 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday, July 18th. I hope everybody is having a fantastic week and having a good productive time. All right. We're going to jump in to our news today. We're going to talk about equity in math, the no labels movement, the new rights rise in Europe, and the heat wave affecting Europe and a lot of the United States. Just a reminder, we will be doing a show tonight at 8 p.m. The topic is going to be masculinity. We'll be talking about the Tucker interview with Tate. But more broadly, I want to lay out or try to lay out or speculate about laying out an actually idea of what masculinity is. And we'll do femininity in another show, but just focus on masculinity. Why men are having such a hard time with it? And what does it actually look like? Now, I know I've talked about this on past shows in greater or less detail. But we'll do something a little bit more detailed and a little bit more thorough in terms of what is the concept? What is the content within the folder called masculinity? Ankan Nicos just did a response video to Matt Walsh, what is a woman, which the video is excellent. And it, I think, articulates even in more detail than minded why Matt Walsh is... I mean, why Matt Walsh and why the whole... I mean, Matt Walsh and everything represents such a so shallow and such a ultimately a scam and so destructive ultimately. All right, let's jump in. So, you know, equity has become a thing. It's become a new left concept. It used to be equality. It used to be social justice. It used to be a lot of things, but equity is a thing. And really, equity is focused in on equal outcomes. That is the essence of equity. Equity is how do we create a scenario? How do we help some and potentially penalize others in order to achieve? Achieve is a strong word. Equal outcomes. So it's all about equality, not equality before the law, not equality of rights, not equality of liberty, not even equality of opportunity, although equality of opportunity is kind of a messed up concept. But literally equality of outcomes. So this is the true egalitarian nature of the left coming out. When they use equity, what they're really talking about is ultimately everybody being the same. Everybody having the same amount of wealth. Everybody having the same amount of knowledge. And you have to really understand that they don't mean this in just a materialistic money sense. They mean equal. Equal knowledge. And it's some bizarre way of equalability. And yet this is the left that claims the genes don't matter. It really is amazing how the crazy left and the crazy right always converge, always converge. Because as long as both the left and the right ultimately fall down to the best you can do is what your genes provide for you. They all reject free will. So the egalitarianism here of equity is the real thing. They're not hiding it anymore. It used to be in some sense this was being hidden. It used to be that in some sense they were pretending that no, they just wanted to tell people out. And then of course, we all know how to achieve what they call equity. I hate that term because equity is just another word for justice. It's just doing something great, equitable. And they're perverting it here into some modern leftist, horrible equality of outcome thing. So how do we make everybody equal? Well, we all know how to do that. And I explained that to all of you when I talked about LeBron James and how do we make me and LeBron James equal in basketball? Well, how do you make us equal, right? In wealth, we know how to do it. We tax some and we pay welfare to others and we don't make them completely equal. But that's because we haven't taken our egalitarianism really seriously. The really serious egalitarians want to make us equal. And these leftists want a serious egalitimate. But money as well is easy. You know, it's fungible. You can take it from here, take it from there. You can move it around. That's kind of easy to equate. But how do you equate knowledge? How do you equate ability? Well, I mean, I told the story in a book with Don Watkins Equal to San Fe about how Popat did it, right? You kill those who are able. You kill everybody who sticks his head up, who's a little different, who's a little better, who's a little more knowledgeable, who has a little bit more intelligence. That's suddenly one way to do it. But, you know, we're not yet at the point, yet at the point in America where we're willing to kill the able. So what are we going to do? Well, one way to do it is to hamper them, to restrain them, to stop them from advancing, to stop them from moving forward, to stop them from improving, to stop them from gaining knowledge other people maybe can't because they don't have the capacity for it. So what we can do is chop LeBron James' legs off without killing him. But of course, that too is unappealing and everybody, nobody actually advocates for it. It's violence. Everybody's against violence. But if we manage to hamper people's brains, if we hamper their progress, if we hamper their soul, if we destroy their potential, well, you