 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday, January 9th, well into 2024. Hope everybody's having a great year so far. All right, it's our regular news roundup and I guess we'll just plunge right in. Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today about ESG. We've been talking about this quite a bit over the last few months. That is that things like ESG have become unsexy, I guess unpopular. And as a consequence, investment funds that tout being ESG funds are closing because there's just no interest by investors there to invest in ESG companies. Companies themselves are starting to walk away from the ESG programs, the ESG titles. So there's a statistic, for example, on earnings calls, right? How many times is ESG mentioned on earning calls of the S&P 500 companies, 150 of them, over 150 of them, mentioned ESG in 2021, well during 2021, right, first, second, and fourth quarters of 2021. But since then, 2021 is like the peak ESG. It's again, right after BLM, crazy left was considered the ideology that everybody needed to embrace, that everybody needed to be part of. And the reality is that since 2021, there's been a steady systematic decline into 2023 in the number of mentions of ESG. Now in some cases, some cases, this is purely cosmetic. That is, nothing's really changed. Whatever programs were instituted for, quote, ESG are still in place. But in some cases, it's real. In some cases, the original ESG was cosmetic. That is, they talked about ESG, but they were doing nothing in the background. Now, it's cool not to do anything. So CEOs, I think companies feel much more emboldened not to have to play the game. So I think this is a really good move. We'll have to really watch it closely to make sure that the consequence of this are not just finding another name for all of it. The consequence is not keeping the same programs, just not calling it ESG. But it really does represent a change in the way CEOs and in the way management thinks about issues. And I think for many of them, it does. Look, and all of this, it didn't just happen by itself. This is a consequence of a real backlash, a real effort by a variety of different groups, mainly by, I'd say, business leaders who found this as offensive, rejected the whole ESG label, rejected the idea that they should do socially responsible stakeholder theory type stuff. A focus by certain business leaders, a re-emphasis by certain business leaders on shareholder wealth maximization, putting pressure on certain companies, but also putting pressure on politicians in Texas and Florida, in red states, where these politicians then went to people like BlackRock and said, BlackRock, the big investment firm, we're pulling our funds. If you're going to invest based on ESG, we're pulling our funds from you. So it started to hit investment firms' bottom line. It also is the case that the SEC started to tell companies and investment funds, if you're advertising yourself as ESG, we want proof that it's really ESG. And we're going to come up with standards, real ESG standards. So kind of just pretending to be ESG, just doing virtue signaling became really dangerous for a lot of companies, particularly for a lot of investors. But I'd say a big part of this was really businessmen, business leaders, intellectuals who fought against us and who made a big deal out of this and who told and made it clear to businesses that if they continued to invest based on ESG, if they continued to function based on these principles, then they would withdraw their capital. And again, this happened with BlackRock. And even the CEO of BlackRock who used to be a big time advocate for ESG and traveled around the world talking about ESG and how important it was. It has now backed off of it completely and never mentions it. Now ESG stands for environment, society and governance. Environment is pretty clear. It means kind of programs around zero carbon and not being environmentalist friendly. The S and the G were always more ambiguous, but the S, society and governance were primarily focused on DEI, on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. So the decline of ESG is probably a decline in DEI as well in many of these businesses. So you're going to see, you're going to see, I think, some of the DEI infrastructure in many of these companies shrink. They won't fire them all outright, but they will shrink them. They'll de-emphasize them. They'll just ignore them. And maybe we're seeing a shift here to, I think, a more sustainable model of actually running businesses for profit and actually hiring people based on merit and actually engaging in energy transaction based on the energy needs of the company and price. But we're going to have to watch out for new terminology, new marketing pitch and kind of an institutionalization of DEI without calling it DEI. So vigilance is going to be key here, but it is good to see the terminology of the left, of the extreme left in particular, be undermined, undercut and go out of favor. And that is definitely what's happened. I mean, you're going to see a lot less people talking about woke, DEI, ESG, and kind of the terminology that was so everywhere just two years ago. And then we need a challenge. We need to make sure, or those of us monitoring this to make sure that it's not just in language, but it's also a change in behavior. And that is going to be, I think that is going to be crucial. And I'll be watching that and keeping you updated about that as we move