 All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this, what is it, Friday afternoon where you are, it's nighttime over here, and I don't know, is the video frozen or is it just me? Yeah, the video looks frozen. All right. What do you guys think? Video frozen in your end? Somebody in the chat, let me know, just sound, no video, pick, stop, all right, let's take a look and see if I can sort this out. All right, we might have, there we go, what we looks like we're all back again, all right. Yay video working. Anyway, sorry everybody, technical glitches being in the road, we'll see how Banworth holds up here in my hotel Madrid. Thank you for joining me, I apologize again for the weird hour, but we are experimenting with different hours and different days and we can see how it all works. It is 10 p.m. here in Madrid, at 4 p.m. on the east coast and yes, yes, it is an echo chamber here, so I apologize for the relatively poor quality of the sound, so nothing much I can do about that, I've got a good mic and everything, but the room, the room of Uber, it's, and we keep getting, you guys are probably hearing a little bit of an echo, so I apologize for that, but it is what it is, it's the price of doing these shows on the road. We're going to do quite a few shows on the road through November really, yeah, through December 1st, so December will be home, but I'll be traveling quite a bit, Roland says hi from the Canary Islands, where it's the last day of my vacation, changing planes in Madrid tomorrow again, well I'll wave to you, I won't be at the airport though, so yes, Canary Islands is beautiful, I've been there once, it's a nice place to vacation, so enjoy, have, enjoy your last day there. Alright, so we've got a full schedule today, as you know, Elon Musk has bought Twitter, how cool is that, I'm excited, we'll talk a little bit about that and what that implies or doesn't imply or how it's going to all work out, it's going to be interesting, whatever happens. I have been meaning to talk about a recession, be delaying it and delaying it delaying it, maybe because it's just too depressing to talk about, but we will talk about inflation and recession today, so a little bit of economics, so hopefully some of you will, you know, those of you who are not economics minded will tolerate that and then update on assessments about midterm elections, so we'll talk about the red wave that is coming, the implications of that, what it means, how big it's going to be, it seems like on a day to day basis things seem changing, seem to be changing and the odds of a red wave seem to be altering, so we'll talk about that and what it all means, so yeah, that should be a good show, you can use the super chat feature to support the show and yeah, we've been a little slow, low on the super chat in the last few shows, that's understandable because I'm on the road, it's understandable because most of my regulars are not listening because of the different time zones and the difficulty in predicting when a show is going to be, everything is last minute, I get it, that's great, so more depends on you who are listening if we're going to raise money using super chat, of course if not, those of you who don't use super chat, not using super chat, you guys please consider supporting the show, consider supporting you on Bookshow and everything that I do, my traveling, my speaking, my debating, my waiting, we'll have a new essay that I wrote coming out soon in Skeptic Magazine, Michael Sherma's Magazine, that'll come out soon, I'll link and talk about it when it comes out, I'll have my co-author maybe Lanzono on the show to talk about it, so that'll be soon, I think it comes out in November or December, so we'll see and then finally, yes all of that you were supporting including the show and you can do that on Patreon, I know that's a new favorite for people, subscribe to our locals and you're on Bookshow.com so I support, still having trouble with that website, some people are still struggling to get on and to get through, if you don't want to use PayPal through, and I know some of you don't want to use PayPal then go to Patreon, if you don't want to use Patreon or PayPal you can use Subscribestar and you can always use Locals as a backup and if you really want to I could set you up on a Venmo, in other words, if you're interested in supporting the show, if you're willing to support the show, if you're willing to make the effort to support the show then we will find ways to, we will find ways to get you to actually monetize your interest. All right let's go, so I think so just as a quick aside, I was, I'm starting to listen to Kanye West's interview with Lex Friedman, I guess he's got a brand new interview to win up yesterday or today, on the Lex Friedman show. Yay, it's not Kanye West, it's Yay and since I'm getting a lot of questions at Kanye West because Kanye West is a big public figure, I don't know if you know but Kanye West has bought Paula, so just as Elon Musk is buying Twitter, Yay is buying Paula, so Paula is now owned by Kanye, I have no idea what that means, but who knows where that goes. Kanye is obviously incredibly successful, incredibly successful entertainer, incredibly successful, I guess entrepreneur, he's made a huge amount of money and is incredibly wealthy, but so I'm listening, so everybody's interested, you know, what do you think of Kanye West, and I don't know anything about Kanye West, I don't know his music, I don't like, as you know, I don't like rap, I have no real interest in him as an entertainer, but he is becoming this cultural figure and of course he makes comments, he's made some anti-Semitic comments recently, he's done all kinds of other things, so people keep asking me about him, so I'm listening to the Lex Friedman show, even though I've said often, why should anybody care what somebody like Kanye West thinks, because he's an entertainer, maybe he's a very talented entertainer, maybe he's brilliant entertainer, I don't know, but that doesn't make him an expert on anything else, and his opinions about politics, his opinion about philosophy, his opinion about free speech, his opinion about anything else is, does not seem relevant, but people keep asking because people follow celebrities, people care what celebrities think, anyway, so I started listening, I haven't listened to a lot of it just to the first few minutes of it, I don't know, first 15 minutes of it or so, or so on, and the guy is, I don't know, I mean he's obviously not completely there, he's rambling, what he says doesn't really make sense, maybe it makes sense some way inside his head, maybe somehow things are connected, but it's just floating, nonsensical, pseudo-clever, pseudo-smart, nothing, I'm curious if Lex is going to ask him about the anti-Semitic comments he's made, so far they're talking about engineering, it just sounds like this guy, I mean really if he was not a celebrity, nobody would listen to him because he's rambling nonsensically, he's rambling in a way that doesn't make any sense and doesn't add up to anything, and Lex keeps trying to bring out something out of it, but Lex seems half entertained by it, so I don't know, I mean I've heard that he has real psychiatric problems, that he's got a real psychological psychiatric problems and he needs real care, I don't know, I don't know much about Kanye West, but this interview strikes me as this is not a person you would even consider caring what he thought, if not for the fact obviously that he is a celebrity, he succeeded in one field of life and now the culture looks for him for advice and commentary on a lot of other fields in life, and now he owns Paula, he owns one of the Twitter-like social media platforms, the one that claims to represent open speech and claims to represent kind of an open platform, open speech. All right so that brings us to Elon Musk finally buying Twitter, now this is being quite an adventure as you know, Elon Musk offered $54 billion to buy Twitter months ago, then the stocks, tech stocks collapsed including the stock of Twitter went down, but it seems that it seems now pretty clear that Elon Musk signed a definitive agreement to purchase Twitter at a particular price, Elon Musk saw the price of Twitter collapse, maybe had a change of mind in terms of complexity and the issues related to buying Twitter and turning it profitable, I don't know what exactly when did all of his considerations, but he withdrew the bid, he said he was walking away, funnily enough the contract that he had with Twitter did not have a provision for him to walk away, which strikes me as massively weird and bizarre, usually there is, usually there is a provision that allows you for a fee, a break of fee to walk away, either the fee was very very large or there was no such provision which is shocking, given the number of really really smart people that were involved in this transaction, the number of bankers that committed to providing Elon Musk with a debt financing for this, and Elon Musk himself was a pretty sophisticated player and yet here they had, they signed a contract and he didn't have it out, not even like a billion dollar out and he would have paid a billion dollar to get out of this because it's overpaying by probably 20 billion, Twitter's probably only worth 20, 24 billion, 30 billion at most, so I don't know what the deal is with this contract, I don't know how it got signed, I don't know who is responsible, anyway, Elon Musk is suing anybody, so it sounds like he's taking responsibility for it, so he signed the deal, he backed away from it and Twitter said, whoa, you can't do that, we've got a signed contract and they took it to court and Elon Musk then came up with a bunch of excuses, well bots and schmarts and you know, you disclosed wrong information and you didn't give me all the data and da-da-dam, three weeks before it goes to trial, this lawsuit, Elon Musk sat down with his lawyers as my guest and the lawyers say, and he says to the lawyers, what's the chances of us winning and the lawyers say probably close to zero and Elon Musk said, well then let me just go and buy Twitter and finish with it and he does and of course, you know, he's a financial loser from this, now he could turn this around, but at least in terms of expected values of financial looseness, he didn't want to go through with the transaction, but he is, I don't know if the bigger few is a billion, I'm not sure why he wouldn't just pay the billion dollars because he's clearly overpaying, so who knows what is going on, who knows what's going on with Elon, but anyway, he's going through this, not only is he overpaying, but the bankers who put up $13 billion and again, they committed without an out, without any kind of escape clause, this whole transaction strikes me a super, just from a finance perspective and a legal perspective, super amateurish, I mean this is amateurish, so the banks now have $13 billion of Twitter debt, which they cannot sell, nobody's going to buy it, and they've already said, the banks have already said they're going to keep it on their books because they can't sell it, so we're talking about sophisticated banks, JP Morgan and I don't know who else, but I think Goldman and stuff like that, so bondholders are screwed, the banks are screwed, the, you know, from a financial perspective, Elon Musk is screwed so far, okay, but he's bought it, now he has to, I assume he wants to turn it profitable and he wants to actually make a business of this, which is going to be a challenge for him, it's going to be, it's not going to be easy, the actual, you know, how