 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. The radical, this is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Monday night. It has been a long time, God, 13 days since we last did a show. I think that's the longest. I'm pretty sure it's the longest period of time that I've not done a show ever, no matter travel, Asia, all kinds of places. And it's basically being because I've been sick. So I'm going to be coughing because I'm still sick. I'm stumbling over it. I'll tell you a little bit about what's going on in a minute. I'm still sick. I've got a super busy travel schedule starting this Thursday. I'm probably going to have to cancel a bunch of it because I'm still not right. You might notice that the camera angle is a little different because I'm sitting. I usually am standing during the show. But I'm not sure I have the energy to stand through a show. So we're going to try this sitting down. But I still don't have my voice back. I certainly don't have my energy back. And I have a quart of cough. So 13 days ago, I did a show at the end of the show. My throat was a little scratchy. Next day, I had a congestion and a cold. I was obviously feeling bad. The following day, I was feeling much worse. That's why I canceled the Thursday show. And just felt awful for quite a long period of time there. Basically a cold, nothing more than that. But just a cold, persistent, wouldn't go. Congestion, where none of the decongestion medications seemed to work to open it up. Just state congestion, congested and lack of energy and just a rough time. Last week, I was feeling a little better. So I traveled. I did a couple of talks, one quickly in Connecticut and then one in Dallas. And then I came home. Don't make vitamin recommendations to me. I'm taking them all. Taking them all. Thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate it. Dinner's so-so. Jeremy, thank you. Cook, thank you. Alex, thank you. Anyway, I got home and felt bad again, really bad again. And oh, I tested for COVID when I first got sick because I figured maybe it's COVID. And I tested negative as I have forever. Anyway, on Saturday, I tested for COVID again. COVID again. And this time it was positive. So I do have COVID. It is possible for Yoran Brook to get COVID, which was quite a shock because the assumption had been that I was immune to it. Anyway, I have COVID. I think it's explanation for why this cold won't go away. I think probably what happened is I had a cold. It reduced my immune system, the effectiveness of my immune system, and then COVID pounced all over me. And that's what I'm suffering from now, COVID in the form of a cold. So there you have it. That is the story. And I'm hoping to, I'm testing now every day to see. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Yal. Thanks, Ryan. I'm hoping that this goes away quickly. I'm basically testing every day to see and waiting to feel much better. But I'm still not back to where I want to be, back to where I need to be, back to where it's crucial that I be to be able to continue to do this. It's a real challenge. But I am doing vitamin D, vitamin C, what do you call it? Zinc, everything. So everything you guys are suggesting and have been suggesting and so on. So there you have it. As I said, I did travel and did give a couple of talks in the middle. So we got a little bit of productivity done. I'm hoping that I feel better soon. Hi, Dave. Thanks. I appreciate the fact that you guys all missed me. Wes says you have COVID. You must have upset God in some way. That's the only rational explanation. I mean, if this is all God can figure out to do to me, given what I've said about him, I don't know. I'm now very promising for God, I guess. But anyway, Derek says, welcome back. Only one day after Jesus. Yes, yesterday was Easter. Said it is a fitting that I come back today, the day after Jesus came back, not the same day. Wouldn't want to be pretentious in that way. And God, it's very difficult to owe D and vitamin D. And certainly none the quantities I take. All right, now God has given me COVID. God is all talk, no action. Yeah, all true, all true. So that's the story. I have no excuses. Sorry about that. No beard. You'll never see me with a beard. If I'm with a beard, something really, really horrible has happened. And you might want to stop watching the show because it's not Iran anymore. He's been taken over by a Ukrainian bot, which is what I'm accused of being taken over by anyway. So but the beard will give it away, the beard. Although, yeah, I need a shave actually. Let's see, what else do I want to tell you about? Yeah, I do have this grueling schedule coming up next week. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. I was looking forward to visiting Eastern Europe, touching and speaking in a number of countries with the all Ukrainian refugees. But it's pretty unlikely that that's going to happen. Harper Campbell says, are you getting too old to travel this much? Maybe do more shows instead. You know, that's definitely a possibility. I don't think so. Well, I think the answer is partially yes. I was probably too old years ago to travel as much as the kind of schedule I do. I'll always travel. I like traveling and you can't replace a live audience, even with as much as I love you guys and as much as I love the super chat and the chat. You can't really replace it with a live audience. A live audience is, you know, it's just fantastic. It makes it all worthwhile. So I expect to travel. I expect to change my traveling style. And, you know, I used to get colds after I travel before. This one's just hit particularly bad. And I think the combination of this with COVID has really thrown me for a loop. So, you know, I'm not too... We'll figure out the future in the future. All right, let's see. So as you know, as you know, you guys are already participating in the super chat. There's nobody here to figure out how much we've raised. I have no idea. I'm going to guess, I don't know, $150, maybe $200. Jennifer, thank you. Missed