 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 Monday weekend. Looking forward to a fantastic week. I will be traveling a little bit this week. I'm leaving on Wednesday, and I'll come back on Thursday. I'm going to try to do a show. I found the road on Thursday, but no guarantees. But there won't be a show on Wednesday. So just to set expectations. So yeah, hopefully on Thursday there'll be a show in the morning. Probably won't be an evening show. And then the Thursday evening show will move to Friday. So we'll do two shows on Friday, two shows on Tuesday. Today and tomorrow will be on schedule. All right, let us see where we've got a lot of talk about today. A lot of things going on in the world, but a lot of it's pretty quick. So we can get by it pretty quickly. All right, so I haven't commented on this yet, and I don't have factors. I don't have a lot to say about it. But you know, there's horrific fire in Hawaii last week. Almost 100 people are dead. This thing happened fast. A lot of, probably a lot of things failed, water failed, local authorities failed. The electric power company's already being sued for not shutting down the power. You know, a lot of stuff is going to happen. There's going to be a lot of recrimination. But the reality is, I don't think anybody could have done much here. You know, just the circumstances of a hurricane passing by, causing winds, but also causing dry air, which is weird because you think of a hurricane as causing wet air, causing dry air, a fire being ignited, and just sweeping through the town of Lahaina, which was the ancient capital of Maui. Homes just burnt fast. You know, people escaped into the ocean. They escaped into anywhere they could. But for a lot of people, they didn't even realize what was happening, and they were dead before they realized what was going on. It's super sad. There are a bunch of horrific stories people burnt alive, and they cause and other things. So yeah, just our thoughts go to the people, to the survivors in Maui, and who've lost friends and loved ones, and neighbors and relatives and everything. And it's just a sad thing. But these are the kind of natural disasters that happen. And there's little we can do about them. This will be blamed on climate change, will be blamed on human, whatever. But the reality is that these things happen, and they're horrible when they happen, but they do happen. Part of the risk of being alive is the real possibility of death. Nature out there doesn't want to kill you, but certainly does everything in its power to kill you. It's not friendly to human beings. This is why technology and science and better building and better everything is so crucial, and which mostly requires at this point in our civilization, burning fossil fuels, is so valuable and so important. We are a being that changes our environment to fit our needs, and we got to make our homes fire-protected, hurricane-protective, earthquake-protective. Because nature out there can't rely on it to keep us safe. Nature, if it had a desire, it doesn't. But if it had a desire, one would have to conclude that its desire was to wipe human beings out. It's certainly not friendly to us, as I said. All right. Quick reminder, we do have $250 to raise on these morning shows. So please consider contributing something. You can do it on a sticker or on a super chat. But please consider, for those of you who are live, to support the show. Those of you who are not live, please consider doing a monthly contribution on Patreon or on PayPal through your onbookshow.com slash support. I've seen a nice increase on Patreon. We got to keep that going. But there are still hundreds of people, hundreds of people out there who listen to the show, who do not yet support it financially, and it would be great if we got those hundreds of people. I could stop bugging you, because we'd be in a financial situation where it would be done. All right. Hunter Biden, you know, the gift that keeps on giving in terms of news. Over the, I guess the end of last week, over the weekend, we got an independent council appointed by the Justice Department to investigate. This gives the attorney in charge, this guy, Weiss, more authority to investigate this independent of the hierarchy within the Justice Department. He now gets his own resources. He gets his own people. Everybody's upset by this. Nobody's happy. Like the Hunter Biden people are going, wait a minute, you were negging on a deal. We had a deal. We had a plea deal, and you guys are walking away from it. What the hell is going on here? And the Republicans are going, this guy isn't the guy we want to be an independent council. He's too friendly to the Biden's. He struck a plea deal with them. Then he must not be a good guy, because he struck a plea deal with Hunter Biden. Anyway, nobody's happy, which is a good sign, I think. I think if somebody was happy, that would be a bad sign. It would be a sign maybe something was fishy about the whole thing. Weiss is a bit of a strange appointment, I will say this. Usually independent councils are independent in the sense that they come from outside of the Justice Department. They come outside of the government. They're typically not working as government employees. For example, the independent council investigating Trump in January 6, and the document case was a prosecutor in Hague, but not within the bureaucracy, the American Justice bureaucracy. Other independent councils have been private attorneys that have been brought in to do this. Weiss is an acting attorney within the Justice Department. It's a bit unusual, but I know nothing negative about this guy. I know no reason to think that he's going to be bad, but I do know that Ted Cruz is flipping out furious, according to the headlines anyway. And that Hunter Biden himself is super unhappy with this because it means that they've reneged on the plea deal. So again, I take solace in the fact that nobody is happy. Nobody is happy. Kudababa says they legally must be from