the more we see of this um The more I think we're going to see and are seeing a rejection of of this of this movement But what is that rejection going to look like and and who are going to be the voices and spokespeople of it? And I think there's an opportunity for some real sanity here. Um, but there's also opportunities for um other kinds of reactions And we'll see I mean we'll see who comes to the fore that there have been some really excellent voices You've mentioned uh sam harris who's been fantastic on this barry weiss has been really good on this um david doigt so so which of these kinds of people are going to be the the avatars for this including in politics who's going to arise as um Representing the political parties on this. What are our candidates going to say about it? Yeah, well, we did see in england at least in the uk You know the one minister in in the buddhist government that actually spoke out against the demonstrations and called them what they were Was fired this morning. So so we certainly see that the politicians in england are cowering Before these masses the police seem to be cowering over there, which is worrisome Uh, I don't think we've achieved we've reached those levels in the u.s. Although I didn't see many police out when You know these people are trying to Tear down the doors, but we saw the same thing at blm. I mean blm Burned down the whole parts of cities and the police did very little Yeah, I mean how to this is not to excuse that but how to police a riot particularly when or a mob is particularly when part of what is um Fomenting the mob is a kind of anti police anti establishment sentiment Is a difficult question. I don't know how to do it Well, I think a big part of how to do it Well is not to let those kind of mobs gather in the first place the idea that every thoroughfare Is a place for people to voice their opinions and whatever number Is not what the right to freedom of speech or freedom of assembly means There's a really excellent talk on this by on cargate that I gave you a text from a few years ago So one of these uses there's something unsafe about these kinds of protests At this scale on public property whatever their alleged cause is And once you have them your police are In danger if they're trying to break them up they're in danger if they're not It's just not you have kind of fire in a bottle and it's hard to control it Yep, definitely So I've talked about this somebody actually has a question about this Where is it? Yes, what did you think of about ian history at least say so I I did a whole show yesterday about it But as I'll I'll assume the question is referring to you So, I mean that's one response. I think ian Is certainly responding to some extent to what's going on right now In stating that she's no longer an atheist and is now a christian And she's been on this trajectory for some time. I think she's been keeping company with More and more conventional and less intellectual sorts And I think her husband is an example of that. He's a kind of intellectual in a way but One with very little actual intellectual content to kind of nitpicking Um Petty foggery history that's blind to essentials and I think she's somewhat fallen into that Um, I think I mean she's someone who I very much admire. I've admired her works in the past She's shown a lot of courage, but she's not showing intellectual courage and I think it's Too many of the people who are responding to her um from the pro-reason movement uh move into various sorts are doing it with In a way Too much deference Um, she's a hero. She's done these great things. She's a wonderful person in these various respects I respect her a lot, but I happen to disagree with her on this. I read an essay from michael schermer like that and Um, I think she deserves some moral censure about this. She knows better than this and she's lying to herself You don't this is a pragmatic argument for god We need to believe in god not that there's evidence for him or reason to think it's true What reasons are given to think that it works are obviously fallacious and the lies behind them have been exposed a million times throughout history It's this is not a serious line of thinking and she is a serious person who's capable of a lot better And I think um don in his piece on it actually the first thing I thought when I read Her her essay I texted don I said this would be a great thing for you to to respond to and he said i'm on it And I don't know if he already was I sent an email already as soon as I read the piece that don's saying Yeah, I mean he's writing an essay on this really fantastic work on these kinds of themes so it's why he read to both of us and his title was something like Forget exactly how he put it but shameful shameful conversion to christianity and I think that's um, it's something to be ashamed of Not that anyone ever becoming a christian is but this way Um, this is precisely because she has such a heroic history because she's such a substantial person because she's so bright And because she's overcome so much That's not a reason to excuse this the context of that makes this more damning. Um, she knows better than that you see this as a Uh cultural phenomena that is uh, you know, we've seen You know, I'm not to compare him to and her silly, but Dave Rubin Take this stand but but many others it seems like a kissin the guy from to gonometry had an essay about how You know, all that happens to secular world as they adopted different god, you know, whether it's in front of some awoke Is this uh, is this now a a trend and and and as intellectuals as some of these intellectuals become adopt religion who are secular You know, we know how intellectuals impact the culture is this a direction a culture is going to take I think it is a kind of trend. It's a kind of trend towards Something like what the neocons were on religion Right people who didn't quite believe it but they believed other people needed to or they believed they needed to in certain moments So they didn't think it was literally true and they had some kind of Line of compartmental and bs-ing themselves. And this is the kind of thing I grew up around a lot of people saying this kind of thing. It's not a new way of thinking, right? Um, oh, it's all well and good for you to know. It's not true, but Um, the regular people they need this or I need it on certain moments. It's um, it's a kind of I think It's honest and it's sort of nothing new, but it's definitely Gained in ascendancy recently Um, and you have this rhetoric of you know, a god-shaped hole that's left in people's lives that's left in the society and uh, and and you know, anything can can run in reach into philip and I mean, there are two questions what to make of that line of reasoning and what to make of its popularity What to make of it is god is a reason shaped hole in people's souls and in the culture God is is something that's made up and it's made up to take the place of um Of serious valuing and thinking of valuing and thinking about the deepest issues It was come up with initially before human beings knew how to do that And it's something that we've sort of grown out of in many areas of our life but haven't grown out of in the areas of life where it's It's takes the most sophistication to learn to think for yourself About the nature of the universe about the nature of values and god has always been Something that's filling a hole that's left by a deficit. It's not that god's there Naturally or belongs there and when he goes we substitute something in uh, rather It's in our nature and to live up to our nature is to develop our minds to perform certain tasks and when they're not developed in that way um Other things pick up the slack and religion is one of them religion is one of the things that fills the hole And is no worse a thing to fill the hole or so we know better a thing to fill the hole than the things that the the Neo-religionists are worried about woke ism woke ism is Not something to be concerned about In a way that religion isn't Woke ism is just a kind of watered-down recent version of christianity And even the metaphor of being woke is a christian metaphor You're woken. I mean my name gregory is the greek pluperfect of a word to wake up And it's the name of popes and because you're woke to the truth of jesus and so forth And now you're woke to the truth of systematic oppression, but it's all the same kind of thing. There's nothing um civilized or Exalted or even spiritually of lifting about christianity. All of that is stuff that's been grafted onto it And it's stuff that's been grafted onto it uh from an essentially rational secular origin if you really think about christianity, you're thinking of the dark ages That's what christianity wrought So what about the argument that um We're facing a civilizational crisis. There's a real war out there both with islam and and with Putin and with china um And the reality is That the secular voices in the in the united states in the west are dominated by woke which tend to align themselves with these horrible forces That the western civilization and that the only people Who talk the language of western civilization the only people who Uh are standing for what seems like the values of western civilization Uh are christians are uh, uh the religionists and maybe we need to align with them Or maybe we need to even become them in order to win this war that we're facing It's not true. I mean what language of western civilization is prudent speaking and what language of western civilization are the um Most extreme of the evangelical preachers And and the people who are in their sway speaking. This is not uh, the argument is very much like We're being attacked by sunni muslims. We better become shia or vice versa or the crypts are after us. Let's join the bloods. Um, it's it's They're all variants of the same thing and the the alternative isn't to write off religious people It's to speak to the best within them It's true that there are lots of good christianed and lots of good muslims and lots of good people who are Somewhat leftist and lots of good people who are somewhat libertarianish and lots of good people who are somewhat whatever It's just that those things aren't what's good about them. It's not where what's good in them comes from they might think it is But they're wrong. That's