 Particularly those of you who don't support the show, use super chat. That's the way I'll answer your question. So, I think modern culture is sad and pathetic. Sad and pathetic. And again, it's reflected in the fact that we care so much about what these people think. Any of these people. Instead of just enjoying what good they produce. And many of them don't even produce anything good. All right, let's see. So, Gervais said some funny things, but I think completely inappropriate for the setting. All right, let's see, what else do we have? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, wait a minute, we got this. And then if you've got any more super chat questions, happy to take them. But, no, that's wrong. All right, we are going to take about the wackiness of California. The wackiness of California. So, it's the beginning of a new year. A new budget in California. New legislation kicks in. And you get a sense of how we've seen people are now, I don't live in California anymore. So, it's even more insane from a distance. It's not an accident that California is seeing a huge exodus of people. Interesting. I mean, so many people think everything's about money, but the fact is wealthy people are not leaving California. Wealthy people are not. It's poor middle class, poor and middle class people are leaving California. Not if you're very, very poor. If you're very, very poor, you should become homeless. I'll talk about that in a minute. But, if you're poor, or if you're middle class, you can't afford to live in California. They're just driving you out. If you want to start a small business, you can't afford to live in California. They're driving you out. Massive exodus from California. Now, I see one of my listeners has won the multi-million lotto prize. Cool, well, some of the money you should invest in the Iran book show and become a supporter. That'd be good. Wow, I mean, I've never met anybody who's actually won the lottery. So what has California done? A few things. Well, one, it passed a law last year that kicked in basically January one that basically outlaws or makes it very, very difficult to hire contractors. So basically this law is supposed to force Uber, Lyft, and the dozens, dozens and dozens of companies that have risen that are similar delivery services that basically use individuals as subcontractors. It's trying to force them to view them as employees, give them benefits, give them salaries, give them 401ks, treat them as full-time employees. Now that, of course, would be destroy Uber and Lyft and all these entities. Indeed, a judge today, I think, in California ruled that it didn't apply to truckers. A lot of truckers are independent contractors because everybody knows that this would destroy the industries. It would raise crisis dramatically. Now Uber, now a lot of the companies I hear are ignoring the law and paying the fines associated with it. And they are, in the meantime, lobbying to pass a referendum in November that would basically reverse the law. And in the meantime, they're just paying fines to the state of California. But this is the insanity. Here are companies that have innovated in dramatic, amazing ways, used technology to allow millions of individuals to earn money off of the car that they have. And California wants to make that impossible. California wants to intervene in that relationship and force Uber to treat them as employees. When that would destroy, again, the business model. Raise costs and destroy our ability to enjoy the fruits of these companies. So Uber today released new guidelines for their drivers that are trying to make it clear even more that they are independent contractors. So for example, if you get turned down for a ride now, it's probably because the Uber drivers are gonna have more control over who they take on a ride and who they don't. Which rides they accept and which rides they don't. Because Uber's trying to make the argument, no, no, no, they're really independent contractors. So to do that, they're giving them more and more and more and more control. And Uber as a company is gonna be more and more and more hands off. Who's gonna suffer? My guess? We are, the customers, the consumers. But state of California is gonna go after Uber. They're gonna go after Lyft. They're gonna go after these countries. They are, they have a law. It's called, what's it called? It's called something 50. And AB5, it's called AB5. So that's number one, I was reading. Now second, California is just announced that they're gonna launch their own brand of generic prescription, a label of generic prescription drugs. So because drug prices are so high, the state of California plans to create their own drug company and then subcontract the creation of generic drugs to other companies and then sell it under the brand name of the California. Now, now we're getting into real socialism. The government owning the means of production. The government actually selling, producing and selling directly to consumers. Now imagine, imagine how destructive this is gonna be to the drug industry, to the prices, to legitimate drug companies when they're competing with the government. State government doesn't matter, but it's with the government. And California is a massive market. And imagine, I don't think I have to spell it out for you guys, what long-term consequences that has. Massive long-term consequences to the health of Americans. Already California has taken over Medicare, Medicaid in the States and the state is negotiating with drug companies for drug prices on Medicaid. Again, just like Europe, a destroyer of the profit motive, a destroyer of the