forward. All right. That is ESG, one of the more corrupting influence. I remember ESG too, just this point, was a version of something that's been in corporate America for a long time, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder capitalism. John Mackey called it conscious capitalism, although because he's a more of a capitalist, he probably tongued it down a little bit. But all of the stakeholder and corporate social responsibility, all of that. ESG really accelerated it, really made it more substantial, really made it, you know, gave it a framework that a lot of businesses rallied around. And what really got them rallied around it is when investment funds, and I know this even from my hedge fund, that investment funds that invest in you started saying, what are your ESG practices? What do you do with regard to ESG? That never really happened with regard to stakeholder and with regard to corporate social responsibility. ESG gave everybody kind of a framework of how to judge and how to evaluate. And it had a lot of power. And the diminishing of that, and hopefully ultimately the disappearance of that, I think has the potential of having a profound effect on corporate America. All right. Let's see. All right. As we speak, the DC Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, is actually just ended a few minutes ago. Ended, it's all arguments around the question of does the prosecution of Donald Trump for election interference for everything around January 6th, is that prosecution, is he immune to that prosecution? Does he gain immunity because he was president? That is, does presidential immunity cover his actions to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election? This would affect both the federal court case against him. It would probably impact the Georgia case as well. So it is going to be interesting. I've read a number of legal experts. They've seen a contradict, which way they thought the DC Court was leaning, whether it was leaning for Trump's side or whether it was leaning towards the government side, the Justice Department side of whether to grant Trump immunity for this, or whether to view this as outside of immunity because he wasn't doing it quite his function as president of the United States. He was doing it quite his function as candidate for the presidency. The lower court ruled against Trump, ruled against his immunity appeal, immunity argument. So if the Court of Appeals basically upholds the lower court's decision, that would be bad for Trump. But if it reverses it, it would be good for Trump. In either case, this has two more levels of appeal potentially. The appeal could be made to the DC Circuit Court to be heard in front of all of the judges. Appellate courts usually only a subsection of the entire court sits in and votes on the appeal. You can, though, appeal to have it heard in front of the entire court. And then, of course, beyond that, you can have it appealed in front of the Supreme Court. It seems very, very likely that this will be appealed to the Supreme Court one way or another. And a big question around this is not just how the court will decide, but a big question about this is the timing. Trump has a court date of, I think, early March. In order to make that court date, all these appeals are going to have to be done by then, which seems pretty unlikely. That is, it's likely that the appellate court here, the DC Circuit Court, will come back with a quick result. But then the Supreme Court at least indicated earlier that it's not in any big hurry to decide this case. So once it makes the Supreme Court, Supreme Court, it's not clear that it would be decided quickly. So who knows? And of course, the date of when the court hearing is going to happen, when the trial happened, will have an impact on, of course, the election, on the primaries and the election. If it's a March date, it'll hit its peak primary season. If it's delayed beyond that, then it might not even see a conclusion before the actual election in November. So a lot of implications for this appeal and how it progresses from here, of course, a lot of potential implications for the trial itself. But, you know, Trump is facing four different criminal prosecutions here, and each one of them has their own dynamics. Each one of them have their own issues. And we will see the first trial scheduled is the federal trial for efforts to overturn the 2020 election. After that is the Stormy Daniel payments. There was a schedule tried for March 25. Then there is a trial for the Moerilago classified documents, which is scheduled for May 20. And then there's the Georgia election interference, which is only scheduled for August 5. So an extensive court appearances and that doesn't take too into account all the potential appeals that could happen in between. All right. One of the things happening economically, which is I think interesting and challenging, is the extent to which the office market, high rise building offices, or not necessarily high rise, but just office currently have hit a vacancy rate that is the highest since we have recorded numbers in 1979, higher than the last peak, which was in the early 1990s during the recession at the time. We now have the highest vacancy rates really in American recorded history at close to 20%, 19.6% of office space in major U.S. cities was not least as of the fourth quarter of 2023. Again, this is a record, the previous records were in 86 and 91, and it's a problem for anybody who invests in commercial real estate, particularly in office space, office rents, down valuations of office buildings down dramatically because it's very difficult to lease them. A big part of this, of course, is the remote work, is the fact that people are working from home, and that has created a lot of companies now are remote. A lot of companies are shrunk. They offer space requirements. A lot of companies have gone to only three days work and they rotate their office space. So they again have shrunk their office space requirement. It doesn't look like there's going to be a big turnaround here, even if the economy does much better next year and the economy's already not in a recession. It's doing okay. The last peaks in 86 and 91 were both during, certainly 91 was during the recession. 