a Bad idea that's serving as a a locus to integrate around for them. Some things that are better than that idea Um, and you don't have to say religion's awful I think some people need to say religion's awful and it's part of our job to to say what's wrong with it But if you're a political candidate or somebody rallying something or creating a cause What you want to say is like here's what's good. What's good about the west is individualism What's good about the west is reason what's good about the west is the scientific method What's good about the west is is is is freedom and capitalism and the pursuit of happiness and technology and prosperity and great art and if you can Have that with your religion or a version of your religion that's compatible with that great and if not not I don't think ultimately they are compatible. But the idea that it comes from it And the idea of trying to form that as the point of a of a Movement or a point to rally around Cannot work. It hasn't worked and it can't work. All it is is joining the cause of of of destruction Yeah And necessarily she she quotes this book dominion Um, which I've seen quoted suddenly. I've seen a lot of people quoting this book So I downloaded it today. I started I started reading it this morning. So it's very well written So I'll give it that so far. It's well written and the first chapter is quite good So I'm curious to see how how it develops and how it presents its case As don I think quoted in his article dominion also says that Woke is uh, is a derivative of christianity, right? So so so I think the argument he's going to make in the book is pretty much Given the the dominance of christianity for 2000 years Everything in in the west today is a product of christianity. I think that's wrong But I think that's where the book is ultimately going to land up Yeah, but I mean, I haven't read the book yet But what is the christianity that it's a product of that is if you think about the essence of christianity What's distinctive about it from other movement? What's distinctive about it from other ideas? What's distinctive about it from other religions? None of that has anything to do with freedom Or reason or even really individualism maybe a little bit some people have thought ran that one period thought that but I don't think it's true um it's in so far as everyone has been christian they've had to Connect whatever they believe to their christianity And so you can find versions of christianity that have everything connected to them from from play-doh, which isn't part of jesus's teaching But that based baked into the religion pretty early to Aristotle and Aquinas to Every other kind of element. That's not to say they're coming from christianity. It makes sense to think of those christian But they were spread maybe through some christian christian conduits As they were also spread through muslim conduits at some point in history or jewish conduit or socialist conduits Yep, so which reminds me of be meaning to ask you this um Do the greeks have the concept of individualism and so what it so so what does it mean? For the greeks, what would individualism mean for the greeks? I don't think they there isn't like an an ism, you know an abstract noun that would be individualism for the greeks The closest I can come up with is out Tarkis, which you could think of as independent it's often translated self-sufficiency or out tokea Which which Aristotle and then the Hellenistic philosophers think is a a good thing to develop in yourself um, and it's basically not needing a lot Both not needing a lot from other people, but also, you know, not leading a lot of wealth not your your Kind of secure right and the the Hellenistic philosophers took that to a kind of fetish where you know You had to develop some mental state where you were imperturbable from anything that happened to the world But that's the closest I can think of to an ism that's individualism but there was this idea in the the call it the Socratic traditions of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics of Your soul is what matters your people are too concerned about their wealth. They're too concerned about their body even In comparison to their soul your soul is what matters and That idea is I think as much in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as in anyone later certainly as much as it is in in Christianity what There isn't though until a little bit later is the idea that And you can maybe attribute to Christianity, but I think it's more Attributable to the Stoics if anything the idea that all people are equal in some way that there's some kind of Common humanity that we share This is a theme that becomes important in the better and worst thinkers of the Enlightenment Versus that we are sort of metaphysically in castes And unfortunately, Plato and Aristotle both have a kind of metaphysical caste system But do you think the Stoics have have a type of equality? Well, both the Stoics and Christians Sort of have it but by bringing people down so in effect So we're all sinners it would be in Christian version. We're all radically dependent on God's Redemption and so forth and in the Stoic version we're sort of All ultimately incapable. I mean they think of it as a kind of capability But you know, there's no power to influence reality And so we're all sort of just playing out Zeus's plan So there's in in Christianity and in Stoicism a kind of determinism a kind of Lack of freedom lack of initiative And there's something wrong with thinking of yourself as being in charge of being powerful of having an Amish shall inherit the earth pride come as before the fall Christian, you know, which of you makes the increase you don't make the plant grow when you water it It's God that makes it and there's similar stuff in Islam And I think the Stoics don't put it that way There's a similar kind of feeling in Stoicism so that thinking well of yourself as an individual trying too hard trying to make too much of yourself Um Then it's a sin and then that is associated with you know, great people kings tyrants But also actual great people. Um, you know business people and and great achievements So so where do you think historically? Individualism or intellectually and historically when does where does it come from and when does it appear? So I think there is some of it in this Greek tradition that that's positive in inflato and Aristotle certainly in Aristotle In Socrates But it's not shed of this kind of elitism and I think Too much of the way it came Uh through Christianity and through Stoicism was by bringing everybody down Nobody can be like Aristotle thought we can be rather than more people can be that way than you thought the the the traits that make The virtuous person able to do what he's able to do our traits that Everybody can develop in a way maybe at different levels of ability, but they're not we're not divided into into species and exactly when that Common humanity of us becomes common. I'm not sure I'm not sure who the first thinkers Who are that way? But here's it seems to be around By the beginning of the kind of pre enlightenment Um, one thing I've noticed is is even in Descartes There's um a really interesting line at the beginning of his discourse and method Um about let me call it right reason basically the ability to distinguish true and false Seems to be the most well distributed thing Even people who always complain that they didn't get a fair share of anything Don't complain. They don't have that that they can't tell what's true. And so you get this idea that um associated in the early kind of enlightenment with figures like bacon lock and Descartes of um, we need a method We need a method because we can't rely on authority What the difference between people who get things right who discover important things? Uh, who really know stuff and other people Is that the the people who get it right who know stuff, etc are doing something right? There's a skill they've acquired. There's something they've learned and you can learn it too So it's this idea that that I often stress that knowledge is work. You see that in in this generation or two of thinkers um Did it start with them? I'm not sure. I'm not sure to what extent you'll find it in in um You know the generation or two before but you you definitely see it in bacon. You definitely see it in Descartes You definitely see it in lock and I think lock is In a way a high watermark with this kind of thinking. I mean aesthetically this seems to be It seems to this it seems to be in the Renaissance, right? It seems to be in So if you look at the middle ages painting and sculpture all the faces look the same there's no And there seems to be some breakthrough that happens in the Renaissance of individuation of respect for the individual in in in some sense that hadn't existed before Even if you look at greek and roman sculpture, even if you look at greek and roman art I think that's right. There's a kind of um respect for beauty or greatness in in in greek thinking but not And the kind of implicit notes of individuality, but there's not the sense of um There's not like for example the the idea of a creative genius Um, there's not the idea. I mean there are people who are seen as creative geniuses But it was they did stuff really well. There's there's the stamp of the personal Is not part of the exaltation you get of them Certainly not in in Aristotle or Plato. You'll you'll like a great Sculpture will be described as so great his paintings could his sculptures could come alive or whatever Not so great They bear the mark of his individuality or his soul and if you think of like a post renaissance description That intense personalness is is always there and um Where did that come from? Again, there's this idea that it came from something in christianity. I don't see it But uh, if it did it had to be merged with a respect for reason and reality to get there I think it's something new and I don't quite know where it starts Well, and it and it's clearly inspired by the greeks and the romans, right? It's clearly inspired by the discovery of greek sculpture and the discovery of a greek and the writings of the greeks and and and uh You know, it's a renaissance. It's a renaissance of something. It's a renaissance of greece and and Without that, I don't think it happens. So