you and you guys, all of you guys as well. I will say... Oh yeah, super chat. So we're at about $200. So let me remind you all that we have a $600 goal. Given how few programs I've done, we probably have to do a few shows at $2,000 to kind of make our efforts and get us back on schedule. But whatever we do, we do. I appreciate the support. I appreciate all you using the super chat to make quick comments. Taze, thank you. And not just to ask questions. So I appreciate that. But you can ask questions. If you can ask questions about anything, I've already got three, really two shows. But it says they used to get hammered by winter colds until I started drinking alkaline water. Now my colds are barely noticeable. Vitamin D did that for me for many years. It worked like that. As soon as I started taking Vitamin D, number of colds declined. But again, whatever happened, I'm getting clobbered right now. Again, I've never taken this much time off, ever. So this is particularly bad. Okay, I don't have a heavy program scheduled for today. Adam, thank you. Really appreciate that. Thanks for making up for the last super chat time. COVID cold takes a while to show and a while to shake. Hang in there. Good to see you back. Thank you. Jeffrey Miller for raises and shaving cream. Thanks. I use a machine. I have since I was 16. Derek Encanto. What is Encanto? Remind me what Encanto is. It sounds familiar, but Mike says, feel better soon. Thanks, guys. Mark, welcome back. Thank you. I appreciate it. So it might be a short show just because I'm not sure what my energy level is like. So I don't want to do too much, but do feel free. Oh, the Disney movie. I have not seen Encanto, the Disney movie. I have heard it's good. Disney now right now is in political hot water. So maybe it's a good time to watch the movie. You know, it's good that they can still inspire in spite of being as woke as they seem to be. Apollo, thank you. Really appreciate that. So let's talk about two things. Let's actually start with Ukraine because there's news out of Ukraine, both old news about the flagship. The Russian flagship sinking, but also news from today about a renewed significant Russian attack in Ukraine. So we'll start there and then we'll talk about Elon Musk by Twitter. And oops, let me, I know there's a question here that I am supposed to, let me just copy paste. So as you probably have heard, the Russian army has been amassing for the last two weeks where there's been very almost no action in Ukraine, except in Mariupol, where the Russians are slowly gaining ground and slowly taking over the city and the Ukrainians are just heroically and resisting the Russians. But the Russians have taken the troops out of northern Ukraine and moved them all to the east. And today it looks like they launched a massive attack along the entire eastern front of Ukraine from, I can't remember the name of the city, kind of in the center all the way south throughout the Donbass area. This is an area the Russians claim once autonomy from Ukraine. This is an area dominated by ethnic Russians and, you know, this is the whole Donbass area. And, you know, this is Ukrainian territory. Russian has no claim against it, has no legitimate claim against it. Joe, thank you, really appreciate it. I will definitely answer the questions soon. And, you know, they are the fresh because they've been resting up, they brought in new forces, they brought in forces from the north that were devastated, but the remnants of them, they've also brought people in, I think, from different parts of the Russian, from Russia itself, to reinforce the troops. And it's, and they have a lot of firepower, a lot of forces arrayed. The Ukrainians are super motivated. And as I've told you earlier, I think motivation is super important. I think the atrocities that the Russians committed in North of Kiev, the killing of women and children and civilians, the raping of women, the maiming of people just cutting them up and body parts. On the other hand, the amazing heroic resistance of Ukrainian forces in Maripole, all I think will inspire the Ukrainian forces to fight even harder, to be motivated even more than they were before. The Ukrainians clearly have something to fight for. They're fighting for their homes, their families, their land, and they're fighting against evil. And now they've seen evil. They've seen evil in the nakedness of evil. They've seen evil manifest itself in the Russian atrocities all over Ukraine, wherever they've touched. And they've also experienced victory, the victory in the north, stopping the Russians from taking Kiev. And of course, in the sinking of the Russian flagship, the Moskva, Moskva is basically Moscow. This was the pride of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This was a flagship. Thank you, Sam. Appreciate the support. This was the flagship. This is the ship that those soldiers told to f-off at the beginning of the war. This is the ship that represented Russian supremacy on the Black Sea. And it got hit, it appears, by an anti-ship missile launched from Ukraine, from the shore. It probably hit one of their ammunition rooms, started a fire, and ultimately the ship literally sunk. To this day, we don't know how many of the onboard sailors actually drowned, actually were killed, because Russia won't release that number. There's just been no talk of it, but clearly many of them did. And the fact that it just wasn't just hurt, it wasn't just crippled, it was literally sunk. Is quite an amazing feat. And again, a testament, I think, to the Western weapons systems that the Ukrainians are using. This was a Western, as far as I know, it was a Western anti-ship missile that sunk the Moskva. And more evidence, as if we needed one, that Western weaponry, Western weapons systems, just a dramatically superior to anything that, anything that the Russians can muster to the superiority of numbers, the superiority of firepower, the Western weapons systems, just defeat them, time and time again. PR says the only world in which you