outside the government. I thought so too, but so they must be something here. I don't think they would have done this if it was illegal because then it defeats all purpose of having an independent council. So we'll see what kind of explanation they have for the third party thing, but it doesn't seem like they would do something blatantly stupid as to violate the law in the appointment of the independent council and therefore make the whole thing null and void. So we'll see how it all plays out. I did find it interesting that over the weekend, James Coma, remember James Coma heads up the House GOP committee looking into, this is the House Committee on Oversight, looking into the Hunter Biden case. During the weekend, Coma did say, and you know, maybe he's listening, maybe somebody's listening to you on Bookshow and making this issue, but he did say that he thought it was very inappropriate and a bad sign that Jared Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudis for his private equity fund. He didn't think it rose to the same level of potential corruption as the Hunter Biden story, but he thought it was not good. It was definitely something that should be looked at and it was not a positive thing. It was not good. Wow, I mean, hey, and he's Republican, right? So again, maybe somebody is listening to this show because I don't know anybody else who's made a big deal out of the Kushner story other than me. So yeah, maybe somebody's, yeah, Coma said Kushner crossed the line of ethics with the Saudi deal, right? And so it seems like Republicans are turning on Jared Kushner with regard to this, but yeah. Fund-a-watch, fund-a-watch, and I talk about fund-a-watch. Trump is going to be indicted this week probably by the attorney in the state of Georgia, an accusation that tried to overthrow and acted to overthrow the Georgia election. So this is fourth indictment. This will be Trump's fourth indictment. Two at the state level, one in the city of New York, one in this county in Georgia and then two federal. And this one might be the most interesting one because they might, which I find would be super ironic and interesting. They might actually use RICO on Trump. They might actually accuse him of conspiracy, a conspiracy to commit a crime and use RICO. Who knows what implication that has. I don't know what that allows them to do. I know what it allows them to do in the financial industry when they use RICO. But RICO, of course, is something that was used, there was Congress passed to go after the mafia in the 1970s and then was used Giuliani. This is the irony of it. Giuliani was the first one to use it to go after businessmen, after financiers. And it will be super weird and interesting if Georgia uses it against Trump. And it'll be interesting what kind of implications that has, what they can do, what kind of burden that places on Trump, what kind of burden that places on the state of Georgia. But anyway, this might be a very, very detailed, multi-layer, multi-level kind of indictment. They've got a lot going on from the famous phone calls that Trump made into the two Republicans, high level Republicans in the state of Georgia, trying to convince them to find them some additional votes, to tampering with voting machines, potentially done by Trump lawyers to fake, what do you call it, fake delegates to the convention. And who knows what else. So we will see. It's making the case that for two months, Trump tried really, really hard. Even if he'd overturned Georgia, he still would have lost. But tried very, very hard for two months to overturn the election in Georgia illegally. So, yeah, I mean, wow, we are heading towards potential constitutional crises. We're heading towards potential another contested election. We're heading towards a Republican primary that's just going to be a circus. We've also got Trump refusing to sign the Republican Party pledge that all the candidates who participate in the debates promise to support the ultimate whoever the Republican Party chooses as a candidate. So Trump is refusing to sign that because he's like, I'm not going to support like, you know, DeSantis if he wins. And maybe some other candidates not wanting to sign it because they don't want to support Trump if he wins. So who's going to be in the debates if nobody signs this pledge? I know some people have signed the pledge like, like unfortunately, what's the name from, from South Carolina. But so who knows how these debates are going to play out. The first debate is in August soon, like in two weeks, I think. And Trump has already said he's not going to participate. We'll see if he does in the end. But just the drama and the theater and the craziness and really the circus, the circus as it is evolved with the Republican primary is something. And then you've got a Democratic side. You've got a president that nobody likes. Democrats don't like him. Democrats don't really want him. But the only guy who's running against him is crazy RFK. Nobody wants RFK, or at least nobody sane ones RFK on the Democratic side. Even the Kennedys don't want RFK. And nobody else has the balls, the guts to challenge Biden. Everybody wants somebody to challenge Biden because the Democratic Party, if they had a serious challenger might actually vote for the challenger. Biden is old. He's, he can't focus. He can't think. He has no charisma in spite of actually having a decent economy. He seems to be unbelievably unpopular and doing awfully in the polls and every respect, just, just doing badly. And yeah. And yet nobody will challenge him. Nobody will go up against him. So just a bizarre political reality we're facing in the U.S. unprecedented, I think, in terms of the hostility, but also in terms of just incompetence. And in terms of the uncertainty about not just who will win, but I don't know what's actually going to happen. Is the lead Republican going to land up in jail? Is the Democrat even going to be breathing on election day? And will the Democrats have to appoint somebody