it's some something in the in the intellectual air of the time Merging with these discovery of greece somehow brings this to the forefront and and a fascination with With larger than life characters. I think also might be part of it. Um And you do again to have that in greece. Um I mean part of what makes play though so compelling as an author is this portrait of socrates as this kind of You know unmistakable personality and of course, there's our kind of the great and there's pericles and every society had its great men But there's um a sense of them as having a distinctive personality you can see in the portraiture It's just that what was praised about portraiture. Yeah I mean, I I assume that you get that sense in shakespeare as well So, I mean it's dark and it's not heroic in in the sense it is with the greeks, but it's still It's there in shakespeare Shakespeare's the only renaissance Yeah, I mean yeah Um, and you think yeah, you you know a fellow a yacht Kingly or these are these are persons that you've had an encounter with they're not just, you know Um set pieces. Yep, which is what I think what most Of the literature of the of the middle ages was I mean the question is to what extent is greek literature like that and you and taking me certainly is a character um at a piss but but there's some I know there's a way in which they're more personal. I think in in in shakespeare I think that's right Okay, let's uh Let's take some of the super chat questions. We got quite a few of them Okay, so shazbot says why why don't the advocates for socialized medicine also push for socialized food? I mean, I think yeah, what's that they did for a while. We had collectivized farming and it killed millions of people, right? Um, they'll do and in venicella over the last 20 years They did socialize food and and a lot of people died of starvation But I think there is a reason why they don't which is that um There were well established known ways of making food Yep, and when we tried to socialize them There was immediate obvious falling off. We knew how much, you know Wheat should be grown in the ukraine and suddenly there was not that much wheat grown in the ukraine, right? We knew how much um, and so you can there was an experiment that was started at a delimited time Where there was a track record of what not less collectivized Production and agriculture looked like and then the numbers, you know went off a cliff And people could see everybody was starving and it was seen as a catastrophe, right and the same thing In a way, but also in reverse happened in china with the experiment about uh letting some people work their own their own land Um, there was a kind of baseline Medicine was a very new field in terms of it's actually being able to accomplish anything at the time that it started to get socialized so we haven't seen What it could really be if it were free And so the effects of the socialization are a lot more what Bastiat would call the unseen Um, whereas I think there was more of an opportunity to see it happen with food And so people saw the horrors and they backed off of that, but they didn't Understand what principle those horrors were coming from so they didn't you know, think it applied to all other fields Yeah, and in medicine because it's so new We have nothing to compare it to um, the horrors that it produces just seem natural to the industry It takes a little bit of imagination and actual thinking to imagine a world where the socialized doesn't exist and and people are not very good at integrating their knowledge from one field to another sadly Let's see adam, uh also in healthcare is socialized medicine not yet another manifestation of altruism Sacrificing providers to the collective and sacrificing innovation and efficiency for equal care today tough to move to free markets in this environment I think that's right. I mean, I think all collectivism is a manifestation of altruism um, and it It's a manifestation of altruism and it's associated with a A non productive mentality So the goods are here How do they get here? We don't know nothing has causes but some people don't have them So we have to make sure that everybody has the healthcare that some other people have Without thinking of the healthcare is something that's produced that can be produced more that we don't have the healthcare We we will have in the future if we're free to produce it and without thinking of like what we're doing by eating up our seed stock for the future um So, yeah, but it does come from altruism and altruism in gender short-sightedness altruism in genders thinking about Who's suffering now and what could be done or who has less now and what could be done to make sure they have less At the expense of anybody creating or producing more and therefore at the expense of the future And at the expense of the most capable people at any given time Yeah, and and we see we see alt altruism in I mean altruism Ran said something about an orgy of altruism the world is dying from it. You definitely see it now with with the the isrochamas and In the whole idea that somebody by Just because they're suffering by definition. They must be the right. They must be virtuous They must be sacrificed too Even if that sacrifice means the sacrificing civilization and no sense of what it takes not to be suffering um There's no focus like even if you focus on The that there's some difference between the palestinians and the israelis And even if you're your pro-israeli and think of them as civilized The focus would tend to be on well What's wrong with these palestinians or maybe it's wrong to think there's anything wrong with them So there can't be so it's just that they're suffering but there's no focus on like what's right about the israelis Like for almost all of human history Everybody lived like people live under Hamas Everybody was poor and miserable and under the thumb of some despot And the despot was feuding with the next group over and so forth What's unusual in human history is that some people are free and prosperous and happy And able to have societies where they can advance in and come up with new values That were never had by anybody before then other people can be envious of what causes that And if we're focused always on the suffering and the have nots We're not thinking about what's good and what's right about those societies that are prosperous about those people who are succeeding But in particular in this case about the societies, what is it about israel about europe about america that makes them better And then what would it look like for that to come to Gaza to come to the west bank for it to come to iran for it to come to all the places where it isn't now what has to be achieved and There's altruism is incompatible with a focus on achievement because it's fixated on lack let's see Andrew asks why nihilism gaining power I mean one of the issues we have to think about on on what time scale um the If we're talking about on the many centuries time scale I think the answer is there was These ideas individualism Focus on reason focus on this world freedom were discovered and developed But they were incompatible with the morality or large elements of the morality that we had inherited um with traditional western morality, let's call it that is with christianity and um A new and better one hadn't been developed and likewise there were similar issues in epistemology the the the um science the um ability to have real insight into how nature worked was developed, but the This is sort of technical But the the understanding of how the mind works to make that possible the understanding of the formation of concepts Which is at the foundation of Of knowledge and the relationship between concepts and percepts wasn't well understood the old answers weren't sufficient they weren't capable of underwriting this new kind of knowledge and so Either those answers were going to be found or skepticism was going to emerge and the answers weren't found and so skepticism did emerge This is what happened in the Enlightenment epistemologically and I think something similar happens ethically because of the Refusal of challenge altruism and then in Kant who you know, of course the objectivist villain in history And I think for good reason he merges these two things. He's able to save religious morality basically by by establishing that scientific knowledge and our ability to think only applies to a world of appearances So there could be a real world behind it about which you can't know anything and then that world could have a in effect issue you orders And then you could have to be a good boy and and have faith that there's a god who will reward you for it Since what being a good boy means is acting With no reference to rewards in a way that's unintelligible to you Except that you somehow know you have to do it and you're entitled to hope you'll be rewarded for So so that's the kind of nihilistic philosophy and it's it's was injected into western culture I was able to be injected into it because There were real problems, uh, real philosophical Questions that weren't answered that were needed to understand and take full control of what you mean What what's nihilistic about it? well Knowledge the knowledge we can have isn't of what's real and important What's real and important? We can't have knowledge about it. All we can know about it Basically is that we can't have knowledge about it and what we ought to do in life Is not orient ourselves towards values, but orient ourselves that is not orient ourselves to anything we want or can come up with any Anything we could get out of it. Uh, and indeed we can only identify what things are our duties By identifying the fact that they're not things that we value It's there has to be a method of acting. That's kind of not on values. That's There's technicality is how it works, but that's the essence of cons effort. So everything's defined by negatives The real is defined by what's not anything like what you could perceive and the good is defined by what's not like anything You could want or get anything out of um, so it's all as ran said their definitions are acts of wiping out and that's um A kind of negative theology at some point called a religion that's kind of behind console approach So I think if you're thinking of like This grand historical