86 was after a period of massive overbuilding in the commercial real estate in the office space sector. It's also interesting the parts of the country where the office vacancies are occurring. Now, I know you immediately would expect the biggest vacancies to be in places like San Francisco, and indeed there are a lot of vacancies in San Francisco. But San Francisco is not the place that is being hit the hardest. Surprisingly, the highest office vacancy rates right now in the United States, somewhat similar to the 1990s, are in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. And to a large extent, I would say Houston, Dallas, and Austin is because there was a boom in building office space. There was this perception that the move to Texas was infinite, that people were just going to continue moving and that companies would continue to move and those companies would then need office space. And there was a massive amount of building in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. And as a consequence, they now, with companies with, I think, the move to Texas may be slowing down a little bit, but also with the fact that people are staying home, the reality is that they have the highest office vacancy rates in the country, higher than in San Francisco. The best, you know, the best locations, interestingly enough, are also in the south, but in Florida, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and New Orleans have the lowest vacancy rates. And hard to tell why, but for some reason, those areas were not overbuilt during the late, you know, the pre-COVID era. And therefore, even though companies continue to move there, they weren't overbuilt. Maybe they were, I think the move to Florida is a COVID and post-COVID move, whereas the move to Texas was a pre-COVID move. The move to Texas was ongoing in the 20 teens, and the move to Florida was new. And therefore, the move to Florida filled up existing office space, whereas in Austin, Houston, and Dallas, office space was being built like crazy. And then it didn't happen because of the remote work phenomena. Anyway, I think all that is interesting. Of course, San Francisco, in 1991, at the last time, we had this elevated vacancies. San Francisco actually had the lowest vacancies, so they were doing the best. Now, of course, they're one of the worst with one of the highest vacancy rates in the country. So Florida is doing well. Southern Florida, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, where vacancies are below 15%. And Texas, doing poorly with very high vacancy rates. All of this, I think it's going to change slowly. I think the work from home is not going to change that much. The economy is not growing by enough to see the creation of enough new companies that can fill in that space. So in some places, like in San Francisco, I don't know what they're doing in Texas. But in San Francisco, there's an effort to convert office space into condo space, because as we know, there is a massive shortage in residential building. And that is interesting because that is not an easy process, a very difficult process, expensive process. But there is that conversion. Of course, office space generates a particular type of economic activity in the streets where it exists, lunchtime restaurants, things like that. Residential is a different dynamic, a different type of space, a different type of businesses, different types of restaurants. So this is going to really reshape those sections in San Francisco and those sections in other cities. I think New York is also undergoing this where there was conversion to residential. But that's a good move. I mean, there was a massive shortage in residential. This is a good use of the space, but it is going to take time and it is expensive. But yeah, lots of office space, probably not a bad time right now. If you want to rent office space, now is probably a pretty good time to do so. Now you're probably going to find lower rates than in the past. Now granted, most of the buildings that are empty are not the new buildings, but rather those are fairly full. It's the buildings built in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. The buildings are already showing a little bit of age. A lot of the buildings that produce the glut of office space in the 1980s are empty again now. But if you're willing to be in a building built in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, there are probably some real good deals out there right now for those buildings. All right, this is just a weird story, but it's a story that's kind of hitting social media and elsewhere. And it's also an excuse for all the anti-Semites to gather around and make a big deal