 Hey guys. Hello, Niran. Hey, running a little late. Here we go. The radical fundamental principles of reader, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday afternoon, here in Puerto Rico, at least. Everybody's having a fantastic weekend and enjoying yourselves. I apologize. I didn't do a show yesterday. I meant to. I had it all planned out, but I ate something bad on Thursday and it knocked me for a loop yesterday. So I'm starting to recover from ever this super sensitive stomach. I ordered this salad with chicken strips on it, and which I've eaten before. I didn't realize my wife had ordered it spicy. So when it arrived, there was this spicy sauce that you could add to it. So I took the whole thing of the spicy sauce and added the whole quantity to the salad because I wanted to make it spicy. So it was the spiciness that already existed on it plus the spice that I added destroyed me. So lesson learned. Taste before you add spice. All right. We have a bunch of new people on the panel today, new people in the sense that they haven't been panelists before. So this will be fun. And so we've got some added people. Of course, you guys watching live or not on the panel can still ask questions. You can use the super chat to do it. And let me see. I'm going to go to a different view. We're going to go to speak of you. And let's see. What else do I need? I want to remind everybody two sponsors that I want to remind you of, although I see I need to change the description under this and add the sponsorship. ExpressVPN is a sponsor ExpressVPN.com slash Iran. You go there, you get if you sign up, you get I think an extra three months by putting my name on it. And you get a VPN. And it's a pretty cool VPN. It's the one I use when I travel. Let's see. And the second one is, of course, I'm in university, university.invan.org. And we'll keep talking about I'm in university. But I think if any of you want to really deep dive into objectivism, once you're finished with I met herself, and of course, we plan to pick off that's the place to go. Of course, the only place you can get real deep dive with live live live professors that that's particularly true of the full time students, but you can also audit it. All right, so we're going to go through our panelists. We have a lot of them today. Again, this is becoming more popular. So we have 10 of them will give them an opportunity to ask questions. And then we will see if they're super chat questions, we'll take those friend hopper. Thank you for the support. And we'll start with Jennifer. I wanted to ask another question about that abandoned land issue. Yeah, I remember in the past, we talked about if you wanted to preserve, let's say spotted owls or something, that you would buy some land so that the owls could live on the land. So if you did that, how would you then keep the land from being perceived as abandoned, like put a sign up or something? Yeah, I think put a sign up. You would be fenced and you would put a sign up and you would be very explicit about its use. I think most people, if they buy forest land as compared to the government, which just leaves it as is and therefore allows fires to age and all kinds of nonsense, would clean the place up once in a while, take out the brush, do some basic maintenance kind of stuff to declare this is my property and these are my owls. And of course, they can fly away, but you could create an environment where you could keep the owls and encourage them to stay. So yeah, I think some basic maintenance, it doesn't take much. And I think what Adam was saying is you've abandoned it and you never look at it, you never do anything about it. There's a lot of property here. But if anybody wants to make a business of taking over abandoned property, there's a ton of it's human Puerto Rican. So because more Puerto Ricans live off the island and live on the island, there's just a lot of abandoned real estate on the island, which is unfortunate. It would be better maintained if it was people, people actually took care of it. It would be nice. And I was thinking like, let's say you just went fishing there sometimes or something. And you could also like every few years tell the government I still own this or something of that nature. And I assume you like spotted owls. So you go there and I don't know, you feed them, you watch them on binoculars, you do something, otherwise whatever it is that you're observing, you'd want to enjoy. And I think the nature, what is it? The nature conservatory, there's a private non-profit that raises money and buys just huge quantity of land to leave. And I think they do some of this basic stuff and maybe they even have trails to allow you. And I have a lot of respect for people like that. They're not asking the government to take the land. They're not asking the government to rezone the land. They're putting their money where their mouth is. They believe in the stuff. They go and they buy the stuff and it sits there. Yeah, they could charge visitors and all that stuff. Yeah. Great. Thanks, Jennifer. Jonathan, it's good to see you, I would say, but I can't see you because your camera's off. You know, you're on, can you come back to me in just 10, maybe 10 minutes? I'm just finishing up something. Thank you. No problem. All right, we're going to go to Tim. Hi, Tim. You're muted, Tim. Hi, Dr. Brook, a longtime supporter first time on the Zoom. So good to be here. The question I have to start with is about how a rights-respecting government would apply property rights of its citizens in an international context. So to give a kind of silly example, if I go to Mexico and someone steals my sunglasses, the U.S. is not going to send an army battalion to obtain them. Obviously, up to a certain point, it becomes an issue of the criminal, what can I say here, the police in the courts in whatever country I'm in. But obviously, when we look at the history of the 20th century, we've seen nationalizations by both nationalist and communist forces. What principle would a right-respecting government apply to decide that sunglasses no property of an oil field, yes. Where is the dividing line and how would one determine that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really complicated question. I'm not trying to wheeze a lot of it, but it really is. It's something that would when we have such a government, they would have to really think it through and have clear policies and have objective standards for these things. I think that the different governments might come up with slightly different standards, and that would be legit. So for example, I think the United States, given its military power, probably would have different standards in a small country that couldn't really project power to defend the property rights of its citizens overseas. And it would be in a weaker position to do so. So I think you would have to take that into account. What can I objectively realistically do? And I think obviously America can do a lot more than, I don't know, Estonia or whatever. Estonia is completely there waiting, completely dependent on others. So I think you would have to come up. I mean, I've often said, you'd have to categorize, first of all, you'd have to categorize different countries in different ways. And one of the categories would be, look, here are countries that if you go there, just know we're not going to start a nuclear war to protect you. You know, it's just not realistic for us to do anything if something happens to you. You're on your own and take that into account. You want to do business in that country? You're on your own doing business in that country. We're just now going to deal with it. And therefore, these are countries where we typically wouldn't have diplomatic relations. We wouldn't have an embassy. And if you followed my foreign policy, that it covers a lot of countries. A lot of countries we just wouldn't recognize, we wouldn't sanction. You know, countries that we did sanction, that we did have embassies and so on, we would have treaties and we would expect those countries to abide by the treaties. And I think some of those treaties would probably be some kind of international recognition of protection of property rights. But we'd also tell our citizens, look, basically you've got to abide by the law of the country. You might not agree with it or whatever, you know, whatever the drinking age is, they do it because otherwise, if you violate the laws of this other country, you're in trouble. And there's only so much we can do, right, to respect the laws of this other country. Now, what happens when they do a nationalization, when they do something on a large scale? And it clearly is a violation of property rights. It's not within the optional category. But it's clearly a violation. I think A, it depends on the nature of the country. So, you know, if somebody like France suddenly nationalized all American property in France, I think that the first step would be to say, well, France is no longer a friend of the United States. France is no longer one of those countries that we recognize. And so I shut down the embassy, I'd bring people home. You know, you would do whatever you could short of war to make it clear to this country that this was unacceptable and unpermissible, and you would change their categorization from friendly to unfriendly and everything that that is that relates to. I think it's different if it's a country like Saudi Arabia or Iran, right? These are, you know, and then suddenly in the 1950s, they were barely countries. They were, they were, you know, particularly Iran was influenced by the great powers. There was no, the government was very weak. And they want to nationalize the oil. I mean, no, I mean, you just put your foot down and you make it clear to them. And there's no, you know, all you have to do is really put your foot down and it stops. And the United States try to do that weekly by very in a weak way by replacing the prime minister of Iran in the early 1950s. And then they got the Shah, but then in the end, they nationalized oil anyway and the US did nothing. And the same and in Saudi Arabia, which we didn't even try. And of course, the signal we sent to the world was in 1956, when we required the British and French demanded that the British and French retreat from their attempt to take the Swiss canal and reassert sovereignty, reassert ownership over the Swiss canal in Egypt. And then we said, yeah, you can nationalize anything. You know, the thing is in foreign policy is you don't have to say, you don't have to do a lot to exert a lot of pressure. You just have to be tough in a few situations and people don't mess with you. You know, and if you get a reputation of you are protecting the property rights and the individual rights of your citizens, then people will stop violating them because they don't want to piss you off for a variety of reasons. They want to trade with you. There's more benefit for that. And again, if you're a small country, you have to think it completely differently there. You have to tell your citizens, you're doing it your own risk. Yes, diplomatically, we'll do whatever we can. But, you know, we're not going to go to, we don't have the military power to force these countries to do what we want. We don't have the military power to really protect your property rights when you go overseas or protect them within the borders, but we can't protect them over there. We'll do what we can, but it's not much. And I think that's the situation of pretty much every country in the world. That's the advantage of the United States being a superpower, or at least being a superpower in its past. I'm not sure if it is anymore, but it is, but it doesn't act like one. And England did the same thing in the 19th century. They asserted themselves when their citizens or when their property was being in home ways. They also asserted themselves in places where they shouldn't have. But, yeah, so hopefully that covers it. Thanks, Tim. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. Okay, Matthew. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good. So while back you asked about ideas to advance your show or for making your show better, and I got a few things. You know, I think first, you know, is the show a YouTube show or is it a podcast? You know, it sounds like most of your followers hit the podcast. So I think there's a differentiation there and maybe some value to be had in considering that. And then to a regular schedule, and I know you travel a lot and you've got a erratic schedule. I know other podcasts have guest hosts. I know you were a guest host for Leonard Peacoff or some of the shows do best of releases. So they do a best of the Iran Brooks show while Iran's traveling. What else did I have? Oh, ads. I'm in favor of the advertising. I'm all for it. What do you mean ads on the podcast? Yeah, I think you should get every dollar you can, any way you can. And if we get interrupted by Iran Brooks, so Tammy Baldwin can tell me how she wants to lay broadband internet to the rural farmers in Wisconsin, and then Iran comes on and goes the opposite direction. I'm all for it. Call it same to the victim, but I'm all for it. Yeah, it's funny some of the ads they put on my show. I mean, they have no concept and sometimes it's a complete contradiction. So yeah, I mean, both are good. I think that I don't know, you know, right now things are going through a little bit of a change, but I think it's probably in terms of listenership about 50-50 between YouTube and podcast. I think it was more YouTube, but you know, I've talked about this about viewership and YouTube declining, not knowing exactly what's going on. We're going to try some experiments in the months to come to see if I can figure out what happened exactly. It could be this new category of live shows that people don't really realize there's a new show on, because they don't look in the right tab. So we'll play around with it. We'll try to figure it out. Podcast has increased recently. December was a very good month for podcast, but total listenership is bigger on YouTube, I think. It's hard to segregate it all up, because YouTube also covers all the smaller, the shorter videos. So the audience is both almost equally, but I have to admit one of the challenges I have is I like the live feature of it. If I was doing a podcast, maybe I would tape it. I would do it differently, but I like arguing with the people in the chat. I know people who listen to me on the podcast later on don't always like that, but I like the fact that somebody's actually reacting to me live. I'm a teacher after all. I can't have a classroom here. I wish I could, but the chat, so I like watching it and seeing how it's moving and the little disruptors who come in and shake it up and piss me off. And I do get pissed off. It's interesting how they actually do affect me more than I think is objectively necessary. So I have to play that balance of what really gets me going and makes me the best. I think it is having a live audience versus what a podcast audience would like, which is just I think straight content and a very little interaction with an audience. The second one is interesting. I was thinking about it yesterday, like I was feeling bad and could I call somebody up to just fill in for me? Maybe I'll consider doing that. I do try, I don't know if you've noticed, but I do try when I travel to put up content like old lectures, like talks that I've given and things like that. I try to post those on a regular basis so that there's always new content coming out while I'm traveling. I'm also going to try, now that I'm doing these short newsy shows, I will try to do them on the road because I think it'll be easier. The problem on the road is God, I have to sit down and do a two hour show in an hour that is completely screwed up, but already I'm doing them in hours that I always thought were screwed up. Who the hell listens to your one book show in the morning? Why would anybody want to listen to your one book show in the morning? Well, it turns out a lot of people do want to listen to it in the morning. So I can just do it whenever I have time when I'm on the road and whoever listens to it live listens to it live and the rest listens to it later. So I'm going to be a lot more flexible in terms of doing it on the road than I have been. So I'll be able to do more shows. I've got to set up as long as the bandwidth is decent. I can do it from any way. So that is the solution for that. I will look at guest hosts. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could just hire Don Watkins full-time and I would just, you know, we'd write books, he'd guest host, we'd do all kinds of fun stuff together. But I think the institute pays him more than I can afford. And he's probably, you know, maybe for the cause, he's more valuable over there. But, you know, who cares about the course? No, I didn't say that. What was the other one? Yeah, I think I covered those. Advertising? Yeah, advertising, you know, I'm keeping advertising on the podcast because it's a nice source of revenue that comes in every month. Again, if somebody gave me a $2,000 a month check not to do it, or if somebody raised enough not to do it, then I would stop it because I'd be getting more money not to do it than I would be getting from doing it. But nobody's done that yet. And we haven't, nobody's raised enough money to justify it. I don't monetize the YouTube ones. So, you know, my live shows never have advertising even when they replayed on YouTube. And, you know, I could consider monetizing them at some point. We can play again. I want, what I want to do this year is I want to experiment. I want to try different things. You do one show with no monetization, one with see if the differences in viewership, see if, you know, the monetization is enough to to make a difference or not, and do a bunch of stuff like that to see. Yeah, all right. Thanks, Matthew. Appreciate the ideas. All right, Steven, you are muted. I am unmuted. Thank you. You're now here. Yeah, so basic question in regards to Ayn Rand and how she looks at specific definitions, if you can define them, maybe give examples. So for me, you know, as I struggle through the epistemology of objectivism by Ayn Rand, I have to read the chapter over and over because it's quite deep. If you can identify the basic concepts, the definition of concrete axioms, floating abstractions, I think those would be helpful for me as I continue to study and dive into Ayn Rand. So I don't have the definitions of any of those just readily available. I don't have them memorized. And I have to say, while I think I have a good understanding of the epistemology, I don't have a technical understanding of the epistemology. But, you know, a concrete is a fact out there in reality. So it's something that you can point to. It's an example that you can elaborate. Now, the lexicon is really useful for these. And although I'm not sure there'd be a definition of concrete in the lexicon, but let's just curious if there is. Let's try concrete. Yes. So I don't think there is for concrete. There's abstractions and concretes. Okay, here we go. Abstractions as such do not exist. They are merely man's epistemological method of perceiving that which exists. And that which exists is concrete. So concrete is everything out there. It's a thing I can point to. Right? It's the action or the thing that one can actually perceive and you can point to. And part of the idea is always if you really want to understand an abstraction, you have to concretize it. You have to bring it down to the point where you can point. See this, see this, see this. These are the manifestations in reality of this abstraction. And sometimes that concrete is inside you. That is sometimes that concrete is about your emotional state or, you know, so a concrete of love is the feeling you feel. But somebody, that's a concrete, you know, to illustrate an abstraction like love. What was the other one, concrete? So you kind of define the floating abstraction, which I got kind of, I think it's the same thing. An abstraction is floating. So floating abstraction is going to be an abstraction that you have not concretized. That you have not brought down to the level by which you can point at things. So you don't really have a grasp of it. Let's, I'm trying to think of, you know, Andrew says God is a good floating abstraction. Well, it's, yes, I mean, there's a sense in which, but I want to think of something real that you would have to do the work in order to actually see it. So I think for a lot of people, capitalism is a floating abstraction, or egoism is a floating abstraction, because they haven't done the work to break it down to, okay, what does egoism actually mean? What are the actions? What are the concrete actions that illustrate egoism versus hedonism versus altruism, of course, the opposite of it? Do I see what makes egoism unique as compared to those? And do I see the kind of actions that are egoistic, and can I point to them, and can I make them real? Freedom to many people is a floating abstraction, because they have no, you ask them to define it, they have no idea, the ability to do whatever you want. Well, that's not quite right about freedom. So, you know, people don't have a concrete understanding, a real understanding of freedom, they've never defined it really, and they've never brought it down to examples, real-world examples. And that's what you really need to be able to do with abstractions is bring it to real-world examples. So a lot of abstractions are being held by people as floating abstractions, because it takes real work. And most of, and you know, we're not taught when we learn these abstractions as kids, they don't teach us the work necessary to get them. They just present them and give you a definition you're supposed to memorize, and they don't explain where it comes from. What are the, what are the concrets that make this abstraction possible or make this abstraction true? Very good. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Sure. Thanks, Steve. All right, Adam. Yes. Ukrainian soldiers have been training abroad, mostly in countries that have adapted the American pragmatist philosophy of education. The Ukrainians in their own preschools and kindergarten's used the Montessori system. And the observation is whatever they are being trained to do in their military role, whether it's operate equipment, organize things and so on, they are training in half the time that it takes the people of the host country, the ones educated in the pragmatist system to learn. Would it not be more efficient for the American military, for example, to first train recruits in thinking conceptually and only then go on to specific military skills? Yeah, if they could open their own Montessori schools. I don't think you could train somebody conceptually at that level as an adult. I'm also not completely convinced about your interpretation of Ukraine. That is my experience of Ukrainians that I've met over the years is that they're quite pragmatist. There's a question of Montessori education until what age and until what age is it effective and then what happens later. So I would attribute a lot of their ability to learn the skills to operate the machinery faster. Some of it is, I'm sure they have a better educational system than a lot of the western countries maybe. But I think the much bigger issue is motivation. I think motivation is a big part of learning and particularly when you have to do kind of raw duties like you do in the army, it's boring. I think I remember learning how to use a tank and how to maintain a tank and all that. I was probably super not productive. I probably did it really, really badly. I was probably not at my best conceptually because I wasn't really motivated. When I had to do it because I don't know, we were under attack or something, the motivation came and I think that I think Ukrainian troops right now are super motivated. They take the best to train overseas so you're getting exposure to some of the best people. And yeah, they're doing an amazing job in learning these skills. Partially they're learning them really, really fast because they know their lives depend on it. And a lot of the westerners who learn these skill sets, their lives don't depend on or they don't perceive it because it's too far removed. And I don't think so if I would, again, if I remember my military training, I don't think that there was any way they could have taught me how to think and then taught me how to use a tank. I don't think that's how you learn. I mean, part of conceptual learning and part of Montessori is you learn by example, by doing and then you have to be able to integrate that knowledge. So I don't know what kind of course of study you would give the soldiers. I mean, yes, ideally, everybody in the world had Montessori up until a certain age and then had a rational curriculum beyond that age. I don't think Ukraine has it properly, fully, and I don't think any country has it, certainly though they're likely to be better than the US, but I don't think that much better. Most Ukrainian adults are pretty pragmatic. The one thing that in my experience at the university level is that if I started a course in programming by having the students read Ayn Rand's introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, they got much better results in programming, at least in an object-oriented language than the average student who spent the same amount of time just learning the language. That is fascinating and that is really interesting. It would be interesting to run that as a real life experiment because I mean, you could revolutionize education that way if we actually introduced these epistemological principles into the classroom as a precursor, particularly in the sciences and engineering and in things like programming where I think the applicability is so, I mean, applicability, everything is direct, but here it's super direct, the kids would see it immediately. That's very cool. And one of my students in that class was the first one in the history of the, at that time it was Sun, now it's Oracle, Java exam to get a perfect 100% score where you only need two thirds, 67% to get certified. So I think the results have been as you'd expect. Yeah, that's amazing. I'm curious how many other professors have done that and the kind of results that they get. I'm sure with a certain percentage of the students, you're going to get exceptional results. It just changes the way you think about the world. Thank you, Adam. Debbie. Hi, Yaron. So I've been thinking a little bit lately about the value of visibility. I think there was a discussion in HBL meeting on the minds last week that brought it up that it was referred to as a, like people are ravenous for it. And I think that kind of makes sense. But I have my own thoughts on why. Why is that such a value? But I'd like to hear yours. Oh, you're not going to tell me yours? You're not going to have any comments on yours? You're just going to... I could tell you mine if you want. I just didn't want to ask a long Ramrim question and make you wait 10 minutes before you could answer it. So if you want to hear my name, you can. I'm curious about yours, but I do think that it has, it's very similar to art. We live in a very, as human beings, in a world in which we deal with grand abstractions. We need those abstractions in order to survive. We need those abstractions in order to live well and in order to be happy. So it's a survival necessity to deal with these abstractions. But it does make it hard to hold them. It goes back to whose question was it? It was Steven's question, I think. It goes, it's hard to hold those abstractions, even though you're living them and you're using them. And I think the visibility is it gives you a concretization of the abstraction. It gives you a direct concretization of the abstraction without having to do the work because it's automatized. So art does that by presenting you with a sculpture or painting that has concretized some value, abstract value that you have, and now you can see it, literally see it. Even though you can't draw on abstractions, you're seeing a concrete that represents that abstraction and you're getting the, and I think the same is true of visibility. Visibility, what they mean is psychological visibility. It's somebody else giving you recognition of you, of who you are and what you are, and seeing you in a deep sense, seeing who you are as the values you have as a human being. And it does the same thing. It's very hard to be objective about self. It's very hard to hold one's own value as an abstraction. It's also hard to be objective about oneself. So one needs a certain affirmation, but also one needs just the knowledge that, yeah, that's me and I can see it in somebody else. And then of course, you add to that the fact that there's reverse visibility, you're seeing the other person and they share your values, hopefully, because usually when you get to that level, you're sharing values and they're sharing your values. And so it's a unique human experience in that sense. You see yourself and you see your values and you see that in somebody else, which is super powerful. Yeah, I agree. That's really helpful because it's formulated quite differently from the way I did. But I think we're getting at the same thing, because it was essentially like the way I experience it is, I'll just take a concrete case. My boss, I've got long COVID, I've had it since OCOM, and I was talking to my boss on the update for health status, and he made this comment of you're just so incredibly productive even now. I can't wait to see what it's going to be like when you're back, you got your health back. And that was just amazing. And the thing is that productivity and organization, those are things that I take a lot of pride in. The way I perform in my job is something I really value and my ability to be super efficient and integrated and purposeful in my work. And it was like he saw all that and he reflected it back to me. And it was, it did, it kind of came as a, it's that third party perspective. It's like, yeah, he's seeing the same thing I'm seeing, and it's something that I love about myself. Well, and it brings it to consciousness, right? So you might be seeing it, but you don't think about yourself all the time because you're not a narcissist, right? So it's in the background, it's something you value, it's something there. But what somebody else telling you, hey, you're really good at this and you go, yeah, I am. And it's bringing it to consciousness with all the emotion and the pride and the self-esteem that it brings with. So it's incredibly powerful and it increases our awareness of self. And therefore, I think, and that kind of work is necessary to raise our self-esteem. You actually have to work at pride. Pride doesn't just happen. And sometimes to work at pride means somebody who reminds you, oh, yes, I should be proud of this by just saying something, hey, you're good at X. It's true. Yeah. So it's sort of like helps to strengthen and clarify one's own values. And I just love what you said about art. At first, I had no idea where you were going with that when you said it's like art, but it makes sense. It's the same thing in a like an abstract way. It's a way of concretizing and clarifying your values. In this case, it's somebody else reflecting them back or you seeing them in someone else. Yeah. I mean, art is a way, is a reflection of your values back to you. I mean, that's what can be incredibly powerful. Why you know, why it's so important, I think, for human existence, why I mean, described it as a survival value. Art is not just optional. It's something you need to be a good conceptual thinker, good, exceptional human being. You need art exactly for that. You need those values projected back and you need and other people serve a similar function. Cool. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Debbie. Yeah, I'm coming to you next, Andrew. So go for it. Well, I'm interjecting on this point. I do think though, a really big warning sign should be placed around psychological visibility, because it is close to emotional, it is not as the way you described it properly conceptualized, but it is close to emotional validation. And that is really poisonous. And I think we should be careful about the fact that Nathaniel Brandon, who's one of the biggest second handers in the Objectivist movement, formulated this value. I know it was under Ayn Rand, but I think she, I think she, she agreed with it. And I do think it's, I mean, I think you can introspect and see it, right? I mean, you can, you can see it in your relationship with other people, particularly a romantic love relationship as a lot of this. And so, you know, so just because it isn't Nathaniel Brandon, I wouldn't dismiss it. You have to be careful not to turn it into a second handed type of thing, because it can be. And I think some people get, and some people get their affirmation and their value from other people in this way. But, you know, obviously, I think we've differentiated from that. So I don't think, I think it's a real phenomena that, yes, like a lot of things, you have to be really clear, particularly with regards to emotions, one has to be really clear what one is dealing with. I can give a good contrast between a second handed, what is not actually visibility, but what's something else. And that's like, just to just take Peter Keating, when he got all this praise for being like a successful architect and everything, but he knew he was a fraud. That was, you know, like the second handed version that he was constantly seeking that praise to give himself some kind of like justification for his existence. But it was the exact opposite, because in fact, his real self, it was aiding in the annihilation of himself. He was suppressing his true self. And ultimately, there was nothing left by the end, precisely because he was seeking so much that external affirmation that was actually not aligned. He didn't even have values by the end, but like he had some weak values like painting and Katie Halsey, and he just never cultivated those. So I think that's a good contrast for what's what second handed is actually the opposite, the second handed version I think is the opposite. And it's actually painful, like when I get, suppose someone says an observation that's just totally out of line with the way I'm thinking about something or with my values, but they, but it comes as a compliment, like, I don't know, Debbie, I can, I can't think of a good example, but well, painting, let's just take that because I've never even tried. And I'm not a good painter. If I did try it, it'd be like finger paintings. So like, let's say someone came to me and said, Debbie, you're a brilliant painter. You're so, you're so extraordinary. And I just want to praise you for that, like based on some thing or painting I generate. And like, when I get that kind of thing that doesn't align with my own values, and the way I view myself, I feel, it makes me feel kind of empty and like, Oh, this person doesn't see me at all. And it's like a yucky feeling, whether it's a praise or or a criticism. But if it doesn't align with the my view of myself and with my values. So I think there's a huge chasm between some second-handed thing. It's not like a close, like they're almost the same and you got to be really surgical. They're radically different. If you like, they were, they were quite, you don't know yourself and they were quite real introspection to know what's real and what's not. So in that sense, I think they can be, they can be close in somebody who's not good at identifying their own values and introspecting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Andrew. There he is. Hello. Just one other point on that just quickly. Rand did in her letters, I thought this was just interesting, that some, some reader had wrote to her like, I don't know if you need praise for your work. And she said, I do. Yeah. Yeah. And the ultimate first-hander said, so, you know, I know she spoke artistically, but I like that. And also as an objective moralist, you're not blaming your wife for your stomach ailment, are you? Absolutely not. Okay. I should have, I should have, I should have integrated. I didn't integrate. I should have, I should have, you know, the lesson learned is taste your food before you put the spicy sauce in it. Yeah. I mean, I know she ordered the spicy sauce, but that didn't mean you needed to pour it all over the food. Well, no, she ordered the food already spicy. That's what I did. And then on top of really, really spicy food, I added more spicy sauce and that's what killed me. I could deal with spicy food. It's the combination of spice plus plus plus spice. And I pulled the whole thing. I wasn't even being, because I thought it's not that spicy. And of course, I should, if I tasted it, I would say, Oh, this doesn't need any more spicy sauce. And I would have left it alone. Dr. Brooke, there's a story about Rockefeller. It's probably apocryphal, but supposedly when he was interviewing somebody for a important job, he would take them out to a meal. And if they season to their food before they ate it, he would not hire them because he assumed that they would make rash decisions. All right, I'm fired. I'm fired. I have learned the hard way Rockefeller was absolutely right. I'm not doing it anymore. A couple of things on California, your own. So a few things I noticed this week. One is they're facing a budget deficit the first time in a while. I also saw a figure that said that the population exodus doubled year over year. And the governor Newsom made somewhat of an odd statement about freedom and California being a freedom state odd in the sense that he used the concept freedom, which I'm not really used to leftist doing. Oh, no, everybody, everybody uses the concept freedom. Nobody's against freedom. I hear the right thing, right politicians saying it in a folding abstraction way, but I feel like leftist concentrate on equity and equality more, you know, just the fact that Newsom said it, you know, what do you see in terms of the future of California? I know it's a big question, but are the chickens coming home to roost there or how do you view it? So California's budget is basically whether it has a deficit or a surplus is basically determined by whether there is capital gains capital gains or not. So in a year with it with tech stocks do well, California has a surplus. And as it's had for the last, you know, since the financial crisis, almost every year California's run surpluses because they have vast capital gains companies go, I remember once fate when Facebook went public, like, I don't know that the amount of revenue California got just from the IPO just from all the people associated with Facebook paying capital gains on that stock was just some astronomical amount. And as soon as that, as soon as you don't get a lot of IPOs and you don't get a good year in tech stocks, their revenue goes down. So it was completely predictable that next year they would have a they would be that this year they'd be running a deficit because the stock market went down. Now, so the fate of California finances is completely aligned with the stock market and particularly the NASDAQ tech stocks. If tech stocks do well next year, they'll be fine. If tech stocks do badly, they'll do badly. What if tech companies move? Well, if tech companies move, that's a problem. But of course, almost nobody moves completely. Almost all tech stocks have offices in California and therefore they pay some California taxes. They have a lot of employees, Silicon Valley is still thriving. They might be a big exit. But the fact is it's still expensive to live in Silicon Valley and it's expensive to live in Silicon Valley because people want to live in Silicon Valley. So there's plenty of demand. And as long as there are a lot of people there, they're still selling stock and therefore they still have capital gains and therefore they're still paying the California government taxes. So I'm not worried. I'm not concerned about California running out of money. Unfortunately, I wish you did. It would be pretty cool. They've also raised the income tax level temporarily, they said originally, for the top marginal tax rate from 10% to 13%. But then they kept it permanent. So they've got a boost and a lot of people have not moved. I know most of the people who leave California are the poor. I know that's counter to what people think. Some rich people live in California, but if you look at the sheer numbers, it's poor people who can't afford to live there. California is not a state for poor people. It's a state for rich people. And the reality is that beyond a certain amount of money, so you pay some taxes, say 50% of it is gone, but you're making so much, it doesn't matter for your consumption. And California is such a great place to live in spite of the insanity that a lot of people, millions and millions of people are willing to pay the high taxes in order to live in that place. The population is declining primarily because of poor people leaving. Some rich people are leaving. Companies are leaving, but only partially. Every company that's left still has, as far as I know, big tech company still has significant presence in California, including Tesla. It hasn't expanded in California, but it's still got a plant in California. Amazon, which is a Washington state company, has thousands of employees in California, for example. So you can't not be in California for a tech company. So that is a reality that nothing is going to change. Yes, Austin is picking up some of those companies. Yes, in biotech, Boston has always been, but it's still no competition in terms of the sheer numbers and the sheer size of the companies. Now that will change. As California becomes more insane, that will change, but it could take a long time before it changes. These processes don't happen quickly. And particularly given the very high quality of life that you can have in California, particularly if you don't live in San Francisco or downtown LA, if you live in the suburbs or if you live outside the center, the quality of life is just unbelievable in California. The weather is great. The infrastructure is fantastic. If you don't have to drive long distances, again, if you're relatively wealthy and you can afford to live in good places, yeah, it's hard to, again, if you took away the taxes and some of the regulations, I would move to California, back to California tomorrow, I mean, the quality of life is far higher from that perspective. So California is doing that. Yeah, I mean, when Gavin Newsom mentioned freedom, he talks about freedom in the left ascent. So A, it's a state that's welcoming of immigrants. It's a state that's welcoming that treats even illegal immigrants pretty well. In that sense, it's free. It's a state that welcomes different alternative lifestyles. So it's a state that's been very welcoming to gays and others through its histories. In that sense, there's more freedom. It's a state that in spite of all the regulations that are on control still has a high, very high level of startups, a very high level of innovation, highest level of innovation in the world, maybe per square meter per capita or whatever, one of the highest in the world anyway. So in that sense, I think he means freedom. I also think he means freedom in the FDR sense of the false sense, but in the sense of freedom from want, they have a vast welfare system that supposedly takes care of people. So freedom from want, freedom for fear, freedom, the FDR freedoms, and that's why the left does talk about freedom. They talk about freedom in the leftist sense, which is which is freedom from want, which is redistributive, quote, freedom. That is the freedom to have a minimum standard of living and so on. Thank you, Andrew. All right, let's see, Jonathan. Thanks, your own. And I'm kind of one, don't necessarily feel like a regular schedule or even guest hosts are that important. I mean, Dr. Pieckoff used to do a 20 minute podcast every two weeks. And you do, as you said, on average, one every day or every other day. So thanks for all the work and keep it up. Here's my question actually. I remember John David Lewis's book, if you recall, Nothing Less Than Victory, which kind of you, I think, inspired a lot of your just war theory and era. And even the understanding that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were a moral act in the sense that it ended a war. Explain that, if you will, and contrast that to the kind of outrage over the tactics, for example, that Russia is using now. I mean, it seems like everyone is. And then also even the Mrs. Ms. Rand's comment on Donahue about the difference of the era, but she called them attacks on civilians versus the Israeli kind of approach or writ large. So why was it okay in Nothing Less Than Victory and in Hiroshima, but not in current day so-called atrocities? And thank you again. Yeah, it matters who's doing what to whom. What matters is to a large extent is who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, as we used to say when we were kids, right? Who is fighting essentially in self-defense and who is the aggressor? Hiroshima Nagasaki were a way in which to end a war started