narrative, um, you can think of Kant as the bad guy, but that doesn't explain, you know, why 1990 wasn't much works in the 1980 maybe was better in some ways, but uh, 2003 is worse than 2013 right you need more. Um And there are you need much more local and granular causes to explain. Um, the more local and granular Movements towards the good or the bad in the culture and I don't have a a full theory of that, but here are a few things. I mean, I think the Most nihilistic movements kind of got out over their skis in the late 60s and early 70s Most americans kind of rebelled against them at the same time You had ayn Rand who I think inspired a lot more people Then people realize and then realize themselves But her role in their life was and you have people like Milton Friedman defending free markets And you have this in a context where you have a country that's Freaked out by the hippies and so backing off from them and you know electing smaller government kind of politicians And that I think opens up enough freedom for some of the people inspired by about technology to create a Silicon valley and the the business boom and the computer revolution and that itself inspired a lot of people And so you have a lot of things kind of tending towards the better um, and then I think 9 11 and the financial crisis in different ways really disillusioned people Both are failure to respond to 9 11, which I think is a result of altruism And there's just tremendous talks about this mostly by iran, but Leonard peacock and others Just iran you did more speaking on it than anyone else kind of predicting what was going to happen and And I remember having a strong sense of what was going to happen on 9 11 I was at the beginning of grad school then that we're not going to deal with this and it's going to really Lead to a decay and I think it did And then I think not only did it lead to a decay, but a real sense of Betrayal when the wars in in iraq and afghanistan didn't work out the way people expected The best thing that came out of this was the uh new atheist movement, which identified 9 11 as in effect To borrow a phrase from bush a faith based initiative and there were a lot of people who became more vocal about their atheism But they didn't have uh, they were too much influenced by human cons They didn't have answers to the kinds of questions that needed to be answered think about religion and so they couldn't make that much headway with people and um, you see a lot of people turning back from it now and Then In the time of the financial crisis Uh, I think again a lot of disillusioned with america And I don't understand everything that went behind the kind of Oh, I mean the other thing is there was a real, um If you think about the pro freedom movement or what could have been the pro freedom movement That began in the late 60s or early 70s um The movement that happened when people were uh put off by the hippies and put off by linden johnson basically um It got infected with two two strains of it got infected with a really negative idea So the religious kind of conservatism of bill buckley and the um Anarchistic libertarianism of marie rothbard, and I think those strands kind of dominated um Pro freedom what could have been pro freedom thinking anti-status thinking for so long I think the better people in those movements were less affected by those strands But they were still a big part of the ethos of both movements, and I think they've become more and more dominant over time um Did that have to happen could the objectivists at the time or the people more influenced by them have done better I don't know but those are the things that did become dominant and that for those movements are limited in their ability to be forces for the good and often become forces for the bad and um I think now the conservative movement has lost uh almost all of the pro freedom elements it had and um the liberal movement or leftist movement is um You know has this uh Had less real pro freedom elements than the conservative movement had at one point though It did have some in abortion rights and so forth, uh, but now it's become uh I mean it's just really ugly, you know anti-semitism anti-west anti-colonialist uh element in it that um You know makes it a real source of people yep All right, Brian has this question thoughts on spending bill that just passed a house that sneaks in a requirement The new cars have remote kill switches in the name of tackling drunk drivers So somebody can remotely turn your car off And and the cars have to have it and you have to give it I'm not sure how that works and I haven't seen the spending bill. So I'm surprised that they passed one It must have gotten some democratic votes. So uh, uh, you know, I don't expect this house speaker to last very long If you kind of deal with the democrats, yeah, this is also the first time hearing about that bill. Um I mean congress usually spends like drunk sailors, but I don't know that we're going to do anything about drunk drivers. Um Yeah, I mean it seems a little troubling that you know, someone else would have control of your car, but uh Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me But it seems small on the list of things to worry about yeah savanos, um hard Hard not to be black peeled on subjects like israel hamas And the public reaction even if the majority knows what's right the extremes are slowly pulling society Towards the cliff despite the resistance from objectivism Would galt's galt should be safe today You know, I know red peeled and blue peeled. I don't know black peeled. Do you know black peeled? I know I can look it up. It makes you unhappy or depressed. Um I mean, I I don't think a literal galt's galt would have been possible in in any time and I don't think grand thought it would have been um I think the the sort of What the the meaning or implementation of that novel is in In our world is that there's a kind of breaking with the society and culture That you have to do intellectually and spiritually And I think there's a way in which you can get into a galt's by doing that and you can still do that um And is it or are we safe? Well By historical standards, I think we're safer now than most people have ever been Yep, um, there's a lot bad. There's a lot on the horizon that's worrying but I don't think you know the odds of you're getting killed by a terrorist. Um You know in in austin or portorico or new york, uh, or even by a mugger or a drunk driver are that high that you should um Not try to make a life for yourself. I think it's very possible to and in general I think fights against the bad Fights against the evil resisting of the evil have to be undertaken in a context of Trying to make a good life for yourself um, otherwise you become fixated on a nursing of a grievance and um That's in effect what hamas is Whether the grievance is legitimate or religion or take the pl out. It takes something less religious Whether the grievance is legitimate or illegitimate and we could debate about the particular You know someone whose house or whatever it in the past. Um, I think some cases are legitimate in some art But whatever the grievance you have if you're if your life is kind of organized around I'm going to fight this grievance and I'm going to reject this thing and I'm going to be angry about it and That's not a part of You're trying to make something of your life. You're trying to do something with your life you have something you love and want out of life and um, you recognize that you're evicted of an Of an injustice and as part of going ahead in your life, you're going to try to you know Make people aware of that and you're going to try to rectify the injustice when you can Um, you know, that's the right way to do it But if it becomes that you're living just to nurse your grievance like the count of montecristo or something That's not uh, I mean that novel's cool and exciting but that's not a kind of life to live uh for a real person and I think one has to put, you know, the bad in life in context like that So black peeled is a cynicism pill. It's uh, what's the point? A bit of an idealistic nihilistic pill. Um Uh, so I guess I guess the thing is here You know, what's what's the point even in the Israeli Hamas The you know, the extremes of what the defining the whole thing it's hopeless for the rest of us Um, I give a talk on once on the fountain head on what matters and what doesn't There's a scene in that novel that had a real influence on my life and thinking about these things and and Uh, as a young man made me not be cynical And so I recommend that novel and that scene and more Um self sent more uh self congratulatory that talk Uh, it's the scene where um, Rourke and Dominique and Mallory and I think Mike are in the the building site of the Stoddard temple And there are these, you know barriers around that so nobody could see it and they sort of like in a world on their own And they just enjoy being with each other and enjoy doing their work And it's like no one else exists And I thought you know, this is a nice world and these people are real I mean within the novel they're real but also people like that that are good Uh are real and the fact that everybody outside of it Doesn't understand or has things wrong with them That doesn't change this what matters is what's good and what's real and the other people are, you know, taking up space And you've got to learn how to avoid them and not get hurt by them and uh, but it doesn't dim The the goodness of what's good and you only need a small number of people in your life personally to have that and then you need To have access to what's good in most people who are really mixed But you do have access to what's good in most people. That's what an economy gives you, right? Um, if you step back, you know, even beings made skyscrapers and airplanes and satellites and so forth Despite some of them being religious and some of them being nihilists and some of them being whatever and you can access that aspect of them You could access A certain amount of the best in everybody through the marketplace And then you could access the very best of the very best people through forming personal relationships with them And all of those things give you the values that can sustain you spiritually and materially They'll live a good life And it's only in the context of