in the last minute? It just, yeah. Exciting. A lot of, and you know, Trump is going to be running for president while fighting four different lawsuits. I don't know. At the very least, you could say, you know, that it's entertaining like no other election has been. We can say that, right. All right, let's see. Argentina talk about entertainment. God, who would have thought I remember being in Argentina last year, and this possibility kind of came up. And nobody thought it was possible or real or viable. But Javier Millier, I probably not pronouncing it right, just got the most votes in the first round of the Argentinian presidential election. He solidly beat everybody else. He solidly beat the scent of left. He solidly beat the center right slash conservatives. He is now the leading candidate for president of Argentina. Now, who is this however, Javier Millier? I mean, first of all, this guy is a PhD in economics. Who claims to be an Austrian with a monetized leaning. So some combination of Van Mises and Milton Friedman, those are his inclinations. So a free market guy. Now, every article I see compares him to Donald Trump and Bolsonaro. And there are certain elements that are comparable to both Bolsonaro and Donald Trump. But here's the difference. Bolsonaro and Donald Trump had no idea, no conception, and no view of economics. They weren't free market guys. They were just guys of our power. They hated the left. They were conservatives. We'll get to Milliel's conservative part. They were reactionary. They were all over the place, right? But they had no economic policies. They had strong views about economics. This guy is the most free market presidential candidate. Anywhere in the western world, you know, since Coolidge probably. I mean, he makes Ronald Reagan look like a statist. Now, you know, this is what he stands for. And to compare him to Trump and Bolsonaro and so on is just lazy. It's just lazy and stupid. Now, there are respects in which he's similar to them. He hates the establishment. He's very anti-established, very anti-elites. But he also lives in Argentina where, yeah, God, they've had 100 years of just rotten, horrible, disastrous establishment politicians and elites who've just brought the country to the brink of collapse and who have instituted nothing but policies that have been destructive and horrific for the country. At least American politicians have done it, I guess, more slowly, right? More slowly. But, yeah, I mean, authoritarianism and military governments and the whole shebang. So, yes, here's a guy who does oppose all that, but what's there not to oppose? Absolutely oppose it. Given the corruption of Argentinian politics, given the statism, given the authoritarian nature of Argentinian politics, good for him. Now, he's got some bad ideas. He's very anti-abortion even in the case of rape. He is religious, so he would try to overturn the abortion laws in Argentina. He is, as I said, he's very religious. And so in terms of all of that, bad stuff. But here's what the New York Times says is economic policies. They, of course, think this is horrific, but this is what they say he wants to do. You know, he has proposed dollar-wise in the economy that is basically shutting down the Argentinian central bank and making Argentina move to the dollar. I think that's brilliant. I think that is a fantastic idea and really brilliant. I'm told by some Argentinians a fan of INRAN's, but he's also not a, he's far from an objectivist and he's no real fan of INRAN. So let's not associate with him INRAN because, you know, he's not a Randian. He's a libertarian, but he's not a Randian in, I don't think in any kind of respect. But here's what he wants to do, abolish the central bank and dollar-wise the economy. Wow. That would revolutionize Argentina immediately and would reduce inflation immediately to the levels of inflation in America, which is 3%, 4%, whereas in Argentina it's 116%, so that, just like that, would completely change the Argentinian economy for the better, but you've got to put it on a stable footing, which is the dollar. I know some of you hate the dollar and think it's about to collapse, but I don't think so, as I'll tell you tomorrow night. And Argentina, you know, by stabling it, wow, he wants to, but that's not the end of it, right? He's proposing drastically lowering taxes, not a little bit. Not like Republicans in the United States, we're going to take the marginal tax rate and lower it a little bit and lower it. He's talking about slashing taxes across the board, really reducing them. Now, granted, Argentina has very high taxes and it has all kinds of weird taxes on export and on import and everything, tariffs up the kazoo, and he would eliminate all of that. He is proposing, here's something you don't hear ever from an American politician. He is actually proposing cutting spending. Again, dramatically cutting spending. He wants to charge people to use the public health care system. Now, I'd prefer if he moved to privatize the public health care system and my guess is that's what he really wants, but he's afraid he can't get there passed. Let's see, he wants to close or privatize all every single one of the state-owned enterprises in Argentina. Now, Argentina sits on a bunch of natural resources, a huge amount of natural resources. Imagine what would happen if you privatized that and if you privatized the mining and if you privatized the companies that extracted it and if you privatized the export and import. He wants to eliminate, this is a little familiar, he wants to eliminate the health, education, and environment ministries. By the way, Argentina sits on oil reserves. He would privatize that and encourage the exploitation of that. So, he is a, this is the closest, by far, by far. Somebody who calls himself a libertarian has ever come to willing the presidency. The elections are going to be, I think in November, or maybe the runoff is in November. The two, in October, the elections in October, and then if