 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, the 30th of May. Thanks for joining me for another news roundup. I know this is a little early in the morning, so people haven't opened up yet. Not quite ready for the new time, but it is what it is. So anyway, thank you for those of you joining live. Thank you for those of you listening afterwards. We will jump into the news. Of course, you can shape the discussion by asking questions. You can use the Super Chat feature to do that. And I answer all the questions I am asked. So please feel free to ask questions news related or not in the Super Chat. All right, future flying. God, I think last week or the week before, I told you about this report out of, I think, Juniors at Cambridge University in the UK that basically said, look, if we're going to achieve, we're going to achieve net zero by 2050, what really we're saying is we need to ban all airplanes. We can't fly. I mean, if you're going to fly, there's no way to achieve net zero. The technology is not there. We're not going to have electric planes. There's no real alternative fuels. Net zero is just, it will force our hand and what we're going to experience and there's really no option here is no more flying. And that sounds right to me. If they're serious about the goal, then that's what it's probably going to require. But it's hard to sell that. It's really hard to sell that to people that you can just ban flying. We're just going to ground all the airplanes and no more flying between countries, between cities, take the train, right? Take the train. And that is hard to sell. But there was an alternative that can achieve a very similar goal. And that's what's really happening. What is happening is that the, right now, airlines have to offset something like half of the carbon they pollute by buying carbon offsets, right? And as those carbon offsets are getting more expensive and they are, what is happening is that the price of flying becomes more expensive. This is particularly, this is in Europe. We're talking about Europe. As they are forced to buy more carbon offsets, the price of air flight increases. And as that happens, what happens to demand? It goes down. One of the most amazing things, one of the most amazing things about the modern world, one of the most amazing things about the last 40 to 50 years is how cheap flying has become. How accessible it has become to almost everybody in our society. A European vacation, which used to be only for the wealthy, not that long ago, maybe the upper middle class, as of let's say the 1970s, is available almost to everybody today. Flying to Disneyland, flying across the country, flying to Asia. You can see that with the shin number of tourists from relatively poor countries. Who are everywhere, everywhere as you travel. There are millions and millions and millions of people traveling by air flight. I think there's something like four billion people who fly. Now many of that is the same person flying many times like me. But four billion is a lot. If prices don't go up, if prices stay the same, they expect air traffic to go to eight billion in a decade or so. Eight billion, total number of population of Earth is around eight billion. It means that people are flying, people enjoying seeing the world. It is one of the great beautiful things about the modern world in which we live. How cheap things have gotten. We're very quick to talk about inflation. We're very quick to talk about, I don't know, stagnation. But one of the things that is hard to really measure and hard to really capture is how cheap things have become. And as a consequence of the cheapness, how they've impacted disproportionately their lives, primarily people who couldn't afford them before. Flying is one of those things. Well, it turns out now that this European Union emissions trading system, airlines are going to have to buy emission allowances to cover every metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and flights, starting and ending in the European economic zone, which include including the UK and Switzerland. They only buy half now. But by 2026, they're going to have to buy double. Prices are already expensive. They're going to go up. The price of carbon emissions offsets has gone up, right? In Europe, there is a market in CO2. You can buy and sell CO2. It's gone up from around 25 euro per metric ton, I guess, of carbon in 2019 to about 100 today. It's gone out four times. So when you pay those really, really high FAs, realize that a big chunk of that is going to carbon offsets. A big chunk of that is a consequence over the hysteria around climate change and the course of government policies to reduce that carbon footprint. Basically, carbon outline, over the next 25 years, companies are going to have to reduce their carbon footprint significantly. It's not only about buying credits, but also by just reducing the use of carbon by law. So they're going to have to invest heavily in improved technology. They're going to have to invest heavily in alternative fuels. They're going to have to invest heavily in the offsets and everything, right? The total cost of this is something like $820 billion if the industry is going to reach net zero by 2050. Now, there is no $820 billion to do this. That money doesn't exist. But this is going to basically squeeze and eliminate. They're talking about just the increase in carbon offsets that the companies have to buy is going to shrink the profits of the major European airlines, particularly the cheap ones, the Ryanair, the EasyJet, the Wiz, Viewling, Eurowings, Transvia. These are the real cheap airlines that make it possible for everybody to travel all over Europe at really, really amazingly low prices. They're going to decrease their profits by 77 percent, 77 percent. What's the outcome of this? Much higher prices, squeezing out the low-cost carriers, a lot fewer flyers, a lot fewer passengers, an economy in which, again, only the wealthy can travel by air. And just fewer flights. I read a story that I did a show on this or I mentioned in the show maybe a year or two ago. France now has