could implement Iron Man's ideology, the libertarian ideology, is a world in which Putin wins. PR, you don't understand Iron Man's philosophy, you don't understand free markets, and you have no conception of who Putin is and what he is if you think that. That's just ignorant and stupid. Sam, who the hell is Sam? Didn't Sam shake some sense into you? I don't know who Sam is. So, Ukraine is gonna hold on here. It's not gonna be easy for them, they're gonna take massive casualties. So is the Russians. I don't think Ukraine has the capacity because it doesn't have the firepower to take back much of the lands that have been taken from it. They have tried, particularly in the Gerson area, in the area of the south-central Ukraine, and they have not been overly successful there, and I doubt that they have enough to be able to really push the Russians back into Russia, but I do think that they have enough to withstand the Russian assault and to inflict massive casualties in Russia. And look, Russia's already lost, as I told you on day, I don't know, five of this war. No matter what happens, Russia's lost. The latest significant evidence of the loss of Russia is the fact that both Finland and Sweden are considering joining NATO, not considering a likely, very likely, the summer to join NATO. I mean, if Sweden and Norway join NATO, that will be, this war will be one of the greatest strategic blunders in military history. And this is Putin, the strategic genius, right? And it will extend NATO's border with Russia significantly. It will place the Swedish military, which is a very well-trained, very effective military. It has a, Sweden, I don't know if you guys know, but Sweden has a military-industrial complex. It produces military equipment, very good military equipment. It will place that industry at the behest of NATO. Finland, which has fought Russia, Finland, which has fought Russia in the past, has a very motivated, very lethal military force. Again, that force will now be at the disposal of NATO. This will be a massive, massive strategic blunder. And it already is. So basically all Putin has managed to achieve in this war is to unite Europe against him and to bring Sweden and Finland into NATO, which will be huge. So he's already lost the war, no matter what happens on the frontier. But I expect, yeah, Putin is a massive looter. Liam, thank you, wow. So I appreciate that. So we're now at $600, thank you guys. Anything above this is kind of to compensate for the few shows that I've done, but of course I don't deserve it if I do so few shows. But keep it coming. It'll be great to have a good month in spite of the fact that I did so few shows. And oh, and let me also say, I know I owe at least two Iran rules for life shows and I will make those up. I'm not sure exactly when, but I'm keeping count of the ones I owe and I will make them up. So it's $651. Ukraine has received a lot of Western equipment during this lull in fighting over the last three weeks. I expect that equipment to be well used in the East. I expect the Ukrainian forces have been reinforced by fighters from the North. So not only did Russia reinforce its forces, so did the Ukrainians. I expect the Ukrainians to continue to pound on the supply problems, the logistic problems that the Russians had in the North, and I suspect we'll have in the East. I don't think strategy. I don't think Russia has hired any brilliant new generals. I don't think they have any new fantastic tanks. They don't have any new weapons systems that we didn't know about. So I expect that Ukraine is gonna put up a real fight. I expect that Ukraine will hold its ground. They might be defeated here or there, but overall, I think they will be holding its ground. They might take some ground from the Russians. It's gonna be brutal. It's gonna be bloody. It's gonna be massive casualties and Russia will lose. Russia will lose, because they already have lost. And because the longer this goes, the greater embarrassment and humiliation is for the Russians. And note, for example, that we haven't heard much from China about its support of Russia in recent weeks, and that's because China has to a large extent backtracked from supporting the Russians, another Russian significant Russian loss. So again, I think everything I said in the first day of this war continues to be true. I don't think anything has changed. We will watch closely to see what happens with this new front opening up. Ashton, thank you. Wow, Ashton's been a terrific supporter of the show the last few weeks. This is terrific. Thank you. And Taze, thank you as well. So yeah, I will keep track. I'll update you if anything changes. I will update you as fighting continues in the Eastern Front, if the dramatic changes either way. I do not think Putin will result in nuclear. Never try to estimate what a dictator would do. Remember, I was wrong when it came to my estimation of Putin invading Ukraine. I did not think he would do it. I was wrong on that. I could be wrong on the nuclear option, but the nuclear option really is a nuclear option. And I wouldn't be surprised if he used gas, but nukes are very difficult to control, very, very difficult, very difficult to, you know, to basically to control how they're used, where the radiation goes, who gets suffered, and how do you stop it from deteriorating from just a local nuclear tactical thing into a massive World War III? All right, let's quickly say something about Musk buying Twitter, and then I'll go to your questions, because I know there are a lot of them now. Please, no more under $20 questions, because I do, I don't wanna make the show too long, and we're already at 866, and I am starting to feel like maybe I'm losing my voice, and I don't wanna get to the point where I actually am losing my voice. All right, so Musk has put in an offer to buy Twitter, which is pretty amazing. It's about $50 billion. This is his own money. I don't know of another example of an individual buying a company for this kind of money. I would have to do my research to