nobody wins that, there'll be a runoff in November. But he is now the favorite. And as such, we could have a small L, maybe it's a big L libertarian, as president of a country of 58 million people. Now, here's what he calls himself. He calls himself a short-term minicurist, i.e. somebody who believes in government, minicurists are people who believe in a government, in a limited government. He calls himself a short-term minicurist, but a long-term philosophic anarcho-capitalist. So, but he's a paleo. You know, he's against, you know, a lot of, he's like the Mises Caucus. So, he's probably, this is probably, I mean, the libertarian party in the United States must be beyond itself. An anarcho-capitalist everywhere must be going crazy and nuts. And of course, the danger here is that he gets elected and he completely screws it up and he sets back the cause of economic liberty. Who knows how many decades because of that. But we could also hope that he gets in and he does a few of these things. He's not going to turn Argentina into an anarchist state, but he's going to do a few of these things and make Argentina a relatively rich country and that will at least resurrect some support, maybe globally, for free markets. Anyway, as somebody removed from Argentina, although plans are for me to go there at some point and give a talk maybe early next year, you know this is interesting and it's going to be fun to watch from the outside and it's fun to see how this evolves and what happens. At the very least, I would expect him to push whatever the candidates towards debating and talking about free market ideas. But Tista says, come soon, I wanted to come in December but they've canceled my trip. So in late November, early December, it looks like my trips can cancel. I'll probably be coming in March, April, May, something like that next year. All right, wow. I mean, very, very strange. I mean, he's obviously Red-Eyed Rand. He's a weird guy. He also thinks that Ben Bernanke is the greatest fed shaman in all of history and is a huge admirer of Bernanke's. That's just weird and wrong, but okay. So he's kind of an admirer of monetarism and this is why I think he actually trusts the dollar because he trusts the people at the Fed somehow when he really shouldn't. Okay, two quick stories. Well, this one I've talked about but I just thought I'd commemorate the fact that the ruble has just a crash to the level of 100 rubles to the dollar. This is the lowest or the cheapest the ruble has been since the very short crash that it had in March of last year at the beginning of the thing and then at the beginning of the invasion, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After that it bounced back. This seems more sustainable. This seems more problematic. The central bank has already hiked its key rate to eight and a half percent, eight and a half percent. That's pretty high. That has to hood the Russian economy as does the ruble being. I mean, it's impossible to import anything at these kind of rates that's affordable. This is raising the cost of living, lowering standard of living, raising interest rates to eight and a half percent is devastating for Russian businesses. So this is just an indication of how bad the Russian economy is faring, how bad things are going. When the ruble was strong at the beginning of the war everybody says, oh, see, but I said at the time it's being manipulated and it was and there's only so much the Russian central bank can do in manipulating the currency. The commentators on Russian TV are freaking out. They want to fire the people to central bank. They want to replace them. They want to challenge them. Anyway, they're freaking out. They're completely freaking out in terms of all of this. So it is interesting. And I think you'll see more of this. I'll update you more on the war and what's going on in the front later this week or early next week. There are certainly interesting developments. All right. Finally, an interesting story out of Afghanistan. Now we know what happened in Afghanistan. We know about Biden's, well, we know about Trump cutting out the peace deal with the Taliban and then Biden basically extracting all American troops out of there in a shameful, disgusting, you know, America running from the scene with its tail between the legs. Set up by Trump's shameful, shameful, what do you call it, deal with the Taliban. I mean, one of the more disgusting things an American president has done. Well, the Taliban has taken over. It's as bad as it always has been. They promised to moderate. They promised to treat women nicely. They promised not to let terrorists into the country and all of this. They've reneged on every single one of those promises. They're horrible. But this is the problem. The Taliban had been fighting a war, a war that America let them win or let them at least not lose since 2002. That is for 20 years these men have been fighting and young men have been trained to fight. And one of the things, you know, so there is a culture among the Taliban in Afghanistan of warriors, fighters of young men who are used to battle. And now they're bored. They're bored because Jihad has been successful in Afghanistan and they're like, now what? And the whole region is struggling with this. So many of them are spilling over into Pakistan where they are engaged in attacking the Pakistani military, engaged in fighting other groups. They've joined the Pakistani Taliban and they're fighting with them. There's also fear in countries to the north of Afghanistan in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the other states that some of these fighters are going to be involved over there and get engaged in fighting over there to bring Jihad and to bring an Islamic state over there. You're also seeing in Afghanistan a significant resurgence of al-Qaeda and of Islamic state and both of these have, of course, global ambitions and have the potential of taking these restless, warrior, young men who want to go and fight for God