by the Japanese. And therefore, in order to end that war, it was appropriate and right and just and moral to do whatever was necessary to the Japanese to convince them to end it. So the United States was acting in itself defense. It was acting for a moral purpose. It was fighting for the individual rights of its own people. Japan had no moral reason to attack the United States. It was the villain. They were the bad guys. And therefore, they needed to be forced into stopping their aggression. This absolutely same as true in Ukraine and Russia right now in the sense that Russians are the bad guys. And you can put aside all the geopolitical, all the stuff. They initiated force. They started a war. And in that sense, the bombing of the cities is wrong and evil. But the bombing of soldiers is wrong and evil, right? I mean, everything the Russians is doing is wrong and evil. And everything on the battlefield, the attacking Bakhmuts and it's hand-to-hand fighting and it's brutal. And that is horrific and evil and disgusting just in many respects, just as evil as bombing civilians. Would it be, excuse me, just quickly interrupt, would it be appropriate if Ukraine bombed civilian centers in Moscow as a means to stop the war? Is that what they should do? Well, that's a different question. In the world in which we live today, no, they can't. Because in the world in which we live today, if they did that, all the support from the West would stop. They couldn't explain it. They would need to notice that when Ukraine bombs something in Russian territory, which they do periodically, it's always a military base. They're very, very careful about that. They're super afraid about losing the support of the West. Should they do it in a moral world? Would they be encouraged to do it? Absolutely. Now, there's one other issue, which is really important. And that is that the Russians have nukes and the Ukrainians do not. So the Ukrainians have to be careful not to push Russia into a situation where it might use a nuke against them. So that's a complicating factor. But if they didn't have nukes and if the world wasn't so much against it and they weren't so dependent on the world, absolutely they should be turning Moscow into dust. So they were attacked. It's unequivocal here, the moral issue. And the good guys have every right to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves and to stop the attacks against them. And that was the justification of Shuman Nagasaki. That was the justification of why that I gave in the essay against just war theory, which tells you you've got all these restrictions and you're not allowed to win, in other words. And how we fought, how the United States fought in places like Afghanistan and it's why we can't win. Or even how we fought in Vietnam and we didn't win because we tied our own hands and we restricted our own ability to actually win the war. The Ukrainians can't afford to play by those rules because of Russia's nukes and because of world opinion. So they have to grind it out on the ground. All right, thanks so much. Sure, thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for asking that. Let's see, Pini, I don't know if you wanted to ask a question or not, but it's Europe if you do. You just have to unmute yourself. Yeah, I am muted. Hi everybody. Question about a different subject. Life is the highest value and we should do anything to advance that advance alive. What do you do and what do your opinion about eating healthy, exercise, longevity, and so on? I mean, I think you should do it. I think you should eat healthy. The challenge, of course, is figuring out what that means. Unfortunately, given the state of science, the science is very conflicted. I think one should exercise what should do the things necessary in order to, it's not just how long you live, it's how well you live. And as I watch people that I know get older, my parents, I have a lot of friends who are older, I can see the difference between people who've taken care of themselves and people who haven't and there is a inequality of life, never mind in longevity. And I think people should take care of themselves and in all those things that you mentioned. I think longevity is very difficult right now, again, because of the state of the science. The science is a lot of conflicting ideas about longevity in terms of different theories and it's really hard to untangle and figure out what's objectively true or not. But I think once you do one's best, at the very least talk to some doctors and talk to some people who have done some research and do the best that you can. So yes, I've always thought that trying to live well includes to the extent that you can get objective information about it, what you eat, your physical activity and the extent to which longevity becomes, it is becoming a science. And it has to do for me right now more to do with the quality of the life than even the length of it because it's just so difficult to watch people you care about who are getting really, really old and who do not have a good quality of life and who are suffering and who living through the suffering. And it's just hard to watch and you want to do whatever you can in your own life and the people around you to hopefully get to that age and not be suffering like that. Yeah, you want to live a healthy long, not necessarily long, but healthy long. Yes, and you want to flourish and flourishing means you want to be able, you want to sustain your mind. So I follow a lot of the research on dementia because, God, I mean, if that goes and that's so crucial. So follow a lot of kind of the research around dementia and around Alzheimer's. So you want to be able to sustain a healthy mind and a healthy body and be able to enjoy the thing that life provides for you for as long as you can, you know, for as long as the biology will allow you to do it. Thanks, Pini. I appreciate the support. Let's see, friend Harper, you're here. All right, cool. Hey, happy to be here. So I asked, I think it was when Don was on with you a question, something along the lines of can friendship be a central purpose? And I wanted to more elaborate on what I meant by that because, you know, how I suck at having character limitations. But so I was thinking of it more of an angle of like an advocate of the principles of being a good friend and the virtues and values of it and ways of like stressing. So you mean being being an educator about friendship or being an. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if that becomes if you can make a living off of that, if that is a if that is a productive activity, absolutely. So on the note of production, though, and that I might be misunderstanding because it's a it's one of the more trickier ones in objectivism for me. But if I am being virtuous towards the value of gaining and keeping friends, aren't I producing values that make my life more worth living? Not to say I should. That's the only thing because independence should come first because the objectivist morality, but yeah, but that's not what productiveness as a virtue really is. So that is not about creating values. I mean, all the virtues about creating the values necessary for your survival. Yes. But productiveness and your central purpose needs to be centered around the or for most people it should be. I don't think everybody is like this because you could be in a position, for example, where you've inherited a lot of money and your survival in that sense taken care of and your productiveness is expressed definitely. But your productiveness should be in a realm that is related to your survival in a realm that is related to your dealing with reality in a way that if you if you had to, you could survive by doing it ultimately through trade, but you could survive by doing it. So it's your relationship to the fact, the knowledge that you have to act, you have to do something in order to survive that human beings do not survive automatically. It's this recognition of the of the necessity to use your mind and act to survive. I got you. Yes. That's what's unique about that particular virtue. Gotcha. And then a few more notes on for when I was going to be here. It was I just find that objectivism has such a great framework for two individuals and seeing each other as friends because I see that it takes common values but hobby and like shows and tastes and music are more superficial than things like recognizing the trader principle and honesty with yourself and others. And so I think healthy friendships start with maintaining independence, individualism and boundaries. Yeah, I agree completely. And in spreading friendship like this in deliberate explicit terms, I hope to shift the culture into people who are more considerate and be like, hmm, this guy, I know what values to probe for and to at least give him dignity. It's funny that most people don't think of objectivists and considerate is in the same universe. But of course, right, right. And then one final thing on central purpose. I was, I don't know if I've heard you explicitly say yours. So I've been guessing it somewhere between raising money through the hedge fund in the R on Brooks show. And I think but what's cool about either of them is the research you do for either of them complement each other. And I thought that was awesome. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't think that the central purpose is the raising of the money that can't be a central purpose. The central purpose is the activity. And I have a, you know, my central purpose is split, which is I've always lived like this and I don't recommend it necessarily. But you know, my central purpose is primarily, you know, to add my voice to changing the world and to having an impact on the world and to, and I get to make a living in doing that. And that's, that's, that's amazing. You know, and then I have a another purpose, another productive purpose on top of that. But that's, that is unusual. You know, it's hard to maintain two productive purposes. But the central purpose is my, you know, my work to bring about a change in the world in people's view of values and morality and in the world out there. Got you. All right. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. All right, let's do two quick super chat questions. We are, there's a lot of room for more. Let's see, Sparks asks, did Rand invent or discover objectivism? Did she nurture it like a mother to a child? Or did she raise it like a farmer to her crop? Wow. I think she discovered objectivism. I mean, I mean, she, you know, to invent objectivism, objectivism is a way of understanding the world. She, in a sense, you know, it's not that this way of understanding the world is out there. And she found it, right? It's that she had to figure it out. And I'm not sure that either of those metaphors work. I don't think you nurture something like that because nurturing a mother to a child, I mean, I mean, I guess there's an intellectual aspect to that, but it doesn't quite, I mean, this is all, this is intellectual. She, I mean, she, yeah, she induced objectivism from reality. And that is a process that combines inventing and discovery. She didn't raise it like a farmer to a crop. It's not about watering it. It's about, it didn't exist. It's not like there's a seed out there. That's not the epistemological process. The epistemological process is fundamentally inductive. She observed the world and generalized from that world principles, abstract principles. And that is a, that is a very different process. It's what a scientist does. And, you know, we say they discover the laws of the universe, but the laws are not out there. It's not like the laws in some platonic other realm, and they've peeled everything up and they've discovered that law. They, they have, you know, they've figured out that this law applies to the world. And, and so discovery is not really the right term for discovering the laws of nature, but that's what we use in language, because discovery assumes that it's there already, whereas what's really meant is the phenomena is there, but the law is not. The law is something that, that you have to conceptualize, that human beings have to conceptualize. And this is, this is the difference between intrinsicism, which believes things are out there and we just have to, you know, the abstractions exist as entities out there, and we just have to grasp them versus objectivism, being objective, which is the process. We have to use our reason to see the concrete and abstract from them, these truths, which is a very different process. Actually, you're wrong. If I can, I'm so sorry. I think, quick, I think at some point I remember Dr. Peekoff or Dr. Binswing are asking Ms. Rand about that, you know, don't you realize you're a genius and her responding, I believe I'm paraphrasing something effective. Oh, you know, anyone could have illuminated that. That's my word, objectivism, but I kind of said it or something. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but that was what I recall. Yeah, I think she was inappropriately modest. I mean, and I think it's true of most geniuses. I think it's hard for people, for a person to appreciate, and I think there's a certain way in which they don't really want to, the extent to which there's so much smarter than everybody else. And I think Anne Rand definitely had that. She didn't completely recognize it because it's hard to recognize it plus it's a little depressing because you want to believe that there are people at your level out there. But yes, it's not, yeah, so I'm not sure what the exact term is. We use discover, but I don't think it's the discover that works exactly right. Let's see. Okay, Michael asked, why do libertarians not recognize intellectual property as legitimate? Are they just as materialist and anti-mind as Marxist? How do we, how are we supposed to win with friends like these? Does libertarianism ultimately need to go away? Why do they not recognize intellectual property as legitimate? I think Adam talked about that. On Thursday, I think it's primarily because, yes, they have this element of Marxism, of materialism. They're brought into this falsehood about scarcity and about property rights coming from scarcity. They reject philosophy and they really, really, really, really need philosophy and they really, really need objectivism. How are we supposed to win with friends like these? Well, we should question whether they are your friends. And does libertarianism ultimately need to go away? Yes. Ultimately, it needs to go away. It needs to be replaced by objectivism as other ideologies need to go away as well. Libertarianism is not exactly, Leo, what it exactly is. That's the other aspect of it. I mean, I know a lot of different knowledge libertarians and they disagree on a lot of different things, even on things that you would expect them to agree on. Libertarianism is a very, very loose term that people use. All right. Let's go back to our panel. Let's see. Let's start with, just because you're in a different order now on my screen, let's start with Tim. You muted him. Dr. Brooke, if 20th century motor company were a real company in modern times and John Galt was working there, would he be buying supplies from the Chinese or selling finished motors to the Chinese? I guess what I'm trying to ask here is about the concept of sanction in the context of both business but also consumer behavior. I once worked with a guy who was actually really great at his job, but he was a devout vegan. And I remember him spending just immense amounts of time on any free moments he had doing research into every product and to see if it was vegan. And again, it was a sort of religion to him. But on the other hand, I think there's times where people can, let's put it this way, if I go out and buy a cheap TV that's obviously stolen, that's pretty obviously a moral act. So there's times where I think people can sometimes shut off their minds as consumers in order to get a good deal or something like that. Where does sanction begin in that context? I mean, I think before you even do the sanction question, I think you have to have an evaluation of China, which is important because I don't think China's an easy case to evaluate. It's not like, for example, when you go to Cuba, if you go as a tourist to Cuba, every dollar you spend in Cuba flows to Cuban government. There is literally no private property in Cuba. You go to tourist restaurants, they're ultimately run by the government, the hotels run and owned by the government. I mean, there's just no way for you to interact. Maybe on the black market you can interact with private people in Cuba. And if you can, I see no problem with that. I would interact with them, right? I would buy stuff from the Cuban black market. China's very different because China's this mixture of people really entrepreneurs and people producing, creating, and pay. They pay lower taxes than I used to. They pay lower taxes than you do in California. And in many respects, from an economic respect, the freer than we are in America. Less regulations, less controls in some areas and less taxes than in some areas in the United States. And so the government benefits only marginally from you trading with a Chinese person. Then there's the Chinese government, which we can evaluate. It's much easier. They're clearly immoral. It's an authoritarian government, a government that suppresses free speech. It's a government that uses force on some of its citizens in brutal, horrific kind of ways that has, I don't know, in the past harvested organs from prisoners, obviously treats the Muslim population in the West really, really badly and all kinds of things like that. And then there are state-run enterprises where the state does benefit. You're basically dealing directly with the government. Go untangle that. So the complexity of the world in which we live is very difficult. And also, I would say 10 years ago, my at least evaluation, I think when I talked to Adam the other day, he shared it. And I think others who've been to China shared it as well. I was talking to John Allison and he shared this as well, is that 10 years ago, all of us who visited China, when China were very positive about China in a sense that it was moving in the right direction and that there was energy behind freedom and entrepreneurship. And the government was stepping away and liberalizing. And this was a process and we wanted to support that process. And you okay, it wasn't going to happen all at once, but now it's not. Now it's moving in the opposite direction. And that is a change that happened probably around 2016 to 2018. I only observed it in late 2018, but it was happening during the mid-20s. So how do you evaluate China today versus 10 years ago? So I think all of these are complex and they're not easy. And now to untangle it in terms of figuring out, I mean, do I not buy an iPhone? But then if I'm not going to buy an iPhone, do I buy a Samsung? And am I convinced that everything in the Samsung doesn't, that nothing in the Samsung has a Chinese origin? I'm not. I'm pretty sure Samsung has production facilities in China and all of this stuff. And so how much am I willing to forgo modern life or life in order to sanction something in China that might be going to private people, but might also be helping the government? Look, if China declared war on Taiwan tomorrow and there was a war going on, then we do everything we can to untangle ourselves. So if there was a clear cut event that motivated me, I would probably do it. But in terms of right now, I for one, and I'm not comparing myself to John Galt, but I for one, I'm not willing to spend that time and energy into trying to untangle it. I think when I trade with a Chinese person, that Chinese person is better off. Yes, the government is better off, but I don't see them as an existential threat to the United States. I don't think it's an existential threat to me. Yes, they're bad people, but it doesn't rise to the point where I'm willing. Now, if the United States is at war with them, I will do all my best not to buy Chinese products, but it's going to be a very, very messy process. And this is part of the problem of a country you think is heading in the right direction, reversing itself as it gets very, very, very messy. And American companies are learning this, and there's frantically trying to diversify away from China. And it's very difficult because China was very unique in what it supplied the world, which is primarily large numbers of engineers. So I'm not giving you a definitive answer because I don't have one. I think it's messy. Can I ask more particularly, or excuse me, less particularly about China and more particularly just about, I mean, I don't spend any time. It sounds like you don't either. Dr. Brook really researching where the products I buy come from. I guess this just doesn't seem worth its time. On the other hand, I don't want to be someone who's, you know, again, being willingly stupid or unwilling to examine things that I might be providing more sanction to. But part of that is that my sense of the world is generally the world's moving in the right direction, right? If I was worried about products from Iran being on the shelves or products from Cuba, or like if I was going to buy cigars, I would make a point not to buy Cuban cigars, right? And I don't buy cigars. It's not an issue. But if I travel around the world and I see Cuban cigars in stores, I go, eh, you know, that kind of turns me off. You know, right now I wouldn't buy anything made in China in Russia. But you know what? There's nothing made in China in Russia that I really want. So it's, it kind of has filtered itself out in a sense. China is the only real conundrum. Most countries, I mean, I'm sure there are others, but most countries don't produce enough if they have bad, bad, really evil regimes to make it. Now, but I will give you other examples, right? Some of the stuff in the iPhone is mined in mines in Africa under basically slavery conditions that are just horrific. Africans are doing to each other. And if I was going to buy that material from, I would, I wouldn't want to do it. I would want to find another source or something. But can I, and I hope that Apple does that? They claim to be, you know, to care about ethics and so on. So do I hope they do it? I do. But do I know they do it? I don't. And am I going to spend the time investigating that? I know. So, you know, I've delegated that to Apple in a sense. And but that's, and there are situations like that in the world. But for the most part, the world is free now than it ever has in human history. And the United States has fewer real enemies than it's ever had in human history in the sense of real. Can I ask a quick question per what you said? Do you think it's appropriate now, would it be appropriate if the stock exchanges listed Russian stocks? No, I don't think they should. And they, and they're not. And I don't think they should. Yeah, I don't think the stock exchanges should. If I, if I had a, if I was running a mutual or hedge fund that invested globally, right? Like if I was investing in emerging markets, you know, so that's an area. That's an interesting question. Okay. So I'm asking myself, right? Remember, people used to have a brick that was a very popular, but still is huge. Bricks are huge. I still get, and indeed, I get a lot of libertarians arguing with me now that bricks are the good guys and America is the evil one, right? These are the pro-Russian libertarians who, who think the bricks, bricks is Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, somehow got in there and China. And they are, they are the up and coming superpowers of the future. Bizarre. But so what would you do if you're running a mutual fund or a hedge fund that's internationally diversified? Would you invest in countries that you deem this clearly immoral? And my answer would be no. Do I, have I checked to see that my money, which I have, I'm sure I have some money in an emerging market fund. I mean, I'm sure my financial advisors put some money in there. I actually do have a financial advisor because I don't want to bother with my own money. Is it in, is it in, have I checked to see if that fund invests in countries that I despise? No. And that's a good point. I should. And I should ask them to shift it to another mutual fund if it does. Particularly in, in, you know, place like Russia, places like, you know, but it's so complicated. What's that? It depends, don't you think? I mean, you don't want to, objectivist shouldn't be too hard on themselves about researching everything that they deal with. No, not everything. But I think, I think this is something I know. This is something that's easy to look up. It's not that hard. But yeah, I think I should. And I don't want my money going to funding Russia or funding Iranian nuclear program or anything like that. So it is important to do where you can, which relatively easy to do and where you can, where you can make a change in how you behave. You know, again, I don't think you should become obsessed by it, but I do think at the margin it's worth doing. I agree. But did you hear the anecdote where Rand was among objectivists and they were arguing over whether to drink Coke because Coke was involved with business with Soviet Russia. And she said, let me be the Mahatma Gandhi of morality for you and say it's fine. Drink it. Yeah, I don't know that anecdote, but there is an anecdote about a record. And God, I hope I don't get this. Lenin Pekov tells the story about a record that he got her or something. And it had been produced in Russia of Apparetta and she was like, fine, that's okay. It was a Soviet record. And she was like, fine, I can't get this anywhere else. This is it. So yeah, you have to live your life. But there are aspects of it where you can control. Tsvika asks, how about working for a Chinese company in the West such as Tik Tok or Neo? I wouldn't. Again, I don't think it's necessarily immoral, depending on where you are in your career and what options you have and what opportunities you have. But I wouldn't want to work for a company. And I would be... So yeah, but do I post my videos on Tik Tok? Yeah, I do. But I've also been to China and spoken there. And if I wasn't a little worried about my own safety or even more so about the safety of my audience, I would probably go again to China to speak there. The only reason I wouldn't go is a safety issue. So China's this... It's a real conundrum and partially it's a conundrum because of the way it evolved and because of a lack of a good foreign policy from the United States. This is part of the problem. Part of the problem is if the United States as a country doesn't have a good foreign policy, it's very hard for us as individuals to compensate for that and to make up for that. It just doesn't work that way. So that's a challenge. It's part of the reason why... One of the many reasons why we want to have good politicians. We want to have good politicians because we want to be able to not have to think about these things. In a proper world with proper leadership, it wouldn't be an issue. We know who our enemies were. They'd be clearly defined. We wouldn't be trading with our enemies. Countries that were so so, they would leave it to us but we'd have a lot more information. We'd have a lot more knowledge and we know we weren't sanctioning an enemy. And there'd be intellectuals that gave us information about this and helped us think this through. It would be so much easier. It would be so much easier. But yeah, I mean part of the problem of course is what do you do with America? When you have an American government that is, I don't know, where the FBI is putting pressure, or not just the FBI, where the government is putting pressure on media from the New York Times all the way to Twitter about what they cannot report, what they cannot say, what they shouldn't say. I mean, we have the beginnings of censorship in America. In a sense, we've got to take care of our own house. And there's enough challenges in taking care of our own house before we start trying to nudge other countries to become better. So there's a lot of work to be done. All right, Steve, Steven. No other question. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, Matthew. First off, I want to say that I do appreciate your music reviews, even the pop music that apparently is so controversial. Who knew? What's controversial is that I don't like it. Sure. But I did request several of those songs that you did recently. And yeah, you didn't like it, but you found positives in a lot of it. And I guess taking opportunity to maybe touch on a couple here. So those songs from the 80s, I think a lot of the 80s through the different genres, whether it be the rocker or the hip hop or I don't know what that stuff was that I gave you, bubblegum, something or other. I don't know. But they're up-tempo, positive, forward thinking. And I think in the 80s, it kind of crossed through the genre. So it says something about where we were culturally, that those were able to gain that momentum. And you talk about demographics and birth rates being people's projections of the future. And I think in the 80s, you can see that in the music quite a bit, can't you? That the projections of the future were pretty wide open. So I don't know enough about the 80s. I mean, the 80s was also a period, I think, of a punk. And what was that band in Seattle of grunge and all kinds of very dark music as well, that was quite popular. Yes, I mean, the 80s were a period. I mean, this is historical analysis, which is interesting if we broaden it from music. I mean, the 80s were a period of general positivity and optimism. But it was a period of all of that that was very superficial. It was the me generation, me, me, me. But it wasn't a me in a properly selfish way. It was a me in a more superficial, I think, perspective. I think the music, what you call the bubblegum music, reflects that a little bit. It's shallow. It's kind of fun, but it doesn't have any depth to it. To use the kind of food analogy, it's desserts. It's not the meat and potatoes that really give you the nutrition or the vegetables and food, whatever your inkling, but it's more of the dessert. And that's what I said. I mean, I like it on a one-listen, one-off basis. I can listen to it. Can I do a whole road trip just listening to that kind of music? No, it would drive me nuts. It's too sugar overload. You'd get a sugar overload from it. Sure. And I noted those songs. I'm driving to work and they came on and Uptempo lifted me up. It lifted me up emotionally, starting my day. So I wrote them down and said, hey, let's do what you're on thinks. I think that historical analysis is a great part of music and looking into the culture. I had a history teacher in high school. One of the projects we had was to bring in a song from the past and display it historically. So I think that's a route that you could take. No, I agree. I mean, music is art and art is one way in which to analyze. But this is the sense in which this is my problem with pop is that it's reflective of the culture and the culture shallow short term, narcissistic and hedonistic. And I compare this to, I don't think it's a fake comparison, but I'm going to do it anyway. I compare it to young people in the 1810s hanging out and deciding to go to a music concert and going and listening to, I don't know, Beethoven's premiere of the ninth symphony, spending three hours mostly in silence, listening in intense concentration to music. And that's the culture that I gravitate towards, right? That rather than what I see when I go to a nightclub is a beat and people gyrating to a beat and a look on their face of mindless numbness. It's appropriate that they take whatever drugs they take because they want to escape. It's complete. And so I'm gravitated towards the taking music seriously. And I like my sugar, right? I like that sugar once in a while. So I like my a beat, fun song when I'm driving the car. But I also need my 40 minutes, 45 minutes symphony that I can really, really gain the emotional fuel that I think art can really supply. Sure. I want to move on to that song, Handlebars. So watching you review Handlebars, I'm really happy that I actually watched it. Usually I just listen to the podcast, but I'm glad that I was able to watch you process your thoughts and emotions. You know, correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me as though that song really emotionally touched you or connected with you. I know that you said that it was an evil song, but you also said recommend that people listen to the song. It's a very dark song. The lyrics are very dark and they're very dark. And it is a beat and it is interesting. And this would be a question to a real musician, not me, is what makes it effective emotionally? Because it definitely does resonate. And I was humming and I still have that rhythm, that particular rhythm, that song somehow caught a rhythm that resonates, but it's not a sophisticated one. It doesn't go, again, it only has so much depth to it. And at the end of the day, the real content of it, which was shocking to me, was it starts out very positive and then it becomes very, very negative about human beings. Agreed. Before I go, I just wanted to touch on the fair tax. I studied the fair tax quite a bit when I was an undergrad, know quite a bit about it. I know that you said the other day that it would be your ideal form of tax, would be the consumption tax versus the flat tax. I think that's what you were indicating. In the world in which we live, yeah, I think so. So what, I guess, what makes the flat tax more palatable to voters, to politicians, and decision makers? I don't think it does. I mean, we don't have a flat tax. I guess the impression I got when you were commenting the other day was that you thought the flat tax would be palatable than the fair tax. I think it would be, and I think the reason for that is that I think people associate taxation much more with income, and you earn and you have to pay on what you earn rather than on consumption. I think the idea of not taxing people in income is just too far into people right now. There's something about penalizing people for their productive work, which appeals to people. It's upside down, but- Yeah, being able to call it a progressive tax versus a regressive tax. A flat tax would be progressive. Well, we'd be progressive in the amount people pay. People would pay more, but a consumption tax is a regressive tax. That's the big opposition to it. They view it as really horrific for the poor. So I think it's not that people support the flat tax. It's people are horrified by the consumption tax because of its regressive nature. So they claim and they will claim that the fair tax is not regressive. They've got some stipulations in there. We can get into that. But the stipulations are what undermine the fair tax. The fair tax is undermined by the stipulations because you either have 100% sales tax or you don't. Once you start introducing all kinds of supplements- It's not exceptions. It's 100% consumption tax, but then it's an 100% pre-bate, they call it. So they pre-bate money to everybody based on whatever the poverty level is federally, and that's in the weeds. Yeah, you would have to do something like a universal basic income plus a sales tax to make it palatable. But I would only support something like that if you got rid of all of the welfare at the same time, all of the redistribution programs. And you just had that and then you slowly eliminated that because ultimately I believe in zero welfare and zero taxes. Okay. Well, I would just like to say if you think the consumption tax is the ideal tax, then you should pound the table for it. Yeah. Well, I don't think taxes are where we should be pounding out the table. I don't think it's... All right, let's see. Jennifer. I was thinking about the word consensus in regards to science. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what this means. It's used in different ways. There's a consensus, obviously, I would think among astronomers that their earth goes around the sun, I would assume, and that's correct. So there's nothing wrong with having a consensus or whatever, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be open to new evidence if it came up. But I mean, is it necessarily a pejorative term? It depends, right? No, it's not a pejorative term at all. It's become a pejorative term because the bad guys use it to justify climate change. They use it to justify, I don't know, it's a consensus that everybody should mask or some of their scientists, all scientists think that. And they lie because it's not a consensus and B, they're advocating for bad positions. But yeah, just to say, I mean, there's a consensus that gravity applies to us, and there's pretty much certainty around that. So yeah, just using it some consensus is not a bad thing. Thank you. Okay. All right, Jonathan. Oh, sorry about that, your own questions. So what I've observed, especially on social media, is that many people who are opposed to vaccine mandates are opposed to vaccines. And what I would say is anti-corporation. There's a lot of hatred for big pharma, Bill Gates, writ large. Is that something you've observed? And what's the best counter to that? Yeah, I know. I'd be shocked at how prevalent it is on the rights among libertarians. I think Candace Owen has come out saying that pharmaceutical companies are the most evil people on the planet or something like that. I mean, it's just insane. I mean, when you think about the benefits we all get from pharmaceutical companies, even if you disagree with them on something, they're calling them evil, they're calling them horrific, you can't trust anything they do, they're liars, they've misrepresented the data, all this stuff on, and they want them regulated, some want them nationalized. This is across the board. It is also true that the people who are against vaccine mandates, I mean, we all were, a lot of us were, but some of those people have turned out to be anti-vax people. And the anti-vax movement, I think right now is growing. I think they're winning the debate. I see more stuff anti-vaxing right now than ever before. They're much more than a year ago. And I see very few people kind of arguing against them. Just this week, it was on Joe Rogan. It was on a few other of the big, big, big podcasts where they were arguing with the podcasters were presenting these strong anti-vax arguments. So this is a sign of bad thinking. It's a sign of deterioration in our, and some of this is justified in our trust in scientific authorities, which is sad that we can't trust scientific authorities. I think it's justified that we can't completely, but it's become so that we don't believe anything they say. And because they say it, we take the opposite view, or some of these people take the opposite view. I also think it's a weakness of the people defending these cases so that the, unfortunately, a lot of the people who are arguing for vaccines also believe in vaccine mandates. They can't separate the two. So it all gets lumped together. You get package deals on both sides. It's just, I think what you're seeing, Jonathan, is an illustration of how bad the culture is and how bad the thinking is, right? How bad the thinking is around all these things. So, for example, we've known for very early on, relatively early on that, you know, the mRNA vaccines, actually all the vaccines are causing these heart issues for young people. And that quite a few young people, a certain percentage of young people, get this. And in extreme cases, they could land in a hospital and some will even die. But that's been known from the beginning, but now it's dropping dead left and right. Everybody's dying from this. And there's no thought of the probabilities and what it means and the fact that almost all of them, somebody sent me this paper where they did ECGs on school kids who got the second or third dose of the vaccine. And they found abnormal heart thing in, I can't remember, 17% of all the kids. And you say, see, everybody's lying to us. This is causing these deaths that are happening. And there's a line in the study that if you read it, it says not a single kid was hospitalized and all of these abnormal heart things all reverse themselves shortly afterwards, right? A few weeks later. They don't read that. They completely ignore their sentence. And they pretend like this is now some kind of revelation. So people, you know, what it illustrates is the inability of people to be objective. And science requires objectivity and analyzing data requires objectivity. And they're not being objective. And they latch on to concretes and then they extrapolate from concretes in the most bizarre bizarre ways. But they can't think. I'll give one other example too quickly if you quickly refine it. People are anti-fouchy. I mean, anti-fouchy meme one after the other, but they're not against the principle of government involved in healthcare. Yeah. So I mean, Fauci basically did what his job required. I mean, he went overboard. I think a few places there's a reason to criticize Fauci above and beyond. But the real problem was the position he was put in, which was as a doctor to be responsible for prescribing policy and to violating people's rights. He should have never been placed in that position. He made a lot of wrong decisions. But I think anybody in that position would have made, unfortunately in the world in which they would have made very similar positions. So I think that there are plenty of reasons to criticize Fauci, but there are even more reasons to criticize the very nature of the way the CDC more broadly and government more broadly responded to this crisis. And the fact that they even have the power to respond in the way they responded. They shouldn't have that power. Fauci shouldn't have ever had that power. You're on? Yes, I have some optimism in this whole mess, which is that I don't know if this is accurate or not, but it seems like because the kooks are against the vaccines. Now some of the leftists and the establishment, they're pro vaccine to be anti the right. And they always hated big pharma. But now they're kind of in the position where they may approve more medicines. If you listen to them, big pharma had nothing to do with it. It was all because of the government, the government funded it, the government did it. It's all based on government research. Pharma is just a useless middleman. If only we could get rid of them. There's no bright spot here. I'm sorry. I hate being a better person. Thanks a lot. Yeah, but it's just the vaccine, the only bright spot in the vaccine issue is. Well, they have approved your own vaccine for Alzheimer's recently. They approved the drug for Alzheimer's. They just approved that a Japanese drug for Alzheimer's that in tests in early onset Alzheimer's improves your cognition. So it's actually the one drug that has worked. But I don't think that's because they have a better approach to the vaccines. I think it's just the FDA doing its job. And I don't think they've accelerated anything in particular. I don't think science is moving more fast because of this. Yeah. And I think the public now is generally suspicious of everything pharmaceuticals do. And I think that's going to have horrific consequences. Sorry. No positivity here. All right. Who haven't asked Adam? Adam. First of all about contemporary music. There are still great serious composers. One that I recommend is Georg Spelechis. And if you get a chance to listen to his concerto concertino Bianco, I recommend it. That's sort of often a tangent. The other thing is a military question. Since you're the guy with military experience, how important is it strategically to cut off the enemy's logistics? And in particular, if the Russians strike down on Western Ukraine from Belarus to cut off the logistics of Ukraine coming in from Poland, shouldn't we be preparing and upgrading the rail links through Romania so that Ukraine can continue to get Western weapons? Yeah. But if I remember my geography right, then yeah. So, oh, you're talking about Belarus. Okay. Yes, upgrading those rail lines makes sense. Logistics is crucial in a war like this. You know, people have lost wars. And one was because of logistics. It really is crucial. I think the Ukrainians are very aware of the threat coming from Belarus. And I think there are other issues that give, I think, Ukrainians a little bit of confidence that Belarus is not going to intervene. Remember that Russia already struck out a Belarus, right? In the first days of the war, columns of Russians advanced from Belarus down south towards Kiev. That was the first place the Russians retreated from ultimately. But there were no Belarusian soldiers among them. And that was always interesting. And I think the reason for that is the precarious situation in which the president of Belarus finds himself. Whereas Putin is incredibly popular in Russia to some of our horror. But that is a fact. He is popular in Russia. The Belarusian president is not. And if you remember about a year ago in Belarus, maybe over a year ago, a year and a half ago, there were big demonstrations in Belarus and he needed Russian help in order to suppress them, in order to sustain his control over the country. I