 And he is, by the way, this video is being used by a number of leftists to say, look, you see, nobody believes in Ayn Rand anymore, right? There are no objectivists in the trenches, you know, they're saying there are no atheists in the trenches. Well, now there are no objectivists in the trenches, so there are no free marketers in the trenches. Look, even Mark Cuban has basically thrown Ayn Rand under the bus. And he doesn't really, but he basically throws his own beliefs under the bus, or his own prior beliefs, or if he had any prior beliefs. Now, you'll know, just before we get to this, I did a video a while back about Mark Cuban and his defense of capitalism and noted how much of a pragmatist he was in that video. So even, irrespective of Ayn Rand, irrespective of what he says here, which I think takes it much further along his rejection of capitalism, he's never been a good defense of capitalism. He's always been, his whole approach has been tinged with altruism and collectivism and anti-principle, and I think that's why he didn't read Atlas Shrugged, because he knew that it would challenge all of that, and he didn't want it to be challenged. So it's been, you know, Cuban has been, is not being a defense of capitalism, ever, ever, ever. So it's not like he's completely changed, it's not like coronavirus has completely changed him, but he has gone from a compromising moderate supportive capitalism to an out-and-out, statist, borderline, you know, you know, statist, I wouldn't say socialist, but borderline socialist. Let's listen to what, and if you listen to a whole interview, then you'll get more of a flavor of all the proposals now he supports, all the things he wants government to do, all the interventions, all the stimulus, all the things that are going, that are happening. All right, here we go. Julie, again, you know, in the last several weeks now, I'm sure you've probably had a lot of time to do quite a bit of flecting, and I know we all have pretty much, and I'm wondering if in this period, if you've changed your mind on anything, whether it's, you know, policy, the role of government, or, you know, the role of corporations, if there's anything that's kind of shifted for you that may be even surprised you. Everything. Everything. So this coronavirus has basically changed everything from our Cuban. That's how solidly he held his beliefs before. Now, reality should, you should be open to changing your mind based on new facts of reality, but what exactly is happening coronavirus that should have shifted your beliefs 100% that completely changed what you believe? I mean, you have to wonder. Now, it's true that coronavirus is a good time for reflection. It is presenting some real challenges and some real questions. But everything. Wow. Right. You know, everything is easy when you don't really believe in anything solidly, when you don't really print, you're not really principled about anything. I mean, I read, I ran, I was, you know, Howard Rourke, you know, He was never Howard Rourke. Libertarian. I was, you know, I thought government had a role, but smaller government was always better than bigger government, and that all changed. See, and that's part of what happens with most people who have what they call Libertarian positions of free market positions. Is they don't, you know, and I think this is true of Mark Cuban, but I think it's true of a lot of people. They don't know what it's really about. They, some government, but small government, you know, not too big government. What's the principle? What's the principle? And you have to be able to articulate a principle of why limited government, limited by what? Limited to what? And of course, fine-rand, the limit is limit for the protection of individual rights. By the way, that too is the limitation placed on the government by the founders. I think the founders viewed government as its sole responsibility is the protection of individual rights. But when you have it as a floaty thing, ah, big government is not good, then it's easy to give up on that. Big government is not efficient, then it's easy to give up on that. You need, if you're going to have an understanding of why do you hold that big government is not good? Is it because it's not efficient? Is it because politicians don't do as good of a job as the private sector? I mean, all of that is true for most things, but is that the fundamental? Is that why you're against big government? Or is there a principle behind it? Is there something you clearly believe that the government's role to do is? And there's a conceptual framework for that. And that conceptual framework is all about individual rights, what they are, how they need to be defended, and why you have to have government to defend them. That's the argument against anarchy. Why you have to have limited government to defend them, why government is limited by them, and why a constitution must limit the role of government to the protection of individual rights and nothing else. Why anything else is that abomination is a violation of rights. So all of that is a real intellectual project, which if you're going to defend capitalism, you have to know. You have to know. So let's see where he's moved now that he's no longer a free market guy. You know, if you were to ask me four months ago whether I thought we could lose 26 million jobs and potentially many more within the space of a month, I would say you're crazy. Now, I wonder if maybe we've lost 26 million jobs because of the government not taking its job protecting individual rights seriously, not, not living up to its responsibility to protect the individual rights, which in this context would have meant taking this virus seriously early on. And