out of this. But it is kind of a weird story. So yes, over the weekend, I guess, over the last few days, the police and the authorities in New York have discovered that under the world headquarters of Chabad, Chabad is an ultra-orthodox sect of Jews in New York City, the world headquarters in New York City, they have been building tunnels. Tunnels, one of those tunnels, the tunnels reach a mikveh that is a bath for women. It's long been abandoned, but it reaches there. I haven't seen any kind of authority of discussion about why they were building these tunnels, what these tunnels were serving for, what the purpose was. I've seen anywhere from this is an attempt to expand the synagogue that was in this world headquarters. That doesn't really make any sense. There's also a big ownership dispute about who owns the building itself that's going through the courts in New York. So that's confusing. At some point, the argument was they built this tunnel so that during COVID, they could sneak into the synagogue because of the, if you remember, the restrictions on religious gatherings during COVID. And this is the way for this Jewish community to get around those restrictions. But that seems to be false because the tunnels seem to be relatively new and to have been built over the last six months to a year. Of course, the anti-Semites are all out saying, this is a human trafficking ring. This is where they sacrifice babies. That's why there's blood down there. This is where Jews do all the horrible things that they do. And so this is far up for the anti-Semites. You'll see it all over. I have no explanation for this tunnel. It is bizarre. But then again, Chabad and generally the ultra-orthodox are not people I particularly respected Maya or like. I have little sympathy for them. But some of the accusations against them are just bizarre and ridiculous and stupid. But it is kind of nutty. In addition, so yesterday, I guess, part of the tunnel digging actually weakened the foundation of the building. So yesterday, some trucks came by with concrete to fill in the tunnels. And a bunch of these Chabadniks, about a dozen of them or so, 20 of them, started going nuts and trying to prevent the tunnels from being filled in and started fighting with the police and ultimately 12 of them were arrested or 10 of them were arrested and are spending the night in jail. Again, unclear what they're fighting over, what the purpose of these tunnels are. The leadership of Chabad have condemned the tunnels, have condemned, and they claim they don't know why they were built and they condemned these young radicals for building them and they're trying to defend themselves and their extremists. Anybody who dresses up in the same clothes that these people were wearing in the, what is it, 18th century, something wrong with these people. But tunnels, tunnels under New York, tunnels into a synagogue, they're just bizarre. Bizarre and plays into all the kind of anti-Semitic nonsense that exists out there in the world. I guess the Jews didn't need this story right now, but it is a weird one. But this is, of course, a weird community. It's a weird community. Yeah, the Amish are like this, you know, but it's just, but of course the Amish don't use smartphones, no flying airplanes, and the Amish are consistent. The ultra orthodox, you know, wear the same clothes and have the same headrest, but then they will use modern technology to its fullest. They are not, they have no qualms about doing that. It's a strange cult, if you will. Amish, I don't know, whatever. Let's see. That is Habad. I mean, just to give you a sense of kind of the, what has happened in Japan over the last 40 years, really, or 30 something years. The Nikkei 225, 225 stock average, which is the dominant, you know, it's like the S&P 500 in the US, yesterday reached a level that it had not been at since March of 1919. In other words, when the stock market collapsed in Japan after the bubble of the 1980s, it collapsed in Japan so badly, and it has moved so little since, that it has taken 33 years for it to recover, 33 years. I mean, there's a certain attitude that says stocks only go up over the long run, stocks only go up, and there's a sense in which, if you mean a long run, being 33 years, that's true. But I think the Japanese economy and the Japanese bubble and the Japanese stock market should be just a warning for everybody, that if you buy at the top of a bubble, you might lose and stay at a loss for 33 years. It took the NASDAQ, I think 12 or 13 years to regain the heights that it achieved before March of 2000 in the dot-com bubble. So I know a lot of you are momentum traders, you just buy when stock prices go up, you buy. Beware, because stock prices can go up very, very high, and they can tumble and really never recover. 