think the fear is that if Belarusian soldiers get involved, the military might rebel against, I forget the name of the dictator Belarus and the people would rebel against him. And that would spur revolution in Belarus. And he is not intervening because he is afraid of that. Otherwise he would have intervened a long time ago, I believe. But yes, I think that Ukraine, I'd be surprised if they're not reinforcing whatever real lines they have coming into the country. But I also think that they are, they've got a presence in the North, they have troops in the North, they are ready to counter any advance from Belarus southwards to cut them off from Poland. The border with Poland is not a small, it's not a short border, it's a long border. The Belarusian troops would have to have a lot of success. They would have to go very far. They would have to go towards Lviv. I mean, Lviv is close to the Polish border. I can't imagine Belarusian or Russian troops getting that far. They didn't in the first days of the war. So I just don't see it being achievable. It's also interesting to me, and this is again, I think Russia and so many levels, Russian military tactics are being just stupid. I don't get it. So why they're so bad? Because if I were Russia, in the first days of the war, I would have tried to establish aerial supremacy. That would have been my entire focus, is trying to get my planes to dominate the air over Ukraine. And I think they could have done that. And they should have done that, given the Ukrainians have Russian planes, they don't have better planes. Russia has more and better. And then I would have just bombed every rail line coming into Ukraine from every country in the west. So I guess I'm glad I'm not running the Russian military, because I think I would have done a better job than any of the generals out there. But it seems to me this is like war 101. But the Soviets had this doctrine of mass numbers and ground troops. But first thing the Israelis did in 1967 war, and it was to wipe out the enemy's air force. And once you wipe out the enemy's air force and you control the skies, it's a different ballgame completely war changes completely. And in 73, one of the first signs of changing the direction of the war was Israel's ability to dominate the skies in the Middle East. So air force is crucial in warfare and the fact that the Russians don't have the dominance of the air prevents them from cutting off those supplies, because you don't need troops on the ground to do it. Imagine every train leaving Poland soon as it crosses into Ukraine gets blown up. We've changed the dynamics of the war completely. From what I remember of the history, the engineering teams and the maintenance depots for the most advanced planes in the Russian air force were all in Ukraine. And they're not available to them anymore. It's still flying. For example, the Su-57, which is the most advanced plane in the Russian arsenal, it's a fifth generation stealth fighter, they won't fly it over Ukraine because they're afraid of having it shot down, which is just stunning. I mean, this is such a failure on the map. It means they haven't taken out the ground, the surface to air missiles. Russian tactics in this war are just bewildering. They truly are. The incompetence at the strategic level is truly stunning. But then that's what authoritarian do. I mean, think about Hitler. Hitler showed some real strategic genius for a while and then completely messed it up, but that's what happens when you have authoritarian governments. They can't win. Thanks, Adam. Wow, we're going on two hours already. Oh, hey, Debbie. Okay. So I have a note that I took during your December discussion about James Cameron movies. First of all, I really appreciated that because I was on a break from work and I had the flu. So I went and watched a bunch of like pretty much all the ones you talked about that were good. And that was really nice. So I got a value from that. But one comment I wanted to make on the movie Titanic because, well, that's one of the ones I did not watch. And I agree with you about all the Marxist stuff. Like there's some really terrible, terrible stuff in that movie. The worst part you didn't mention, which is that at the end, the way the woman drops this gem into the ocean, like she's on a boat of this guy whose his life's work is to find this thing. And he spent like God knows how much money and all these investors and everything. And then she's like, and she just drops it in the ocean. And that is like, I just want to scream when I see that. Okay, so I agree with you about the bad. I do think there's something good about it too. It's like, I don't know if it's a sub theme or a component of the overall theme, but it's something that resonated with me. And I think probably with a lot of women, which is this breaking away from oppressive gender roles of the past. There's a lot of that. There's a really beautifully dramatized, like very well made scene where the mother's lacing up the daughter's corset. And she's like, and she's talking about this. He doesn't want to marry this guy because she hates him. But like, and then her mother says, well, we're women, all we have are bad choices. And, you know, and it's just all this, oh, ladies, after dinner, we're going to go do our cigars and brandy, you go do whatever woman stuff you do. And so the whole thing about like her progression as a character, even though she was irrational, like, you know, she makes these comments like, oh, it's illogical. That's why I trust it. And stuff like that, which I hate. But that aspect of her character's progression like this, just throw all that constraints away and pursue my life. And then at the end, this sort of pan over all these pictures from her life, she's got like, they show her with her leg up on an airplane. And like, they suggest she went out and lived and really lived and had all these adventures. That aspect of it, I found inspiring, particularly when I was 18 or 17, when I saw it in the theater. And even now, although the rest of it is yucky, so I don't necessarily watch it that much. But I just want to bring that to your attention. See what you think there. Did you notice that? Definitely, definitely that's there. The problem is, it's much better done in other movies than indeed James Cameron. If you think about James Cameron's movies, in all his movies before this, the woman is the hero. True. Yeah, Ripley and Sarah Connor. Oh, they're bad ass women. Sarah Connor, but even in Abyss, she's the rational one. She's the real thinker. She's the one who's the plot along. She's the most benevolent of all of them. So he has this amazing respect for women throughout his movies. And I thought, yeah, he's doing this. He believes it. But he undermines it by everything else he does in the movies. So yes, I can see that. And the romantic part is so yucky. Yeah, there's no values, really, other than this independence to project to her. And every single person who's rich on that boat is horrible. So it's just, yeah, I get it. But for Cameron, who has this immense respect for women, I'd expect that. In his other movies, that is front and center in such an amazing way, in such an original way. They're all heroes. Yeah. Yeah, in a believable way, too, because there's a lot of movies, especially in the past decade, where it's like about a strong woman. And it's just characters are one dimensional, though. And they're just strong in some weird way, like the Captain Marvel absorbs energy from some nuclear reaction, and now she can shoot lasers out of her hands and fly through space on her own. I mean, that's just silly. That's just silly. So it's almost just turned into sort of a caricature of what Cameron does so beautifully with some of those other movies. And most definitely, mostly with aliens and Terminator and the Abyss and so forth. The only unique thing about the Titanic is the recognition of breaking away from that constraining past that all the other ones, the women are already well away from that constraining past. And they're just out there rocking and rolling. The thing I like about the women in other movies is that they're all thinkers. So it's not just about physical stuff. Yes. They're all rational. They're all thinkers. And that's what makes this movie so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't like about the beginning of I didn't like Terminator 2 at the beginning of it, because Sarah Connor is gone crazy and it's out of character. She shouldn't. So I don't like the beginning of that movie because of that. She comes to her senses and she becomes this amazing rational hero. It's it's not quite that. I mean, yes, she's unhinged at the beginning. But also it's they've locked her up in an asylum and they see her as crazy. But then she kind of responds by she responds by not to get in that situation where they lock her up. Exactly. And you think she was. So it's a little inconsistent. I forgive you. That one. Same here. Okay. That's all for me. Great. All right. Let's see. Tim, did we get we did two with you? Yes. Okay. So let's go to we did Matt. Fred Harper. Hey, so I have observed that the culture is starting to have like two, two ways of communicating using or two ways of using the same word and like the most obnoxious way possible, like the freedom or freedom defined as an absence of coercion or freedom as the like the ability to gain stuff without doing anything or racism is judging people's moral values off of their skin color versus racism being a system of oppression. I was just wondering how if you got any tips for reconciling that with people, I find when I communicate with people, if I open up with, look, there's two ways of looking at these types of things in the culture. I'm able to at least communicate about it, but it's it's definitely seems to be one of the big contributing factors to the cultural divide that nobody's on the same page when it comes to epistemology and concept formation. Absolutely. So everybody is for freedom. Everybody. There's not a person out there who's not for freedom, but they all define it differently. And so it's a good opportunity to talk about the importance of definition. And then it's an important opportunity to say, okay, what is it that we're free of? And why do we need freedom? What is the necessity? Where does that derive from? Where does it come from? And so it's an opportunity to bring up the world of the mind and and and freedom as the and force coercion as the enemy of the mind and freedom is is is necessary in order to be able to think and to act on one's thoughts. And the idea that one should be free of fear of free of a few of want is is metaphysically impossible. You can control those and and that is there's no concept to capture that it's an abuse of the concept. So you have to be able to kind of walk them through what it looks like to come up with the concept of freedom. And what's it used? What is its use case? Why have it? Why do we need freedom? And and differentiate it from the way they are they are using it, which is destructive and not productive. Gotcha. And then real quick on the topic of the podcast. I don't know if this is manageable, but I would enjoy hearing small condensed rants without the audience present periodically on the podcast would be cool. I would come to terms with commercials with if there was like like when you when the your lectures get posted those I'm always excited when those pop up. But like small topic rants. Yeah, the challenge is my rants are best when I have a live audience and when I'm pissed off and live audiences are what piss me off. So for me to artificially do a rant is difficult. I could probably do it. But it's it doesn't come quite out quite as good as when it comes out naturally because I'm just upset. Fair enough. Fair enough. Let's see who to have. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna go on for just because you're good. Thank you. So Pini any another question? Sure. Last question. I have a question of how to reconcile a certain thing. I I started my own business. I immigrated here. I started my own business and did there pretty well. So I can value the money. I can value the productivity and money is just the result. So it's not my goal. Obviously it's important result and tools to do to achieve other stuff. So how what you do with the money later on you don't want to corrupt to certain extent your children by give them money then they can lose the value of productivity and work. So I kind of debate this issue. On one hand you want to help them you want to give them something of your fruit. And besides giving to other causes that I have but still you want your kids to enjoy it but without corrupting them. Yeah, I know so I agree completely. I think you have to it depends on your kids right and it depends on their character and it depends on what they're doing in life and depends how old they are. I think if they are let's say you know I would give them less when they're young and more as they get older in a sense. Because as they go to older they prove they're proving that they can be productive. They are productive. When they're young is what they're most probably tempted to have to the shortcut to relying on your money rather than on the work that they need to do. So I think as they get older I would view giving them more money more positively because assuming they've lived good lives and the people that you're proud of and that you think they'll put the money to good use then I would want to see them enjoy the money while I'm alive. So rather than wait until I was dead and then they got all the money then or some of the money then. So I think it's a it's a balance but it depends on your evaluation of your own children and then again when they're young I would deprive them and once they get into their 40s and they've had they have careers and their families and they've been productive they've achieved stuff why not give them a bunch of money you know and and enjoy it with them or enjoy watching them enjoy it. So I don't know that's I would think about it and of course you know as you said the other values you want to pursue whether by giving the money away or whether by consuming that money that you should spend the money on. Yeah yeah that's that's what I kind of believe and that's what I did when they were young they're in mid 20s now and and when they were younger they didn't get much and just slightly now. Yeah I think I think I think if they have if they if they do well in their careers and they do well at work and then and then they've got a family and and they're good human beings then you know why not give them a lot of money because at that point you're not corrupting them you're just rewarding them and it would be fun to fun to see them spend it. Okay thanks. Sure. All right who have I not given a second opportunity. Andrew did you do too? I have not. Okay I think you're the last one. All right you did a really interesting analysis of the Uvaldi shooting and the cops that were kind of meandering and not not interjecting themselves which was really a horrible story and you tied it in with morality and