as we've talked about, and I don't want to talk about it anymore, tested, isolated, tested, tracked and isolated, done what North Korea did, sorry, what South Korea did, done what Taiwan did, that our government defaulted on its responsibility to protect individual rights, defaulted on a scientific disability, and then as a knee-joke reaction to the fact that, oh my God, this is a real disease, people are really dying, we need to do something. The knee-joke reaction was to shut the economy down, to shut everybody's lives down, to force people. Now the economy would have taken a hit anyway. The Swedish economy where they've left the economy basically open has taken, is taking a major hit. Nothing like the hit we're taking, nothing like the hit we're going to take. But even when it comes to losing 26 million jobs, the 26 million jobs just evaporate just because of COVID. And even if they did, let's say we'd had a virus much worse than COVID, which had caused businesses to shut down, not because the government voluntarily, which had really caused 26 million people to lose their jobs. Okay? So what? You couldn't imagine that? I get that, but does that alter your entire philosophy of life? Only if you didn't have one, only if you didn't have principles, and only if you're thinking as fundamentally collectivist. Ooh, so what do we do about society? Instead of thinking about how individuals should probably prepare themselves for losing their job, individuals should probably prepare themselves for a virus or other things. There's no way that's going to happen. And so dogma's got to go out the window, and so, you know, a federal job. Dogma should always be out the window. Program, I would have been against that. Now he's forced federal jobs program? Really? And this is going to protect 26 million jobs? How? By hiring those people? With what money? Money taken from whom? And what would those people do with that money? Is it not taking, giving jobs to some or killing future jobs for others? Is it not taking from our children and grandchildren and giving to people right now? Is it not forcing all of our lives, the slow, pathetic economic growth into the future, and limiting innovation and real growth, the consequences to a government run? Real consequences, dangerous consequences that every socialist country in the world has experienced. Why won't we learn? Federal minimum wage. Federal minimum wage he's not for, probably 15. Why? Why a federal minimum wage? What has changed? What has the coronavirus done to now say a federal minimum wage makes sense? And what about the poor kids who won't be able to ever own a federal minimum wage because they can't produce at that level? Then what? You give them money so that they don't work? Or maybe then you do AOC's program, which is what you're suggesting, a federal work program where, you know, the government employs them at $15 an hour. And again, where does that money come from? At what expense? At whose expense? At what jobs expense? Where would that money have gone? What jobs wouldn't that money have created? I mean, Cook says, Kibben, who God's Iron Man is dog, whether he probably means he accepted random free markers of faith. No, I don't think he ever accepted Iron Man on faith. I don't think, I think he accepted Iron Man on emotion. I think he accepted our work on emotion. I don't think he ever understood Iron Man. I don't think he read Iron Man extensively. All he read was the fountain head. And I don't think he ever was really free markets. I think whenever he was pushed, whenever an issue came up, he reverted to a collectivistic, pragmatic solution. What Mark Cuban has never been is principled. He has no principles. He stands by no principles. And I don't think he's afraid of free market competition, Brad says. I don't think, I mean, the idea that people who are not against the free market just don't want the competition against their own businesses, I don't think that's true. I think he just doesn't understand principles. He doesn't believe in principles. He doesn't hold principles. He is, you know, he sees a problem and he'll say this in a minute. You know, he sees a problem. We need a solution. The problem is people don't have jobs. Okay, hire them. Who's going to hire them? Well, the government can do it. The government has, the government can print money. I can't do it. I don't have money. The government can do it, right? That's how he thinks. No principles, pragmatic, on-the-moment solutions. No real understanding of economics. No understanding of economics. The fact, and I said this about Trump many times, the fact that you can make money in the business world does not mean anything about your knowledge of economics. I know lots of business people who are rabid leftists and have no understanding of economics. Nothing. They just saw us on. And yet they made huge amounts of money in the markets. So it is not true that business people know economics. They know business. They know how to create value. They know how to offer you that value. And good for them. In this case, at the Mavericks, I think he's good at marketing. He's good at running this business. Whatever, however you want to define the business. But he doesn't understand economics, and he doesn't again hold the principles, individual rights, for example, necessary to be able to defend in your own mind, never mind other people, the idea of freedom, the idea of capitalism. Here's a perfect example of a pragmatic business person who can solve problems within a particular realm over a particular time frame, but cannot think, in principle, over long ranges outside of his specific domain of expertise. Yes, that. There's just so many things that I think we need