figure it out, but I don't know. It is partially amazing because of the rationale that Elon Musk is using, he's using the rationale of he wants Twitter to be better, not more profitable than necessarily just better in terms of being a better platform for speech. I think it's a great motivation, particularly for a private investor who doesn't have shareholders, and it doesn't have to worry about how he uses shareholder money. I think it's great that a private individual wants to change the direction of a company, and wants to use it for what he sees as the good. I think this is phenomenal. As I said on my show on Musk and Twitter last time, I think this is a great example of how capitalism works. It doesn't just work to promote materialistic values. It also works to promote other values, and here you get an example of somebody trying to promote a society with more speech rather than less. I think that's incredibly noble and good, and that's what Elon Musk is doing, and he's willing to engage in a hostile takeover in order to achieve it. That is a beautiful thing. I think what's happening with Musk and Twitter is a validation of capitalism, a validation of how capitalism works, and the efficaciousness of capitalism, whether he succeeds or fails. It is such a validation, because the fact is that he'll probably fail because of a lack of capitalism, and I'll explain in a minute in the world in which we live. So Elon has put in a significant bid, a significant premium on what the stock was trading at, but why did he put in this bid? Because of course the bid now makes it clear what his aims are. The bid also gives an opportunity for other bidders to get organized and to potentially outbid Elon. The bid also makes it possible for the company itself to defend itself, and it already has. It is, I think it has already voted to put in a poison pill, or is at least talking about putting in a poison pill. So if that is, it's a significant issue, so we'll get to what a poison pill is and how they work, but the fact is that the fact that he had to make up a bid for the company gave the company enough time to put together a defense, and in this case the defense is the poison pill. So why did he have to put in a bid for the company? Because of security law. Basically in 1968, security's law prevents somebody from stealthily, stealthily just means on the quiet, on the hush hush, buying 61% of a company and firing its CEO. Before 1968, that could be done, and indeed that was done. It was done regularly in corporate America. Companies were bought out by the buyer, buying 51% of a company without disclosing the fact that it was doing so, and then basically once it reached 51% firing the CEO and declaring that it now owns this company. CEOs, CEOs of companies that were afraid of being bought out. That something like that happens, if you're buying 51% of a company on the quiet, necessarily bids up the price of the stock. So you have to be willing to put more and more and more of your money into buying the stock and you buy 51%, and then you have to believe that the stock is worth more than what you paid for to justify this, which means that you believe that management were not doing a good job maximizing the profit-generating potential of the assets of the company. And that's what was going on. It was a huge era of takeovers during the 1960s in which companies were taken out because the belief was they were mismanaging the assets. You could argue Twitter is mismanaging the asset that it has. Twitter's not a particularly, if at all, profitable company, so even on the basis of profit, not just on the basis of speech, Twitter is not doing a great job. So in 1968, because managers lobbied Congress to protect themselves, Congress passed the 1968 security law. This is a real example of cronyism. This is an example of managers, CEOs, lobbying Congress to protect themselves, all in the name of shareholders. And what they said was, what the law says is that you cannot accumulate stock without letting the world know why you're accumulating it. And if you want to maintain, if you want to get control of a company, the only way to get control of a company is to do what's called a tender offer, to publicly announce that you want to take over the company and yeah, it's called the Williams Act. You want to take over a company and you're willing to pay X for it. And the reasoning they gave, the reason why this was presented as good for shareholders is one, you would have to pay more shareholders. You wouldn't just pay incrementally a little bit more as you gained towards 51%. You would accumulate stock, let's say, up until 10% because at 10% you would have to make your intention public. And then anything beyond that, you would have to pay the tender price which would have to be significantly higher. So shareholders would get more. But more than that, it would open up the company for bidding because now other people would know that you're interested in this company and they could then step in and say, well, we're willing to give you, we're willing to give 40, we'll give 42. And then there'd be a bidding war that would drive the price up. So this is supposedly good for shareholders and indeed for some shareholders it is very good for companies that are way undervalued and where there's a lot of buyers and a lot of people would wanna buy them, there's a, this would increase the share price. On the other hand, for companies that are marginal or for companies that you won't, don't expect a lot of bidders like I think Twitter, you're not gonna get a significant increase. And at the margin, a lot of people are not gonna take over the company because of how expensive it was. Now, from 1968 till the 1970s, you're so significant decline in hostile takeovers in the United States because of this. And then in the 1980s, people found a way around this. Primarily by raising cheap capital called at the time junk bonds or high yield bonds. What you got is a whole new generation of corporate raiders, people who would come in, buy