can't see that. There's no blood. There's no blood. And this is what the left loves. And this is why the dominance of our educational system is so scary and so horrific. So what do they do? Well, in California, and it turns out now that in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard and MIT, right? In Cambridge, Massachusetts in the city of Cambridge has recently removed algebra and all advanced math from its junior high schools. Let me repeat that. They've removed algebra and all advanced math from their middle schools. Why? You might say, why are they doing this? Well, because some kids can't take algebra in middle school. Some kids can and some kids can't. And a way to close the gap between them is to not allow the kids who can to move forward. The way to make everybody equal is to paralyze or to restrain or to lower the standards. But it's not even the standards, right? Because you're literally holding back. You're literally not allowing the kids to advance. You're raining so that everybody can catch up and everybody can learn the same stuff altogether. And this is already prevalent in California. And it was supposed to be even harsher. It's all based on the work of a Stanford academic by the name of Joe Boala, B-O-A-L-E-R. Just so you know to be careful. So Joe Boala's proposal for California was a lot more radical. A lot of that has been watered down. There was some criticism of it. It was watered down. But the end of the day, the end of the day, it's California and now Massachusetts, at least in Cambridge, are basically committed to this idea of the way to achieve equity, the way to achieve equality. They figured it out. And I've known this forever and in equal as non-fair, we lay this out. The way to achieve equality is to rein in talent, ability, ambition. To destroy it. RIMO says just pure evil. Absolutely just pure evil. Unequivocally just pure evil. So the approach there is if not everybody can do algebra, nobody should do algebra. If not everybody can read, nobody should read. I'm extrapolating. If not everybody can read. I don't know. Lemme see Robles in high school. Nobody should read it. Lemme see Robles in high school. Maybe we should just burn the books that only some people can read. Maybe we should start teaching algebra to all ages because not everybody can do algebra in any age. Equity ultimately is lowering our lives to the lowest common denominator. Equity ultimately is the most evil. Most unjust. Most horrific. Literally most evil. Idea that exists out there. There is nothing more evil than the idea of equality of outcome. There is nothing more evil than what Paul Park did and why he did it and how he did it. And there is nothing more evil than these people who want to hold back some for the sake of those who cannot keep up. It's horrific. Now just to give you a positive counter, the Dallas Independent School District also noticed that not everybody is taking algebra. You know, not everybody is taking the more advanced classes, in this case, honors math enrollment in sixth grade. And indeed that there was a racial disparity. About 50% of white kids were taking it, but only 17% of black kids were taking honors math, were enrolling in honors math. And it said, you know, we'd like to get more kids to take it. We'd like to get generally more kids to take it because we want to raise everybody up. We don't provide more kids with more tools. So what the Dallas School Board did in the Independent School District is usually you have to opt in for honors math enrollment. But what they did is they made math enrollment something you have to opt out of and you actually have to get your parents to sign off on opting out of it. And it turned out that once they did that, enrollment in math, in the honors class in math, skyrocketed. Among white kids, it went up to 82%. Among black kids, it went to 43, from 17 to 43. That's like a three-fold, greater than a three-fold increase. So if you care about kids who are left behind, challenge them. If you care about kids left behind, encourage them. Because the truth is that many kids can take Algebra in sixth grade. Many kids can be good in math. And a lot of it is just about challenging them. Now you might think, oh, a lot of kids are taking this class, but they're failing. But it turned out that it didn't. That's not the case. Almost all of them are passing. They're getting good grades. 