 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Wednesday. Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. I hope you're having a good day. I hope you've got a planned romantic evening ahead of you. So I hope you're celebrating, and the celebrations go well. So yeah, love is in the air, and love is a good thing. We should do a show about that. We will, at some point. All right, maybe the positive show on Sunday or something. We'll see. Although yesterday was a positive show. I think I've done my share for the week. Back to the negativity. All right, let's start with another Republican loss in the House of Representatives. If you remember, the Republicans kicked out George Santos. The House of Representatives basically fired him. He was shown to be thoroughly corrupt, lied about everything, violated campaign finance law, violated a whole bunch of different things. And Republicans ultimately kicked him out of the House. Yesterday there was an election in his district, which is in the state of New York, in a fairly wealthy part of Long Island. And this is an area that Republicans should win. And Republicans lost, again, right? Republicans lost, again. Scott, again, is here to defend Republicans, even the lying, scheming, worst ones of all of them. Scott will defend of them. Don't worry about it. They're going to get a thorough defense by objective Scott. Anyway, they lost that election. They lost it by, like, eight to 10 points. They lost it by a big margin. It wasn't even close. This is an election obviously that previously Republicans had won, should have won here. And they just can't win in the House. They keep losing. One of the number of explanations were given, one is that the weather lowered turnout. And whereas Democrats did, what are you, mail-in votes, Republicans don't do mail-in votes because Trump has said, don't do mail-in votes. It's not right. So Republicans have a huge disadvantage, particularly if weather limits turnout. Huge disadvantage relative to the Democrats. All thanks to Donald Trump. So that's one explanation. Another good explanation, of course, is Trump's explanation. Trump's explanation is basically a Republican candidate didn't come all out in favor of Trump. Because of that, the MAGA supporters didn't come out to vote for her. And this just proves that if you want to win an election in the House of Representatives, you have to completely embrace Donald Trump. That's the only way to win. That was Donald Trump's explanation. That explanation is difficult to square with the fact that this isn't the first kind of, what do you call it, while the term is going on, election that Republicans have lost. Indeed, a month ago, they lost an election in Florida where the candidate clearly embraced Donald Trump. They lost in a district that went for DeSantis by something like 10 points. They lost in a district that had been Republican. And they lost a Democrat. And if you look at the polling, if you look at exit polls, I guess, they lost because basically independents all voted for the Democrats. They refused to vote the Republican, maybe because he completely embraced Donald Trump. I mean, it is truly stunning how suicidal the Republicans are. I mean, they basically face a Democratic Party that is unbelievably unpopular. They're unpopular because of inflation, unpopular because of immigration. They have a senile president. They can't get the far left excited. They can't get their base excited. They face a Democratic Party that should be on the ropes. They face a Democratic Party that by every standard should be losing everywhere across the board. And yet they cannot win. They cannot win. They keep losing. As we know, they did not win the Senate when everybody expected them to win the Senate last election. They won the House by the slightest of majorities. And now that majority is significantly smaller given that they've just lost two elections. On every front, Republicans are just losing, losing, losing. And maybe, maybe at some point, they'll wake up to the fact that they losses have to do with basically one guy. Their losses have to do with the shift of the entire Republican politics towards MAGA, which is not, does the seem at least so far, to be a winning strategy, one in 2016. And since then, lost, lost, lost, lost. I said from the beginning, if DeSantis wanted to win the primary, he should have labeled Trump a loser and reiterated that at every opportunity and made a big deal out of that. Let me remind you that in 2014, Republican won a large majority in the House. They had a 54 seat Senate majority. They had 68 of 99 state legislature chambers, 33 governors, and 25 of the states had everything, both legislatures and governor. It seems like since Donald Trump has come to the stage, has come to be, to represent the Republican Party, they have taken massive steps backwards, backwards. So, but will the Republican Party learn from their mistakes? No. It doesn't seem that way. It seems like they're doubling down on their errors. They're doubling down on Trump. And, you know, Trump might still win the election, maybe to a large extent, because Biden is so incompetent. Trump might win. But it does look like the Republicans are going to really struggle when it comes to the House, certainly, and maybe even to the Senate, even though the senatorial map is hugely in Republican favor. It was last time, too. Last year, even Africa was in their favor as well. And they managed somehow to blow that because of the types of candidates they put up, the kind of MAGA, Trumpish candidates they put up who lost. Lost. All right. Anyway, Republicans are losing. Continue to lose. Not a good sign for the opposition party trying to rein in democratic statism. Not happening. But Republicans did win a vote yesterday in the House of Representatives. A very, very, very, very important vote. So about a week ago, Republicans put up to a vote to impeach Mayorkas, who is the Homeland Security Secretary because of the fact that the crisis on the southern border, he's obviously not doing his job. He is, let's say, systemic refusal to comply with the law, breach of public trust, treason, bribery, and other high crimes of misdemeanors, not so much, but breach of public trust and refusal to comply with the law. Doesn't quite stand up to the treason, bribery, or other high