up companies, break them up, sell off the assets, make a fortune. Kind of people that, other people's money, the movies celebrate. And the 1980s were a period in which this was celebrated. This was amazing. This was American capitalism in a sense, in this sector at least, reborn American conglomerates being broken up. In my view, this is one of the great errors in American history, in American financial history, and a great error for American business. It's an error in which we went from inefficient, cumbersome conglomerates to efficient, competitive, incredibly profitable businesses of the 90s and 2000s. Well, in the 90s, companies came up with this idea of a poison pill. Poison pill is basically where the board decides that it is gonna give preferential treatment to other shareholders other than the one making the tender offer. So they would issue new shares at a very low price and by doing so dilute, but issue new shares that the new, that the person tendering for the company didn't have access to, was discriminated against and issue these shares at very low price, encourage all of the shareholders to buy into them and therefore dilute the share ownership of the guy who is tendering and therefore make it prohibitively expensive for them to actually buy the company out. Initially, this was fought in court because you would think that this would be illegal. This is against their fiduciary duty to protect shareholders. This is a killer of hostile takeovers which are very friendly to shareholders. And indeed, there were courts that determined that it was a violation of the fiduciary duty of the board. But then the most important court in the land when it comes to corporate governance, the most important court in the land when it comes to these kind of issues is the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware. The Supreme Court of the State of Delaware ruled that the poison pills were okay. And as a consequence of them being okay, they are now everywhere. And indeed, if you look at the last 20 years, we've had very few hostile takeovers. That whole idea of American finance, restructuring American business of American finance using capital to complete the reorient American business towards maximizing shareholder wealth, towards profit maximization, that went away. One of the reasons we've seen so much slow economic growth, theme-master, thank you, really appreciate that. One of the reasons we've seen so much slow economic growth over the last 20 years is I think because finance has been neutered, the ability of financiers to restructure American business has been neutered. And that's what we're seeing right now. So Twitter is using, the reason, by the way, that the Delaware Supreme Court is the court that matters is because almost every major corporation in the United States is incorporated in Delaware. The reason every major corporation in the United States is incorporated in Delaware therefore corporate governance is determined by the courts in Delaware is because Delaware courts are very friendly towards management. And therefore management has a huge incentive to incorporate in Delaware. So there you have it, a quick lesson on corporate governance in America. It's perversion, I think, and it's distortion. The lack of freedom in accumulating stock in order to buy, the lack of freedom in takeovers, the basic disappearance of hostile takeovers, which is what we're seeing now. Elon Musk trying to take over Twitter is hostile because the Twitter board does not want him to. It's hard to see a path by which Musk actually succeeds because sadly the courts have given boards of directors almost unlimited power to stop people like Elon Musk from taking over their businesses. I think this is a disaster. I think this is horrible, not just because of Twitter, but more broadly from American business. We will continue to pay the price for this for decades to come. This is an example of the kind of regulation that most of us don't even know exists. Most of us don't even know is out there and yet really limits the ability of markets to function properly, function properly. So it's unlikely Musk is gonna be able to succeed. If he does succeed, then I think it becomes interesting because one of the things I think Musk will discover if he takes on Twitter is how difficult the job is. It's how difficult the job is. Well, I think Twitter can probably be run much better than it is. I don't think this issue of speech on Twitter is easy to solve. I don't think it's something that you can just do like that. It is some simple principle, some simple rule you can impose. This requires deep, hard thinking. It requires thinking about the kind of culture you wanna have, the kind of speech you wanna have. It requires rules that are transparent and objective, which are not easy to formulate. And I think Musk will discover that and that's good. Let Musk use his IQ and let him bring the best people he can find to try to deal with it. So shaking up social media like this would be a terrific thing, would be fantastic. You can have any speech you want except threats on your property, not on somebody else's. That's the difference. So what kind of speech should you be permitted to have on private property like Twitter is an interesting question and it's not obvious what the answer is. And it's not obvious that Elon Musk has the answers, but I do think that shaking it up, that trying something new on this, that doing it differently is something worth experimenting with. But those of you think that this is easy and straightforward, I think underappreciate the issues involved and one of these days we'll get into those issues. Maybe if Musk takes them over, we'll get into those issues, but unfortunately I don't think that's likely to happen. But I don't think anybody has the answer to it. A clear answer to it, I'm sure people have the answer, but it's a real challenge, it's a real challenge. And be a successful company and make money. Don't forget you have to do that as well. Your job is not to guarantee