doing that where you're free enough to do it and almost everybody Well, I don't want to everybody listening to the show is because some people might be listening to the show You know, uh in Iran or or you know someplace But most people listening to the show are and it's in the context of living and enjoying a life that then you fight to expand your capability to get rid of the barriers to um Life versus society which you'll be able to do it more fully But there's no use fighting for that if you're not doing it to the extent that you can now and you can do it to a significant extent Yep, absolutely All right, so ibis, uh ibis uh is here. That's good. Great to see great to see greg back on Thanks for the awesome current event coverage this month you're on question for greg Do you have any thoughts on philosophy of history and the value of history and recommendations around these issues? But no, I mean In the case of philosophy of history like the people who have written out it in the different theories of it I just don't know enough about it I have theories about what's fundamental. I mean, I have a view of the objectives to about what's fundamental to human nature And what's fundamental to human action which has an implication for what will be fundamental the fund The ideas will be the fundamental driver of history Um, but it's not a subject. I've you know read all the different people's views on and haggle and this one and that one So I don't have much to say about that as for the the value of reading history I mean I can just talk about it it personally Leonard picoff gave a lecture a long time ago on the value of knowing history to be a philosopher And you know, you really have to know a lot about it and read exactly how we put it But I remember when I I first read it, uh or heard it I was a little skeptical. Of course, it's useful to know some of what happened, but he's he's overstating the case or Whatever, but I've you know, he was right, uh, and Um, I've fallen in love with learning about history. I read a ton of history now there's just so much interesting to know about what people have done and So many questions it raises about What's possible to human beings and and why things happen that I just think it's it's certainly part of any active life of the mind to To learn a lot about history and to have it be a It's just endlessly fascinating, but I don't have very much abstract to say about it. All right. Vadim Vadim says, um, what's the best way for doctors to fight socialized medicine? Well, I think I mean this is a question, you know, we'll we'll address somewhat on saturday So so listen into the the panels and we'll hear different people's opinion But I think one has to think about issues of scale there's one Question is what can you do in your own life and your own career? If you're a doctor and also if you're a patient, right anybody dealing with any aspect of this industry To be able to do work you love and that you can do well As well as possible and as freely as possible And that's going to be really situationally dependent on what kind of specialty are you in and what kind of work? Do you like in in some in some fields of medicine? It's easier than others because you can more isolate your practice than others And that's one of the things we're going to be talking about But you've got to think about you know, how can I chart a career here where I can do work? But I love and that I'm happy with and fight the worst effects of it in my own life And then there's the question of what can we do to advocate for a freer health care system? And I think and and what can doctors in particular do their right thing You have to have a clear sense of what's wrong and what the ideal is and again That's one of the things we're going to be talking about on saturday And then you have to identify specific Measures that people who don't agree with you on everything that's wrong and who don't agree with you about the ideal Can nonetheless be persuaded to see as things that are positive or steps in the right direction Think of the way the socialists fought for what they wanted They from the beginning had a sense that we want socialized medicine but For now, you know, and they admitted it many of them that's what they wanted, right? But, you know, grandpa's old and he doesn't have a You know, so we need medicine for him and then we need a prescription of a plan b to cover the medicines and we need You know, you think about incremental things that solve small problems but moving in the direction that you want And likewise, I think you need to think about what things solve problems that people can recognize as problems where the solutions are movements in the direction of freedom and We're going to give a lot of suggestions of particular things Like that on on saturday. Um, so I won't scoop myself with them now and then the third component So the first component is thinking about what can make a good career for yourself This the the second component or 2a is having a vision for what the the good would look like and 2b is having incremental steps towards it and then the third component is how to create a movement around those steps Um, and and to fight for it politically and that don's going to talk about so i'll i'll leave it to him to say a bit about that All right, uh Let's see All right, we've got a bunch of these questions. So you tell me when you're Out of time and i'll take you so i can keep going for a bit All right, they just have to go downstairs and and put ellen to bed at some point and he can Do that a little later. So let's do ones that that that are clearly for you. Um Um Hopper Campbell says greg who will you be voting for in 2024 if it's trump versus biden? um if it's trump versus biden biden biden's awful. He's been a bad president. Um He's been less bad than the last couple of presidents, but he's been very bad, but It's a horrifying thought he might be as good as we can do as a country I hope we can do better. I think it's it's obvious that he's better than trump Um, that's not a high bar Uh, but if I had to pick between those two, I think it's a fairly easy choice. So it's a very distasteful one. Yeah Um Greg, what are your thoughts on vivic and ron de santis? I mean vivic just seems clownish um Uh, I don't think he's a serious candidate. Um, he said some very good things but also some really crazy bad things and um I don't know that's what to say about him de santis. I think at one point was more of a serious candidate. I think he's um I don't admire him as a governor. I think he's an anti-free speech and anti-business in very much the same ways as um I'm liking that his name the governor of california Uh is but just with a different political tribal alignment but I think he's um Way better than trump and I would be You know very much relieved if he became the republican nominee and if it was up to De santis versus biden. I don't know who I would depend on How they each how the election played out and what they were each advocating for at the time and I might not vote Or I might vote for either of them. I don't know Yep Uh All right, let's see that doodle bunny says greg Don't appears know you're an object do Do your peers? Okay. Do your peers know you're an objectivist? Have you ever been confronted by hostile faculty or students for teaching objectivism? um Yes, and not really um, so I mean everywhere that I've worked Many of my peers have known that I was objective. I don't know if everybody Uh, that was the case when I was in graduate school. It was the case at all my jobs Many of my jobs have been all of them in one way or another have been supported by ansom and other objectivist organizations that was sort of part of the You know part of the mix that I was there for that reason um, but even when I was a grad student and I've always taught I in rand in classes not every class but the classes where it's appropriate given the topic And I've never gotten any pushback about that the only times I did Was when I was on the job market Um for academic positions. Well, one, I'm sure there were a lot of places I didn't get interviews for uh, because there were things on my cv that were red flags it But that I don't you know hear about directly But once or twice in interviews, I was asked like really I in rand, you know, isn't she awful? Why do you teach I I've got like kind of explicit pushback in that situation but not other than that and um and not from students. I mean the students, you know Not that many students are um that confrontational with their professors All right, let's see um I will say other there are a lot of people who I've met professionally at conferences or so forth who didn't know at first that I was an objectivist and um, and then it came up later and um and you know, we had a had a rapport or whatever and so forth and um Most of them seemed to regard it as kind of oh, you know, like quizzical Yeah, um rather than you know either being excited or horrifying All right, let's see. Um Michael says will health give you one of the last things that get privatized in a march away from altruism towards a free society? Um, I think it might be before I don't know banking or something. Um I think If the country is liberating There will be a lot of fields that are liberating in tandem, but by degrees so it won't be like, um You know food production will be 100 free, but medicine will be just like it is now and then then it'll be turned for medicine I think you'll start to see Gradual deregulation and liberalization of fields in tandem. I don't think medicine will be um The first but it might be one of the first to get a little less regulated than it is now because it's just so Regulated now and I think progress has to start on the places that are most tightly controlled Yeah, and the benefits are so Great and the more we move to a socialism the pain is going to be so substantial that it wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing What's that and what I expect you'll find is pockets certain subsets of the industry or certain places or um Your drugs to deal with certain issues Yep All right, let's see. Um Um Richard says I like the desocialized medicine idea. How about deprogramming postmodernism from academia replacing it with objectivism? What working on that? That's postmodernism. Um Yeah, or D. Um, I mean the the