to do now. And that's what entrepreneurs do. That's what leaders do. When you face the circumstances you have and you deal with it. And dealing with it means throughout all your principles and just come up with solutions. You know, like locking all of our lives up. Like shutting down the economy in our lives. Like that's a solution. That's powerful leadership, right? Instead of the actual solutions, which is having a real plan, you know, deploying resources to actually execute on the protection of individual rights. No. I mean, we want these knee-jerk solutions that have nothing to do with science, that have nothing to do with economics, that have nothing to do with long-term consequences. To hell with long-term consequences. What matters is what's right now. People don't have a job. Let's just use the government to give them a job. Effectively, all these trillion-dollar investments are a put for... But this put has got to be not for the wealthy and not for big business, but for working people. So you want a trillion-dollar investment. It's not an investment. It's a redistribution. It's not an investment. For working people. And why does he want this? Why does he want it to go to working-class people and not to rich people? Now, he doesn't give the altruist reason, which the poor, the suffering... No. No. He gives the economically ignorant answer. He gives the AOC answer. He gives the Bernie Sanders answer. And this is why I've said there's no differences between people left and right these days in terms of their understanding of economics. They all agree. Here's why we need to give the money to the working-class and make sure that the rich don't get it. Unless we lift up from the bottom, we're not going to have any consumer demand, and it doesn't matter how much liquidity is in the system, the risk hasn't left the system. So what we need in the system is consumer demand. Now, why would consumers demand when... You know, what are they going to demand when nothing's being produced? No answer. I did a whole show on production as the primary, not consumption. Why consumption is not the driver. Why Keynes is wrong when he says that it's all about aggregate demand. It's not about aggregate demand. It's about supply. And if you assure supply, then you assure jobs. Then you assure specific demand. It's not about lifting up from the bottom. It's about reducing uncertainty for entrepreneurs. It's about increased investments. But to do that, what you need is not to increase demand. What are people going to use their checks for if they get a check right now? What are they going to do with it? They're going to buy groceries, more toilet paper, and they're going to leave the money in the bank because they don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. There's not going to be demand for hotels. There's not going to be demand for airplanes. There's not going to be demand for computers. There's not going to be demand for the kind of products that we actually need demand for if we're going to get out of this, which is demand for the products that actually grow and enhance human life. No. Because people, because of the uncertainty, because of the risk, people are worried about their dinner. They're worried about their lives right now. And that doesn't help the economy. What you need right now is to reduce the uncertainty. Now, that's hard. It's hard without doing what you should have done to begin with. And I know I repeat myself, which was test, track, isolate, without that, without knowing the magnitude of the problem, without knowing the magnitude of this disease, the real deadliness of this disease, the impact it really has on the lives. And, you know, uncertainty is going to be rampant by shutting down the economy, by telling people, oh my God, you're all going to die. So Mark, based on what you just said, whether you're 20 or whether you're 70, you're all going to die. That kind of hysteria is what creates uncertainty that shuts down an economy that makes it so difficult to grow the economy in the future. Giving people $1,500 checks is not going to change that. Now, this crisis is caused by government, by the government response. It's caused by the virus. But we could have handled the virus if we had a decent government. We cannot handle the virus because the government is making it a thousand times more difficult for us to deal with the reality out there. Because we're not getting the information we should have getting and because they're panicking us and because they're making it legal for us to produce. Now, this guy asks a smoky Ayn Rand question too. Watch this. This question will annoy Dagny Taggart and John Gould. It's not the question that will annoy Dagny and John Gould. It's the answer that's going to annoy them. Ayn Rand reference. Why not after we get passed, as we slowly start to bring up, based on what you just said about demand, why not have the government, there are 200 million adults in the United States, send every adult $1,000 a month. I think, forgive me, because I get zeroed out. That would be roughly, we're talking about $200 billion a month. Wouldn't that be a more effective way to deal with what we're dealing with as opposed to these programs? Absolutely not. Look, and I know the UBIers are like Bitcoin. So this is a UBI question. And notice here, Mark's answer, it's completely collectivistic. I mean, just listen to how he faces this. It's truly stunning. They're going to come and attack when I tell you what I'm about to tell you. But first, I'm not against UBI for a partner who stays home to watch children, right? That makes sense, because that's a job. Yeah, so let's redistribute wealth from all of us to your partner who doesn't want