and have seen how successful they have been against the Americans in Afghanistan itself and they would like to take the fight to the Europeans and they have global ambitions. What happened in Afghanistan as I predicted, many others predicted what happened is that this has emboldened the Jihadis. This has created a massive recruiting base of Afghan, young Afghan fighters to engage in terrorist attacks all over the world. It has created a training and logistics and a leadership base from which terrorist attacks can be planned. Remember that al-Qaeda was quiet for five, six, seven years before they started launching attacks in the United States in the late 1990s and it could be that it takes them five years to get organized to launch attacks in the United States and against the Europeans. In the meantime, they're going to create havoc in the region. I think even the Chinese and the Russians are worried about this because they both have radicalized Muslim populations and so really everybody in Asia is worried about this but it's not clear nobody wants to go to Afghanistan to deal with it. Nobody wants to actually win a war in Afghanistan. Nobody wants to do what would be necessary to win such a war so everybody is staying out of it watching it from afar and worrying about it. Again, the main victims right now the Afghans themselves and the non-radicalized population and of course the Pakistanis. So we will speak. We will see. We will see how this evolves, but it ain't good. It ain't good. All right, that is what I had for today. Thank you guys. Let's see. Thank you. We are about 150 short of our goal. We've got 80 people watching so it's a good number of people. It's two dollars a person. We could cover this cover the gap pretty quickly. We've got a few questions but not many. We've got some money. Dave Dean. Thank you. 50 dollars. Really, really appreciate that. And let's see Catherine, Fred Hopper and more from Catherine, Mike Dial. So there's a you can use the stickers which is what all of those people that I just mentioned used in order to support the show. Value for value if you're listening. I assume you're getting some value out of the show. Those of you live, those of you not live, as I said, you can support the show through Patreon or Subscribestar or PayPal Patreon seems to be the most popular right now. You know, there are hundreds of you out there who do not yet support the show who do not yet provide value for value that you get from the show. You can support it at $2, $5, $500 on Patreon and that would be great if we kind of build up a community on Patreon and PayPal. Thank you, Darlene. So we got a couple of questions and then we'll call it a day. And in the meantime we have about $130 left in order to get us to our goal. But just I said, I was hoping to hear you talk about Milliel for a long time although I think he has some questionable attitudes saying his sister is his moral guide apart from that he is a great reader and a great economist and intellectual. Yeah, I mean he's, you know, he's anti-abortion. He's very religious. He's got real problems. His anti-abortion certainly is a problematic policy. He is quite, from what I understand, he's quite religious. That can't be good and it'll impact social policy within Argentina. It's such a mess that they need a shock to the system and somebody like this can provide that shock to the system and get things maybe going economically. He is an anarchist but I don't think his anarchy will really come into play. He is more fundamentally and more importantly I think for what his presidency might be like and people don't know that he's going to win is that he's an economist. He's a PhD in economics and as a consequence I think that he's going to approach whatever economic reforms he's going to propose for Argentina. He's going to approach them seriously you know kind of with a proper methodology and really work to put Argentina on the right footing and I hope he is successful in that respect. I also worry anytime somebody is a avowed anarcho-capitalist that he's going to screw it up and destroy it. Now I hope that what happens is that there are a lot of good free market economists in the Spanish speaking world in Latin America let's hope that one of the things that he can achieve is to bring a lot of those economists to come and work for him in Argentina and to really really put together a reform plan and this is what Bolsonaro tried to do in in Brazil and wasn't very successful but to really bring the kind of intellectual forces he needs to Argentina to really completely revolutionize the whole thing. Now one other thing I will add winning the presidency is not enough because he doesn't have kind of the support in parliament and I don't know that he's going to have it and he's not going to get it so how do you completely upend the existing order how do you completely reform an economy without this support of a parliament and without becoming an authoritarian that is going to be a major challenge but he's going to have to find a way to do it and be radical about it because if he doesn't do big things it won't change the dynamic within Argentina in a big way and if the circumstance in Argentina don't change in a big way then he's going to be discredited and the whole idea of free markets will be discredited and that of course is the real danger. Thank you Matisse, I know that's his first super chat and just to give you a sense of the Argentina Pesso YouTube says a 675 Argentina currency is worth $2.36 it used to be worth a lot more than that a lot more than that and that is the that's probably the official rate the unofficial rate is probably around a dollar alright from Milkat, from Israel as long as he doesn't harbor Russian war criminals when all this is said and done who knows if he harbors Russian war criminals or not I really don't know I don't know what his attitude is to Russia I really think his focus is going to be he's got so much to do within Argentina and look he's going to be