crimes of misdemeanors of the Constitution. But who cares? We're Republicans, and we're going to nail those Democrats. So last week, they tried to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary, and they failed. At the last minute, I guess, from a hospital, a Democrat came in, and they lost by one vote. This week, Republicans have regrouped. They reorganized. And now, they took it up for another vote, and this time, they won. By one vote, they had one of their congressmen, Scalia, who was getting against the treatment. He just got released from the hospital for the treatment. He came in and voted the swing vote. Three Republicans voted against the impeachment. Every Democrat voted against the impeachment. But Mayokas has been impeached. He is the first cabinet secretary in American history to be impeached. I'm sure all of you feel like the government is now much, much better. We are far more secure. This is a huge step in a direction of making America a better country. And I'm glad to see the Republicans spending so much time on some significant issues on big deals. I'm sure this makes their base very, very excited. I'm not so sure about independence. I'm pretty sure it doesn't get Democrats excited. And I'm pretty sure it doesn't get moderate Republicans excited. But it doesn't matter. MAGA will reward these people. And God, these are the priorities of the Republican Party. They can't pass an immigration bill that's very favorable towards their agenda. They can't pass aid to Ukraine even though a majority or a majority of Congress would like to pass aid to Ukraine. But they can impeach a sitting cabinet member on standards that are pretty pathetic by standards of impeachment. And of course, a lot of this is just, well, you impeached Donald Trump. So will impeach you. They couldn't get enough votes to actually impeach Biden, not even with all the corruption, the most corrupt presidents in history, and with his son and everything going on there and all the money changing hairs. They couldn't get enough votes to actually impeach Biden. So they chose instead to go after poor Alejandro Mallorca, the Homeland Security Secretary. Again, the state of American politics is beneath dismal. Dismal is too nice of a term to describe it. I'm not sure how it gets much better. And it seems like, yeah, anyway, let's see. Let's look at natural gas. Story today about the United States today is the largest producer of natural gas in the world. It is a massive exporter of natural gas. Not that long ago, the United States was importing natural gas. Not that long ago, people were worried about the complete depletion of natural gas in the United States and our dependence on Russia and on the Middle East for all of our energy needs. And here, we've turned the corner not only to producing more oil than any other country in human history, but also producing more natural gas than any other country in the world. And we're doing so basically because of American innovation. We're doing so because of fracking. Fracking has released natural gas and oil reserves in quantities that are hard to imagine. There's enough natural gas and oil probably in the ground just in the Permian basin in West Texas for the next 100 years. Anyway, one of the challenges is you've got all this gas, natural gas in the ground. And how do you get it to end users? We're exporting it. America doesn't need this much natural gas. And it's difficult to build pipelines within America. So let's say the Northeast does need natural gas. Almost impossible to get pipelines up there. So the idea is let's export natural gas to Asia. And what is happening right now is pipelines are being built and export facilities for LNG liquefied natural gas facilities are being built all along the shores of what country? Mexico. So Mexico is, which used to be, again, an importer of liquefied natural gas by sea from other countries is now becoming a terminal for the export of natural gas that comes from the United States. It comes to Mexico's facility and then is exported out from there to where the demand is, which is in Asia. This is also reducing the need to go through the Panama Canal, which is having a lot of problems because of drought and is a direct link to supply energy to China and to other thriving economies, whether it's the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, all over Asia. I first read this story. I said, oh, this is cool. We're pumping the natural gas to Mexico and from Mexico, there are these plants in there. And then it hit me to ask this question, why are we pumping the natural gas to Mexico? Is it shorter and simpler to pump the natural gas to California? California is closer to the Permian Basin maybe. I think it still is. And we don't have to deal with whatever one has to deal with in Mexico. And it's not like Mexico has existing LNG facilities. The Mexicans are building LNG facilities in order to facilitate it. So why aren't we just building pipelines? We probably have the pipelines. Why aren't we just exporting this natural gas through California to the Far East? And of course, the answer to that is you can't build an LNG terminal in California. I never mind building pipelines in the United States and actually digging up the ground and who knows what worms you might encounter, endangered worms or endangered rats or whatever. But it's impossible to build an LNG terminal in, I think, California because of all the environmental regulations, environmental controls. Even if it's possible, it's probably unbelievably expensive. So my best estimation of why this is going through Mexico is you can build them fast, cheap in Mexico. And in terms of the ships, they don't care. It's not that much more expensive than California, but ultimately cheaper than California because of the high cost that would cost to build these things, almost all driven by environmental regulations and controls. So when you think about growing economic activity in Mexico, a lot of the growing economic activity in Mexico is a consequence of the rising costs of doing anything in the United States or anything you want to do that is a little challenging, a little ambitious, and might offend, I don't know, the regulators, the environmentalists, whatever. Just don't do it in the US. Do it in Mexico. And that's why the Mexican economy is doing