the inversion of morality and in the culture and how that creates certain situation. Yeah I mean and the only the only defense that I was thinking for the cops is that makes me a little uncomfortable is that we live in such a bureaucratic culture that I don't know what they were being told and like are their careers on the line there's so much red tape there's so much needing approval to do anything and do we know whether it was a sacrifice for them or what they were being told. I agree with you by the way this is really I agree with you in essence this is like a marginal issue but I do think as a bureaucratic a comment on the bureaucratic state it's it's really hard. But that's part of the conditioning to be a coward right I think the bureaucratic state conditions you to be a coward, to be afraid and to fear to be the dominant and conditions you you know not to take action instead it conditions you to file paperwork but it's still shocking to me that I don't know how many cops were on the scene not one of them took the personal initiative this is their job I'm not talking about just I mean as a bystander I would consider getting involved in something like that if I saw it happening right because just as a bystander particularly if I had a gun on me but these are cops these are people whose profession it is is to jump into situations like this and to do something to make quick decisions and to act on them and to think that there were a dozen cops there I don't know how many were there and not one of them took the initiative and just stormed into the thing and rallied the other cops to follow him along it's just shocking to me and if you think about if you think about human heroism in on the battlefield in situations like the school in situations where this has happened and you think about the number of times that massacres have been prevented and these things have been because somebody you know was was was brave enough to stand in the face of evil and the fact that there was nobody there that is so shocking and disappointing and I hope it you know probably suggests something about the culture at large but yeah I mean think about what was that there were these terrorists on a train in Europe and a couple of a couple of US kids marines I think on on vacation or something jumped them and and you know they had no arms and these guys had sub machine guns and they they managed to they managed to minimize casualties if they were any at all this was in France I think it was a train to Paris from Amsterdam or Belgium or something it's just you know there are lots of your view is somebody should have said screw it I don't care if I have authority or not I'm kids lives at stake I mean how can you just I mean yeah I just don't get it you're a cop where's your pride in your job where the where that where's the pride I mean if you're you know this is what at the end of the day this is what your job's about if you can't stand up in this what do you do you know I'm very critical of cops they don't overweight they're under trained that they don't take their job seriously I don't get a sense and this is another example of that this is another example of that they you know you got to have pride in your job and pride in your job suggested you're you're in charge of saving people from exactly the situation you're not there to manage traffic you know you're there to save human life when the situation arises where that is necessary and man up there you got a little a little rant all right all right let's do some super chats quickly and we'll call it a day okay I've got quite a few super chats actually Brad Bradley says do you think there is a pressure to be socially altruistic yes huge amount of pressure that is other people seem to need constant humor or conversation to keep comfortable is this my problem or there's work made most people in this company I think it's their problem but I don't I wouldn't call that I don't know that socially altruistic that you know the fact that they need to have to talk or to have contact in order to have a you know they have to be in a conversation I don't know if that's driven by altruism it's driven by second-handedness it's driven by fear of being alone or being in your own head of needing affirmation needing visibility in a second-handed kind of way so it's being a second-hander which I think it is so they're the problem not not you they're the ones creating the situation and it's their psychological need that is creating it okay Frank says a history of freedom of thought by J. B. Bowie an astounding book defending individualism condemnation of the prison of religious intolerance and pain matter-of-fact language plain matter-of-fact language wow I am copy pasting it I've never heard of that book so sounds interesting all right thank you Frank Michael are African countries poor because of socialism or lawless anarchy tribal government structure also why was your debate with the anarchist in New York City postponed do you have a new date having in countries are poor because the statists the exact form of the statism is some combination of socialism and at lawless anarchy and just tribal authoritarianism and all kinds I mean we it's not that important to put specific labels in these things it's basically tribalism and authoritarianism is the problem um debate was postponed I don't not I do not know why it was postponed I have not asked I just know it was postponed um they just asked me if it was okay if we did in July instead and I said fine so I don't know the reason uh Richard uh will you interview Gina Golden in the near future I think so I mean I've got a list my assistant is calling up people or emailing people some of the response some of them don't Gina I don't think this is private Gina just had a baby a second so is she going to be available anytime soon I don't know but she's certainly on the list of people I will be interviewing uh the exact timing I need to ask my I need to ask Angela for a list of who I'm interviewing in the next few weeks Casey uh is stakeholder capitalism the idea that customers labels investors communities are all have a say in the way the business is run as evil as it sounds yes absolutely it is although you know of course the reality is that you have to take all those groups into account if you're trying if you're trying to do anything uh so it's it's it's it's evil because what it really is is about undermining the profit motive undermining shareholders centrality this is coming out of their world economic form yes but they didn't invent it the stakeholder capitalism has been around since the nineties maybe even the eighties but certainly since the nineties it didn't start with the world economic form but the world economic form is a big big promoter of it no question about it uh Michael ask why is subpoenaing a witness not initiation of force I didn't quite understand Adam's answer the other day god I have to recreate it um it is um you know you would hold the information that could save somebody else's life um that withholding of information would be immoral and illegitimate it would be the argument that is and therefore the state has um the right because because you're basically by withholding information you're violating somebody else's right you know it has a right to uh um you know force you in a sense to provide that information to a subpoena so it's a withholding information that is deemed as the right violation dr brook I actually think dr peacock was asked that question on a podcast about the issue of jury duty and was that an initiation of force uh I think that might be accessible on his website as well yes and and and jury duty is a little different that would be that would be different that is uh you know uh and I and I can't I I think he said no it's not initiation of force but I can't remember there is a debate and objectivism about whether jury duty is initiation of force or not but I think that's different than a subpoena where with subpoena you're you're going after particular information that the person holds that would you know is crucial for a real rights issue um and and of course I'm sure subpoenas are abused today I'm sure everything is abused today within within the world we live in today but yes I mean I my guess is all the a lot of these questions are being asked of either lennard or inrand at some point um what what do people mean when they talk about um slave morality loses guilt tripping the winner into acquiring resources for themselves I'm actually not sure michael I'm not sure what you're referring to michael I was asked why is the left always trying to find mechanisms to take people out of the workforce aren't people suspicious of this uh or do they convince themselves it's out of compassion well I mean the left utopia is one in which you don't really work is it's a it's a it's a world of whim it's you know if you read Marx his utopia is a world in which people just do whatever they feel like doing in this the world is so plentiful you never actually have to work middle slave has actually put up the link to the particular answer he has access to every yeah should you even duty be compulsive uh it was a podcast that lennard pick up did july 19th 2010 the answer is two minutes long and I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember what it is all right um jonathan does because jonathan had it right off the bat so jonathan what was the lennard's answer about about uh jewis you know honor uh your own rather than try to put words in his mouth I'll encourage other people to check it out okay it's on uh it's on picoff.com so check out picoff.com podcasts uh and they'll organize quite nicely on the website and you can search them and find different topics if you've never listened to lennard pick off old podcasts I highly recommend them they're wonderful quick answers to to to questions with that very unique brilliant sharpness that lennard pick off has um let's see a man isn't great because this is michael a man isn't great because he hasn't failed a man is great because failure hasn't stopped him um yeah it doesn't mean he's great failure not stopping you but um if you're great failure hasn't stopped you because failure is right around the corner if you if you're active michael says why should people take alex Epstein seriously since he doesn't have a phd in his field because he's an expert in the field in spite of not having phd and you can figure that out by listening to what he says and by evaluating um you know uh his ideas challenge them uh research challenge them if you if you figure out that he doesn't know what he's talking about then don't take him seriously but as long as what you discover is that what he's saying makes sense and phd doesn't give you access to truth quite the contrary uh most people who are phd's don't know what the hell they're talking about shazma says that the us have three nukes at the time just in case the japanese didn't surrender after being hit by two i think so i think they only had three so they were very close to running out um justin is high sex drive a detriment to productive work no not necessarily not if the high sex drive is um uh funneled in the right direction uh is not used as an excuse not to do productive work uh and and is not allowed to dominate your thinking not allowed to dominate your actions uh high sex drive is a healthy thing not an unhealthy thing don't make it another healthy thing now you can have you can be obsessed with sex you can be addicted i don't believe addicted but you can be obsessed with sex which is not healthy um so it it as long as it's focused in on and oriented towards something healthy there's there's there's no downside to a high sex drive certainly not to productivity michael why exactly did the factories leave the us was it the labor laws if so do you think they would return if the rights violating laws were abolished um well it's a complicated question because you're making an assumption the factories left the united states a lot of factories left the united states a lot of factories closed they didn't leave the united states because um weren't competitive uh the technology wasn't competitive the japanese could do it better uh the labor wasn't as productive japanese labor was was more productive this is pre china uh most of factories in the united states that closed closed because of chinese japanese competition not because of chinese competition china didn't compete with much with the united states most of the jobs in production that the united states lost it lost to um to robots not so factories didn't leave the us now it is true that labor laws uh reduce the level of productivity they reduce the amount of wages that labor's earns um and uh and they reduced the number of uh jobs they all though there's a shortage in the united states today of employees not of jobs so with the labor laws you still have lots of people coming to work in the us um so yes labor laws raise the cost of labor but uh and and they're a reason why some factories couldn't compete and shut down and if you abolish them you know there would be more jobs available in the united states but the problem today is not a lack of jobs the problem today is a lack of people to fill those jobs so the real challenge is you have to increase immigration um and from an economic perspective and you have to get rid of the labor laws because the real effect of getting rid of the labor laws will be to increase productivity and people would earn more you would raise people's standard of living it's not about where the jobs are geographically that's how much you how much you are productive and you want how much you earn all right last question bank ask can the can the objective definition of art be applied to music and literature or are these disciplines would it be best to read Aristotle's politics so yes absolutely it can be applied certainly to literature and England does apply it extensively in the romantic manifesto she shows it extensively in the romantic manifesto how it applies to literature that's the one art of all the arts in which it applies if you will where she has shown us that it applies more than any other art form with regard to music it's more difficult to apply it but yes it definitely apply it applies to all art it's just more challenging to understand it more challenging to explain it and to see it she starts doing that in the romantic manifesto but there's still a lot more work to do all right everybody thank you oh god i'm late for dinner all right two and a half hours these things are getting longer and longer and longer but this is good more and more people participating that's always a positive uh thank you i will see you all on monday as long as i don't get sick again um but there's no plan for that so i will see you on monday uh next week i'm traveling so schedule will be off a little bit sorry guys but it will be off a little bit uh i'll be traveling wednesday thursday friday uh i will try to do shows from the road but i will see how well that works uh and um but in the meantime i'll see you monday tuesday i'll see you monday and tuesday thanks everybody bye