33 years is pretty close to never. Now, of course, this is partially the result of the Japanese economy never recovering, the stagnation in the Japanese economy over the last 33 years, the relative poverty that exists in Japan as compared to the United States and even to Europe, and all of the consequence of bad economic policy from the government in Japan. I mean, people tell Japan is this amazing place, but from an economic perspective, Japan is lagged. It's lagged America by a long shot. It's lagged Europe, and most of that is a consequence of just horrible central bank and federal government policies that have led the Japanese economy to stagnate way too much regulation, way too much from labor regulation, all the way to bank regulation, to every aspect of Japanese economy. And a strange kind of monetary policy that kept the entire economy, just the combination of the whole thing, kept the economy just barely growing, just barely growing. And for much of the period, price is actually going down, not because of increased productivity, but because of lack of credit and lack of money circulation. There's a lesson there. Don't assume everything only goes up. All right, finally, a story about journalists. There are lots of stories about journalists, and we talked about the plagiarism yesterday. That is an ongoing story, the battle between Ackman and Business Insider and Ackman and now MIT. Ackman's going after MIT, but he's also going over the parent company of Business Insider, which is a big media company. It's going to be interesting to see how that plays out, and I'll keep you informed about this. This is a different one. This is about journalists in Gaza. This is about journalists who work for the AP and Reuters. The AP and Reuters, two of the entities, we get pretty much all on used farm because they're the ones who have journalists all over the world who are actually on the ground. Well, in some cases, these journalists are literally on the ground. I mean, they're on the ground with the terrorists as they reap and murder and torture. And it turns out that a number of journalists, one of them photojournalist Ashraf Amra, they work with AP and Reuters, were right there on October 7th, filming what the Hamas was doing, partially because they were embedded with Hamas. But there's also pictures now being shown of them sitting around, in this case, Ashraf Amra, with a couple of his friends sitting around watching some of the videos of Israeli soldiers, in this case, being slaughtered, just being brutally murdered, and laughing and having a good cheer about it and enjoying the whole thing. Another one, Abu Mustafa. Freelancer's been working for Reuters. And he was like, hey, I was just in Israel. This is on October 7th. All of you, you should come. You should, you know, you're saying this on his social media, encouraging Gazans, Palestinians, to cross over the fence and go join in the slaughter and in the rape and in the pillaging that was going on. This is a once in a lifetime thing he was telling them. These are journalists who our mainstream media uses. Is it any surprise that we get the kind of stories that we get? Is it any surprise that this is the kind of screening that our news agencies do where they actually get, where we actually get kind of objective information, not objective information. These people are part of Hamas. They are part of the terrorist organization. They are part of the Palestinian regime that is responsible for the slaughter. And they are reporting on it at the same time. Well, objectivity out the window. But I think that's true in so much of our journalism today. All right, a reminder that the Iran Book Show is sponsored by the Ein Rein Institute. Right now, the institute has open registration for the Objectives Conferences. That's the big Objectives Conference that we do every year. This one is between June 13th and 18th in Anaheim, California, not far from Disneyland. It is a great time to be in California. June, the weather is perfect and the conference is going to be amazing. You get to hang out with 500 other people who share many of your values. You will also get an opportunity to engage with some of the speakers, like Tera Smith, Havi Binswanger, myself, Ankar Ghatte, and many others. And all the speakers are incredibly friendly. You can chat with them, ask them questions, you can see them live. The whole thing is just a wonderful way to spend a week. You can even play poker in an AI poker tournament that happens on one of the evenings. There's even a talent show last year. The talent show actually lived up to the concept of talent. There was a lot of talent on display. Anyway, it's a lot of fun. You'll learn a huge amount and you'll just enjoy it and you'll meet a lot of fascinating, interesting people. Anyway, that is one of our sponsors for the show. So please go to einran.org slash start here, einran.org slash start here and register for OCOM POKA is a lot of fun. We have a poker tournament. It's run as a tournament and it's a lot of fun and I enjoy it and I tend to harass everybody else playing poker. So the games as some of you on here will testify have been very enjoyable. All right, there will be a show tonight, probably at 6 p.m. East Coast time. I still have to finalize that topic to be determined. But it will be tonight, both topic to be determined and final time probably 6 p.m. East Coast time. All right, let's go to the Super Chat. Ooh, thin on the Super Chat today. So a reminder that this show is funded from support by listeners like you, support that we receive on a monthly basis through Patreon or PayPal. I've noticed a bunch of you adding on monthly contributions on Patreon and on PayPal through yourunbrookshow.com slash membership. So thank you. Thank you to all the new monthly supporters. Thank you to those of you who have increased your support on a monthly basis. It is greatly appreciated and it makes this show tick. It makes this show happen. And of course the other way you can contribute if you're listening live and not only contribute but also have a say in the content is by asking Super Chat questions or contributing through a sticker here on