fairly well. It's doing fairly well now because of any domestic policies that Mexico has embraced. Indeed, its president is pretty bad. The Mexican economy is doing pretty well because people are leaving China, but they won't come to the US. Nobody wants to build manufacturing in the US unless the US subsidizes it. So they're building the manufacturing in Mexico and then using NAFTA, that amazing deal, that best deal in the whole history of mankind, that Trump signed or Trump negotiated, Trump's people negotiated, and which, by the way, was almost very minor differences from the original NAFTA, although Trump made a big deal out of it. And because of things like this, where it's easier to build in Mexico, so the Mexican economy is primarily thriving because of the cost of doing business in the United States, which is driven almost all by regulations, by government controls. It's just insane. Good for the Mexicans. It's why there's almost no immigration to the United States from Mexico. Mexicans are not trying to come to America because they have good jobs in Mexico. And the people who are trying to come to the United States are from further south, or east, or west, from all over the world, but not so much from Mexico. All right. So we've talked about this story, but it keeps coming up. And there's something going on here that I think is super interesting, bad, interesting, and so we need to keep talking about it, because it keeps coming up. It's in the news constantly. And there is a phenomena here that, while it's not right now affecting the United States directly, it certainly is indirectly. It certainly is a phenomena that the United States shares with the rest of the world. And that is the pharma protest, the pharma revolt that's going on all over the place right now, as we talked about the fact that it's all over Europe, farmers disrupted traffic in and out of Paris. I've had a long time in France. I think it's still going on in France. Right now the big story is in India where there are what, 25,000 tractors are heading towards Delhi, the Indian capital, and are trying to obstruct what is going on there. And so I was thinking, OK, what is going on here? I mean, there's certain common denominators about all these protests. In Europe, a lot of them are focused on environmentalist policies that make it more difficult for European farmers to farm. And to do what they've been doing for decades. We talked about this what a year ago, two years ago, with regards to the Netherlands, a lot of this, or at least came to me, is that they were opposed to that. But it's not. But when you read what they actually say, it's not environmental regulations are part of it, but a lot of it has to do with price controls. They want subsidies. A lot of it has to do with the fact with inflation. Prices are going up, but farmers are not reaping any of the benefits of that, because they're cost arising as well. They want more subsidies. So you would think, OK, this is good. This is an anti-government intervention in the economy. No. This is the kind of intervention in the economy. They don't want environmental regulations. Cool. They want more subsidies. Not cool. In some places, they want price controls. Not cool. They definitely want significant restrictions. Significant restrictions on imports of food, on competition. Not cool. Now, this is in Europe. If you go to India, what you're seeing is here is almost all about subsidies. The Indian government in various times has promised, today has a price guarantees on rice and wheat. It buys from farmers, just like in the United States. The government buys milk and some other things. Basically, it has price guarantees on certain crops. Indian farmers are saying, why only certain crops? We want the government. We want price guarantees on all the crops. We want subsidies on everything. We can't make a living. And I was thinking, OK, what is actually going on here? If you look at Europe, if you look at India, if you look at the US, where farmers are unhappy, we have the fewest farmers probably we've ever had. Small farming, they're unhappy. They gravitated towards Trump, and I think they still gravitate towards Trump, because Trump is very good. While he got them in trouble with the trade war with China, China stopped buying a lot of agricultural products from the United States. He then subsidized them. He then gave them huge checks to compensate them for the losses they suffered because of his tariffs. But they want, I mean, in America, they want more price guarantees, more subsidies. They want more protection against imports, and they want more protection about what they call industrial farming and big farms. What is common about all these? And they're all kind of populist movements that seem to be electing, although India is a little different because the politics are a little different, they're kind of center populist, socialist in economics, nationalist in other things, anti-trade political parties. Donald Trump, I think, represents that in the United States. What's going on here basically is what I meant predicted always happens in a mixed economy. A mixed economy is an economy in which the government and a big scale is basically picking winners and losers. And it's redistributing wealth across the entire economy to various groups in every part of the economy. And as a mixed economy matures, people come to realize that there's a real sense in which it is a zero-sum world. It is a zero-sum game. That is, if you're subsidizing, I don't know, auto workers, that money has to come from somewhere. And therefore, that money might be coming from farmers who are then subsidizing auto workers and or it might come from, you know, some other business, steel industry. If you protect the steel industry, for example, like Trump did with tariffs and Biden has continued, then that has to come at somebody's expense. Well, that comes at expense of the consumers of steel, auto manufacturers. So in a mixed economy, every time the government steps in to subsidize something, to tax something, to redistribute benefits and costs across the economy, there has to be a loser. Somebody is paying for it. And I think farmers are starting to see that in Europe, in America, even in India. In India, the economy is doing well. Manufacturing is booming. And indeed, the Indian