to monetize Twitter is a real challenge, it's not obvious, and Elon Musk is going to have to deal with that challenge, he's going to have to figure this out, it's not going to be easy, you know, if he wants, if he wants advertisers, for example, it's going to be interesting, so he has, he has a tension on the one hand, he wants to open up the platform to anybody, he wants to have very low threshold, and we'll get to this in a minute, but he wants to have a very low threshold in terms of what is acceptable to say on the platform, so he wants to be able to allow more varied speech in the platform than currently is allowed on Twitter, but on the other hand, he wants to increase advertising revenue, because suddenly that is one of the ways in which one expects to monetize, monetize, you know, Twitter and Twitter subscriptions, but the advertisers are clearly going to have certain agendas, the advertisers are going to say, look, we want to advertise, but a product, I don't know, is family friendly, and we don't advertise if these kind of things are said, or we don't advertise if these kind of political views are said, or we don't advertise if that's said, I mean advertisers have opinions, we know that, we know that advertisers have withdrawn advertising for various TV shows, we know that advertisers who advertise for Fox often don't advertise for CNN and vice versa, so this is going to be an interesting challenge, how do you increase advertising revenue, how do you increase monetization of the platform, and at the same time, how do you increase the amount of speech allowed on, you know, on the platform, so this is going to be really interesting, as Jennifer said, I mean a lot of advertisers have dropped Kanye because of supposedly, supposedly, you know, if advertisers have dropped Kanye because they're anti-semitic statements as you made, how is all this going to be balanced out on Twitter, right? Joe says Musk's contention was overbought issue, I don't think it was over the bar issue, I think Musk could, because if it was really over the bar issue, then he might have been able to get out of the contract, but he couldn't get out of the contract because the bar issue is not a big issue, it's not an issue probably at all, it sounds much more like after he wanted to get out of Twitter, he used the bar issue as an excuse to get out, but I be shocked if the whole bar issue was a surprise to anybody. All right, so Musk now, as of today, I think, as of this morning, owns Twitter, he has bought it for whatever price he paid for it, debt holders in the tank for it, the other equity providers other than Musk, bought it, they are, they're in, they're in. I think this is terrific. First of all, I think this is a fantastic example for the world, not that the world really learns from examples, but it's always good to have an example. It's a great example for the world on how markets solve this so-called problem of limited speech and platforms. You don't like the restrictions the platform has on speech, then buy it. And that's what Elon Musk is doing, he's buying. And you say, well, Elon Musk is rich, other people could do it, well, other people could get together, they could form a group to buy it, they could take on more debt, they could use leverage buyouts, there are lots of ways in which sophisticated investors can buy something even when they're not as rich as Elon Musk is rich. So I think it's amazing, it's wonderful that he bought it, whether it'll be successful or not, I don't know, but that's not the issue. The issue is that it's really cool to see the problem, suppose the problem, and I'm not sure there is a problem, suppose the problem of Twitter having too restrictive a say in what people could say on that platform, that problem going away by basically somebody like Elon Musk buying Twitter. Now, it would be interesting. If everybody who's cheering Elon Musk buying Twitter and saying, this is great, this is a great, you know, grateful, this should be, this should allow him to go through because this is a private property and it's great because the far left is yelling and screaming and really pissed off because this saying, wait a minute, it's the public square, how can Elon Musk now own it, it's privately owned, and he's going to limit our speech, he's going to constrain us, that's the left yelling and screaming because Elon Musk is supposedly associated with the right. Imagine, and the right is saying, oh, no, no, no, don't do that private property, you know, but imagine if if if George Soros bought Twitter, oh my God, would Trump and everybody else be flipping out and yelling and screaming, even if by the way, George Soros committed to expanding speech and having more points of view and returning Trump and having everybody on the platform, just because it was somebody on the left who bought it, people would be flipping out and yelling and screaming and being upset. I mean, the people on the right this time, the people on the left would be embracing it. I mean, it's amazing how much a people's opinions, how much of people's attitude is dictated by where they are on the tribal, on the tribal, you know, Venn diagram or tribal maps map, which seems to determine more than anything else. Wes, thank you. Wes just supported the show with 50 bucks, really appreciate it. He can't stick around, but he wanted to support us. That's wonderful. Thank you, Wes. All right, so Elon is now in control. Elon has said he wants to expand a viewpoints. Of course, one of the first things that happened when Elon took over Twitter this morning or was it yesterday, he basically fired the CEO, which makes sense. He fired the CFO, which again, probably makes sense. And he fired the legal council and the people responsible for any kind of content moderation, they were all fired. So they've all been escorted out of the office. They're all gone. Elon Musk is now officially in charge over there. He is the CEO, CFO, CRO, Chief Content Officer. Jack was not on the payroll. Jack hasn't been on the payroll, what, for a year, two years? Jack hasn't been on the payroll in a long time. Jack has gone and has been gone for a long time. At least a year. So Elon Musk has cleaned house in terms of laid everybody off. He's declared himself to be the chief twit, Elon Musk, and he is now basically running shop. He's committed to laying off a lot of people. At some point, there was talk about 75% of the people, but it looks like it's going to be significantly less than that. But there's going to be a lot of layoffs, a lot of turnover, a lot of rehiring, a lot of new appointments. They're going to have to hire a lot of new people for the C-sweets. Now, Elon Musk is excellent at hiring people. Remember, Elon has started and run and in a sense own a variety of different companies. I mean, he can do that because he has delegated and he's very good at delegating the actual running of the business and running aspects of the business to a variety of different people. He's from everything I hear. He's excellent at hiring quality people and leaving them alone and letting them run the place. This is why he can get so much done. This is why he is so productive and so efficient. So Musk is an extraordinary businessman in his ability to run multiple businesses and do so, so well and hire extraordinary people that can be left alone to run the businesses for him with his oversight. Musk is now taking on this additional role of being CEO of Twitter. We'll see how long he stays CEO and how quickly he hires a CEO basically to run day-to-day operations over it. Somebody said Jack Dossy. Yeah, Jack Dossy's gone a long time ago, but he is, you know, one thing that's interesting also came out today. Jack Dossy about a year ago, maybe two years ago, said that he was starting a new venture, which was going to be a social media company, a Twitter-like company, but it was all going to be on the blockchain. It was all going to be, it was in a sense going to be peer to peer kind of Twitter. I think it's called Blue Sky and so nobody actually can control the network. The network is, you know, I don't know how these things work, but the network somehow is on the blockchain. It's all encrypted. Nobody can control it. Nobody can edit it. Nobody can, you know, take stuff off. You own the post that you put up there. Nobody else owns them. So it sounds like a pretty powerful platform, Twitter-like supposedly. Anyway, Jack Dossy supposedly was working on this. It has been working on this in the background for a few years. He started working on it while he was CEO of Twitter. He saw what was coming in terms of the controls and the pressure and influence that that was placed on Twitter because A, it's for profit and B, so it needs profit to sustain itself and needs profit in order to have capital to continue the investment. But here he found a way this Blue Sky supposedly is all done in some way. It's actually a non-profit kind of venture where I don't know enough about how it exactly works, but it's anonymous and, you know, Twitter, you know, in the blockchain. That's my understanding. Anyway, whatever that means. And supposedly, he launched the beta of the product today, the same day that a Lung Musk started with Twitter. Twitter has got its competition from Jack Dossy. So Jack Dossy launched his beta today. Let's see. Yes, some more stuff about Musk buying Twitter. Let me just say this. So here is a tweet that a Lung Musk tweeted about an hour and a half ago, which I think is interesting in terms of content moderation on Twitter. Here's what the tweet said. Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or counseling statements will happen before that council convenes. So this is fascinating. I told you months ago that buying Twitter, running Twitter, figuring out what content moderation in Twitter would be, is not easy, not straightforward, not simple. And that Lung Musk was going to discover that this is complicated and this is hard and that, you know, he trivializes this and, you know, everybody, you know, I don't know that Lung Musk could trivialize it, but people trivialize it. Oh, he'll just open everything up. It doesn't work that way. You need content moderation. What does that content moderation look like? Well, now we're going to have a council. By the way, Facebook has a council already, has had a council for a year or two or three. I don't know. So now we're going to have a council to decide a content moderation. And we're not going to reinstate anybody until the council convenes. It just seems like, wait a minute, what is all the yelling and nonsense and hoopala and stuff being about if you're just going to appoint a content moderating council? So it turns out even a Lung Musk, even a Lung Musk thinks that you need content moderation. Go figure. All right, let's see. With the net worth of a Lung Musk and Kanye West have, wouldn't they be less interested in profit and far more interested in lasting legacy, but lasting legacy and profit are the same thing. There is no lasting legacy without profit. You know, the fact is that what does profit make possible? Profit makes possible the system, the ability of the business long term. You could be the richest man in the world, but the business can eat out your cash flows so quickly. If you want to, for example, a Lung Musk just bought Twitter for $44 billion. Twitter's losing money. How much money is a Lung Musk going to be willing to put into Twitter every single year, every single year until when? The only way to have a lasting legacy is to build a profitable company where the profits sustain it into the future. It's