what I worry about with this postmodernism has taken over the university's Um rhetoric There's something true about it, but it's not as though the universities were just fine, you know, 30 years ago Um, I mean, they were totally infiltrated by communists and other it's it's uh, there are respects in which they're worse now and respects in which they're better They're more homogeneous intellectually now. I think than they were in in in the past But with sparks of you know, little enclaves that are really different um, but the mean is more, you know, homogeneous now, but it Some of this language that you hear about the the long march for the universities or whatever makes it seem like everything was fine and this cabal programmed it wrong the the university systems, uh The ideas that were dominant in universities have been bad for as long as there's been universities and certainly as long as there's been Any of our present universities in america with um brief periods where they've been a bit better And I do think it's important to try to fix them and make them better and to create alternatives to the universities and alternative universities And alternative centers within universities and so forth, but it's not like there's just one You know thing that's come to infected and we get rid of that infection and things are fine The job is bigger than that we need to you know reform the thinking of the society and the universities are in effect like the organs of the society where the detailed intensive Much of the detailed intensive intellectual work and passing on of ideas happens And so as we perform the society they'll be reformed as well And it'll be an important part of that reformation All right related somebody asked here Where is it related to alternative universities? Somebody's asking Thoughts on the university of austin getting its degree granting status Well, I was supposed to be at a reception for that tonight There was a like a cocktail hour that I was going to go to but when we scheduled this show and a few other things meant I I couldn't make it to it I'm I'm pleased that they got this. I haven't heard much of the latest I was expecting to hear it at that dinner and I'm sure I'll I'll hear about it from friends who were there or read About it soon. I think it's good. I'm a little Underwhelmed by what I've seen from them so far Impressed that they got the degree granting status so quickly and they're moving ahead I'm a little underwhelmed by their ability to do something different um, so I think there there are two things if you just took The existing universities and rebooted them like you reboot a computer Like took all their documents and policies and so forth, but just started a new one and hired people fresh um, I think that would be better than many of the existing universities is a kind of um, builds that builds up there and uh practices and so I think the minimal case scenario is that university of austin does something like that it um minimal good scenario it It's not much different from another university except that it's um, You know started new and so it doesn't have a lot of the um Entrenched particular problems other ones have and it's an alternative and the more people see that you can do that The more there will be other ones that crap up and some of them will be good. Maybe that one Maybe some others. Um, they they see themselves as doing more than that. They see themselves as being a real alternative to um Something that's structurally wrong with the existing universities But I don't see that they have any clear identification of what it is that's structurally wrong with the existing universities Or what they're doing that's going to change that or prevent it And I had a conversation once with um the president of it where I was kind of pushing him on this So is it you're not going to have tenure or you are but it's going to be different and you're going to run things in a different way And I was just surprised by how little Content he had about like what are you doing to make this a different kind of place? Um, and I again, I was a little bit underwhelmed, but I you know wish them the best and they have some really good people involved in it Um, Barry why Sam mentioned earlier was involved in it. Uh, some less good people too, but some really good people so, um You know, I'm hopeful but moderately hopeful I'm glad that it's happening in the city that I'm part of and so I get to get to see Actually, somebody's asking do you enjoy living in Texas more than New Jersey? Do you feel significantly freer? No, I feel less free. Um, there's um No freedom That is really important to me that I feel like I have more of here and um abortion, which I think is an important right is totally illegal here And was totally legal where I was so I think that's a big difference And I think it's bigger. I mean it would be very easy to get a gun here, but I you know don't particularly want a gun and um The biggest day-to-day life kind of freedom, you know that like something I can do that I couldn't do in New Jersey What could do here would be get a gun and that's I mean, I think it's good for people who want them And that people should be able to own guns, but that's not an important value to me Um, whereas sex and reproduction and having control of it is so in that sense I feel less free the taxes are um You know in some ways a lot better, but property taxes are a lot higher. I don't think it's quite a wash, but um But it's you know, I don't feel politically freer than I did in New Jersey But I do like it here. I like it here because I like my job here. Um, I like my house I like the immediate things I'm around and uh overall I like the part of the country I was in before better But I love about taxes that so many of my friends have come here at around the same time That we have a lovely little community and I really enjoy being here for that reason Yep Justin says what is right or wrong about the ideal of color blindness? Is it wrong for someone to identify with his with their race? Most racial minorities do Well the ideal of Yes, and I think it's wrong if you primarily identify with your race Or with any other superficial aspect of you like this is what it is about me. This is who I am um, I think there is our Two respects in which it's fine to one of which it's sometimes mandatory too So there are going to be lots of optional values that somebody has That are going to have to do with their personal history and maybe you like a certain kind of food or Whatever because of where you were brought up and that has to do with what group you were in and and so you think Um, if that becomes too important to you or too central to you on mentality or whatever then I think it's it's A sign that you don't have enough else going on But if you know, I really love hummus or I really love whatever and and I think of that as part of my jewish heritage Or my italian heritage or whatever. I think that's fine And I have some things like that more to do with the italian side of my family than the jewish one But uh, nonetheless, but the the other one is When you're a victim of persecution or prejudice and this is something um, Iran gave a really fantastic talk on israel about back when I was in in graduate school When you're a victim of of persecution or prejudice because of your race because of your skin color because of your Biological background or whatever Then I think there's a need sometimes to to to own that fact about yourself to know That you know, I'm a victim because of this and um, or or subject to being victimized because of this And I need to know who else is in that same plight so that we can, you know, band together for defense when it's necessary I think that's a really dangerous thing to be focused on it. It's necessary sometimes I think it's it's why it's I think proper for jews to have formed a state in israel I think it's why it was really important for there to be some black organizations in america the NAACP and so forth, but other ones too to to kind of support and and uh, like what you have other organizations for different groups um to fight these kinds of uh Persecutions, but anytime you have it there's a danger of making yourself too much about that And it's the same kind of danger. I talked about earlier about focusing too much on grievance or injustice against you Where there are injustices against you have to be aware of it and you have to to work about it but you have to keep it in the context of a life that's not all about that and and in so far as the reason to take seriously the identification with your race is Because it's a a vector of victimization to you that you have to guard against Um, you do have to take it seriously But you also have to guard against making it too central to you because to do that is to make victimization too central to you and I think um, I think very very often that happened um with most minority groups and most minority group identification groups and um It's it's hard to strike the balance quite right, but that's um, that's how I think about Um, do you apply montessori in your college classes? Do I apply it in my college classes? Um Not really. I mean there are montessori is a specific thing with specific methods and um uh At very abstract levels There are some ideas about encouraging agency and so forth that I think about how I can apply in college classes Um, and I don't know that I have you know tremendous insight into how to do it, but I do what I can um, but it would be um overly grand to call that applying montessori Uh, your view of elon musk advancing free speech through x to a child He's not I mean, I was pleased when he bought it. Um, because I thought he might do something interesting with it. Um I never thought there's such a thing as a free speech company or you could have a company whose policy is free speech That's I think a really deep category error Any more than you could have a free trade business and think of like my free trade businesses that I sell everything That's not what a free trade business is free trade is that you're free to sell everything But then your business is going to sell what it sells and likewise you can't have a free speech platform In the way. I think musk imagined he could I think that was um Foolish and I I say that advisedly because he's so brilliant