government has a strong emphasis in manufacturing. Profit margins on a small farms are very low. It's very difficult to make a living in a small farm. In order for farming to become more profitable, it has to industrialize. But industrialization creates competition to the small farmers. And to the extent that the government again is playing all these parties off of one another, they get upset. If the government is emphasizing one sect over the other, they're going to get upset. If the government steps in with the environmental regulations, well, somebody has to pay for it. Farmers feel like they are the ones paying for it, and they probably are. In certainly in Europe, maybe less so in the United States. And they are rebelling. They're not rebelling against the mixed economy. I wish that would be amazing. We could support their protests. They're rebelling against the distribution of goods and favors that is happening in the current mixed economy, and they want a different distribution, which favors them. They are not fighting for freedom. They're fighting for more goods for themselves. Less goodies for you, because it has to come at somebody's expense. And as farming shrinks, and it shrinks, the United States used to be not that long ago, 80% of American population were farmers, what, 150 years ago? Today it's, I think, less than 2%. Family farms, smaller and smaller percentage of farming is family farms. They're disappearing, and they will disappear. There will always be a niche for them, organic, whatever, specialty products. Same thing is happening in India again. People are leaving the farms and going into manufacturing where the real money is, innovation, technology. Farming is a low margin business. Same thing in Europe. Europe protects its farmers, subsidizes its farmers, protects them certainly from farm competition. Well, except because of the war in Ukraine, they've allowed Ukrainian goods in, and farmers are upset about that. But it's all about a fixed pie, a zero-sum world, in which the farmers feel like, and it's mostly feelings, they're being screwed, other people are benefiting, they want to get their stuff. There is nothing here really about freedom. I mean, once in a while they'll hit on an issue that's true, like climate change. We don't want climate change regulations to increase our costs, but if the government turned around and said to them, look, we're going to have these climate change regulations and controls, but we'll compensate you for it. We'll give you a check in exchange for you implementing the climate change. They would say, oh, okay, that's fine. We'll do that. Since it's not a principled, even mildly principled, objection to climate change, it's objection to the effect that climate change regulations are having on their business. And they want to be compensated at somebody else's expense. So, you know, this farming stuff, this farming uprising across really much of the world these days really needs to be understood as just kind of a natural evolution of the mixed economy. This is what happens in a mixed economy. This is what necessarily happens in a mixed economy. Sad, I wish there were some heroes out there that we could actually support in the uprising against government, but there really isn't. All right, a quick story about the military. Two stories about the military. One is just to give you a sense of, I think the real challenges that we face in the world and how on nice edge I think much of the world is these days, we all know about what's going on in the Middle East and what's going on in Ukraine and the challenges and the stress and the dangers and, you know, the U.S. commitment in the Middle East to protecting sea lanes, to protecting their own troops and their attempts to do that, not very good attempts, but attempts to do that, and they are American troops deployed in the Middle East as a consequence of this, whether that's good or bad, they're there. What I find interesting though is right now that the United States is focusing much of its resources not on the Middle East. Right now, the U.S. is about to deploy five, five, that's almost half of its aircraft carriers to the West and Pacific to China. They've never had five aircraft carriers in the West and Pacific all at once, and that, of course, each one of these carriers brings a whole, you know, what do you call it, not Armada, but a whole grouping of warships with them. This is a lot of sailors all focused on basically telling or sending the signal to China beware, beware. And I can't believe that they would do this unless there is some intelligence that suggests that maybe China is contemplating this, thinking about it. So the world is a scary place right now. It's a scary place. Five aircraft carriers with their entire entourage in the West and Pacific. North Korea is, who knows, I mean, what North Korea would do. Hard to tell what China would do. I think China is more of a rational actor than North Korea. But scary nonetheless. And if you add this to the fact that right now global spending on military, on arms, on weapon systems, hits a global record, $2.2 trillion. $2.2 trillion. On military spending, we talked about the Philippines building up their army, Indonesia building up their army. That's in Asia. We, of course, know Poland is building a massive army. Many European countries have jacked up this spending on defense. Israel is spending huge quantities of money to refurbish and resupply, particularly on the munitions side. $2.2 trillion. I mean, think about what that $2.2 trillion could do if it was applied to productive activities. Kind of sad, right? But what is interesting is that the U.S. spends, if you look at the $2.2 trillion spent by the world on weapons, how much does the U.S. spend? U.S. spends 40% of that. So 40.5% of all global spending on the military is the U.S. The U.S. spends more than the next 15 combined countries on weapon systems. Huge numbers. Now, I think the U.S. is probably one of the most inefficient countries in the entire world in terms of its weapons procurement. So I'm not sure it gets the equivalent of that multiple. China spends a quarter of what the United States does. NATO, as a whole, spends less than half of what the United States does. Russia spends half of what China does. In other words, about 10% or less than, about 12% of