91% of the black students, this new cohort, 43% of all blacks are passing this course. And this is across all the honors classes. And they're not just passing everybody. These honors classes, they have standards. But if you teach kids well, all kids, almost all kids can get Algebra in sixth grade. So the way to deal with kids falling behind is to encourage them to rise up, to challenge them. I mean, maybe the story of Marvel Collins in Chicago where she had this private school and she had the poorest of the poorest of the kids attending. They were all black. And she took these kids in and it was a small classroom and they all went to college. I mean, 100%. And a huge achievement. And they would have died in public schools. Why? She challenged them. It was a, what do you call it? She demanded. She was incredibly demanding. I mean, I can't think of anything more evil than what they're doing in Cambridge and in California. I don't think it's surprising, but it's still pretty horrific. All right, there was a new political party on the American political scene. At least maybe it's been around, but it's becoming more serious. Threatening to field a presidential candidate in next year's election. Only on one condition and that is if the election turns out to be between Biden and Trump, they will field, they expect to field a candidate. It's called No Labels, which is, you know, kind of weird name. And they already have what looks like their preferred presidential candidate and they have probably his running mate. The idea is that No Labels will run a Democrat and Republican as president and vice president. So that both parties are represented. And they will run people from the center who are both, who could easily flip between Republican and Democrat. They seem to be serious. They have real money behind them. They have put out their policy agenda, which is exactly what you'd expect from a centrist No Labels political party. It's neither here nor there. It's kind of status quo. Don't upset the cart too much. You know, we believe in climate change, but we don't want to do too much, but we'll do some. We believe in, I don't know, we'll restrict abortion, but not too much, just some. We want to deal with the budget. We definitely want to cut the budget deficit. No word on how. We'll reform entitlements, but not too much. Nobody will suffer. Don't worry. It's just a centrist, blah, meaningless document. But I have to say right now a blah, meaningless document with the prospects of Biden and Trump as presidents sounds pretty good to me. Right? It sounds pretty good to get away from Biden and Trump kind of agenda. So this is, this is what they're proposing. The candidate most likely to be their presidential candidate is a mansion from West Virginia, who is of a reelection in the Senate as a Democrat and has a Republican challenging him, who is the governor of West Virginia, who's incredibly popular in West Virginia. West Virginia is a massively Republican state. Manchin is likely to lose his Senate seat. So why not run for president as a third party? And John Huntsman. Remember John Huntsman? I don't know how many of you remember John Huntsman. He ran for president in the Republican primaries once, didn't get very far. He is a moderate middle of the road, nothing. He makes Mitt Romney seems like a radical for capitalism. Huntsman is from Utah. He's a Mormon. And he would be the Republican who represented on the ticket. Right? That that's who they want to run. I think they're purposely choosing boring centrists to contrast with, but at least who can verbalize a position as compared to Biden and at least not complete insane as compared to as compared to. Trump. So the people most panicking here are Democrats. The Democrats are convinced that a ticket like this would basically guarantee the Trump wins. Probably true. The reality is that Trump has a core of devoted voters that that I don't think Biden has. I don't think he has any core of devoted voters. And that a significant number of Democrats would probably vote for mansion over Biden in a coming election. Biden is very unpopular, even in Democratic parties, not very popular. And yeah, so it there is a possibility that mansion is a spoiler for Biden and he allows Trump to win. Now, the other news and politics that I'm reading is that there's a story going around that Trump is ultimately going to kind of deal with prosecutors in all his various different criminal lawsuits because the last thing Trump wants to do. I mean, the very, very, very last thing Trump wants to do is go to jail and that he will kind of deal with everybody where he gets some kind of penalty that doesn't involve jail, but he does not run for president. So a lot of interesting stuff is going to happen in the months to come. A lot of interesting stuff. But it does. There's no labels. Look, I mean, they are registering in all the states. They will actually be able to feel the candidate. And yeah, I mean, this could be a candidate that kind of gets the the the what happened here. Gets the gets the never Trump is of all kinds independence Republicans and so on, gets their vote instead of Biden and thus allows Trump to win that that of course is what everybody is really, really, really worried about. All right, no labels. Finally, you know, not finally, but I've been talking about this story for a long time. So not a lot to talk here about. But but there was a big story today, or there was a big article today about the global wave of populist nationalism. That is actually increasing, not decreasing, started with Trump and the perception is it started with Trump and Brexit. And there's now sweeping much of the world in Bolsonaro in Brazil, Bolsonaro last Trump last but other than that, pretty much everywhere else you're seeing a real