YouTube. It's fun and it's more instant gratification. Talking about stickers, let me thank Chris, Jonathan Honing, three different contributions. Silvanos, thank you. And Stephen Harper, thank you. Thank you to all of you for that. All right, John Bale says, if you have never seen a total solar eclipse, you should try to be in Austin on April 8th. It's an amazing experience. All right. We're going to have a total solar eclipse. I guess Austin is a good place to site it. I guess Puerto Rico is not. That's why you're suggesting coming to Austin. But yeah, heads up to all of you people out there in the path. Don't miss out on experiencing the solar eclipse. Michael, was there anything you were absolutely sure about that turned out to be completely wrong? Oh, I don't know. I'm sure there was. I'm sure there have been many. I was absolutely sure there was going to be a recession, and there hasn't been. So that's one. I'm sure in a lot of things, when it comes to economic predictions, I've probably been wrong like that. I'm not sure what else. I mean, I made some bad investments. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what else. You know, there are a lot of things that I didn't think Donald Trump would be the nominee of the Republican Party. I mean, it became obviously would be at some point. I wasn't that surprised that he won, but I was surprised that he became the nominee. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I've been wrong about a lot of different things. I mean, sure about something. Yeah, I'm sure that that's shorting Amazon. I never shorted Amazon. I bought put options in Amazon and I was right. I was right. When I put the put options, I was right. I wish I did it too early, but I was right in terms of the directionality of it. I bought those put options in January of 1999. And if I'd bought them in January 2000, I would have made a lot of money. So the directionality was right. The timing was off. That often happens to be an investment that I get it right in directional, but the timing is off. Amazon was overpriced in the late 90s during the dot-com bubble. Pretty much every tech company was. And ultimately I would have made money on that bet. It's long-term. I never questioned long-term what would happen to Amazon. It was that short-term or medium-term, the price was too high, given what it was. But again, that was true of all tech stocks. Let's see. Silvanos, do employees deserve the freedom to manage their own schedules? How much would we need managers in a proper capitalist society? This is for $100. Thank you, Silvanos. That's great. And you've brought us much, much closer to our target as a consequence. No, I don't know that they deserve freedom to manage their own schedule. I don't think that is necessarily the case. I think it very much depends on the nature of the business, on the nature of the employee, on his level of maturity, knowledge, sophistication. I absolutely think you would need managers in a proper capitalist society because there is a massive skill set that manages, there's a perspective, there's a context that employees don't necessarily have and can't necessarily have. Because you're doing job X, the manager sees you doing job X, somebody else doing job Y, somebody else doing job Z, and he knows how those three integrate. And you can't know that. You don't have the time to know it. It requires separate expertise. So management is required and it's a massive, not a little, a massive added value. Now, it's true that if we had more conscientious, more focused, more engaged workforce, managers would have a much easier job. They would not have to motivate as much, although there'd still be jobs that you have to motivate around. And people are going to be diverse and different in terms of their motivation anyway and in their level of focus. But it will be an easier job. People will be thinking, people will take more initiative. But you absolutely, people do not spontaneously organize. People do not spontaneously know how to coordinate. They just don't have the knowledge and their ability. So there is real, I mean, you might not experience it because you might have lousy managers. But management is a real profession. More important than the workers when done right. This is, you know, I reject kind of the Marxist view that managers is just exploiters. They are the coordinators, the bringers of perspective. But the main function that they have is integration. And you can't expect the workers on the line, in a sense, to do that integration. And it doesn't matter even if we have only robots, there'll be people doing jobs vis-a-vis the robots and they will have to have managers to coordinate what they do and what the robots do. Robots need managers. So yes, absolutely, I think we need managers. And I think that managers need to be in a position to be able to manage people's schedule because they need to be in a position to be able to figure out what needs to be done and how it needs to be done and when it needs to be done and all of that, which is not trivial and not easy and cannot be expected of the person actually doing the work at every given point in time. Thank you, Sylvanus. Jeff, I remember Corbine Rand when she said, every insecurity and can be traced back to altruism. Can you expand on that idea? I don't know if it's every insecurity, but yeah, I mean, I think the lack of self-esteem, a lot of our psychological problems, a lot of our lack of integrity, a lot of the challenges people