eliminated short flights. If you can take a train between two cities, and I can't remember the exact number of hours, if it's below a certain number of hours it'll take you to get from point A to point B, they have banned the use of airplanes from those two points. Europe is serious about this, this serious about eliminating flying. Whether it's through the pricing mechanism, making it so expensive, Miroslav says it's 150 minutes. If the train is 150 minutes or less, can't fly. Airplanes are grounded, or at least Miroslav thinks it's 150 minutes. Anyway, so no short hop, flying. I mean Europe is serious about eliminating, basically eliminating flying, and eliminating the ability for people to take planes, to go on vacations, to do business. The consequence of this are horrific to our quality of life, to our standard of living, and to our ability to do business. And they're talking about, so they're concerned about this flight, what they call flight inequality, that is that a few people, the richest 10%, fly much more than the poor. The poor do one flight a year, and people like me do dozens of flights a year. So they want to introduce a frequent flyer tax. You know how you get frequent flyer points? They want to introduce a frequent flyer tax. To tax people who fly a lot, again, to reduce ability to fly. What this represents is a direct, unequivocal attack on the quality of life standard of living of people in the world today, particularly Europeans in this case, I don't think this would fly in the United States. And what are they pushing, they're pushing trains for now, electric trains, where they're going to get all the electricity to run these trains from solar panels and for windmills in England and in Germany and in the Netherlands, you know, where the sun shines all year long, right? So be prepared to be stuck, or the other way around to look at this is I've urged you all to travel. I've urged you all to go see the world, and I urge you again, and I did a whole show on why traveling should be a value to you, that there's there's great joy and great benefit and great excitement and great great thrill to travel and see the world. Do it soon. Do it soon. Do it before it becomes too expensive. Do it before maybe in the world we're heading towards it becomes impossible. Do it now. Get on a plane, fly somewhere, enjoy the freedom that you have now because those freedoms are going to be taken away one way or another. The European Union at least is dedicated to taking them away from you. And, you know, the US just is lagging by a decade or two. That's all. We typically catch up pretty quickly. All right, one other implication of the net zero, the net zero, you know, scam. So as part of the net zero, the UN plus, I guess, activists have been engaged in trying to get the insurance business insurance companies to participate, basically not to insure for a few projects, you know, basically to raise rates on using climate science, science in quotes, to start pricing in the most dramatic and most fearful effects of this. And, but they know they can't actually achieve this if they don't get all the insurance companies on board. Because if some insurance companies sit it out and they underpriced everybody else because they're not too worried about catastrophic, you know, weather and catastrophic events caused by climate change, then they can't get the effect. The only way they can get the effect, the only way they can get the effect of insurance companies raising the cost for all of us, unless we play by their game, is to get all insurance companies to do it at the same time. And that's what they've tried to do. They've created a net zero insurance alliance, NZIA, and they put massive pressure on insurance companies as of governments and pressure groups. And NZIA, they put a huge amount of pressure on them to join this alliance. And indeed, a significant number of the large insurance companies in the world have now were a part of the NZIA. And a lot of anti, well, you know, a lot of people on the right, other people in the free market, or people who are generally more sane with regards to climate change have lobbied against this and tried in various ways to convince insurance companies not to do it, but insurance companies are not listening. To a large extent, because insurance companies are getting the direction of the culture. The direction of the culture is to take climate change more and more and more seriously. And they better get on board. Then the opponents of this net zero insurance alliance figured out how to really, how to use the system against the net zero crowd. And what they started accusing the net zero insurance alliance of is antitrust. This is a cartel. This is a price fixing scheme. This is a attack on competition. And, you know, they're starting to threaten lawsuits around antitrust, using antitrust to force them to break up. And as a consequence of these threats, threats that have come from a variety of different think tanks and groups, but also from the anti ESG kind of people in some states now are starting to look at this issue of antitrust. What has actually happened is that insurance companies are leaving this association very, very quickly. Lloyds of London is the latest insurance company insurance entity to leave this affiliate association. And they're running from it, right? They're running from it because they're afraid of being sued for antitrust. So here's a case where using any rat, what I consider any rational law, any moral law, maybe one of the most immoral laws out there. But to achieve a using it is actually achieving a positive effect. And that is getting these insurance companies to leave this alliance, and therefore to actually compete around this issue of climate change. So and how to price it. So it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to see what happens with this, where the government gets together and give them an exclusion from antitrust law, if they participate because it's for a good cause. But this is kind of the, this is the direction I think many people are going. And that is to use market in quotes, market