right wing populist. Continue resurgence or surge surge, not research surge. You're seeing it in Tokyo, you're seeing it in Hungary, you're seeing it in Israel where where the kind of populist right did much better than expected. You're seeing it in in India with Modi and the BGP party, but more than anywhere you're seeing it in Europe in Germany. The alternative for Germany, which is a kind of a scary right wing populist party has recently pulled at 22%. I've actually seen it even higher. And 22% makes it the second largest political party in Germany. I've seen it pull as number one political party in Germany, the highest. Now, I don't know if that's real, but it is unbelievably popular right now. And very competitive in terms of winning in some of the states, the German states in the Eastern Germany. In many respects, pretty, pretty scary, pretty scary. So, you know, this is a nationalist right wing party that has its roots in neo-Nazis, they've kind of kicked the neo-Nazis out. But they're there, they're very, again, nationalist, anti-immigration, central planning and bringing, you know, in Europe, the combination right now, the main feature of these parties, the things that makes them most popular is economic problems, which all of Europe is experiencing, particularly Germany. And immigration, those are the two big things that are pushing this. In France, you've got the national, the right, far right national rally, which is Le Pen's party, which is basically in the lead. It's getting the most, it's got like 24, 25% of the votes together with the far left, the left wing party alliance, which is getting also 24, 25%. But then you've got also another far right party of Eric Zimmer, who's getting another five. So that puts the far right kind of at 29, almost 30%, almost 30%, which would make it the biggest block. Emmanuel Macron's party is only 22%, so it would make it the biggest block with the only alternative being the leftists. In Spain, we've got an election in a few days. This one's going to be really interesting. And you've got the right wing party, Vox, again, nationalist, anti-immigration, and all the negative characteristics of a far right party, they're doing really well, so well at 14%, that they probably will be in the next government. They'll probably be joining the next government. And one of the characteristics of many of these parties is religion. And then you've got the Netherlands. Now, the Netherlands is a little bit more murky because they have so many political parties. They have like 17 parties that get seats in the parliament. And, you know, the farmer's citizen movement, which is looks like it's going to be the largest political party. It's not exactly what they stand for other than leave the farmers alone. But Netherlands is a complete mess. The current government has failed, again, as collapsed over the issue of immigration. So they're collapsing in Belgium. You've got the right wing party is a 22% in Austria, a 28%, and in Romania, you've got an ultra nationalist party, 20%. All of these parties also share a real suspicion of the EU. Many of them want their countries to leave the EU. But of course, once they get into power, they don't actually push for that. You can see that in Italy. You know, what is considered to be kind of a populist far right political party won the Italian elections. They've kind of really moderated since then. I mean, they're becoming one of the strongest members of the strongest participants in the EU. They don't seem to be eager to leave the EU. And of course, the reason is that the EU is basically a mechanism by which northern Europe subsidizes southern Europe, basically to mechanism by which Germany and the Netherlands and Scandinavia to some extent subsidize Hungary, some of the Eastern European countries and Italy and Spain. So once an Italian, you know, nationalist gets in power, they don't want to lose their subsidies. That's why Alban, with all this criticism of the EU and EU is the worst thing ever and EU is a disaster. He'll never leave because he knows exactly what will happen to the Hungarian economy if they leave. It'll fall off a cliff. And part of it is the EU is bad, regulatory bad, awful from regulatory perspective. But the reality is that many of these governments are worse. The reality is that to some extent for some of these government, the EU is actually moderate as compared to what they would do if they actually got into power. And they know it. It's like everybody complains about the euro, right? Why can't we have our own currency say the Greeks? Well, you know why? Because if you had your own currency, you would be ever thousand times worse than the euro. Your currency would collapse completely and your economy would be completely finished. The euro saves countries like Greece and Italy and Spain and other countries from their own, from themselves. If they had a central bank, they would have hyperinflation. So, and the same with the EU with the bureaucracy. You think the EU bureaucracy is bad, Italian bureaucracy and corruption is worse. And if Italy left the EU, it