ability of companies to invest, to do R&D, to provide us with new drugs and this is in California, the capital of biotech where you think they should know better, but it is a haven now for socialists and this is the thing about California and socialists. California is really, really rich. California has become really, really, really successful in spite of all the stupidity and evilness of California politicians and the California government, California remains rich. It throws out huge amounts of tax dollars to Sacramento. They can do unbelievable amounts of stupid things and the producers continue to produce. Silicon Valley continues to work. Hollywood continues to work. Those are the two big industries in California and as long as the producers continue to produce. And again, it's not the producers leaving California. As long as the producers can continue to produce, as long as the producers do not rebel, as long as the producers do not shrug, California can continue for a long time to do nutty, insane things. Now one day, they'll go bankrupt but that could be decades from now and imagine the innovation, imagine the wealth creation, imagine the progress we would achieve if the state of California backed off the most productive people in the world because California is one of the most productive places in the world. Silicon Valley housed some of the great geniuses of our generation in the world today and they are being hammered by regulations, by controls, by taxes, by stupidity instead of being set free to make us all richer in life. It truly attracted you. One more thing California is doing is the governor of California is recommending $1.4 billion to help solve the homeless crisis in California and Los Angeles is contemplating a $3 billion project to build a whole mini city for homeless people with shelter from the rain, rains a lot in Southern California and air conditioning and homes and shops and a whole little town. Now, it's I guess Sony me who sees the problem in these things. With homelessness this is how it works. The more money you throw at the problem the more homeless people there will be. Insenives matter. If people are in the threshold of homelessness but they know that if they become homeless they'll get all the stuff they already do to poor but they can get even more if they're homeless maybe even a free house then they're gonna become homeless. If homeless people in Chicago hear that California is gonna spend $1.4 billion on homelessness in California guess where the homeless in Chicago are going? They're going to California plus the weather's much better. It's just unbelievable that they don't get it. The more money you spend the more homeless there will be. The solution to making to the homeless problem I mean you've got a mental health problem which is a major problem but most of the problem of homelessness is twofold. One, the high cost of living, the high cost of housing which is completely dependent on government could be solved easily by freeing up housing by freeing up developers to build houses everywhere. And second, by stop funding it by making homelessness even more painful than it is. I mean it's not nice to say but it's a reality that the more comfortable you make it the more money you throw at it is the more homeless people there will be. The worst that I'll get. If you build it they will come, absolutely. If you build a home so the homeless there'll be more homeless because there are one more homes. What you need is to build homes cheaply so that people don't become homeless to begin with. And what you need is to change the code to make building homes cheaper if California became inhospitable to homeless people they would leave. So you're enabling the problem and you're making it thus worse. Now all of this, all of this is driven by altruism. Our focus on homelessness we have to throw more money at it nobody will criticize the government for it everybody thinks they need to solve the homeless problem. The homeless problem is the problem of the people who are homeless and it's a problem of the people whose property rights they violate. And the only way to solve the problem of the homeless is to stop letting them violate property rights. But that cannot be done because of altruism because we're going more about the homeless person because they're needy and they're suffering than we do about the property owner. And it's what prevents us from going to war with Iran. Because who are we to assert ourselves? And oh Iran they're poor and they're struggling and we shouldn't assert ourselves that would be too self-interested. That's altruism. Altruism which cripples our ability to be self-interested. Not only Trump is altruistic, Trump's just a pragmatist. But his people around him is advisors, certainly the Democrats and everybody else and the Republicans and everybody is an altruist. That is the standard of morality. There is nothing else. They can conceive of an alternative. And that's what guides everything. All right, so California is batshit crazy. I mean it's just amazing. I mean I could go on and on with this stupidity of Sacramento and all this stuff. You see they have the House, the Senate and the governor and they have a supermajority in the Senate. So the Democrats can actually pass anything they want. And this governor is about as left as it goes. So they're gonna pass everything left as they can. So you're gonna see a real experiment in California. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to Iranbrooksshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com, Iranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not showing the next.