pricing, market in quotes, forces to destroy markets, aviation, insurance, or to manipulate human behavior, raising costs in order to achieve climate goals, right? Use of market processes to achieve climate goals by raising prices like an aviation or you know, basically getting guilty, all these companies into an alliance where they work together in a cartel like in order to raise prices on projects that are deemed, or to eliminate insurance on projects that are deemed anti net zero. Climate change is, you know, it's insidious. It's, you know, the hysteria, the panic will get to another hysteria and panic in a minute. It is, and it is, it has massive, unbelievable consequences to human life. And it's going to make our lives so much more expensive. It's going to lower the quality and standard of our life so much, the panic and hysteria. When what we should be doing is investing heavily in cheaper and cheaper energy so that we can become rich so that we can deal with, we can come richer and richer and richer so that we can deal with whatever climate ultimately throws at us and who knows what that will be. So even if you don't dispute the science, the solution is not to make energy expensive. The solution is not to lower standard of living quality of life. The solution is to make energy cheap, to raise standard of living, raise quality of life so that we become so rich that we can easily deal with whatever ultimately happens with climate change, however the climate ultimately change, ice age or floods or heating or hurricanes or whatever, we can deal with it. All right, talk about climate change and its victims. Well, one of those victims is the German economy. The German economy shrank in the first quarter for the first time in a long time. It's technically in a recession. You're seeing this in difficulties in manufacturing, difficulties with exports, costs have gone up, inflation is hit and a big driver of the cost increase, the lack, the inability of German manufacturers to be competitive on a global scene is the cost of energy. And the cost of energy is a consequence of Germany's crazy climate policies, crazy attitude towards nuclear power, which doesn't really have anything to do with climate, it just has to do with environmental nonsense. It's shutting down all of its nuclear power plants now. It's move to windmills and solar, which is not just unreliable. It is expensive. And again, it can actually provide energy because the sun doesn't shine much in Germany. Instead of, and of course, a reliance for a long time on Russian natural gas. Now, they've got over that by increasing LNG. But the reality is that they are moving more and more of the economy to windmills. And the consequence of that is now a recession. Now, I mean, I'm sure there are other bad economic policies. The cost of labor is really, really high in Germany. The taxes on labor, particularly at the higher end are very, very high, which motivates people often not to take a raise because the marginal cost of taking a raise actually makes you poorer because you pay so much more taxes at the next back end. And what's interesting is because of the hugely labor-friendly policies that the German economy has in it, even though there were some pro-business, if you will, reforms that were done in the 90s, Germany still is massively pro-labor in its reforms that amount of vacation time and so on. But on the other hand, it's easier in Germany to work part-time. It's easier in Germany to get a part-time job than in the United States. The United States has all these rules about who's part-time and who's a contractor and who's an employee. And I mean, the United States regulates these things to death. It's actually simpler in Germany. But the reality is that workers in Germany work a lot, and I mean a lot, fewer hours per year than Americans do. I mean, the numbers are huge. Americans work 2400 hours per year, 2400 hours per year. And Americans will be working about that amount 24 hours. I don't know what we got for 24 hours. Sorry, not 2400 hours a year. The Americans work about 1800, 1800 hours a year. And how being basically at the same level, maybe it's being as high as 2000 during some periods of time, but basically it's being the same level for, you know, you know, since 1950. So Americans have seen a slight decline in the number of hours worked maybe from 2000 to 1800 over the last, you know, since 1950. Germans on the other hand in 1950 work 2400 hours. They worked significantly more than Americans. They worked on weekends. They worked nights. 1950, they were the poor. In 1950, they were coming out of World War II where their country was completely destroyed by themselves, but completely destroyed. And today, they work only 1300 hours. So significantly less than the United States, 1800 versus 1300. And dramatically less, almost half of what they worked in 1950s and 60s. So labor works a lot less. The cost of hiring that labor is very high. And that is part of the problem. Germany as efficient as it is, as competitive as it is in terms of quality and accuracy and things like that. It shoots itself in the foot by making it so expensive and so difficult. So these are the kind of things that are adding up to cause the German economy real problems and a real need to restructure. You know, so much of the German economy is the auto industry. You've got Mercedes, you've got BMW, you've got Volkswagen, Audi, Audi I think is owned by Volkswagen. But you know, all of those companies if you look into the distant future are going to be in decline. The up and coming powerhouse in terms of automobile sales is China. China has seen a dramatic increase in exports of cars, of automobiles to all over the world. China dominates and or is going to dominate electric cars. You know, China and South Korea have a huge advantage on electric cars over Europe. You know, Tesla is a competitor there. But really, at the end of the day, it's going to be the Chinese and the Koreans. You know, China might be cutting a deal with Tesla given how big Tesla is in China. But it is a Germany is in trouble. Europe is in trouble. But the German