would have to live with its own bureaucracy, which is worse than the Brussels bureaucracy. It would be more statist, more socialist, more central planist than what even the EU. And, you know, the UK has discovered that. The UK left. The Conservative Party pushed it to leave. The Conservative Party is like the most, it's as unpopular as it's ever been. It's driven the UK economy to the brink of collapse. It is giving them inflation. It is also giving them a regulatory state that matches the EU. It is not deregulated. It's not freed up. It is not liberated. It has not done anything that it promised. So, why did they leave the EU? They lost the massive benefits the EU provided and didn't get any of the upside. And that's why, and the UK is not going back, even if the left wins. The UK is not going back to the EU. But neither the left nor the Conservatives know how to get the benefits from the UK for not being in the EU. They can benefit from the fact that it's completely independent of the EU. They have no clue how to extract the good that they can do. And I said at the time, I said at the time, and another one of these things I'm right on, I'm all for Brexit if the UK government does the right thing with its newfound liberty. And I'm against Brexit if they don't. And I predict that they wouldn't know what to do with it. And I'm right. They have no clue what to do with it. And as a consequence, the UK economy is really struggling, really struggling. And it looked like it looked like it was doing, it was doing fantastic. And then suddenly it kind of fell off a cliff. All right, let's see. Oh yeah, finally, heat wave. It is really, really hot out there. Not here in Puerto Rico. It's always hot. But it's really, really hot like in Rome. It's 105 degrees today. And it's going to be over 100 for a few days. It's supposed to be in some places in Spain, France. There's this massive heat wave all over Europe. Of course, Phoenix is over 110. I think for 18 days straight, I think they're going to break the record of the most days over 110 ever in Phoenix's history. But you know, Phoenix is always over 110. Well, not always. But a lot. That's why you never, ever, ever go to Phoenix in the summer. And if you live in Phoenix, you leave in the summer. It's insanely hot. It's kind of a nice heat. I like the Phoenix heat because it's dry. It's like, I don't know. I like it. You go out into it and the heat just envelops you. The good thing about Phoenix and American hot cities is they all have air conditioning. They all know exactly what to do with the heat. They have air conditioning and everybody's doing fine. The problem with Rome is, a lot of people don't have air conditioning. And the other problem with Rome is that Rome is packed right now with tourists. Tourists are walking from site to site because you walk a lot in Rome. In this heat, God. I mean, I have to say when we were in Rome, and this is the whole story with global climate change, I guess. When we were in Rome in May, it was cold. It was like everybody we talked to from Rome, the taxi drivers and everybody, was saying, we don't remember it being this cold in May. It was rainy and cold. And it was not pleasant to walk outside because it was rainy and cold. But this is ridiculously hot for Rome. And Rome was also humid. So not fun. So yeah, don't be a tourist in places that are really, really hot during the summer. This is why it went in May, but then May was cold. So I don't know, climate change is screwing up tourism. And one of the consequences of that is it could be that people start changing their habits in terms of tourism. July, August might be the best time to go visit Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Sweden, the Norwegian Fjords, like Scotland. If you're really feeling adventurous, you could also do Siberia. But there might be places where you can go in the summer where it's kind of pleasant because during the rest of the year it's impossible to be because it's too cold. Unless of course you live in Michigan and then it's just average. But people are shifting. Yeah, Iceland is beautiful. Why not go to Iceland during the summer? Canada becomes semi-habitable, moderately habitable. Even Michigan becomes moderately habitable in the summer. You can go to Michigan. They're beautiful lakes. It's really, really pretty there. Just be careful driving at night not to hit the deer. But yeah, so we might see as a response to climate change, a shift in tourism habits, which will hurt people in Rome and benefit people in Copenhagen. Not sure on balance what that does. People have to adjust. And this is the thing about climate change. People will adjust. They'll adjust their behavior. Businesses will have to adjust. Some businesses will not fare well. Other businesses will fare phenomenally well. As climate change, people adapt. Human beings adapt. We buy air conditioning. We spend more electricity, less on other things. We go vacation in Norway instead of Greece. We change, we adapt. And what will happen ultimately is that if we allow for economic growth to continue, of course, is