not a matter of how wealthy you are. It's a matter of do you build a sustainable business? Do you build a business that is lasting? Let me be clear, our lasting legacy is a profitable legacy, at least in business if you're trying to build a business. Now, if this is a hobby, then it's probably not a lasting legacy. It's a hobby and it's a question of how long can you afford to sustain the hobby, but then recognize it's just a hobby. What is profit beyond the capacity to reinvest and sustain the business? Profit is also a measure of whether you're succeeding. Is Twitter successful if people are using it? Are people using it in a way that actually reflects the values produced? If it's not profitable, if it's a loss, then you're destroying value. Destroying value is, again, not a lasting legacy. Destruction of value is not lasting. It's not a legacy and it's a sign of failure, not success. You shouldn't think of profit as just money. Profit is a sign of success and profit is a sign of sustainability. It's what makes a business sustainable. Without profit, a business is not sustainable. Let me just see if there's any. Now, can Elon Musk turn Twitter around? Yes, surely he can turn it around. There must be, I don't know what it is, there must be a business model for Twitter where it can make money. But I'm not sure the making money is 100% compatible and sustain the business and keeping it going in the long run and growing it and making it this wonderful forum in which people exchange ideas on a massive scale. I'm not sure that is compatible with very, very open moderation. I think one of the reasons you need moderation is in order to make it profitable and big. Now, we'll see. He has these two goals, to open it up and reduce moderation, to have minimal moderation, to basically allow for all speech that is not illegal speech. Although he did say to his advertisers, he wrote a letter to the advertisers in which he said, well, we also want it to be a warm and pleasant place for people to engage in ideas and so on. Although Elon Musk himself is not particularly warm and pleasant on Twitter. But there are going to be these conflicting ideas. I think the advertising model and the revenue model are going to require more content moderation. And yet his so-called free speech view is going to require less moderation. And I think those two come into conflict and there's a real challenge there and how he resolves that and can he figure out how to make money at the same time while doing all of this? That's going to be the challenge. And this is the beauty of capitalism. He gets to try. He gets to put his money where his mouth is. He gets to go out there and he gets to not just complain about Twitter, not just say I could do a bit of job, not just to say these people don't know what they're doing. He gets to actually go there and show the world what he can do and we'll all see. Can he indeed, can he turn Twitter around and make it a profitable business? So yeah, we'll see. Okay, let's do a couple of quick check questions and then we'll talk about inflation and recession. All right, so we've got happy avocado from Israel. What do you think about German 19th century romantic painters such as Casper David Frederick? Do you consider the art as malevolent? Who is your favorite 19th century painter? No, I don't consider the art malevolent necessarily, although the art often diminishes the role of human beings. It often expresses, you know, it presents human being as in struggle, suffering. Casper David Frederick is more, I mean, his paintings I think are beautiful and quite striking. I love the colors. I love the kind of a quiet drama in them. But human beings typically are small relative to the grandeur of nature. And this is quite typical of romantic painters and I don't particularly like that. But you know, I like Casper David. Again, I like the colors. I like the drama and implicit drama. I like the fact that they are human beings in his painting. A lot of painters who painted landscape did not paint humans at all. Usually the human being is in a way that he's prominent in the painting, even though typically small. The paintings definitely evoke emotion. So I like the paintings of Casper David Frederick. I think it's good art. I think they are beautiful. Again, I enjoy them. Edmund says Goya Velasquez is a superior to Casper. I mean, a very different Casper. I'm not a fan of Goya at all. I find Goya, I don't like his figures. They're all distorted. They're all elongated. You know, he's trying to draw you into a certain emotion. But yeah, I'm not a fan of Goya at all. I find his paintings off-putting. And they're certainly not beautiful. See, Casper David Frederick's paintings are truly beautiful. You know, I talked about surrounding yourself with beauty. That's beauty. Velasquez is amazing. I mean, his ability to portray, to paint portraits, particularly faces, eyes. His eyes are stunning. They seem alive. The portraits seem like they could just walk off the canvas. They're truly stunning, particularly the torso, the head, the eyes, the face. So I'm a fan of Velasquez, but not of Goya. But of course, Velasquez is 17th century versus 19th century, very different styles, very different sense of life, very different perspectives. If I were going to put a painting on the wall, it would more likely be Casper David Frederick than a Vasquez of Goya. Just because of the beauty. And because of the particular style and the era, Vasquez, there's too much ornamentation. There's too much of the period in what's being painted, whereas I think there's something more universal around Casper David Frederick's painting. And then do you consider they art as malevolent? There is a certain malevolence generally romantic painters. You know, I'm not, I'm not sure I'm familiar with other romantic painters, German romantic painters of the 19th century, other than Casper David Frederick, although they're similar to this. There is a certain malevolence towards man. There's a certain adoration of nature. But no, you don't look at it. The paintings are not depressing. The paintings are not bringing out in you a kind of malevolent view of the world. They reflect, they cause you to reflect a little bit. They might be quietening. They certainly are not heroic. That's certainly lacking is man as a hero, man as a conqueror. But then I was thinking about it. There are very few paintings of heroic man conquering man. Very, very few paintings like that. So yeah, I but I wouldn't consider them malevolent necessarily. Who is your favorite 19th century painter? I don't know. I mean, I love, I love the French and British academics. I like the Pre-Rapha Lights, the English, the British Pre-Rapha Lights. I like, I just saw painting in Italy of an Italian 19th century painter who I really like, Hayes, H-A-Y-E-Z. I'll show you a painting of him, one of these shows, when they have an opportunity, a beautiful painting of his that I really like. But I like Frederick Layton. I like Jerome. I like Bouguereau, although some of his stuff is a little overdone. So there's a, there's a lot of, a lot of good, there are a few beautiful places in paintings by Cabernel at the Dorset. They're a couple. I'd say French and British 19th century academic, academic painters. And it's Frederick Layton, not Edmund Layton. I'm pretty sure it's Frederick. And the Pre-Rapha Lights. I like the Pre-Rapha Lights a lot. I think I mentioned Flaming June, one of Frederick Layton's most beautiful paintings is actually in Puerto Rico. The original is in Puerto Rico. It's, it's in an art museum in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It's, it's wonderful to be able to drive 40 minutes. And it's just a little over an hour actually, and, and see it. It's, it's magnificent. All right, Hopper Collins says, many conservatives seem to be happy that women basketball players going to do nine years in jail in prison for possession of marijuana. Unbelievable. Should the Biden administration do something to get her out? Yes. I mean, she's being held by the Russians. Nine years from marijuana is ridiculous. It seems like the kind of sentence that the Russians have imposed on her, you know, to get back at the America, it seems like they're doing it on purpose to try to kind of deal with the Biden administration. I don't know if she really had the marijuana or if it was planted on her, she's claiming it was planted on her. Why would you? God, I mean, people don't learn if this is true. But why would anybody, why would you travel across the border with marijuana on you? I mean, don't you know that it's against the law in most countries around the world? Don't you know that some countries, I mean, if you're in Singapore, you could spend a lot of time in jail just for having marijuana. Why would you do it? What is worth the risk to doing that? So I don't know if it was planted on her, but yeah, I mean, they should try to get her out. I think that's a job of our embassy. That's why we have diplomatic relations with these countries. I don't know why we have diplomatic relations with Russia, but we did when she was arrested. So we should represent her and try to get her out and do what we can. Such a sentence is ridiculous. The fact that conservatives like this, I haven't seen it. But yes, conservatives would like to ban marijuana federally. I mean, some conservatives. So yeah, this is, this is absolutely horrible. Yeah, I just, I saw a substack from a conservative, a kind of Trumpist conservative who wrote a whole substack about why marijuana should be banned. And if, if Republicans get control of both houses and the White House, they should have a federal ban on marijuana overriding, overriding state law. I mean, it's already federally banned, but it's not, it's not, what do you call it? They don't actually do anything in states that allow marijuana, but they could overwrite state law and basically use the FBI to shut it down, to shut down legal marijuana in different states. So Democrats would like to legalize marijuana across the entire country. I'm with the Democrats on this. Republicans would like to, some Republicans anyway, would like to outlaw it, even overriding state law. That would be pretty bad. But yes, it is already federally banned, granted, but they don't actually, you know, the federal government is not trying to arrest people in California for possession of Moana or in Colorado for possession of Moana, but they could, they could shut down state law, they could make it irrelevant, they could devote resources to it. And Republicans would like to do that. Some Republicans. James Taylor says, are you optimistic that most world leaders, even thugs like she don't want to kill the golden goose that is capitalism and private property a year, they'll control it more and hamper it, but they know not to let it die. No, I'm not optimistic about that. I don't think they, I think ultimately what overwrites, everything is power and control. And you're seeing that in China with the, you know, the disappearance when it happened of Jack Ma and the shutting down or the increased regulations and internet companies, if ever there was a golden goose, this was it. The progress China made on the internet with its, with both Alibaba and Tencent, these companies were giants. They were innovative. They were breakthrough. They, in many ways, they were better than the American companies equivalent companies in terms of what they did and the experience they offered users. And yet the government has done everything it can to now to hamper them and restrict them. And shut down the innovation and ingenuity