to go and work or chooses not to go work. And it could be a rational decision. I'm not saying it's a bad decision. Why are you supposed to pay her? Let her husband pay her. So UBI is good. Redistribution of wealth is good from people who have jobs to people who don't have jobs. That Mark Cuban is on record for supporting. But I'm going to quote JFK or paraphrase JFK. Ask now what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country. Because we need... Now that is one of the most evil political statements ever made. Ask now what the government can do for you but what you can do for the country. That's pure collectivism. That's pure statism. That's pure fascism. It was uttered by John F. Kennedy, a pragmatist, unprincipled politician although compared to our current politicians, he seems like a epitome of virtue. But what is that really about? Remember, our government, i.e. the American government, is our servant. And it is exactly about what the government can do for me. It is exactly about how the government should or shouldn't protect my rights. That's what the government is there for. It's to serve me in the one function that I need them to serve me in and that is the protection of my rights. It's not my responsibility to do for the government anything. Respect the law. Iron Man talks about this in the Fascist New Frontier which is an S.S.U.O. in the 1960s about the John F.K. administration and about this kind of attitude. That you as a citizen, your job, your responsibility is to government, to the state. No, that's not America. That's not American. The state is your servant. There to protect you. There to defend you. There to respect and protect your rights. And otherwise, leave you free to live your life based on your mind in pursuit of your values. That's what America means. But Mark, like most people, is a collectivist. What does the country need? And it's an opposition to, you know, a blanket payment for everybody, universal basic income, is that it's not good for the country because it provides incentives for people not to work. Let's listen. People to contribute. And while you be out to work to contribute, sorry, you know, God forbid you work and you earn a living and use that living to pursue your own self-interested values. No, no, no, no, no. That's not good. It's about contributing. So you work so that you can pay taxes, so that you can create economic activity for your fellow man. It's great for individuals and gives them a lot of creative control and personal control over their life. And that's great. Right now, we need people to contribute to the economy. And if that means a federally guaranteed job where you're working as a crossing guard managed by the folks at AmeriCorps or the people in the Peace Corps or whatever organization, then I'm fine with that if it's a federally created job for testing and tracing. That is going to contribute to the economy to be able to do those jobs. Notice that those jobs are not necessarily... Now, I'm all for the testing and tracking, but he wants federally paid for jobs, jobs that are basically digging ditches and filling ditches. No productive value because he, like AOC and like Bernie Sanders and like many people, the Keynesians out there, believe that what drives the economy is demand. What drives the economy is not production. It's not the work. It's the work that's being made and then they go and consume. Now, he would like them to do things that add value, not value as the market dictates, value as Mark Cuban dictates, value as the bureaucracy dictates, value as democracy dictates, value as the state dictates. All behind. So maybe in another world, UBI is a great solution but where we are today staying home with kids, I'm not a fan. All right. I think you get the picture. There's nothing you know, he basically goes on and on about this stuff. So, Mark Cuban is a statist, a pragmatist, a collectivist. I don't think there's anything really new here because he mentioned Zain Rand. I thought it would be a good idea to kind of present it, but I showed you a defense that Mark Cuban made of capitalism a few months ago. Nothing has changed. He's just gotten worse. He's become more of a statist, more of a collectivist and he's more explicit about it. So the whole idea of I'm against UBI because I want people to contribute. I don't want to just give them a check. I want them to work for that check. Work for whom? Not for themselves. Work for the state. Work for the benefit of the state. And that is the essence of fascism. That is the essence of sacrificing the individual, sacrificing lives, sacrificing futures for the sake of the state today, for the sake of the collective, for the sake of the common good, the public interest, fill in the blank, any one of those. That is what this is all about. And this is not unusual. So Mark Cuban is not unusual here. This is the common belief. This is the popular belief. Left and right don't disagree on this. There's no difference today between left and right on these issues. There's no individualism left today in the political spectrum. There's nobody in the entire political spectrum who stands even mildly for individualism. What we need today what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect. Not by feelings, wishes, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time so I'll do it again, maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing if you appreciate what I'm doing then I appreciate your support those of you who don't yet support the show please take this opportunity go to www.uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to www.subscribestar.com www.uranbrookshow.com and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going.