that places like Italy and Greece and Spain will invest much more heavily in air conditioning. We'll invest much more heavily in air conditioning. So we do need to grow. We need to become wealthy and we need to become richer, particularly in those countries, so that they can access air conditioning because air conditioning is expensive. And the advantage of Phoenix is they already have air conditioning. Vegas. Vegas right now must be so hot. But it's the kind of heat I like. For a while, you know, at some point the dryness just starts killing you. But for a while, that heat is, I don't know, I find it comforting and pleasant. All right. Oh, way over time. All right, let's jump into the Super Chat. Wes, thank you for the $50 question. And by the way, we're only $24 short of the target. So hopefully with a few stickers, we've got about 100 people watching right now. With a few stickers, we can get to the $250 mark. Remember, value for value, those who are watching right now. Oh, if you're watching right now and you're not a subscriber, subscribe. Please press that subscribe button. And then you'll get notifications when I go live and I do these shows every day. News quick news round up on shows. Hopefully interesting. Hopefully saves you from watching some of the horrible news that are out there. So please subscribe if you're not a subscriber yet. All right. Wes says any thoughts on Hollywood and ongoing strikes. I think the system of a large studios and large unions is not sustainable. I think those involve need to think outside the box and come up with something new. Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult because it's very difficult to break the unions. It's very difficult to work outside the unions. The unions in Hollywood are particularly powerful and particularly nasty. And it's just everybody's bought into the system and everybody's accepted it. So even even many independent film and many independent producers are affected by the strike because they can't find writers. Writers are part of the guild and you're not allowed to write for the movies unless you're a part of the guild. And of course, you can become a part of the guild unless you write for the movie. So it's like a catch 22 very difficult to get into the union. And then the union does these kind of things where where they they negotiate these kind of terms, which, you know, maybe, maybe I'm very skeptical about whether the union is necessary here. Whether we could whether we would need whether if the union went away, smaller unions would arise that, you know, that dealt with this that dealt with the needs of actors, maybe actors in different stages of the career. I don't know. I don't know enough about the industry to know. But it doesn't seem rational to me, but we can have a Pellegrino on to talk about the strike. I don't know. I don't know if he wants to be public about this. I don't know. I'd have to ask him. But, you know, so it's, I don't know enough about what goes on there. And I don't know enough about the industry to say, I mean, obviously it's insane. Every few years or every decade, there seems to be this massive strike, everything shuts down, nothing gets done. It seems to be very, I mean, why is one organization negotiating for everybody? That seems wrong and disturbing. Why aren't people applying anti-trust laws against them? Huh? I wonder. So I don't know enough about the industry, but I'm suspicious because of the size of these things and because the whole industry can be shut down like this. And because of the insider, the fact that everybody plays around with this and nobody, you know, there are no films being made right now. And the system is broken in some very fundamental way. I don't know how to fix it other than to take away kind of the legal protection that unions have. But how did the union here get so strong? How did the union here get so powerful? I just don't know. I don't know. All right, Stephen, thank you for the $20 that took us over the limit. David, thank you for the sticker. Marilyn, thank you for the sticker. It's not Marilyn. She told me. Oh, God. Marlene, is that right? Anyway, no, Mary Ellen, Mary Ellen. There we go. I remember it's Mary Ellen. So sorry, Mary Ellen. I finally remembered that I've been mispronouncing it wrong all this time. She came up to me at Ocon and told me you mispronounce my name all the time. Mary Ellen. So thank you for the support. Wow, I can't believe I actually caught that. Let's see. Stephen, more Stephen, anonymous user, Paul, and Mary Ellen again, and Danny, and Catherine, and Jonathan Honing, and Robert Nacer. I got that right. Thanks. Thank you all for the support. All right, let's do the questions quickly. Remo says, I recently watched a documentary. Oh, by the way, somebody asked me about reviewing a movie. It's $500. I recently watched the documentary, Startup Nation. It claimed that the policy of Shimon Peres are backing VC losses and therefore attracting venture capital led to the current flourishing tech sector in Israel. Thoughts. No, I don't think, I don't think that's true. I