face psychologically and just living up to human standards are caused by altruism. Altruism tells you fundamentally that the standard of the good is other people, not you. It tells you to focus on others, not you. It tells you that their happiness is more important than yours. It tells you that that should be your moral purpose in life, other people. Well, that does so many things psychologically to you. It undermines your ability and your motivation and your incentive and your confidence in thinking about yourself. What is good for me? What is healthy for me? What should I do? What shouldn't I do to achieve? So any achievement you have is immediately undercut by the thought, yeah, but I should be working for the people. I should be sacrificing. Any moment of happiness you might have is undercut by a sense of guilt. So you can see how it undermines any success, any success spiritual or material that you might have. And therefore cause, you know, you never gain the self-esteem because self-esteem, the things that gain you self-esteem according to altruism are things that you should reject. So, and then, of course, by focusing on other people all the time, by orienting yourself towards other people all the time, you are placing yourself in a position where you are not doing the things, if you do follow through with altruism, if you live it, then you're not doing the things that will gain you self-esteem, success and happiness. You will actually suffer. So whether you practice altruism or not, if you hold altruism as a moral ideal, you suffer. And it leads to insecurities and unhappiness and lack of self-esteem and everything else. So that is a short answer. We could talk about that for hours. Yeah, if you could have a technology from Star Trek, what would you choose except communication? We already have those. Well, I mean, it's obvious in my case. I mean, I've been saying this for years and years. The technology I would want is the Be Me Up Scotty. I would want to be able to go anywhere like that instantaneously. No flights, no really necessarily four hotel rooms either because I could beam back to my bedroom and sleep at night and then I could be in another city somewhere else in the world the next day, do what I have to do and then sleep in my own bed again. So yeah, the Be Me Up Scotty, that is a technology I would like that would be super cool. Of course, I think Harry Binswanger said that that is metaphysically impossible. So I'll probably never have it, certainly not in my lifetime. But if it's metaphysically impossible, then never, ever, ever. All right, Michael, besides Terminator 2, are there any sequels worse than the originals? Are all sequels worse than the originals? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'd have to have a list of all the sequels in front of me. Terminator 2 is better than the original. Oh, Aliens is better than Alien. Another movie made by James Cameron, maybe not accidentally. So the second Alien movie is better than the first in my view. The first one is good. It's just like Terminator is good. But the second is better. You know, Godfather 2 was good. I don't know if it was better than one. In some ways it was. I don't know about Star Wars. I'm not a Star Wars. Yeah, some people say Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. Yeah, but Terminator and Alien are two I can recall off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others where the sequel is better than the original or at least as good. All right, I America, Destroying Gaza is good for the environment, for society and for governance. Yeah. Michael, my friend got a degree in Egyptology but can't get a job. So he's paying more money to get a PhD. He can work teaching other people Egyptology. In his case, college is literally a pyramid scheme. Yeah, and it's only made possible by the fact that the government will lend you money to pursue a degree that almost guarantees that you will never have enough money to pay them back. Note that a private sector would adjust the interest rates that you pay based on the risk of not getting their money back. And I think Egyptology majors would have to pay a higher interest rate than engineering majors. Now, I will say that to be a PhD in Egyptology, there are going to be a lot fewer PhDs than there are students. So some students are finding some work some way, probably not as Egyptologists. I don't think there's much work there. But they probably then go and do regular jobs that have nothing to do with what they studied, which is what I'd say most people in the humanities do. I mean, most people in the humanities don't work in the humanities, right? They work in banking, they work in business, they work in all kinds of things. They don't actually work in gender studies or in Egyptology or in anything like that. Meribens says, I'm so crushed that Peregrine and her five baby rovers won't get to land on the moon. It is unfortunate when we don't get to see the full flowing of technology fully manifest. All right, I'm here again with the same message. He wants Gaza flattened, we get it. Jeffrey, did you see one of the stars are fouled up? Idan Ahmed, he was injured in Gaza. No, I didn't see that. I mean, the particulars might be surprising or not, but the reality is that many, many, many Israelis are in Gaza right now. And while the debt toll has not been huge, it's still been well over 100 Israeli soldiers have died. There are thousands that are injured. And so you're going to