hated by now he hasn't won yet so let's be clear but he's going to be hated by every other regime in Latin America all the other regimes in Latin America all of them are now run by real leftists so he's going to have he's going to have problems up the the United States is going to be a problem the Biden administration is not going to be friendly to him he's going to want to dollarize the economy I wonder how friendly the Fed is going to be they should encourage it but will they you know is really hard to tell and is going to be really interesting and it will be really interesting how that is done and how that happens but and what the Fed's response to suddenly you get 58 million people that's 1 7th or 1 6th of the American population added to the daily use of the dollar we've already got El Salvador and you've got Ecuador and you've got Panama all in the dollar but 58 million people this is major revolutionary but I think phenomenal and I think good for the U.S. too because again it solidifies the dollar as a currency but it will put some pressure on the Federal Reserve in terms of how this affects monetary policy and how how you use the dollar the Federal Reserve is going to have to adjust to it not going to be simple we might talk about it tomorrow night when we talk about the dollar some more Shahzabat says is there a chance that Putin or his successor might sell some Russia's nuclear weapons if their economy sinks low enough I don't think so I don't know who they would sell them to I mean maybe the North Koreans but the North Koreans have no money who has money to buy nuclear weapons I think the Russians are literally afraid to sell it to anybody because those weapons could be targeted at Russia I don't think the Russians trust anybody so no I don't think so not to say it couldn't happen but I just don't think so you know the Russians are helping Iran but they really don't want Iran to get a nuclear bomb because you know Russia has problems with Muslims and if Iran suddenly sides with the Muslims then Russia would have a problem if they have nukes so while they help Iran and they might assist Iran to what extent do they really want Iran to get nukes I don't think so I think it's more they want Iranian money and they're pragmatists and they don't think long term but if you really push them I think they'd say no we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and they support Iran because because it pisses off the Americans a big part of what motivates policy in places like Russia is what is going to piss off the Americans alright we have 84 people watching we need about 84 bucks stickers just two five dollars yes did a two dollar sticker thank you yes Darlene did a two dollar sticker I mean if everybody right now did a two dollar sticker just show support less than a coffee at Starbucks we would be over the top and hopefully you think my show is more valuable to you than a one coffee at Starbucks but alright and Milka says I'm having I hate this word I can't pronounce it short and forward over the prospect of Afghanistan being Russia's and China's problem well remember Afghanistan was Russia's problem forever for a long time like during the 1980s it's never been China's problem but it could become China's problem I mean there's a reason why the Chinese are so insistent on oppressing the Uighurs the reason they were oppressing them is the Chinese are really really really afraid of Muslim terrorism and they had Muslim terrorism about ten years ago and it was very unpleasant and a lot of people were killed and the Chinese just basically clamped down I mean they want to continue clamping down but the Chinese are already worried about Islamic terrorism and with the spillover from Afghanistan this could be a greater reason for them to worry but I think we in the west should worry ultimately you know the Taliban al-Qaeda ISIS got their best PR their best recruitment when they were fighting America and they were fighting the west so for them nothing quite beats nothing quite beats going out there fighting western allies thank you Enric thank you Savanos only $70 to go thank you Aymerica so if you want to support the show now is the time to do it quickly otherwise we're going to call it a day a spa from Norway, wow how do you see the Scandinavian countries evolving regarding personal liberty right now they are fairly highly ranked on the heritage economic freedom rank I mean I don't know I'm not an expert on Scandinavia and I don't know exactly how things are going to evolve I do think whatever happens in Scandinavia the evolution will be slow there's a strong incentive maybe with the exception of Sweden but I don't think there's a strong incentive in Norway in Denmark and I know Finland is not part of Norway but it kind of is in my mind anyway there's no incentive to really rock the boat too much life for most Scandinavians is pretty comfortable most people seem pretty satisfied with the with the conditions of today and how things are handled how things were handled nobody is complaining much about anything really Scandinavians are not big complainers they didn't complain about how COVID was handled they didn't complain about the economy they don't complain about the different aspects so whatever happens it's going to go slowly I don't see Scandinavia moving away from its current model which is fairly free market and quite strongly free personal freedoms I think that is an economic freedom index Scandinavian countries rank about the same as the United States sometimes higher and I don't see them moving away from that they become comfortable with that there's no urgency I mean there's some urgency in Sweden because of their inability so far to integrate the Muslim population their lack of willingness to impose the rule of law on the Muslim population and therefore the increase in gang violence and the increase in Sweden so I think that there's a real challenge in Sweden on how to deal with the Muslim migrants that they brought in they're going