mean, suddenly it made it a lot easier for capital to flow into the country. But the start-ups were already there. The technology was already there. The genius was already there. It smoothed out and accelerated the VC's willingness to invest and also the VC, the quantity and the amount of the VC coming to Israel and investing in it. But it would have happened anyway, maybe in a different time frame, maybe a little slower, maybe a little better. Who knows? But it suddenly accelerated at the beginning before Israel was kind of discovered. But I don't think it changed anything fundamentally. All right, everybody's trying to explain to me in the chat how to pronounce Mary Alene's name and I'm probably butchering it. So at least I got the Mary, you know, I'm separating, it's a combination of two names. At least I'm getting that rather than just my old pronunciation was completely wrong. So ultimately I'll try to get it right. Mary Alene, Mary Alene, Mary Alene. Friend Harper says, I can't make the show later but you can address the question then. Is masculinity that which is unique essentially to a male human? Like how nature is that which is unique to humans? No, my answer is no, but let me leave that there because I think you can be a female and masculine. All right, the Godfather. I just read a long expose about Peter Schiff's bank at DW. DW being what? I don't know what DW means. What is going on with it? Why is the government going after it? Can you shed some light on the regulatory side and shift side? I can't really. I mean, the bottom line is banking is the most regulated business in the country. Part of Schiff's approach to the bank, I think, and he was speculating, is to provide kind of an alternative way of doing banking, something a little bit outside of the box, something that provides services of a different kind and at a different level. Nothing shady, nothing scheming, nothing bad on the contrary, but different. And the regulators don't like that. And then it's also Peter Schiff with all the baggage that Peter Schiff brings to it with his vocal anti-fed and anti-regulation. I'm not surprised the regulators are going after it, but I don't know enough to say, to give you the exact reason why and I don't know enough to specify in detail, but it doesn't surprise me at all that they're doing it. This is what they do. It's so regulated, anybody who's a little different, anybody who's doing something a little cutting edge, a little innovative, they're going to clamp down on. All right, I need to speed it up here at 15 minutes. Jennifer says, in a Twilight Zone episode, they forced everyone to have an operation to look alike. Yeah, remember that. Afterwards, the girl says, the best part is now I look just like everybody else. Yes, it's very scary. Twilight Zone episodes are generally very scary. But yes, the idea of complete equality should really, really scare you. Really, really scary. It's a really, really evil idea. Luckily, it's also an idea that people are likely to embrace beyond a few enclaves of crazy, nutty leftists. Not embrace fully. They embrace it in small ways, but not fully. Adam says, there is nothing wrong with a world full of both Eddie Willis and John Galtz. Suppressing higher achievement makes all of us inculcably less rich, incalculably less rich. Absolutely. It's a win-win world. The world is a win-win. Somebody else's talent, achievements, success, wealth are a benefit to us, to you, if you're willing to me, if I'm willing to be productive, if I'm willing to trade with him, rather than try to exploit him. So absolutely, absolutely. Frank says, do people psychologize because passions are still present in our lives? Isn't altruism an envy? A passion we have rationalized? Yeah, to a large extent, altruism and envy are passions, but they're passions that come from ideas. That is, the passions are not the primacy, the primary, the passions are not the beginning. The beginning is our conclusions we come about reality that then result in us having particular emotions, particular passions about the world that then, and it's a loop, right? Those passions certainly reinforce certain aspects of our thinking, certain aspects of our psychology. But yes, the idea, the altruism and the envy, because they're not really, the formal manifestation of them is not acceptable. People rationalize them and come up with excuses to justify them and hide them even from themselves. No one says the AFD here in Germany has a weird mix of nationalist and free market policies. I think there is still a good chance that they'll implement the more sensible ideas, especially in a coalition they would have to join. I hope so, but I tend to think it's the other way around. I tend to think that the world, basically the world is against free market ideas, period. There's basically a much bigger coalition that opposes free market ideas. And the national idea is actually a lot more appealing and a lot more interesting and a lot more, you can form a coalition around them because everybody out there is a collectivist and it just feeds into that collectivism. Whereas