get some well-known personalities. But that is sad. Jay Dogg, thank you for being clarity and purpose to my life. You're on. Been watching you for one year, although this is his first super chat. This is amazing. Thank you, Jay Dogg, for the first super chat. I've been watching you for one year, still learning apologies in advance for any questions that might seem trivial. No problem. Jay Dogg continues, was the UN partition plan for Israel, Palestine justified and moral? What gives the UN the right to decide about the future of some country? I mean, nothing gives them the right. They certainly don't have the right. But the reality is that at the end of the day, the partition between Israel and the Palestinians wasn't decided by the UN. It was decided in a war. And that, of course, was always the alternative for the UN partition. It was a land grab, a political grab by whoever was there. Now, the British could have stayed, but they wanted to leave. It was too expensive for them, and they were being harassed by both the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews were willing to accept the partition. The Arabs were not. So something was going to happen. It was going to be a war, whether it partitioned into two states or whether it partitioned into all just one state, or whether it partitioned into Israel and then Arab states occupying parts of that territory, was to be determined by war. And that's exactly how it landed up. So the UN has no authority and has no way to actually implement its decisions. It has no enforcement mechanism. So the partition landed up being settled by warfare. And in the Israelis, the Jews won a piece of land for themselves. And that's as legitimate as any other way. I mean, it wasn't like you could have had a referendum. The reality is that when the British left, Arab countries invaded the territory in order to kill the Jews and drive them out. And the Jews obviously weren't willing to accept that. All right. Robert says, hey, people, in the like link, is the like link broken? Click it. Yes. I believe it really, really helps with the algorithm. Thank you, Robert, for reminding them and me. Jeffrey, what do you think of jazz? Any musicians you like dislike? I like jazz. I don't love jazz, but I like jazz. I find it enjoyable when I listen to it. There was a pianist that Leonard Peacock introduced me to in California. And we used to go to concerts together. I forget his name now. He's Israeli pianist. And he was very good. I enjoyed listening to him. You know, when I listen to jazz, I enjoy it. It's not profound for me like classical music is, but it is enjoyable. I don't have favorites. I'm not immersed in it enough to have favorites. Sorry. J-Dog, thoughts on answering force with force. That is, if a robber threatens you with a knife, is it morally justified to use extreme force? Are you a gun? Absolutely. Your life is the standard. If somebody threatens you, there's absolutely no reason for proportionality. You do whatever it takes to defend yourself. And if that means a gun, absolutely. If that means, you know, whatever you have used in order to defend yourself. So yes, I'm completely against proportionality. I believe in defending yourself. If somebody is coming to punch you, if somebody is coming to assault you, and they're going to have the upper hand, they're going to beat you to a pulp, take out the gun, absolutely. You don't owe somebody assaulting you with anything. You don't owe them anything. They are violating your rights. And by doing that, they have lost their rights to defend yourself to the best of your ability. Now, you're going to have to explain it to the police, and you're going to have to be willing to go through that process because they have to bring objectivity to it and figure out what happened and who started it, and so on. But if it's true self-defense, you've got to do what you've got to do. Stephen Harper says, would you consider giving a public speaking seminar before, after OKON 2024 in Anaheim? Yes, I would definitely consider doing that if there's enough interest. So I'm doing one after the INRAND conference in Amsterdam. I will be doing it on the Monday afterwards, hopefully in the same hotel as the conference. If anybody going to INRAND conference Amsterdam once, let me know, Yuan at Yuanbrookshow.com. But I will also be definitely considering, considering doing one at OKON as well. Maybe the day after OKON would be a good time. I will definitely announce that once I have the plans firmed up. Frank, re-watching QB8, right? TV show. Was Dr. Adam Kelno altruistic for bringing medicine to Kuwaitis? He made little dollars, but he was still knighted for his service. I don't know. I don't know the details, but no. I mean, not making money out of something doesn't mean it's altruistic. You value human life. As long as it's not a sacrifice. As long as you're not sacrificing a higher value for a lower value or nothing, it doesn't have to be altruistic. Defining altruism, you need to be careful. It has to involve self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, actually giving up something of more value, gaining nothing. All right. I need a run. I've got something at 1 o'clock. Thanks, everybody. Really, really appreciate the support. I'll talk it again as we have, I think, all year. I will see you tonight for your Unbrook show. We'll delve into some topic to be determined. I'll be advertising it hopefully in the next few hours. See you soon. Bye, everybody.