what the United States does. 40% of all spending in the world on the military is spent by the United States. Of the $2.2 trillion, $800 billion is spent by the United States on an annual basis. That's just astounding. And what do we get from that? I don't think we get that much because it's so inefficiently spent and the United States is so scared, so scared to project its power. Yeah, the world is in deep trouble. Hard to project what we are over the next few years. Finally, a positive story from the world of cathedrals. And you know that I don't like cathedrals, but this is a good story. If you remember in April of 2019, there was a massive fire in Paris and one of the most famous, if not the most famous cathedrals in the world, almost burnt down completely. I.e., the Notre Dame Cathedral, burned down significantly, including the entire top of it, what do you call it? The top, the spire. The spire was burned down. And I think Paris was a shock. The French were in shock. Originally it was thought to be maybe a terrorist act. You know, maybe it was the Muslims did it. Turned out that it was an accident. Well, I think this week, the scaffolding had been taken down. The new spire has been revealed. And the Notre Dame Cathedral is now back. It only, you know, people around the world pledged $1 billion to rebuild it. I don't know how much was spent in order to rebuild it. I'm sure it was a lot. But what caused it was an electric short circuit. And that is what people are estimating. But it is now back. So next time you're in Paris, go see it. It's quite a spectacle. It's quite an amazing building. I don't like cathedrals particularly, Gothic cathedrals. But they are impressive and they are landmarks. And certainly the Notre Dame Cathedral is a landmark. And of course, if you've read Victor Hugo, particularly Notre Dame, his famous novel, yeah, it's part of Paris. It's part of the ambiance. It's part of what it is. It's part of, I think, the image that a lot of people have of Paris. So it's fantastic that they rebuilt it and it's back and it is standing. So good for the Peruvians. Perugians, Perugians. By the way, Ali, I don't know what modern therapy is. What do you mean by modern therapy? Which modern therapy? What modern therapy? Therapy, psychological therapy. So if you want to say in the chat what therapy you're talking about, that would be helpful. All right, let's see. A few announcements. No show tonight, no show tomorrow night. But there will be a show Friday night and there will be news roundups Thursday and Friday. So that is on track. Won't be a show during the day on Saturday. There will be a show on Sunday, probably in the evening, but I'm not sure which one. So that is kind of the schedule for this week. As you know, this is a listeners supported show. The show exists because of the support that you provide. So thank you to all of you who do the super chat or stickers. I haven't thanked the stickers people. I should thank the sticker people, Gail, Finn Hopper, Stephen Hopper, Finn Hopper, Stephen Hopper. We got a lot of Hoppers. And Jonathan Honing and Roland, Happy Valentine's Day to you too. So thank you to all the sticker people. So you can support the show while listening live by using the stickers. If you're watching on YouTube later, you can do an applause and you can support the show by using an applause. Of course, if you are listening afterwards or generally if you're listening live, you would like to provide monthly regular support, which is great. You can use Patreon or you can use PayPal through www.uronbrookshow.com slash membership. Iron Man Institute is a sponsor of the show and right now they're still looking for applications for scholarships for the Iron Man Conference in Austin by people who are serious about studying Objectivism. Go to ironman.org slash dot here, ironman.org slash dot here to apply for a scholarship. It'll be a great conference. Jason, who was on the show last week and you've also got Greg, you've got Ben and you have Tara Smith. Yeah, so go hopefully apply to the scholarship and enjoy that. What else do we have? I think that's it in terms of announcement. Oh, one last announcement. I want to make again to anybody, particularly in Europe or anybody going to Europe if you are interested in a public speaking seminar then in Amsterdam on March 11th, it's on Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. please drop me an email, iran at www.uronbrookshow.com we're definitely having it. Got enough people to have it but I'm still looking for anywhere between one to five people. Five would be max but anywhere between five one to five people would be fantastic if you want to join me there. If you can't come to Europe then you can come to, I will be doing it either just before or just after Ocon in California and again drop me an email expressing interest and as my plans firm up I will provide you with the information for that seminar as well. All right, I think we're good. Let's jump into the super chat as we do every day. So thank you to all the super chatters about $47 short of the target just so you're aware. Hoppe Campbell, 50 bucks, wow. Another 50 bucks and we're done. Do you think Millay would let us build a free state within Argentina? Like what they try to do in Honduras? If Millay can't get his reforms through the legislator maybe he would let us carve out a free piece of territory within his own nation. I don't see how we could. I think Argentina already has states. I don't know that the federal government at that level can just carve out a piece of land and declare it. I'm sure for example it would also have to go through the legislature and would face a challenge in the courts. That's ultimately what happened in Honduras and the legislature has been hostile to the free states in Honduras. This is not easy to do. And of course what prevents Honduras or Argentina or any other country as soon as you're successful from marching in and taking over? Nothing, right? There's just no shortcuts guys. I know you want them when you're young. You want to believe that one day you will live in a free society and you think that it can happen any day now and it's just there are just no shortcuts. The reality is the reality is that this is that any one of these free states exist within an international system and a domestic system of statism and that statism, that state will overrun. What happens when Millet loses? There's no longer in power and there's another government and they don't like it anymore and they change their mind. Who's going to invest billions of dollars necessary to build such a state? But again, you're never going to get all the approvals needed. Millet should and I think is focusing on his energy on trying the best that he can in the context of liberating the Argentinian economy and I think that's where his energy should be focused. Jennifer says I'm so angry at these Republican governors trying to ban lab grown meat to protect farmers. No kidding. I mean I don't know how many Republican governors are doing this. We know DeSantis is. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Midwest governors do it because to protect their cattle business, to protect their farmers, I'm sure there's pressure. Wouldn't be surprised if it happened in Texas. But yeah, it's outrageous. It's ridiculous. And yeah, what can you say? These are Luddites of the first degree. We know they're Luddites on the left in Luddites on the left in California burning down self-driving cars and now we have Luddites of the right lab grown meat. Jennifer says also in Arizona. Arizona has a Democratic governor, so this must be the legislature. Hopefully the governor vetoes it and they can't get it passed. Bizarre. Why Arizona? God. It's just ridiculous. Alisa says what is your view on modern therapy and you mean here mental therapy? I really don't know Ali and I'm sorry, I mean you had to spend $20 for me to say I don't know. No modern therapy and generally I don't think I'm a good source for that, right? I'm not a psychologist. I don't know psychology. I, you know, what value is my opinion about these things? Not great, sadly. It's a good question to ask when I have somebody like Gina Golanon who is much more tuned to what's going on in the world of psychology and has studied it. From my general understanding and from my talk with Gina, I would say that the best school of psychology out there for mental health is the, you know, cognitive school, cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT are best. But that's you know, that's based on what I've heard from her and based on what I've read about it. So it seems to me that if you're looking for psychological therapy I would start with cognitive behavioral therapy. James says, both places I want to live in the U.S. are only getting crazy. Boston and Dallas politics, econ, are vastly different today than five years ago. I was looking in London and was getting and it was getting and it has gotten crazier. Do you think this will continue? I think to some extent, yes. I mean, what is going to stop it? I mean, most big cities are run by the left. That's true of Boston. It's even true of Dallas. And it's definitely true of London. London has the added problem of a large Muslim population that the police will not enforce the laws against. The police will not actually disciplined. And not discipline outside of the law, but within the context of the law. So there's no rule of law in London. Which is a problem. It's still a great place to live in spite of that. And particularly I know, I think you're interested in finance if I remember right, a great place to do finance. So in that sense, I wouldn't give up on London. Boston is crazy in some regards. But it's also a city that's done very well. It's a well-run city relatively speaking. If you can tolerate the weather, it just doesn't have a thriving of a finance world as it used to. Dallas, which is an up-and-coming city, you're going to get a good cost of living. It's going to be a lot easier to live there. And so I'm not sure in what ways Dallas is going, becoming much crazier. It might make sense Dallas, you know, might be the least crazy of these places. And it certainly has the lowest cost of living by a long shot. By a long shot. And a slowly growing finance community. I mean the only other finance place I would look at is Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina. Which, at least from a banking perspective, is a big banking community in Charlotte. James asks, we're excited to attend your public speaking seminar in the USA. Since we are unable to attend one in Europe, will you go over any techniques to speak loud for long periods of time? I wasn't going to. I don't know that they have techniques. I can think about it, but certainly that would be a great question to ask me at the seminar. And I can think about in advance, I can think about what that requires. I think a lot of that is voice training. You can hire a voice coach. Part of it is just getting comfortable with yelling. Most people are not comfortable with yelling unless they get really angry. So it's finding a way to bring that energy to the forefront. Bring that energy to your speaking so that you yell. People tend to yell when they're upset. And we need a liberate ability to yell even when we're not upset. We need to be able to yell for effect. Raise our voice for effect. So a great topic to talk about during the seminar. Look forward to having you and your wife, I think, at the seminar in California in June. I'll have a date for you soon. Happy Valentine's Day. Don't have a significant other to throw money at. Here's to you, Yuan. Thank you, Sivanos. I feel bad about that. I'd rather you have a significant other. I think that is a great contribution to your life than me. But keep trying. Keep finding somebody. Keep looking for somebody. Not finding somebody. Keep looking for somebody. All right, we've got still a bunch of questions. questions. Sivanos, by the way, $50 put us over the target, so that is great. But you can still ask questions, of course. OPG233, hi. Should a government send aid to countries of war? Should America go back to their isolationist nature to prevent involvement in unnecessary war? I think, I mean, Iron Man talked about isolationism as a package deal, as an anti-concept. There is no such thing as isolationism. The United States should go back, if it ever had this policy, of using its military force and intervening when necessary, when necessary for American self-interest, when necessary for the protection of the individual rights and the vital interests of Americans. Now, I don't think that means