speech for everybody, your job is to make money. How you do all that in a corporate structure on a platform like this is super difficult and nobody else has been successful in creating an alternative, which I find interesting. If it was easy, somebody would have done it and created a real alternative. All right, let's see. So those are my thoughts on Musk buying Twitter. I think that answers Nathan's question. He says, welcome back. Could you please explain the poison pill strategy that's being discussed to keep Musk from purchasing Twitter? Is it a poison pill or property rights violation since person of ownership is diluted? I think it is. I think it should have never been ruled legit. It should have never been ruled constitutional, but the fact is that it is the law of the land and they can do it. So I don't think it's legit. I don't think it should be allowed. I think whether it's a property rights violation, it certainly is a violation of the fiduciary responsibility of the Board of Directors to its shareholders. And I think it should be rejected as such. Let's see. All right, next question. Let's see if there's anything here. Okay, let's just do them by in order. These are the $20 questions. Oh, no, I've got $200 question. Let me do those first. Let's see. What U.S. city, this is from Joe, what U.S. city would you pick for young family to buy their first home? Hope you feel better soon. You know, I don't know. There's so many considerations for that. The first city that I lived in in the United States and raised kids in the United States, although I didn't buy a house because I couldn't afford it, was Austin, Texas, which was a great city then and I think still is to raise a family by a home and live in. So I think suddenly Austin is a fantastic place, but many places and particularly when you're young and you're not paying a lot of taxes, much of California is a great place. Orange County is a fantastic place. Now it's very, very expensive. So maybe it's not a great place for a first-time house, but Nashville, Memphis, Tennessee generally, low taxes, pretty and high quality of life. I just think that there's so many considerations. What are your preferences with regard to weather? What are your preferences with regard to being close or far from family? What are your preferences with regard to job? I don't think there's a... What do you like? Do you like living in a city? Do you like living in a suburb? Do you like humidity? Do you like dry in terms of weather? Do you like cold? Do you like hot? So I really think you have to look at all those considerations, taxes and the regulatory environment being one of them. Are you an employee or are you an entrepreneur? That's a big one. Are you going to have to hire people? So is the area that you want to buy a home an area where you can employ people if you're starting a business? So there's so many considerations. So it's easier for me to list the considerations than it is for me to list the places because you have to figure out. You have to figure out what's best for you. Liam says one of the reasons for your success is you are dynamic. Thank you. You do not have a script. You always fall back... You always fall back on. I do not. People can ask you about anything, even things you haven't thought of before and you give quality original answers. Thank you. Too many intellectuals are narrow and robotic. Liam, I really appreciate that. That is a real compliment, particularly the thing about ask me about anything and I give quality original answers. I appreciate that. Thank you. I don't feel particularly dynamic today, but we'll get back there. Don't worry. Ashton asks, I just wanted to say I was in a very dark place for a while dealing with depression. So much so I was on the verge of suicide. Really sorry to hear that, Ashton. Before I discovered you and I in Rand, I will continue to watch the show and read study philosophy. Thank you for all that you do and for saving me. It is literally my pleasure. Thank you. And you've been an amazingly generous supporter of the show. So I very, very much appreciate that. Thank you. And I look forward to following your progress as you study and read and study the philosophy and as you come more familiar with it and as life in general improves significantly as you integrate these ideas more and more into your life. Because at the end of the day, this is a philosophy for living. It's a philosophy for living a good life, living a good life. We are, by the way, over $1,000. So thank you, everybody. I really, really appreciate that. You guys have been great. We'd have to have a few more shows this week to catch us up. Gail, thank you. She says she agrees with Liam and Ashton. I appreciate that. All right. Brian, a question I meant to ask on April 1. Now, with that intro, I don't know, does that mean it's not a serious question? April 1, April Fool's Day? Let's see. But you didn't have a show. Is the phrase I think therefore I am known as the think-am dichotomy? I don't think it is known as the think-am dichotomy, but okay. If so, can the is-ought dichotomy be formulated as I is therefore I ought? No, but I is therefore I ought is, you know, the principle of morality. That is, I is. That is, I am alive. I am alive and bear a particular nature. And therefore I ought to do certain things so I stay alive. So the is is I'm alive. I have a particular nature that requires certain actions in order to sustain it. And therefore I ought to do these things that will sustain it. How about that? And at the end of the day, of course, I think there are if I am is reversed. I am therefore I think. I am a being of a particular nature. Therefore I must think in order to survive into that is my nature. So I turn it into a serious question. Ryan says, thank you for answering my silly question when you have COVID. Thank you for being a good sport, April Fools. No problem. And of course, at the end of the day, it turned out to be a serious question. Thank you for answering my silly question, April Fools. Ryan