free market ideas are fundamentally opposed to collectivism, the individualistic. And for a collectivist culture to accept an individual premise is a lot harder than for a collectivist to switch from one form of collectivism to another. So I think ultimately it's the nationalist ideas that win out, not the free market ideas. And you can see that with all these right-wing political parties, when they win, they don't, including Trump and Bolsonaro and others, they don't really implement much of their free market ideology. That doodle bunny and non-objectivist world is a world I don't want to live in. All right, but it might be the world you have to live in. Socialism seems to be the position that slavery is wrong when done by individuals, but right done by the state. Well, yeah, but it rationalizes that in the form of, but it's better for people, but they're better off. But at least it teaches them all equally, at least it's more just. It has to rationalize it because it can't hold that what they're doing is enslaving people. James G. says, why have flights from the USA to the UK so high compared to previous years? I realized that we have inflation, however, price is almost triple from five years ago. At the same time, I do not understand it. I think because after COVID, a lot of people decided they want to fly, I think to some extent capacity on airlines shrunk a little bit during COVID and returning that capacity has been hard. And therefore there's less competition and there's less capacity in the planes of pact. The planes are packed, there are no seats. So people are returning to travel with a vengeance and maybe this heatwave will lower that. But yes, I mean, travel to the UK is very expensive. Just giving an example, British airways stopped flying the A380, the Airbus 380, that big double-decker plane. And they basically decommissioned the planes. And then when demand soared last year, they had to bring some of those planes back. But they haven't brought all of them back. So they brought a few of them back and they still, I don't think their capacity is up to what it was pre-COVID. And yet demand is still there. Hopper Campbell, for people who've never studied objectives and how rational can they really be? There's a limit to it, but they can be rational. They can be rational, certainly at the level of common sense. Logic is pretty much understood out there. But it's hard for them to be completely rational and integrated into every aspect of their life. But it doesn't mean that before Objectivism there were no rational people. They were. It's just how conscious were they of it and how integrated were they? Clark says, what's wrong with being entitled? Isn't that an aspect of selfishness? No, entitled is not an aspect of selfishness. Selfishness requires that you earn what you consume. It requires, selfishness requires that you earn it. That you pay for it. And being entitled is, I should get the stuff whether I earn it or not, whether I work for it or not, so whether I, in a sense, deserve it or not. Entitled separates consumption or receiving love or receiving anything from dessert. And that's anti-selfish. Selfishness is all about dessert. Michael says, suppose you became president while Congress was still controlled by traditional status parties. Could you video your way to shrinking the state? Probably. I shut down the government a few times. And it's quite possible they also, they would be so afraid of a government shutdown that they would compromise or at least allow for some shrinkage. You could do some stuff. It would be hard and it would be very difficult and it's not clear if the people would support it. But you could do much more than anybody's done in the past. Frank, I was reading that Italy is a social market economy. Or that it practices Ryan capitalism or Rainish mode. Can you explain it? How does this work? It just means it's a mixed economy. It just means it has elements of markets and it has elements of government control and it has elements of cronyism. It also has elements of corruption. So that's all that means. It's just they pretend as if there's such a thing as Ryan capitalism. There is no such thing. Italy, just like Germany, just like France are all mixed economies. They have some freedom and a lot of state control. And they have no for-born capitalists and they protect rights in certain limited respects and they don't protect rights in lots of other respects. And in that sense, they're a complete mixture. All right everybody, reminder tonight we're doing a show on masculinity. We'll talk about a few things about masculinity but also is the way people hold masculinity a frozen concept. What does that concept entail? What goes into the concept of masculinity? We'll talk about Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson who definitely both have a frozen concept of masculinity. And that interview that they did and a few things to be learned from that interview and other stuff. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. And I will see you all tonight at 8 o'clock 8 p.m. East Coast time.