to have to think about it and they're going to have to solve it and if they don't solve it then the populist right is going to solve it for them and that I think will be unpleasant for most Swedes so I mean it's pretty simple in my view what needs to be done is to impose the rule of law first you need to be super tough and you need to be very clear with the immigrant population that the laws apply to them that they're expected to live up to the standards of the law in Sweden not in Iraq and that they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law they will sit in jail and maybe the laws need to be made harsher for rape and gang violence and violent crime they need to clean it up they need to arrest the gang members they need to get the power to be able to do that and that's step number one has to be the rule of law you cannot have a civilization without the rule of law then then you've got to get them off of welfare and you've got to get them working and that's the challenge without work there is no integrating into Swedish society you've got to get them into the job these neighborhoods you've got to get them to where the jobs are you've got to find ways to force them to do that and one way to do that is to stop the welfare payments so all of that is all of those are the kind of things that have to be done in a place like Sweden Norway doesn't have that problem Norway has a problem of declining productivity and more and more reliance on a welfare state mentality so they can't afford to increase the welfare state they want to move against that and this is why in Norway you get more right wing governments Denmark and Finland are cruising on comfortable lives on a comfortable situation where things are comfortable and decent why rock the boat so that's how I think it's going to happen I don't think the problems are going to come from Scandinavia in terms of greater statism much more likely to come from central Europe, France and Germany which have much more difficult economies and less of a comfortable status quo only $40 away $220 questions and we're done Paul is asking one of those $20 what do you think of Paul Zehan the global strategist so I've done a couple of shows on Paul so you might want to just search my channel put in your own book Paul, Peter, Zehan and you'll get it I basically think he's interesting he has a lot of interesting things to say I think he is very observant about certain phenomena in the world I think he has a very good understanding of the benefits of trade and the benefits of globalization his life has become over the last 50 years so he is not one of these last 50 years I mean a disaster for the working class he gets it how beneficial globalization has been and he worries about the disappearance of globalization I think he's a little bit too pessimistic about its disappearance but we will see he might be right on the button not because I think it's inevitable he kind of thinks it's inevitable but because I think that our obsession with turning China into an enemy and China's obsession with maybe becoming an enemy of the United States is going to make the world a less wealthy place unless amenable to trade unless amenable to economic growth it's a real problem so we don't have a strategy with regard to China and that's a real problem and of course the war in Russia is not helping I also think he's too much of a demographic determinist too much of a natural resources determinist he doesn't place enough emphasis in both explaining history and explaining the future on ideas he oversimplifies stuff and he gets stuff wrong he gets stuff wrong his whole interpretation of Russia and the war in Ukraine is wrong in my view he doesn't understand Putin he doesn't understand the dynamics of what's going on there he doesn't again he doesn't understand the role and importance of ideas in shaping history and in shaping the present but fascinating guy I read his one book and a lot of interesting things he's been using demographics while I think overly deterministic also really eye opening he might be too much of a pessimist in a sense of his models for demographic collapse seem to be much more aggressive and so much faster it's happening much faster than most other models but he might be right I mean things are happening very quickly in both China and Japan and soon in South Korea that he might be right about that and overall I think his view that the world is turning anti-globalism anti-globalism anti- free trade is absolutely right and super scary we should be very very scared there's no global issue that is more if you were scary than us turning our back on free trade it'll be a disaster for the United States it'll be a disaster for your standard of living quality of life that you have John says I believe males of a nature more aggressive than females am I a biological determinist do you think first cousin marriages reduce intelligence yeah I mean of course males are more aggressive than females in general generally speaking I know some females who are more aggressive than males so overall overall because of primarily because of testosterone men are and you can see it in boys more active more physical and therefore more aggressive than women now is that biological determinism no it just says that we that male have a certain inclination that you know that's different than inclinations of females females and men are different are going to be different in many many many regards partially because of the fact that men are more muscular and stronger that is going to dictate a certain attitude towards the world and towards activity and towards aggression women because they're born with less muscular chair for the most part you know are going to have a different attitude towards all those kind of activities but it has to do with the fact that women have a uterus and they have the potential of having babies and they have and they have a period and men do not and women have a lot more estrogen than men and men have a lot more estrogen