that they were, that they were manifesting. So I don't, the idea that tyrants can figure out the exact balance of how to keep the golden goose laying the golden eggs and not shut it down. This idea that they can centrally plan that, it's not possible, can't be done. So no, they will destroy, they will destroy it. Things will have to get quite a bit worse before they get better. Whoops, let me shut down something I didn't want to. All right, let's do this. Last, last super chat, then we'll go to inflation recession. Do tyrants go back and forth from having an inferiority complex to having a superiority complex? They go from being envious, anxious, and insecurity to arrogant whites, they're philosopher kings who have a civic duty to rule over us. I think in many respects, it's the same thing. I think they're inferiority complex, they're insecurities. Basically, the need, their expression, they express themselves in the need to control other people. So I don't think it's a superiority complex. I think the inferiority complex manifests itself in the need to control, in the need to manipulate, in the need to have other people, you know, on their knees. And that requires them then to embrace this idea of a philosopher king. They don't think they are knowledgeable or better, not in any, not in any deep kind of sense. They might expect, they might seem like they do like to he does in the fountainhead, but deep down they know it all stems from inferiority complex, it all stems from hatred, it all stems from envy, it all stems from resentment. They're in the end, they're just pathetic, miserable, you know, angry, horrible people. But they have to exude confidence because they're controlling. And that's how it expresses itself in this controlling behavior. And they embrace the persona of a philosopher king in order to make that real. All right, let's see inflation and recession. Yeah, let's, you know, this is the big story of the day. It is, it is everywhere. This is the, this is the thing that with all the, everything else discussed, including politics, this is a much of what's going to happen in the world is economic. We're facing the world is facing real economic crisis. Stock markets might be going up right now or down on any given day. But generally, we are facing significant crisis. And I just thought we'd go over some numbers to kind of see where this came from, what's going on right now, you know, and, and what we can expect moving into the future and what we can expect next year. I mean, all of this is really a consequence of the existence of central banks and the fact that central banks have no real limitations on the ability to print money. You know, the Federal Reserve basically has complete discretion over how much money it prints, when it prints it, what it uses that money for. I mean, it has some boundaries, but often in times, in times of crisis, those boundaries, even legal boundaries are brushed aside. We saw that in 2008, 2009, we saw that again in 2020, whether whether the Federal Reserve just did whatever it needed to do, whatever it thought it needed to do in order to quote, save the economy, even things that are clearly not in its mandate, even things that it's never done before, even things that most of us in the markets, and I think most people in politics assume that they couldn't and weren't allowed to do, they still did. Federal Reserve central banks are this incredibly powerful central planning entity, central planning organ of the government, with the ability to print money with no limitation, with no constraints. And this has been going on really since 1914, when the Federal Reserve was established. This is the Federal Reserve was a cause of the great depression, I've talked about this in the past, cause of the great depression lasting as long as it did, together with FDR, and the cause of the great inflation 1970s and everything else that happened. But let's talk about modern history. The fact is that over the last 15 years, the Federal Reserve of 14 years, the Federal Reserve has been printing money at an unbelievable rate. In 2008, the point I want to make here, before I give you a little bit of history, let me tell you why I'm doing this, the point I want to make here is that like all central planners, like all central planners, the Federal Reserve fundamentally does not know what it's doing. The Federal Reserve cannot predict the future. The Federal Reserve cannot tell what its behavior will actually result in. It is miscalculated over and over and over again. It has caused massive amounts of damage in our economy, in our lives, in our world, over and over and over again, over decades. It has gotten more sophisticated. It has more models. It is the largest employer of PhDs in the world, I think, PhDs in economics. And yet it does not fundamentally know what it's doing because it cannot, because central planning cannot work, because you cannot force an economy. You cannot cross a market. You cannot dictate to people what their value should be. And that exactly is exactly what the Federal Reserve tries to do. It tries to manipulate us, incentivize us, dictate to us how and what we should behave in the marketplace, in terms of our savings, our consumption, our investment, our production, our time horizon, how forward-looking we should be. All of that, all of that is influenced by their ability to manipulate money and interest rates. And the two are very related, because they manipulate interest rates by manipulating money, by buying and selling money, in a sense, by printing and sucking out of the economy money or bonds, but at the end of the day, it's money. And by manipulating that interest rate, they are destroying the ability of businessmen to plan properly. They're destroying the ability of savers to save into the future. They're destroying the abilities of consumers to figure out what they should buy now, what they should buy later, how much they should put aside, how much they should invest, what the investments make sense, what invests don't make sense. And they turn financial markets into, to some extent, into a type of casino. Now, because of the financial crisis in 2008-9, all the old rules of central banking and the Federal Reserve were thrown out the window. In 2010, the Federal Reserve formally introduced the idea of quantitative easing, QE, which is basically unrestrained money creation. And this was going to be a standard tool of the policy. Never in history has a central bank ever done anything like, as far as I know, anything like quantitative easing. Not in the United States, anyway. This was the idea that the bank would go out into the markets and buy government bonds, in other words, monetize the debt by private bonds. This is so unusual, right? Now, government backed private bonds, which means mortgage-backed securities. Thus, making mortgages, mortgage interest rates, cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, so easier and easier and easier to people to get mortgages. Is there a shock then? The demand for housing went up and prices kept going up and up and when the Fed was driving interest rates on mortgages down and down and down and down, because the Fed was just buying up mortgage-backed securities, hundreds of billions of dollars of them. And of course, during the financial crisis of 2020, not financial crisis, during the COVID crisis of 2020, the Fed started buying up all kinds of private bonds. Thus, in a sense, manipulating even private interest rates, interest rates that typically are determined by private markets based on real risk. Well, risk goes out because the Fed was buying these bonds, driving those interest rates down so that those interest rates didn't reflect real risk anymore. So what the Fed has done since the beginning of its existence, but really in spectacular fashion since 2008, is completely divorce interest rates. Really, in some sense, all interest rates divorce them from liquidity, from risk, from any real world anchor. And I get excited about this because I don't think you have any kind of sense. I don't think any of us has a real sense of how evil and how bad and how disastrous this is to all of our lives, because it is so disastrous for the very prospects of economic growth and economic success and entrepreneurial success. I mean, the fact that the economy has grown, the fact that we've had low unemployment in spite of this just suggests, just gives you an inkling of what is possible, of how much economic growth we are leaving on the table in a sense in the graveyard, if you will, how richer we actually could be without all this manipulation. But what the Fed does and what the Fed has done over the last 14 years has been destructive to economic planning, economic growth, and our standard of living and quality of life. So in 2010, the Fed committed to add 600 billion dollars of reserves into the banking system. Now, in other words, it's bought, you know, increases the money supply in a sense by 600 billion in 2012. It began adding 40 billion in reserves every month. They raised the number to 84 billion per month through 2013. In September 2019, when there were liquidity problems in the overnight markets, the Fed reserve added reserves at a rate of 60 billion a month. Between November 2010 and March 2020, just before COVID hit, the Fed reserves balance sheet. This is the amount of like bonds it has on its balance sheet, the amount of bonds it owns. Went from less than 2.5 trillion to 4.1 trillion, almost doubling. So in a sense, they doubled the amount of money out there. They took in the bonds and they put out liquidity. They put out money. Most of that money sat on the balance sheet of banks. Luckily, you know, the money didn't circulate that much. The velocity of money was pretty low. It didn't cause inflation for a bunch of different reasons. Partially, the Fed keeping interest rates at zero prevented inflation because it made those bonds be the same as... Anyway, it's complicated. But they printed a lot of money. They lowered interest rates to zero, zero, which means that even if there was a little bit of inflation, 1%, real interest rates, real returns were negative and return on saving was non-existent. You could also argue that all this money, maybe, I mean, I've seen different arguments about this, but potentially also led to a massive asset price bubble. Suddenly, low interest rates drive asset prices up. When interest rates are low, all assets, all income producing assets, all assets that have future value, the value today goes up. Stocks go up. Everything else held constant, just interest rates going up. Stocks will go up. Bonds will go up. Real estate will go up. Any rent producing property will go up. The lower the interest rate, the higher the value of assets. So by driving interest rates to zero, all assets rose. Beginning in March of 2020, the Federal Reserve went to a new level. In that year 2020, government spending, this is under Trump. In that year 2020, federal spending, government spending increased 50% to $6.5 trillion. And it remained at 6.5 or approximately 6.5 through the end of fiscal year 2021. So through the Biden administration, even as the pandemic receded, federal expenditures remained 30% in 2022 above 2019 levels. So the government went on a massive spending spree in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The Fed provided much of the funding of that by monetizing all the debt, mortgage-backed securities again, lowering interest rates during 2020. So in spite of the pandemic, in spite of COVID, what happened to real estate prices, they went up because