says, stay well, get healthier on. Thank you, I appreciate it. All right, let's see other $20 questions. Daniel, hasn't COVID shown the crippling effects of unions and policies they pushed along with tariffs and other protectionist policies? Why can't people connect the dots? John Concurrent has been on fire lately. Glad you're back. Yeah, I mean, no question. COVID has shown why tariffs and why we need more trade, not less. Why unions and all kind of protectionist, local and foreign policies are wrong. And John Concurrent gets it. He's one of the few that gets it. He's one of my heroes coming out of COVID. He had some of the best takes on COVID from the beginning, best takes on vaccines from the beginning, best takes on the FDA from the beginning. Some of the huge was and even more huge John Concurrent fans. So, yes, COVID has shown that we need more free markets, not less. Daniel asked, is it rational to have a career that you love but it gives you a higher cancer risk, 9%? The fire department offered me a job. But all my buddies say they love it. But there is health risks, sleep deprivation, cancer, etc. I think it is rational. I think it's rational to take risks. A lot of people, you know, going to the army is a risk. And yes, it's a rational profession. If you love it and if it's important to you. One of the things that I would do if I were you is if I decide to embrace this career, I would definitely look into reducing the probability of cancer. I'm sure there are ways of doing that. Maybe by figuring out how to have better sleep habits. Sleep is crucial and maybe other means by which you can reduce cancer risk, diet, other things. So I would do everything in my power to reduce the risk but I wouldn't say risk is enough to rule out a profession you would love. At the end of the day, you have to live every moment and even if you have to give up some moments to live well, you want to live well. Harper Campbell asks, when were you propositioned for sex on your hitchhiking trip? Did they offer you money? What are the details behind that? Was it from a married couple? Wow! Where did that come from Harper? Well, it happened a number of times. It was never from a married couple. A woman was never involved. It was all from men. They all offered money. Some of them got into greater graphic details about what they wanted to do to me or what they wanted me to do to them. I didn't accept any of their offers even though I had no money. I was very uncomfortable, very scary, very unpleasant and in one circumstance, I literally had to jump out of the car while the car was moving because I was worried that it wouldn't end with a proposition. That was in Florida, north of Jacksonville on the I-95. Close to border with Georgia. I was hitchhiking, so those are the kind of people who pick you up, what can I say? That's as much detail as I think we need. This was in 1979. Let's see. Okay, let's go from the top. These are all under $20 questions. No more questions, guys. I need to cut the short. If you want, put a significant amount of money if you could ask. The Constitution asks, would objectives be ready to present their ideas if there was a constitutional convention? Some conservatives are pushing for one when it would be opportune for us. I think we're ready. I don't think anybody's there to listen. The conservatives are worse today than they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And the last thing in the world I want right now is a constitution convention. I don't think we would convince enough people to make a difference. We're ready to make the case of what needs to happen. But there's nobody on the right. There's nobody in the Republican Party or conservatives who would listen to us. Ashton for $100, wow. What is your view on Friedrich Nietzsche as a philosopher and his idea of the ubermensch? Is it the same as Einwren's idea of the ideal man? No, it's not at all. Nietzsche's idea of the ubermensch is somebody who is above morality. Somebody who so basically Nietzsche accepts kind of altruism as morality and believes that some men can escape it, can be above it, but he concedes morality to the Christians in a sense he gives up on morality. And the ubermensch is above morality. And he's above morality in every sense. That is, none of the rules principles apply to him. And he is guided by what Nietzsche considers pure will power, will, the will. In other words, he is guided by emotion. Indeed, one of the things that ubermensch overcomes is reason. So the ubermensch is immoral according to objectivism. It's exact opposite of the ideal man. The ideal man redefines morality properly in accordance with reality. He doesn't abandon morality. He doesn't rise above, supposedly, morality. He embraces a proper true morality and can define it and defend it. And he identifies reason as the way in which he is ideal. Reason is his means of being good, of morality, of survival, of thriving, of succeeding. He rejects emotion as true subcognition and as means of knowledge and as guides to action. They might be in the background. They might be providing you with information about you. But they're not reasons in and of themselves to act. The ideal man acts on the basis of reason, not on the basis of emotion. So, no, the ubermensch is very much not the ideal man. Iron man, like the aspects of Nietzsche, the romantic aspects, the aspect of the shattering of convention, the shattering of Christian morality. She liked this criticism of altruism and of Christian morality. But what she rejected, rejected vehemently, is his focus on emotion, focus on will and rejection of reason. It's the exact antithesis of Einstein's philosophy, the exact opposite. Okay, Michael says, are red cameras a rights violation? Red light cameras, you know, the streets are quote owned by the government. They have, they have a responsibility to put in rules of the road, if you will, and to stop people from violating those rules. And so it's completely within, they prove you to put in red lights cameras. They shouldn't