a lot more testosterone than women and those things matter but none of those things are going to determine what you are as an individual it doesn't determine how aggressive you are going to be I know a lot of men who are not aggressive at all I know women who are a lot more aggressive than a lot of men that I know these are just generalized inclinations that people have genes do matter up to a point but they don't determine you in the sense of who you are what you're going to be and I for example have never said that intelligence is not to some extent determined by your genes of course it is all I'm saying is IQ is not a very good measure of intelligence and that intelligence is not only determined by your genes your genes are one factor that much of your intelligence is cultural people are much smarter today than they were 500 years ago because they're exposed to more because there's an educational system because they're expected to know more because their minds are utilized when they're young in much more better ways because more kids go to Montessori today they went to Montessori because they didn't exist 500 years ago because a lot of things so intelligence is not unidimensional not unidimensional in terms of being determined by genes and it's not unidimensional in terms of being measured by one test I mean IQ tells you something it just doesn't it's not, I don't think it's not a proxy and it's not a measure for capital I intelligence it's one measure, lots of measures and the fact that those institutions including the military use different tests that are correlated with IQs but not exactly IQ tests suggests that there are all kinds of aptitude tests that different organizations modify and change and create in order to test different things but at the core of it is the fact that you recognize that biology makes a difference, some people are born tall and some people are born short does that make a difference in life yeah, some people can pay for basketball, some people can't if you're tall it has certain psychological implications if you're short it might have certain psychological implications all of that is true but does that determine you no, you take that as an input into your character into your moral character, into the kind of person you become into the kind of person you want to be and then your choices your choices actually shape who you become and the culture which you live is going to help with that and so on so there are there is certainly nature there is nurture culture, society and there are choices and those three together determine who you are going to be and I think of the three the most important is not nature and not nurture but choices you make and whether you choose to use your mind or not and how you use your mind and how consistently you use your mind so I've never claimed otherwise do you think first guys in marriage is reduced intelligence yeah, of course I think that is pretty much being shown and yeah, I mean you can take a gene and you can flip it and cause people to be really really really really stupid or have Down syndrome or do all kinds of genetic deviations that cause them to be really really really low on the intelligent tests so in that sense that is kind of deterministic because once you turn that flip you make them so dumb that nothing matters, yeah and I said one of the one area where IQ tests are very good is measuring the very bottom of the scale and there is not much you can do in the very bottom, I mean there is things you can do culturally in the sense that the jobs they can do and I think AI and all of this will enhance their abilities but there's not much you can do to change their intelligence below a certain threshold but above that threshold I mean there's so much there's so many variations there's so many choices so yes, you can genetically make somebody very very stupid and first cousin marriages certainly will do that I think that nothing I just said will contradict anything I've said in the past about IQ and so on if you actually listen to what I say, friend Harpa would you consider having Robert Zubin to talk about nuclear power he was excellent in a power hour and I learned a lot from that interview he came out with a book recently on the topic yeah, I mean thinking of having him on I met him of all places in Korea I think two years ago well last year last year I went to Korea last year so last year it seems like a really nice guy huge Iron Man fan so yes, he's on one of my lists to have on as a guest alright we made our target well $1 short we can manage the $1 short although somebody could do a sticker and get us over that alright everybody no show tonight but there's Captain China just got us over thank you Captain China and it was the first super super sticker that Captain China has ever done so thank you Captain China what was I going to say yes, no show tonight show tomorrow morning about the same time as this one o'clock I think there'll be a show and then so that's tomorrow then tomorrow night there'll be a show I'll continue it'll be a show primarily on the future of the dollar we'll see maybe I'll squeeze in another topic if somebody has any good ideas maybe we can squeeze in another topic in addition and but maybe there's enough to talk about the dollar and dollarization and maybe there's enough to talk about that what else are we going to do what else are we going to do yeah and then Wednesday I'm traveling so no shows Wednesday Thursday I'll try to do a show on the road it might be earlier in the morning than what you're used to so I might try to do that from our hotel room and then Friday we'll be back on schedule in the morning and early afternoon and then I'll probably do an evening show on Friday to compensate for the fact that I didn't do an evening show on Thursday and then there'll be a show on Saturday at 3pm east coast time so that way we'll cover the week thank you thanks for getting us to our target we really appreciate that and I will see you all tomorrow