mortgage interest rates kept going down because the Fed was buying mortgage-backed securities. And then they were buying bonds of all kinds at a rate of more than 120 billion per month. So the Federal Reserve balance sheet went, if you remember, it started out at under 2.5 in 2010. It went to 4.1 in 2020, early 2020, and it went to 9 trillion, more than doubled again by 2022, while keeping interest rates basically at zero. Now this final, you know, so what happened during this period? What happens with interest rates at zero? Well, if I can borrow money at a very, very low interest rates, particularly as asset prices are going up, I have every incentive in the world to borrow money and buy stocks, buy real estate, buy homes. Everybody borrowed money. Federal debt, which was $13.5 trillion and 88% of GDP in 2010, is now $31 trillion, much more than half, much more than double, sorry. And nearly 125% of GDP, total debt of the non-financial sector, businesses, individuals, which was 247% of GDP in 2010 is now 262. That hasn't gone up as much as I would have expected. Notice how much government debt has gone up. Our debt as individuals, not gone up that much. Between 2010 and 2018, labor productivity increased at an average rate of 1.1%. It had increased at 2.3% from 92 to 2000, also a period that followed a session. Between 2010 and 2018, by the way, I'm getting much of this from an article by Thomas Honing, who was, I think the Fed chairman of the Kansas City Fed, formerly, so he provides a lot of these stats. So productivity declined, weekly, real earnings declined, Dollar Jones industrial, on the contrast, shooting through the roof, price of homes, shooting through the roof, every asset goes up in value when interest rates go down. And of course, the ultimate consequence of all this is that in 2022, we are facing, for the first time in 40 years, real inflation, real price inflation. Prices, CPI, consumer prices, the prices you pay for the stuff that you buy, the stuff you need in order to live has gone up by 9%, 8. something right now, peaked at 9%. I'm not sure it's peaked yet, we'll see. And the Fed, in response, is increasing interest rates. Because as you increase interest rates then, what happens to asset prices? Well, if when interest rates go down, asset prices go up, when you interest rates go up, asset prices go down. Stock market way down, housing prices on the way down. Any income producing asset, any asset that produces stuff in the future is going to be priced down as interest rates go up. Now, inflation mitigates this a little bit, because your income is going to go up in the future with inflation, supposedly, rents, for example, so that even though interest rates are going up, so is your income, that mitigates it a little bit. So industries that can raise prices are going to see their value decline slower than industries that have a harder time raising prices. But generally, what we're seeing right now is the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates with the hope of slowing down economic growth, with hope of reducing asset prices, with the hope of ultimately reducing inflation, reducing demand for goods, reducing the amount of money chasing goods, reducing businesses expectation about inflation, and therefore, businesses incentive to raise prices, and thus, capping inflation and starting to moderate it down to 2%. And the idea is that if the Fed does it just right, if they increase interest rates just right, just to the right amount, just to the right level, then they will be able to decrease economic growth. They will be able to slow demand in the economy. They will be able to reduce price inflation just enough so that it comes down to what they view as an ideal 2%. I don't know where they get the 2% as ideal for, but an ideal stable 2%, they will be able to do this without a massive recession, without actually economic growth going negative, without millions and millions of people losing their jobs. Now, they realize that unemployment is going to increase, but how much? They think it's, oh, maybe it'll increase from now 3.70%, 6%. But this is called the soft landing. The soft landing is, can we reduce inflation, price inflation without really destroying the economy? Now, they have two tools for this. One is the increasing interest rates, which we see, they let us know all the time. But in the background, what they're also doing is sucking money out of the economy. You remember before, they were putting money into the economy by buying bonds. When you buy a bond, you get a piece of paper and you send money out. Where does that money come from for the Fed? They print it electronically printed, but the money goes out into the economy. A bond goes onto the balance sheet of the Fed. When they reverse that, they sell the bond into the market and the money comes back. As they sell the bond into the market, that drives interest rates up because buyers are not going to buy that bond unless they get compensated for it. So they're going to drive its price down. It's yield up. The yield is the interest rate. So this is all working together, driving up interest rates, selling bonds, shrinking the amount of money in the economy. All this doing in a fine-tuned way says not to cause inflation. And this central plan is, they are going to get it just like they've got their models, they've got their equations, they've got the massive calculus that they're running, model simulations. They've got all the resources in the wall. They can print money. So they are using the best minds, most sophisticated algorithms to try to get it just right. One other element that I should note is that the government has to pay interest on all the debt that it's taken on. And that debt in 2019, the interest that the government paid every year on the debt in 2019 was $375 billion. Over the next year, it'll be more than double that. And as interest rates go up, the Fed has to pay higher and higher interest rates on the debt that it bothers, on the bonds that it's pulling out there. Soon we're going to reach a point where the federal government, a federal government has to pay $1 trillion every year just on interest on the debt. $1 trillion. The budget used to be around $3 trillion. A third of every dollar the federal government, a third of every dollar that you're paying into access, is going to go just to pay interest on the debt. That's $31 trillion debt, $1 trillion in interest payments, and it's growing. So that $1 trillion is a low estimate that $31 trillion is not going to end. So how does this end? Well, what is the probability that the Fed gets it just right? What is the probability that the Fed is so good at what it does, and has shown such, it's being brilliant, that it manages to raise interest rates suck money of the economy just at the right amount as to cause prices to come down, price inflation to go away, but not drive us into recession? Well, I personally think the probability of that is very close to zero. The Fed basically missed the 2008-2009 financial crisis. It didn't see it coming. It printed huge amounts of money, plugged it into economy, but the economy barely recovered. Productivity barely went up. It kept facing these emergencies, which required it to print more money, emergencies it never predicted. All last year, people were saying, be careful, inflation is coming. And the Fed was like, nah, just transitory, no big deal, no problem. So it did nothing. The Fed has a terrible track record as you would expect of being able to predict what will happen in the future and be able to deal with it effectively. Two scenarios that are possible. One is that the Fed raises interest rates and is committed to crushing inflation and will raise it and raise them and raise them until price inflation comes tumbling down. In that case, I predict a significant deep and lengthy recession. How lengthy who knows, how deep who knows. But it might not be, you know, this economy has this amazing resilience and amazing ability to rebound. So maybe it won't be that long. Maybe it won't be that deep, but there's going to be a recession next year. And it's going to be significant. And it's going to be substantial. And it will basically have the potential to kill the Biden presidency, a presidency which is already teetering. The second possibility and this would happen. This would probably be more likely to happen if there was kind of a Trump in the White House rather than a Biden. Biden is weak. But that the Fed raises interest rates. Inflation comes out a little bit. And the Fed says, okay, we've done our job and they stop. They actually start to decrease interest rates because it's pressure from the White House is an election coming up. We don't want a recession. So there's no recession. Inflation comes down. Interest rates have gone up a little bit. There's no recession. Interest rates are coming down because the Fed is easing and then inflation starts going up again. That's exactly what happened in the early 1970s and mid 1970s. Every time the Fed would raise interest rates, they wouldn't do it enough as to actually bring inflation down. They would stop before it got there because they didn't want the recession. They didn't want the pain. And then they would start lowering interest rates. Inflation would start up again. And ultimately, we got stagflation as a consequence until Paul Volcker basically raised interest rates as much as necessary in order to crush inflation. And of course, it wasn't just the crushing was the inflate. It wasn't just Paul Volcker was the deregulation of the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. It was the tax reform under Ronald Reagan in 1982 or the tax changes, both increasing taxes and decreasing taxes. And it was the fact that it was Ronald Reagan in the White House and non Jimmy Carter. All of that together is what ultimately brought inflation down. But none of that do we have right now. I think markets will generally view about public and victory in a week from now in the elections as a positive vis-a-vis inflation. But not a big positive because you're still going to have the problem with the Fed. You're still going to have the problem of a probable almost recession. And if not a recession, then more inflation. So it's likely inflation is going to continue because the Fed won't do enough. And if the Fed does enough, you'll get a deep recession. And that's what we had. So the volatility in the market not going away. A stock's bottomed out unlikely. Is a recession fully priced? I don't think so. I don't see it. I don't see it. And nobody knows how deep the recession will be. And nobody knows when it's going to happen. So we're still in for volatile times. We're still in for huge amounts of uncertainty economically. They're going to be layoffs. Unemployment is going to rise. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes up above 6%. So no job I think out there is completely safe. I think tech, you're going to see some real layoffs in tech, but you're going to see some real layoffs across the board. You're seeing a slowdown in tech already. Apple is seeing it. Facebook is seeing it. Google is seeing it. We're facing, I think, a tough 2023. That's my prediction. I mean, I hope Republicans coming in to the House and the Senate behave like adults. I hope what they ultimately do is kind of deal with the Biden administration to cut spending. I think that's the only thing that will help. They can assist in trying to mitigate the impact of inflation and try to mitigate the impact of rising interest rates and try to mitigate the fear and ultimate fear of government default, of government inability to pay back the debt or the interest payment on the debt getting so large as to be a real challenge. My bigger concern is that the current crop of Republicans coming into the House and Senate don't care about economics. They have no interest in economics. They're not pro-free markets in particular. They're not pro-limiting government spending. They want to spend government money because they want it for their own causes, for their own ability to manipulate the world. They're not interested in bringing sanity to the economic sphere. So I'm worried. I'm worried. And this brings me, I guess, to the question of this red wave election. I mean, the last week, two weeks, three weeks have been really bad for Democrats. Democrats are taking a beating in the polls. Federman in Pennsylvania took a beating in his debate. The guy had a stroke and he cannot speak and he doesn't sound like he's all there. You've got a president who doesn't sound like he's all there sometimes. But now you can have a senator from Pennsylvania who's not all there. The alternative is Dr. Oz, who is way behind in the polls. But as for Pennsylvanians and discovering that the Democratic candidate might not be there, I think many will stay home. And I think some will just vote for Dr. Oz just to have somebody who they can understand, speaking, representing them, even though Dr. Oz is probably an awful candidate and will be an awful senator. Across the board, Democrats are losing because at the end of the day, while abortion will be something that I think motivates people on the local basis, motivates women, I think, including Republican women, independent women. I'm not sure that it's going to bleed into federal elections. I think when it comes to federal elections, the economy, inflation, possible recession, Biden's poor performance, distrust in government, are much bigger issues for most people. And then of course, crime is a huge issue. We've got rising crime throughout the United States. Again, I think it's nowhere near as high as it was in the 1990s, but it's rising. It's not good. People associate this whether justifiably or not it doesn't really matter, whether empirically it's justifiable or not doesn't really matter. They associate with defund the police, the agenda of the Democrats. They associate the Democrats with defund the police. They associate Democrats with woke. They associate the Democrats with CRT. I've told you Americans, the American people not tolerate critical history. The American people not tolerate woke. The American people not tolerate defunding the police. As long as the crazy left dominates the headlines and people continue to associate the crazy left with the Democratic Party, which they should because it's them. Democratic Party cannot establish a governing majority. They cannot win in this country on a woke agenda. They cannot win on this country on defunding the police. And the consequence of that is that they cannot win. And people are going to vote for Republicans. It appears in Senate races and in House races. And it now appears it looked like the toss up a few weeks ago between Republicans and Democrats in terms of winning the Senate. There was a good chance, good probability, they would stay at 50-50, which is good for the Democrats, bad for the Republicans. Now it looks like the Republicans might gain one to two, maybe three seats. We will see. It looks like they might hold on to Pennsylvania, which is huge. It looks like they're going to hold on to Wisconsin. And it looks like they might take Georgia in spite of Walker's problems. They might take Arizona and they most likely will take Nevada. JD Vance will hold Ohio. So they might gain anyway from one to three seats. And now let me just, let me just, and they could gain a lot. They could gain 40, 50 seats in the house. I don't think that would be a surprise at all. Again, during the summit looked like they would only gain 20, maybe still have a majority, still win the house. Now let me just say that while I want to see the Democrats lose, while I want to have divided government, while I want to see the Republicans control at least one of the houses, a big Republican victory scares the bejesus out of me. And I know, I know you guys don't get it and don't like it, but this is the reality. It scares the bejesus out of me. And I think it's just scared the bejesus out of you. These candidates are not good candidates. These Republicans are not Republicans that we can trust. Too many of them are 2020 election deniers. Too many of them in the pocket of Donald Trump. Too many of them are economic statists. None of them have any respect for individual rights. They will be winning here with a mandate on their social agenda, not an economic agenda, but a social agenda. It's not like any of them presented a program of how to cut inflation. How to protect us from recession. Not a single one of them ran on an economic freedom agenda. They're going to get elected and stand for what? I think if Republicans gain two to three seats, that'll mean that all of Donald Trump's candidates have won. That'll mean that it's almost a certainty that Donald Trump will run. I think if Donald Trump runs for president and declares early, the Santas will not. And we've got a good likelihood of a Donald Trump presidency in 2024. And even if Donald Trump runs in 2024 and loses, then we've got a real potential for constitutional crisis where many of the people that are going to win elections in a week and a half are going to undermine the Constitution and declare Donald Trump the winner even if he doesn't win the popular vote. I mean, it scares me, the kind of people that are being elected in Arizona. It scares me, the kind of people that are being elected in Wisconsin and in Michigan. Scares me. I mean, the only state that seems to be solid in terms of good Republicans are going to get elected is Georgia, where the election deniers have not been successful in taking kind of and beating out the election of the Republicans that stood up to Donald Trump. But everywhere else, people who stood up to Donald Trump are being crushed or exiting politics. The current governor of Arizona exiting politics. Who is the other governor who was the governor I mean, the guy running in New Hampshire, the Republican running for the Senate in New Hampshire is a complete nut, conspiracy theory wacko. If he wins, God help us, God help us. So the ability of the authoritarian Republicans to create a constitutional crisis in 2024 and basically install an unelected person as president, scary stuff. We're heading towards scary times and in the massive Republican victory. My hope right now is, and it's not going to be fulfilled, unfortunately, but my hope is that the Republicans, if they win the Senate, they win by one seat. And if they, and that seat is Nevada, I hope they don't hold Pennsylvania or Oz doesn't win. I hope, you know, and I, you know, we'll see if they can, if they can overturn if they can, if they can, if Walker can win in Georgia. I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing. I think it's a bad thing ultimately. There has to be some signal to Trump that he might be in trouble, that he might be in trouble so that he doesn't run, that he doesn't run. I mean, I, for example, if I were voting, I would not vote for an election denying Republican. I just wouldn't vote for anyone of them. All right. So that's my latest assessment to be revised, my latest assessment of the red wave. My hope is that whatever happens, it doesn't encourage Trump to run, that is discourages Trump to run, so that the Santas or somebody else runs. I'm not a huge fan of the Santas, but I'll take him over Donald Trump any day. I'm not, I'm not generally a fan of the direction the Republican Party is moving in. Generally, I'm not a fan of the direction the conservative movement is moving in. And, you know, I'm fearful for America because there is no, there's no alternative any more to an authoritarian left and an authoritarian right. All right. Let's see, Michael asked, there could be a row versus Wade that kneecaps the GOP momentum. But the economy is horrific and the left is despicable so the GOP may still do very well. I think that's my point. I think they're going to do very well. I think row versus Wade is just not strong enough at the federal level. It doesn't change things at the federal level. And if, you know, I think the scariest thing, the scary thing now is that the Republicans might have the House, the Senate and the White House and that at that point they might do away with the filibuster and just ram through whatever the hell they want. That I think is scary. So I like divided government. My favorite divided government I've told you many times as a Democratic president of Republican House and Senate. I know it's hard for people to stomach, but those are the best. So if the Republicans win the House and Senate and if they hold the House and Senate, then the reality is that the best shot for liberty, the best fight for freedom, the best shot for limited government is for Democrat to win in 2024. That's just empirical reality that I know you guys hate, but it is. All right, Frank for 50 bucks. Thank you, Frank. We've passed the halfway mark. So that's good. We're still, we're still 300 dollars short from the 650 goal. Let's see, we can make the 650 goal today. We haven't made it in a while. It's been a while. So you know, I guess these hours are not good for my whales. I also owe you a bunch of your own rules for life. So I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to do a, you know, a series of your own rules for life. I also think Adam, Adam was going to Adam Campbell was going to sponsor shows. So Adam, let me know if you're still sponsoring the show. And if you want to go ahead with it, I'll email you. Anyway, Frank for 50 bucks says vertical profit for horizontal chat. Ben Bear awesome altruism. All right, I agree with you. Thank you, Frank. Really appreciate the support. Thank you for that. Let's see. What else do we have here? All right, let's go back to Jason. Jason says rational rationale or do not do think enough of the right people could be convinced that the Fed would be better off issuing a digital currency based on an algorithm than whether the Fed currency does. Would it be a better rationale? Well, I'm against a digital currency period, because put aside the algorithm part of it, but I'm against the digital currency period, because it basically eliminates our privacy. If Fed issued digital currency basically allows the government to know every single purchase that you make, zero privacy. Now, they know most of the stuff where they have access to most of the stuff because you use credit, but if you use digital currency, it's all over. At least today you have the potential to use cash on things that you don't want the government to do. But if they bank cash and you just have digital currency, Fed issued, then forget it. Privacy is history, it's gone. What I do think would be better for the Fed if we had to have a Fed, and as you know, I'm against having a Fed, but if we had to have a Fed, is a Fed that followed a rule. There are a variety of different rules out there, but one rule is called the Taylor rule. I mentioned this, and it tells the Fed what interest rate should be at any given point. Another rule is a rule that basically sets targets for nominal GDP. I'm not going to get into that too much, but any one of those would be a significant improvement on what the Fed is doing today. Troy, thank you. Troy just got us the 