bring all the troops home and keep them at home. I happen to think that America's vital interests include, given America's size of America's military, it includes keeping the shipping lanes open. Iron Man supported using the Navy to keep trade flowing. I think it includes identifying enemies of the United States, organizations or countries, regimes dedicated to killing or attacking Americans and dealing with them by taking them out. It includes identifying threats to American life, property, and vital interests, and dealing with those threats in proportion to the threat that they represent. So I don't think America should go to war with Russia. But Russia is a threat to America. And if America can fairly cheaply support, let's say, Ukraine, to deal with that threat without involving American troops on the ground and without involving America going directly to war with Russia, then great. You can still be an isolationist and send weapons to Ukraine. Isolationist, again, doesn't mean anything. I believe in America first, a proper America first. An American foreign policy and military effort that is focused exclusively on the protection of America's individual rights. The Americans need to have troops in 120 different countries. Absolutely not. Most of those troops should be brought home. If there is a threat somewhere, it should be dealt with by eradicating it and bringing the troops home. Should we have troops in Jordan and Syria and Iraq? No. The threat is Iran. We should take out the Iranian regime and bring all the troops home. Do we need troops in all across Africa fighting all kinds of little armed Islamist groups? No. We certainly should support local governments to fight these groups themselves. I think that is in America's interest to do, but we don't have to put boots on the ground. We don't have to put boots on the ground and risk the American lives for it. And once in a while, if we identify a strategic target, it can take out a strategic target in order to avoid these Islamist, I don't know, grouping together and creating a real threat to the United States. So what the United States does not have is an actual farm policy strategy, an approach, a strategic approach to using the military. And that's what it needs. And neither Republicans nor Democrats have that. They just don't have that approach and that capability. It's all shooting from the hip. Doron, can you say a bit about the election of Power Boho as Indonesia's next president? So who does Sun and Law and a general responsible for the massacre in East Timor wants to restore military rule? You know, the reality is I don't know enough about him. He claims he's not going to restore military rules. He claims that he is going to continue the policies of the previous administration, which, from the perspective of Indonesians, were relatively successful in growing the economy and doing well. But I don't know enough about the specific policies that he's wanting to engage in. I do know that he is friendlier to China than is good for Indonesia or good for the rest of Southeast Asia. It would be better to have in Indonesia somebody who was an ally of the United States vis-à-vis China and to continue to build up together with the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea. A kind of a protective ring, a self-defense ring, vis-à-vis China. So if China became offensive, you would have a number of different allies to stand up against them. And I don't think Power Boho is sympathetic to that. I think he's way too sympathetic to China. That is my main concern about him. But I don't know that much about Indonesian politics or that much about what he would actually do. I mean, Indonesia is an important country, in a sense. I think it's the largest Muslim country in the world. It has one of the largest populations in the world. And it is a Muslim country, although it is not particularly Islamist. Andrew says, can you elaborate on Rand's statement that romantic love is a highly selfish emotion? I mean, yes. And romantic love is an expression, is a manifestation of a response to one's highest values. It's a response in somebody else. Are the values that you hold as most important? It's a response to your own values, not to somebody else's values, but to your values. In the being of another person, you're responding to them presence in somebody else. And in that sense, it's all about you. It's all about your values. It's all about your response to those values. It's all about how your spouse or loved one makes you feel, makes you feel, about yourself and about the world and about them. But you are the one feeling it. If she made you feel bad, that wouldn't be romantic love. She makes you feel good. Feeling good is a good thing. It's a good thing for you as a selfish human being. So romantic love is purely selfish. I mean, Einwand gave this example of imagine going up to your spouse to be on a night before the wedding and saying, you know, I'm doing this as a sacrifice. I'm doing this for you, your family, the world, society, the human race. Not for me. I'm getting nothing out of this. I value nothing in this. I mean, she would slap you. What you should say is I'm doing this for me because of the way you make me feel. The way the kind of person you make me want to be. The kind of person I need to live, the kind of values that are so crucial to my life have reflected in you. And therefore, you are important to me. That's what it means. But for that, you need to know who you are. You need to have respect and esteem for yourself. For all that, you have to have self-esteem. Romantic love really requires self-esteem. Real romantic love requires self-esteem because it has to start with the I. I love you, I. You have to have an I. You have to have a meaningful I. That requires self-esteem. You have to have values. Daniel says, if you didn't see House Intelligence warning of serious national security threat regarding Russia, not sure what that means. I look into it, I don't know what they mean by national security threat. It could be that the Russians, they have bots that are trying to convince us to vote for Trump or against Trump or whatever, which I don't consider a national security threat. Daniel says, what am I sacrificing for Lent? I think I'm sacrificing for Lent sacrifice. I think sacrifice is out. During Lent, I'm