own roads. And then you'd have red lights cameras owned by private individuals. But the government here is acting as if it's a private individual. And that in and of itself is not a rights violation. It's the whole concept of them owning property is the rights violation, not the cameras. Michael asks, they say Elon Musk only had a vision for SpaceX. The government took the initial investment to create NASA and show someone like Elon it was possible. I mean, it's true, the government took the initial investment to create NASA. The government drove out private capital. Okay, so what? If the government had not done NASA, would there be no Elon Musk's? Would they, would we have no space program? I don't think any of that is true. You can read the work of Robert Henlein describing a private space program in the 1950s. And what it would look like and how it would function and what the motivations were, what the incentives would be. People were already imagining it. It was just a question of entrepreneurs wealthy enough to do it. Liam says, we live in some bad times in some serious ways. I'm glad you're back. Feel better. Thank you. I appreciate that. Times else are good. So don't forget the good that exists in these times. I'll be doing a talk at OCon on why I'm still optimistic in spite of everything. Michael asked, what group of people get more excited about ideas than the Jews? You know, but they get, most Jews get excited about stupid ideas. I mean, I don't know. Objectivists get more excited about ideas than Jews. I don't know that the Jews are a group of people. There are many groups of people within the Jews that some of whom I am more positive towards than others. I don't like the whole big category collective group thing even when it comes to Jews. Did you get a chance to watch a Bronx Tale? I had it downloaded. For some reason it didn't play. I'll get to it, Dave. I promise it's on my list. I still need to do the kite thing. And I, that's another one. I downloaded it and now won't let me play and I can't find, if you know, if you know a service that carries it, I will watch it. I can't find a service that carries it where I can actually get it to stream. Michael asked, who is your favorite comedian? Do you like Russell Peters? I don't know Russell Peters. Groucho Marx is probably my favorite comedian. That dates me a little bit. I know some people who do not say for retirement and say they'll just work until they die. Is this rational? If they're enjoying their life and saving, it takes away from the enjoyment. I don't think it's rational, only because you can't control certain things. You can't control getting sick. You can't control getting into an accident. You have to have some kind of rainy day fund that, rainy day fund that protects you from accidents from bad things happening to you, which are out of your control. Charles Butts says you'll buy me a Blu-ray player. I have a Blu-ray player. I just don't have the Blu-ray, so I guess I could buy the Blu-ray. Okay, I'll give one more shot at trying to find a stream and if I can't, I'll buy the Blu-ray. Michael says, do you think you got COVID because they removed mask mandates from some of your PUNA allies in April? No, I think I got COVID after I got the cold. The hypothesis is that I got COVID after I got a cold and my immune system was weakened and that's why I got the COVID. So, but that's our hypothesis. And it's consistent with the fact that it's been two weeks already. I should have, if I got COVID two weeks ago, then I should be over it by now. So, anyway, it's a weird kind of conglomeration of things and we don't know. The rule is these days, 10 days from start of symptoms. So, thanks Charles Butts, I appreciate that. It's 10 days from the start of symptoms. I got my symptoms 13 days ago. So I'm just waiting for a negative COVID test and to feel well and then I'll start traveling again. Free Trade asks, Taze, thanks for joining the Iran Book Show on YouTube. Hey Iran, good to have you back. I sent the super chat in regular chat because YouTube wouldn't let me super chat it. But that means I have to find it. Yeah, I don't think I can... Did you do it after the super chat or before the super chat? Ah, so you're asking about the Russian plans in Ukraine. What are the Russian plans in Ukraine? I talked about that in the beginning of the show. The Russians at this point, I think, will want to take over eastern part of Ukraine and declare victory. I don't think they have the stomach for prolonged war beyond that. EE-00 or something, he says, welcome back Iran, we red light camo to a way to confront their accuser. Does that mean speed traps? Unconstitutional? I mean, the accuser could be the cop who shows you the photo in a court. Does it matter if the cop literally took the photo of you speeding or whether the machine took it? The machine takes it in any case, it's dramatic if he actually did it. I'm not convinced of that. Anyway, I think, I mean, the Russians would love to wipe Ukraine off the face of the earth. They'd like to occupy it completely. They can't and they won't, but they will take as much of eastern Ukraine as they can. They will punish the Ukrainians as much as they can and they will declare victory. And right now it's about saving face for the Russians in the short run. Long term, hard to tell, hard to tell. All right, I think my voice is maxed out only an hour today. Usually we do two, but that's the limitations placed on me. 1200 bucks guys, thank you. Really, really, really appreciated. Particularly those of you who gave 100 and more, Ashton gave like 300, so thank you Ashton. But yes, couldn't have got to 1200 without all of you participating and supporting the show. Thank you. It's going to be back. I expect it to be a show tomorrow. I think it's a show where I have like people and it's a Q&A tomorrow. So come on board with lots of questions. Hopefully I'll be feeling even better tomorrow and we'll just take it one day at a time and slowly get better. Thanks a lot guys and see you all tomorrow.