in so many ways. Um, but I was still hopeful He would do something interesting with it So far I don't I don't see that he has I think the experience has gotten, you know, maybe marginally worse not a million times worse but not Uh way better. I've never been a real lover of twitter. I go through spurts of using it for a few days and then not today's one of my spurts um But I I I haven't found that it's improved and um, I hope it will because um, it would be good for somebody to get a really better uh social media platform and Ilan musk has certainly had enough success in enough industries that I wouldn't count them out but He hasn't done it yet What is your model assessment of richard hananya? So first I've never met him. Um, he he was affiliated with the selam center for a bit. He was doing a um Something on betting markets and he was occasionally coming to give talks and I wanted to meet him I had it in my next time he comes I should should should try to meet him because I really liked some of his essays But I didn't so I don't have any anything I don't have any knowledge of him other than what you can get, you know from reading his essays um A number of them were really good And continued to be really good. He continues to be really good on some issues and he has a new book on um civil rights and uh Civil rights laws the origin of woke that I think has some bad thinking but a lot of good in it I think it's a book that's worth reading um And I think he really has changed from so this is somebody who was revealed To have had a past on racist forums and white supremacy stuff and some really ugly things. He's written in the past Um, and he then wrote an essay, you know why I used to suck and why I no longer do and I think he really has improved in some significant ways and in a way that gives me Hope for some of the worst people out there who are attracted to real racist things. Here's a trajectory. That's really positive But I don't think he's improved enough In particular in his piece about why he used to suck and why he no longer does hopes he no longer does There's a lot of good in there, but I don't think he took seriously what's really gross and evil about his views I don't think he took seriously that they're part of a movement that heard it would be like if somebody was An apologist for Stalin and they wrote a piece like whoops, you know Um, here's why I made that stupid mistake But no, uh, and I was sanctioning a murderous dictator who killed a lot of people and so forth There's no sort of moral tone to it. And I think the moral tone is important And I think part of why that is is because I think he's still a kind of racist and misogynist that is I think intellectually disreputable and morally bad uh, even though he's um improved quite a bit on so many other fronts and is um, you know an interesting thinker on a lot of topics Yeah, I've been surprised that he's fairly good on israel. So I mean Not always I think for the right reasons, but he but he does seem to be fairly good on it Even in that essay He was associating with a known anti-semite And with no apology So I wasn't sure about him, but it's uh, but it's hard to tell why he's pro-israel exactly. There's something A little weird about how he presents, uh, his defense of it I mean, there's a kind of civilization versus savagery aspect to it. And that's that's part of what you should what should be Yeah, but I'm suspicious because of his, uh, right because there's a lot of everything's heritable use of high IQs and Herbs don't or something like that, you know and the kind of I mean People who talk about heritability Um, and so much is innate and so forth and fancy themselves scientific I I think they just fancy themselves scientific. We don't You know every human trait is somewhat heritable But the idea that the difference between better functioning peoples and worse between societies that are prosperous And societies that aren't or segments of society, you know demographic groups that are are prosperous and and functioning well Or living to their potential and and ones who aren't living well The idea that that that is somehow determined by genes or that genes is the primary cause of it is not scientific It's like thinking that You know why some animals can fly and others can't is that their leg muscles are more developed Like we know what the main cause is we know that culture is so We know that culture is makes such a difference in human beings that it's practically a difference in species From like primitive cave people to people today and we know that there were lots of differences in culture Uh among in between us of different cultures in different countries and different subcultures with within countries that we know how big a difference this makes that Anything else besides culture and the choices that lead to it and so forth Um are rounding errors and I don't think for any two racial groups or demographic groups I don't think we're in a position to know presumably they're you know for any two populations. There's going to be some uh Just by chance differences in the um average, you know, whatever innate components of human skills But I don't think we're any position to know what they are in what direction they go At this point because the confounding variables are just gigantic It would be like finding a needle in a haystack and I think it's it's Not, you know, like early IQ science had Chinese people at the bottom of the heap and now they're at the top and it's This is not science. This is a pre science. Um, and I just don't think it's serious And there's a sense in which Without without acknowledging free will and it without acknowledging the effort that reason requires and thinking requires Put aside the amount of hospital you have but just the effort that requires and some people do and some people don't Um, I don't think they can it really means anything Yeah, so there's in addition to environment and genes there's a third thing that determines how you come out Which is your choices your free will and culture is a kind of you know mix of at least um environment and choices But the idea that if you had to pick between you know focusing on culture and focusing on on on genes you would focus on genes and um Is anti-intellectual Yep, and unscientific Yeah, uh thoughts on peter teal's political activism I don't know all that much about it. I mean, I know he's been um a funder of various right wing causes and and other causes too Maybe um that he was a supporter of trump and that he's he sort of Backed away a little bit from from financing politics, but I don't I don't know very much about him other than that Yeah, he now says he won't support trump again. He doesn't want trump to win um He supported j.d. Vance who's I think one of the worst two senators in the senate um, and he supported the guy never zoner who lost um, I forget his name Uh, who I know the guy never zoner. I've actually met. Um Latest thing is He's stepping back from politics, but it's typical to peter um, he's eclectic He hates the status quo. He's looking for solutions. He's willing to dabble in all kinds of different solutions um depends on the time and and and what's going on in the world. Um Obviously super smart in some realms of life Uh, but not necessarily in political philosophy So anyway, I have no thoughts on him. Um, Besides that PayPal was good. Yeah gave a gave a hollow speech at the republican convention when he endorsed trump um Why did the conservatives give up on liberty? Well, it was never There's a question as to how central it ever was to the conservative movement um, I don't think bill buckley for example was ever a great lever of liberty. Um, and Conservativism is not a natural home for the love of liberty. Liberty is about change development. Um, Etc. I think what happened in in In western history really or you American european history, right? Is that there was an intellect the intellectual vanguard was pro liberty at a certain point Um, roughly, um, you know in the enlightenment Uh into the 19th century And then for various reasons to do with the way the ideas developed and mistakes that were made in certain confusions and the stuff To do with the declining respect for reason that that we spoke about earlier That intellectual movement became more and more socialist and less attracted to liberty and it happened by degrees But I think classical liberalism kind of devolved into socialism uh liberalism uh in the american sense of the term went from classical liberalism to kind of socialist liberalism or leftism And then there was always a kind of group or party that was like Against whatever the vanguard was for and for what was around previously. So, um They started being more Against socialism because that was the new thing but they went ever particularly pro-freedom and then people who were pro-freedom Um were always sort of caught between those two those two groups and didn't have a natural home and for a while when there was a kind of Surging leftism in the country the conservative movement seemed like the the bastion of fighting against that um But then when that kind of surging leftism got thwarted to some extent it no longer was a bastion of that and and I don't ever think there was that robust a home for um pro-market pro-freedom thinking In the conservative movement to begin with it was always kind of odd bedfellows that were Only part way there and part way embraced by that movement and the real question is to me. Why hasn't there been a more robust pro-freedom movement that was really about freedom in a way that conservativeism never was and I mean that's to me the deeper question. Um And why it hasn't aligned with the political priorities, but I think it has to do with The way politics there have to be enough people Who this is really what animates them for it to become the central political issue? and if it does the parties would align around that but Um, it hasn't and if it had it would be a real cultural achievement That the issue of freedom versus force came into focus so much In the culture that the parties could be mostly aligned around that um Our humanities departments and universities falling apart The enrollment is down a lot I don't know. I mean, I'm not in administration I um, you know get to teach some classes and I show up and teach them and their students there