650 as he often does. Troy Beaton from Australia. Really, really appreciate that. Thanks for the support. Thanks for being here. I don't know. I have no idea what time it is in Australia. Here in Madrid, it is 11.30 at night. So I think that a rule-based system that the market could predict, the market would know if this parameter changes, this is how much this is how the Fed will be. Get rid of all those PhDs, fire all those people, slim the Fed down, eliminate its budget, and just have a rule, an algorithm that determines the interest rates, but doesn't issue digital currency would be good. Now, there was an opportunity for doing that. When Donald Trump was deciding on federal chairman, what was that five, six years ago, he had two finalists, Powell, who as far as I know is a nobody and a nothing, with no background and no reason to believe he would be a good chairman of the Fed. And the second guy was John Taylor. John Taylor, whose Taylor rule is named after John Taylor, an economist from Stanford, good guy. John Taylor would have imposed a Taylor rule. John Taylor would not have been allowed himself to manipulated by politics and manipulated by Donald Trump. I predicted at the time there was no way in hell Donald Trump would appoint John Taylor as federal reserve chairman. And of course, he didn't. He appointed Powell, who is a nobody and a nothing easily manipulated. And we got what we got. We got what we got, a Taylor rule during 20, from 20, 16, 17, whenever it was that 2016, I think, to today would have done a lot better. We wouldn't have inflation, probably. And the same with nominal GDP. Goal wouldn't have had the inflation. See, yes, I'm for having a rule. Gold standard was in a sense a rule, a rule based Fed. I'm for having free banking, competitive currencies. But ultimately, but on the way there, the Fed would be saner if we had a rule, because at least markets could then predict what was happening, could understand what was happening. It wouldn't be at the whim of a committee, a whim of a bunch of economists. All right, Jupiter asks, here in Ohio, we have JD Vance, who is Tim Ryan for Senate due to the anti feed and platforms of both candidates. I cannot morally vote for either one. What are your views and abstaining for voting? I'm a huge advocate of abstaining from voting. I've abstained from voting. I've abstained from voting in 2016. I probably would have abstained. Well, I'm not sure what I would have done in 2020, but I probably would have abstained. I'm a huge advocate. I ran was a huge advocate for abstaining from voting. She did not vote in at least in one election that I know of, but I think she didn't vote in a couple. But in 1980, she did not vote between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. She did not vote. So yes, I agree with you. JD Vance is awful, horrible, and Tim Ryan is awful, horrible. I'm tempted to, I would be tempted in an election like that to vote for Tim Ryan to send an anti Trump message. Given that the Republicans can control the house anyway, my vote for the Senate wouldn't matter that way. If JD Vance is going to win, let it win at the tiniest of majorities in a very red state, that would be a good thing. So I would be tempted to vote for Tim Ryan in the Ohio election just to send the Trumpsters of the world a message that they are not as welcome as maybe they think they are. Taze's mood has improved during the show. I don't know if it's me or the chat. I have no idea. Ryan says, keep inspiring us, Iran. Thanks. Was that inspiring? I thought that was pretty depressing. I depressed myself, inspired you. That's good. Yeah, I mean, the make and make a great again versus woke. You can't vote for either one of those. So you got to find people who are not making make great again and not woke to vote for them. All right. Scott says Scott, who's always looking to create conflict. I saw Harry Benz when I say CRT is an AM on a show this week. Did you know that was his view? Maybe that could be a good debate topic. No, I did not know his view. I'm pretty sure he's wrong. I think he's wrong. CRT is a D. It's a D2. It's nihilistic. It's not an integrating philosophy. It's a completely disintegrating philosophy. It's a philosophy of disintegration. It's a philosophy. It's about creating hierarchies based on oppression. There's nothing to rally people around. There's nothing to integrate reality around. There's no way to understand the world based on it other than a concrete here, concrete there, concrete there. So I think I could convince Harry that he's wrong on that one. Not worth a debate, but a discussion. I could convince him in private properly, not probably in public, no reason to do it in public. Yeah, I mean, Harry's smarter than I am too, but that doesn't mean he doesn't make mistakes. Let's see. Michael says, as bad philosophy turned us all into domesticated tax cattle for philosophy kings. Well, I mean, you know, I call them philosophy kings, but when you say it like that, it's like too nice of a term to call them. The pretend philosophy kings, you know, they're a pretentious philosophy kings they are. Anyway, yeah, I mean, there's a sense in which we become domesticated tax cattle. It's not just tax, it's they don't just do it for the taxes, they do it for the control. We become and you saw that during COVID, we become domesticated, we become sheep would become easily manipulated and controlled and told what to do and behave and behave ourselves. And that's really what they want and what they love. Pragmatic unprincipled. They are pragmatic unprincipled, you know, powerlusting kings. Philosophical is too nice of a term for them, even though I use it all the time. Michael is preparing for severely fundamentally nihilistic. It's aim is to undercut certainty and absolutes that appears to be an attack on the mind's ability to grasp reality in no uncertain terms. It is, I don't think it's fundamentally nihilistic. I certainly don't think it's motivated by nihilism. I don't think Papa Papa was a nihilist. I think it's his attempt to grapple with Hume's skepticism. It's an attempt to try to somehow explain knowledge, try to somehow bring some sense of stability and some sense of a scientific method to world that philosophically was dominated by skepticism. So I think it's actually an attempt by Papa himself to avoid nihilism, although I think in a sense you're right that it ultimately leads to that. But I think he's trying to avoid the consequences of complete skepticism of complete nihilism by trying to create a system that while embracing skepticism also gives us a scientific method also leads us to greater and greater knowledge even though we can never be certain about it. So I'm not as, while I'm negative on Papa, I'm not quite as negative, certainly not on his incentives as maybe that imply, what you imply. Liam says, do we live in a semi-objective society now? No, there's nothing objectivist about society now. There's nothing similar. We live in a semi-free society now. We live in a semi, you know, liberal in a sense of freedom society now, but there's nothing objectivist about society now. We live in a semi-enlightment inspired society now, but not objectivism, not yet. We're far from that. Michael says, 20 years from now, will we have at least a few objectivist in Congress was Paul Ryan the first? No, Paul Ryan was not an objectivist. Paul Ryan was not an objectivist. Never. He would have called himself an objectivist. I would have never called him an objectivist. I don't know. I don't think, you know, probably not. I don't think 20 years from now we'll have an objectivist in Congress. I'm hoping we have a Jordan Peterson, objectivist Jordan Peterson in 20 years, we'll have public intellectuals who have massive followings, then we'll get the politicians. Michael asks, are there any objectivist academics in European universities? We need to get our numbers up. We can't turn this battleship around with only a few dozen people doing good work. Are there any academics? God, not that I can think of right now in academia. There's suddenly people who are inspired by objectivism that people suddenly people are interested in objectivism in academia in Europe. There's a book out. I think it's a German, maybe French. It's not in English, I think. It's a book about Einstein's influence on European intellectuals, written by a European academic who teaches at a university in Switzerland. I don't know how good the book is. I haven't read it. And I've met her a few times and her understanding of objectives was so, but so she documents in great detail significant influence on Red House on academics all through Europe. And they have been a number of people in Europe over the years who've got PhDs in different fields who call objectivists and maybe they're in academia, so I might be wrong. But so there might be some objectivist in academia in Europe. But generally, it doesn't look like academia is the route that objectivist influence is going to have. It's much more likely that we have our own intellectuals out there in the culture changing people. You know, the Iron Man University is the primary means by which we're going to educate people and get people engaged with these ideas at the deep level. That doodle bunny says, Man, you're on looks old. Thanks a lot. Who the hell asked you? God, you're traveling too much, need to stick to doing shows from your luxury comm, though, on regular traveling and giving talks isn't growing objectivism as much as your show. Maybe I don't know. I don't know if that's true. You know, people who I travel to and give talks to are always enthused. Some people, some people argue that the talks are incredibly valuable. Many people like me doing talks. It's an interesting, it's an interesting balance of how valuable a talks, how valuable it really talks and how valuable it's traveling. I think it's valuable because I think there's nothing like the exchange. You also get a lot of those videos that I do traveling, a lot of those videos that I do on the road, often videos that are watched by a lot of new people. It's how they discover the show. So the videos from the talks are valuable. So I see people are jumping to my defense or not looking old. But thanks a lot, doodle bunny. God. Liam says, Putin said he read Iron Man probably just because she was Russian. In the 1990s, I think it was the 90s, when Putin was first president, his chief economic advisor was God, I can't remember his name now, chief economic advisor was a huge Iron Man fan. Talked about Iron Man, discussed Iron Man, later left Putin because he was so disgusted with Putin, this is way back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and actually worked and maybe still works at the Kato Institute, a huge critic of Putin's. And he's a huge Iron Man fan. And he told me that he gave Putin and indeed on Putin's bookcase is a copy of Atlas Shrugged. He wasn't clear if Putin had actually read Atlas Shrugged or not, but clearly Putin had a copy of Atlas Shrugged and had a copy of Iron Man's novels and knows who Iron Man is. And again, his chief economic advisors in the very early years of his presidency was a massive free market guy, massive Iron Man fan. And today, a senior fellow at the Kato Institute, you can look him up. He's got a very Russian name. I can't remember what his name is. Apollo Zeus says, no, he's just giving you money. Thank you, Apollo Zeus, appreciate it. Michael says, do you think nuclear power will be decriminalized over the next few decades out of necessity or because of Alex Epstein's influence? Well, I think it's a combination