not sacrificing at all. That's what I'm sacrificing for Lent. Tom says, increased regulations result in higher costs for business, higher prices for all. Yes, but it's more than that. They result in lower levels of innovation, lower economic growth, fewer jobs, but mainly less innovation on entrepreneurship, which is huge. Pickaxing on Europe. California may innovate with synth biocultures using bioreactors to create biofuels, synth gases. The laws create problems that lead to innovation. Yeah, to the extent that the laws don't then kill the innovation. But yes, regulations and laws sometimes create opportunities to innovate, because they raise the price of the conventional, and suddenly they create opportunity to invest in something that can be the existence. We'll see if that happens. It'll be interesting. Daniel says, you should use your humor more. I always laugh out loud when you talk about religion or environmentalism. Might attract more viewers. If I knew where my humor was, I would use it more. But my humor just once in a while comes about. It's spontaneous humor. It's never planned. I can't tell a joke for the life of me. So it's hard to build on, yeah, I'm going to use more humor, because it might be there. It might not be there. My subconscious feeds me something relatively funny or not. OPG233, follow-up question, are embargoes a form of market intervention? Should it be up to individuals to decide whether to trade with a dictatorship? Thanks. I've talked about this in the past in greater detail. But basically, I would categorize countries who are dictatorships into two. There is one class of dictatorships that are enemies of the United States. Enemies of the United States. I think Iran is such a country. Maybe North Korea is such a country. Countries that are constantly threatening to use force against America or have already used force against America or about to use force against America. Countries that are clearly a threat, an enemy. And then you embargo them. And then it's the role of government to prevent Americans from dealing with them. You should not deal with the enemy. That's treason. And if you trade with the enemy, you're benefiting the enemy. Again, treason. Other dictatorships are not a threat to the United States. For example, Venezuela is not a threat to the United States. Cuba is not a threat to the United States. Saudi Arabia is not a threat to the United States. But they are dictatorships. And there I would say it's up to the individual to decide whether they want to trade with them or not. And the government should not intervene. I mean, the government should do other things vis-à-vis dictatorship. I don't think we should have diplomatic relations with dictatorships. And then there are borderline cases. Do you consider Russia a threat to the United States? Is it an enemy? Is China an enemy? When does a dictatorship turn from a non-enemy to an enemy? What does it need to do in order to make that transition? Those are tricky questions that really need to be thought through. And if you had a real foreign policy strategy, those are the kind of things you'd have to think about and figure out. Bradley, did you see they passed a law in Australia where bosses can face prison time for contacting staff after hours? No, I didn't see that. But that's like nuts. That's insane. God, I would have gone to jail many, many times. All right, what can I say? Australia is going nuts. I have no idea that it's so bad. Paul, the Twilight Zone, a series from the 60s, is the only program I know expounding evils of statism. The obsolete man is particularly good. It has a Kafkaesque tinge reruns on Prime and YouTube. Yeah, I ran really like Twilight Zone. And she talked about a number of the episodes there. They were quite philosophical. A lot of ideas reflected in that show. So I don't know if it's the only program. I don't think it is. But it certainly is a program and one of the best in terms of dealing with those issues. So glad to hear that it's on Prime Time and on YouTube. All right, final question. James G. says, how will the 2024 election impact Southeast Asia? A lot of people are focusing on Europe, the Gulf, and Eastern Asia. However, Southeast Asia is where a lot of people from the West consider an escape from the West. Hard to tell. I mean, I don't think there's a big difference between Trump and Biden in terms of dealing with China. Biden has been tougher. Trump is too enamored with Xi to be very tough. But it's very hard to tell. Is Trump going to appease the Chinese? Is he going to stand up to the North Koreans? Because they have impact Southeast Asia. But then what's going to happen to confidence in America, vis-a-vis everything else, confidence in to what extent do the Philippines and Indonesia and Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea have confidence in the United States and its leadership in terms of holding the Chinese back and sustaining security and peace in the region? To what extent does the administration support trade or antagonistic to trade? To what extent does it support the defense of the shipping lanes, to what extent doesn't it? All of these was play in. And it's very hard to tell what a future administration will do and how it will behave, particularly if that administration is the Trump administration. To such a large degree depends on who he appoints as advisors. Does he get relatively good people? Like I think many of them were decent, not great, but decent in the first administration. Or does he go with MAGA, mindless people? In a second administration, I just don't know. I just don't know. And until we know more about who is in administration, it's going to be hard to tell what impact it has. But Southeast Asia, main concern is China. And will the United States hold the line in terms of not allowing China to increase its influence or to militarize its influence in the region? And it's not clear for that who is better, Trump or Biden. Not clear at all. All right. Thank you, everybody. Really appreciate the support. Thanks to all the superchatters. If you want to do monthly, please consider using Patreon or you're on bookshow.com.slash membership to support the show. I will see you all tomorrow and have a great rest of your week. And of course, happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Bye.