But I don't I don't know even what's going on So much in the university of texas where I'm teaching now Much less have national figures on it I wouldn't be shocked if that's true, but I wouldn't shock that it's not. I don't know I also don't think the humanities are are They're different from one another So philosophy and literature and the critical studies kind of department They're they're different beasts and I don't know That all the trends, you know, follow the same for all of them. Uh, let's see Uh Why is altruism gotten significantly more dominant and entrenched in the culture since Rand's death? I don't know that it has I think it was um There was a movement towards it that was sort of arrested for a little while and that's resumed But it hasn't certainly been On a constant trajectory of increasing since Rand's death of anything it was Either going down or growing more slowly From I think it related your answer before about 9 11 and and all of that. I think it But yeah, it seems to be getting better for a couple of decades and And then maybe worse or at least not getting worse at the same pace. So, um, There was a kind of I think there's a general intellectual trend for the bad that I think was taking place very very quickly across the first half of the 20th century and then sort of broke in the late 60s and things, you know Remained the same to got a little bit better Uh in the 70s 80s and 90s some respects they got worse but another respects They got better and the balance was there wasn't this kind of rocketing towards Towards a bad a place and then in the two's house since I think it started getting worse again And and really picked up in the 2010s and I don't know all the reasons for that The bonus says greg is there an optimal way to stimulate intellectual activity in a lazy mind Can one be guided to reason? In one's own lazy mind or someone else is that is this self-help? I find that I'm incurious and I want to think it's self-help myself or or or these people around me How do I get them thinking? I don't um, I would have different answers to each if I could come up with answers. Um But I I think sparking questions And questions that maybe they start as challenges to something you've assumed maybe they don't But get to the point where the question isn't about is this true or false Um, but just huh like what's true here? I don't like um, you start off with you know Is israel right or the palestinians right in this conflict? And you're trying to defend one side of the other but get it to the question of like Well, how did this state of affairs start and and how should one start a country? And if one's in a place where another country's been started, but you're not part of it You're not welcome in or you've been displaced or something. How should you deal with that? Like once you're thinking about a question that doesn't have a yes or no answer Um, and you're trying to find the answer you can just get interested in the questions And I think for any particular person including for yourself you have to kind of notice what types of questions pique my interest But once you get into the habit of kind of following up a question and exploring it and having some sense of What it's like to really know something and to do the work involved in knowing and thinking about it Um, hopefully you develop a taste for that and anything it serves as a model to you for like what it's like to really think about something So so even if you don't do that much of it you can differentiate the times when you've done that from other times and think about Well, that's what real thinking is and this is just You know having a hunch All right, what's your opinion on oregon's drug decriminal decriminalization plan? Not going as planned They are soon to scrap the project and start to criminalize again I've been been following it. So I don't know much about it. You're on do you? you think Drug use it's created a lot of problems because there are a lot of drug addicted people around I I you know, I think this is one of those things where first of all decriminalizing is not the same as as making legal, which is a big deal because um You still have the the the risk and the violence associated with something that is in a black market and and therefore all the problems that that engenders and the cost and and all of that that that is associated with that So it's it's not legalization, which is a big difference and second When you don't have property rights, um, or you don't have Application of property rights and application of world of law where law does There is appropriate like for property um People can abuse these kind of things. So the the the consumer drugs they hang out in places where they shouldn't be They they were allowed to hang out the police doesn't enforce trespass laws. They don't enforce Any of these things and it creates real problems It's part of the challenge of doing half measures and while in a sense moving towards freedom will do a lot of half measures How you do those half measures It requires real thought and it's not obvious it deregulate medicine. Where do you start? Right There might be things if you start there, you might do more harm than good Right and certainly in banking. I can tell you that that's the case, right? If you're gonna do banking you have to do really really smart and really really thoughtful And thinking about all the consequences of every step that you take It's not easy to unwind Uh a status a status program and that includes drugs and I wouldn't start with drugs That isn't the first status program I would get rid of or if I did the first part of it would be to free up the police from enforcing the laws For enforcing it so so and and get rid of the get rid of the incentive to take on the kind of risk the cartels take on Yeah, I mean it is there's a lot of thought in how you unwind an unfree system. Yep, and Part of it is you have to have a kind of double thinking that you're doing it like Ultimately, there shouldn't be economic policy at all and there should be nothing we're measuring and adjusting Uh adjusting our government policy so that the economy does this or that and there shouldn't be drug policy and etc But there is and you have to come up with some steps on the way to freeing it up and you have to do some kind of measuring to know if those steps are you know Helping with respect to certain measures or making them worse on the way there But you also have to know that what you're you're not trying to manage the economy in a different way You're trying to ease up on the managing that you've been doing So it's the one thing if it's drugs if it's another if it's finance or whatever So it's it's hard and it's a real art and it requires a lot of people who have thought a lot about this who know how to do it and you know Legislation and governance is not it's a science. It's something that requires work and thought And it's not you know, like you you know the principle of individual rights And so you know just what the law should be tomorrow in every place There's real thinking that has to be done and it can be done Better or worse and I think and I haven't followed Oregon and I don't know whether this was a step in the right direction I think there's there's similar problems in in in places in Europe that have decriminalized It's not going exactly according to the way the libertarians would have thought it would go um All right, so the rest of the questions I can take care of the And I think I really do and you're like half an hour late. So I will let you go. Thanks. I'll listen later and Thanks again for having me on everyone. Just remember if uh, tune in To uh, if you're online to do socializing american medicine saturday, we're going to be on from 10 to 6 Central time. There's a a link to the youtube on the um event page on the salem centers page and if you're here in austin Come out. We're going to be at rolling hall on on campus again from 10 to 6 So that's great and the link the link to the salem center is below in the description So you can find it there and go straight to the event page. Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Okay. Bye Aaron All right, let's do these quickly Liam says in england if you suggest fully privatized nhs, you may be met with violence I just did a debate in england on uh privatizing the nhs getting rid of it. It went fine. There was no violence It was a small group granted But uh, you know, I I did debate a former member of of british parliament an advisor to former prime minister Uh, but uh, no violence in this occasion, but yes, they definitely view it as a as a religion Mary elene says ian hisia li's description in infidel of how she made the intellectual journey to atheism was magnificent I am heartbroken. I am with you. Mary elene Uh, claug says you're on when is your interview with yomi park? I I still don't know. I don't I don't have that nailed down. Um, we'll work on it Going into the next year Savannah says I've hit the fountain it. I guess I didn't integrate that scene enough is Plenty of reasons to redefine hit again You know, uh, it is so much there that you that people don't notice the first time String about 31 black pill is the scorched earth attitude one gets after transitioning from blue pill to red pill All right So I don't know what comes after black pill is there a white pill that frees you from all the from all the scorched earth everything and and and and liberate your mind to actually see the world as it is um claug says when is your debate with uh, denis kucinich my debate with kucinich is on november 28th Uh, it's a tuesday in the evening. I think it's 7 30 east coast time Um, I think it's going to be live streamed Once I have the link in the details, I will of course let you know and of course once I get a recording I'll put it up on my website, uh, but it is going to be live streamed It's not going to be in front of a live audience. I don't think it's going to be in west palm beach in a studio um moderated by I'm not even sure whom but uh moderated and uh, yeah, it should be it should be interesting and, uh Look forward to doing that. So that's in exactly two weeks from tomorrow All right, I think that's a wrap. Thanks everybody. Thanks to all the super chatters. Thanks all your questions Thank you to greg for joining us and aimish as well. I hope