of both. I think Alex is having an influence. He's having an influence of people who are having an influence. I think that if Republicans come back into the presidency, the one good thing about a Republican president is setting energy policy. Thank you. Andrei Ilovanov. That is that is the Iron Man fan. That is the former Putin advisor, Andrei Ilovanov, Ilovanov, something like that. He's at the Kato Institute. Good guy. I met him a few times and yeah, he was Putin's economic advisor, chief economic advisor for years. Putin never listened to him. And he resigned in disgust and left when Putin did the opposite. So in terms of power, nuclear power, I think there is generally a positive move because of necessity. I think Alex is definitely shaping the debate. He's having an impact on people who have an impact. So that I think that that it'll be both. It'll be both. I think without the necessity, Alex would have less of an impact. And I think particularly for Republicans gain the White House, they will have better energy policy. And part of that is likely to be nuclear. Although it's also possible that nuclear power is something Democrats will embrace out of kind of a necessity thing, because they'll realize it's the only renewable they can embrace if they really want to make a dent in fossil fuels. Mr. Muffin. What do you think of Jamie Dimon? You know, I'm mixed in Jamie Dimon. I think he is a great CEO. I think he's done a fantastic job at JP Morgan, JP Morgan Chase. I think he's smart. I had a lot of respect for him when he came out during the during the Obama administration and criticized Obama, even though Jamie Diamond is a Democrat. I think Jamie Diamond is the kind of guy who's super smart, who you who would be a Republican if the Republicans weren't so crazy. But as a Democrat, because you just can't vote Republicans because Republicans are so crazy, but he's not woke. He's not cancer culture. He's not. He's not CRT. He's none of those things. But yet he probably has voted mostly Democrat. But he stood up by he stood up against Obama when it came to to regulating banks and regulations of banks. And I think God Frank, and it was it was quite courageous of him at the time. Valdrin, I think EU should have one big army like USA. I think so too. I think basically what should happen is the United States should leave NATO and Europe should should be NATO. And the European army should be the NATO army. And and I think it should defend itself. And I think that's how you get there. You get there by the United States leaving NATO. I and Mikat asked vote for a moderate Democrat if one is available, a moderate Republican if not, yeah, I agree with that. We talked about that earlier. Final super chat questions. If you have any question you want to get to quickly, you've still got a chance to do it. Maybe one last $20 questions would be great so we can get over 700 bucks. But Troy, again, thank you for the support. Thank you for providing me with the extra boost in motivation by coming in with the $500 Australian dollars every few shows, at least once a month. All right, Michael asks last super chat. Another 20 would be good from somebody asking a question. How did they mean mentally irregular buffoon like KW become a billionaire? Does it just show anyone can make it under capitalism? Well, it shows anybody with some, you know, appeal, you still have to have an appeal to billions of people. I mean, obviously, he was successful in some way. Robin Asear just gave me $20 from Elon Musk. How did he get it from Elon? So you took it from Elon and you took it from Elon and you gave it to me. I don't know how you did that, Robert. Good job. You know, I don't know how Kanye West, I mean, I'm an unexponent Kanye West, but obviously, he was very, very successful as a rap artist. He made a lot of money from that. He then must have had good people around him. A lot of rap stars waste all that money. Or maybe he was saying about that. And there's some reason to believe that what's the name. Kardashian is his wife, former wife, ex-wife, I don't know, is not a dummy and maybe she helped him make better investments. And maybe not investments did well. Remember, because he had cultural cachet, I think he invested in things like shoes and clothes and things like that that again elevated his cachet. He made a lot of money just publicity wide. And the fact that he married the Kardashian again helped the publicity, the brand. So under relative freedom, which we have, you can create a brand and you can monetize that brand and you can you can do very, very well with that brand. So, you know, Kim Kardashian has done phenomenally well with her brand. She's, she's a billionaire in her own right. She leveraged whatever she made on television into, you know, I don't know, beauty brand, fashion brand, PR brand. I don't even know because I don't know that world. But it's Kardashian. Thank you, Kudabai. You're right. It's Kardashian. Not Kat. And he Kardashian, Kim Kardashian. So, um, I don't know the details, but it is true that, you know, if your success on a particular venture and you affect hundreds of millions of people, which Kanye West has, I mean, his music has had a profound massive impact, whether it's positive or negative is a different question. But people are clearly, clearly, um, you know, Don Watkins loves Kanye West music. So, he's had a profound impact on people. So he deserves to be a billionaire in a sense of impacting hundreds of millions of people. He's impacted the whole field of rap and hip hop and whatever of music in the last 10, 20 years. And as a consequence globally, so he's had a massive impact globally. That made him a billionaire. And, and, and then he invested that money well into things that are consistent with that kind of brand that he developed. And what's hurting right now is the brand is being hurt by his stupid comments. And of course he's being doing stupid things and saying stupid things. You remember when he rushed up the stage in the middle of awards ceremony and said, you don't deserve this prize. Somebody else does and all this stuff. I mean, he's a flake. He's always been a flake and he's, it's obviously he's, he's becoming worse of a flake. So it's sad to watch. It's sad to see. And, and really the most dominant emotion you should have when seeing somebody like Kanye is, is sadness that this is his state and sadness at our culture that we still kind of revere him and treat him the way that we do in spite of the fact that clearly he's a little off mentally. All right. Thank you guys. Really appreciate the support. We made it to 650. Thank you, Troy. Thank you to everybody else who supported the show today. Ask questions, good questions. The show almost two hours. That's great. Not sure when I'm going to do another show, maybe on Sunday, not tomorrow. I'm going to the opera tomorrow. I'm going to see Aida in Madrid yesterday. We saw Flamingo, love Flamingo. So we went to see a Flamingo show. It was fun. It was a blast. There's something about Flamingo where men are men and women are women. Maybe I'm going to get into trouble for that. But yes, Flamingo is a very masculine dance when the man dances. It's like I'm going to, you know, show off my masculinity and it's a very feminine, tough feminine. But the women are always, I don't know, angry and depressed in Flamingo. But there's something very powerful and strong in them. It's truly, truly beautiful. I like it. I really enjoy it. The singing is kind of sad and wistful and interesting, interesting sound. So I like Flamingo. So we watched that. That was yesterday and then tomorrow we're going to see Aida at the Madrid opera house, beautiful opera house. We walked by it yesterday looking forward to that. So I won't do a show tomorrow, but I will try to do a show on Sunday. Nathan Smith says, how much time and day do you spend keeping up with the news and what resources do you use? I mean, that's a hard answer. I'm basically, you know, particularly when I'm home, I'm basically constantly following the news, not in the sense that that's my primary focus, but it's always in the background. I don't listen to news and I don't watch news. I do not watch television news. I find that mind-numbing stupid. The only time I watch television news is on breaking stuff, like a terrorist attack just happened, something, you know, the January 6th, you know, something where it's breaking, where you want to see the action, you want to see it as it develops. But otherwise, I never watch news. Watching news is super dumb and depressing because it's it's you don't learn anything. It's repetitive. It's shallow. It's stupid. And it's it's repetitive and empty. So I read. So what do I look at Google News, Apple News, which allows me to scan the headlines. And then then I look for headlines that are interesting. And if the story is interesting, then I look for a number of different angles on it so I can try to get a little bit of a sense of objectivity around it, you know, and again, if it's important, I might read original sources. So it's it's it's being constantly on kind of something like Google News where news is just flooding in and I'm screening it and and and I'm good at it now. And I do it. I do it several times a day. So I'm in constant with the news. I don't read any particular newspaper. I scan the news aggregators, particularly Google News and Apple News. You know, and and I focus on, you know, I focus on the Wall Street Journal and the Atlantic. But mainly I'm just looking for interesting stuff to pop out at me. And when there's a story that's interesting, then I look for as many news sources as I can. I never try to rely on one news source, particularly when I know the news sources are biased. So I read the New York Times, I read a new story in New York Times, I read a new story in Washington Post, I read a new story in CNN. But then I know it's biased. So I read if the news story is important, then I'll read a bunch of other sources, you know, from other points of view, from other biases that I know, so that I can get a more complete picture of what generally appears to be the attitude towards this particular news story. And then if it's really important, then I'll try to go to original sources and try to figure out what's really going on. And oh, another news source that I use regularly is Twitter. Twitter has become a major place not to read the news, but to link to articles where we're reading the news. You know, so I follow trending stories on Twitter, but I also just scan the people I follow on Twitter to see what they're talking about, to see what news stories they link. Scott Lin-Secom is excellent at economic issues and tweets a lot. He's on Twitter all the time. So I follow his Twitter account. So I'm on Twitter quite a lot. And again, it's in and out. It's not I spend hours sitting there reading Twitter. I go in, what's what's happening on Twitter right now, off I go to do something else a few hours later, I'll pop in again. And that's how I do all my news stuff. And I'm good and I'm fast at it. All right. Thank you, everybody. I will, I will see you all tomorrow, not tomorrow, Sunday. Next show is on Sunday. All right, everybody, have a great weekend. Today is Friday night. Have a great weekend. Don't forget, if you want to support the show, you can do it on your onbookshow.com slash sport. Many of you are doing on a Patreon these days. Thank you for the Patreon new subscribers. You can do it on subscribe star and you can do it on locals. Thank you for everybody who supports the show. And I will see you all on Sunday. Thank you, X Facts.