economy, which is the motor of Europe, is in real trouble. All right, finally, last story is just a high hysteria. I mean, it just keeps coming. People are really, really, really scared. So a bunch of major AI labs and entrepreneurs and researchers signed a letter that was published this morning. I think it was this morning, six hours ago. Yeah, we just put out a statement reads mitigating this is the statement quote mitigating the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence should be a global priority alongside other societal scale risks such as pandemic and nuclear war. I'm surprised they didn't add climate change end quote. And the signatures include some of, you know, the leading names within the artificial intelligence space extinction risk of extinction soon. And what are they asking for? Well, we know what they're asking for. They're asking for government intervention. To keep going on this, this is from Twitter. AI researchers from leading universities worldwide have signed the AI extinction statement, a situation reminiscent of atomic scientists issuing warnings about the very technology they've created. As Robert Oppenheimer noted, we knew the world would not be the same. Stated the first sentence of the signature page, there are many important and urgent risks from AI, not just the risk of extinction, for example, systemic bias, misinformation, malicious use, cyber attacks and weaponization. They're all important risks that need to be addressed. Societies can manage multiple risks at once. It's not either or. But yes, and from a risk management perspective, just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritize present harms, it also be reckless to ignore them as well. There are many ways AI development could go wrong. Justice pandemics can come from mismanagement, poor public health system, wildfires, etc. Consider sharing your initial thoughts on AI risk with a tweet thread or post to help start the conversation and so that we can collectively explore these risk sources. Here's some recent examples and they link to some examples. It's truly unbelievable. I mean, this is like Greta. And I got a tweet from somebody, somebody who follows me saying, within 10 years, every man, woman, and child could be dead because of AI. I mean, that sounds like Greta to me. Sounds like that hysteria. AI is developed by human beings. It's just not true that AI is autonomous. AI is developed by human beings. It's developed by specific labs and specific companies, specific researchers. I agree completely that all of them should get together and think about the risks of what they're doing, think about mistakes that they might make, think about these things and integrate some kind of risk controls into what they do. I've said this. This is something that industry should be involved in. But what they're asking is a societal level discussion which basically means governments. Do we really trust governments? Do we trust governments to have our best interest here at heart? Do we trust governments to have the knowledge, the capabilities? Do we trust governments not to create monopolies here that then become even more dangerous? Do we trust governments not to take the technology and monopolize it for themselves? In the name of national security, in the name of panic, in the name of preventing extinction? I don't think anybody should. I trust business people who have families who live in this world, who can talk to one another and who understand the technology. One of the problems with trusting governments, they don't understand the technology. And who are they going to explain? Who are they going to trust to explain it to them? Well, the people from their tribe. And what about the Chinese? And what about the Russians? And what about all these other countries working on AI or getting AI tools and doing their work on them? And AI is not yet in the position of violating rights. I mean, if it is, and if it has uses that could violate rights, that's where the government needs to intervene. The government needs to figure out in what ways AI might violate rights and regulate that. Well, control that. I wouldn't call it regulation, pass laws against violating rights. Every new technology requires that. But I think we're far from that. Although there is some issue around artificial intelligence, scanning people's photographs, people's art, people's music. I mean, one has to really think about is that a violation of their rights? Is the artificial intelligence creating something on the basis of somebody else's work? Is that a violation of rights in what way? So there's some real deep thinking that has to happen here. But the first phase has to be the industry doing the thinking and the industry making some proposals to monitor and regulate itself. Following that, following that, if the government, if a proper government actually sees rights violations there, if they really are, and I'd like to see these things discussed in courts first, then it can act. But this idea that we're all going to be extinct in 10 years. Sorry, this is the same millennial hysteria and panic that we get every few years from somebody. Left, right, center. Somebody is always claiming that the world is just just just around the corner. It's going in. It's finished. And we are responsible. We did it. It's like it's a little, it's a little, you know, self important. Yeah, here it is. AI is more dangerous than bioweapons or nukes. I mean, this is the stuff you get now on Twitter. All right. Yeah, I think they've watched Terminator movies too many times on repeat. All right, that is, that is my news update for today. Don't forget tonight I have Ankar Ghatay joining me. We're going to talk about open closed objectivism. We're going to talk about other issues. And of course, we're going to answer your questions. Any philosophical questions you might have, we're going to discuss effect value, we're going to discuss moral sanction. So join us tonight at 8pm. Be Ankar and myself talking about open closed and the debate that was recently with Craig Biddle and Craig Biddle on the open closed issue. We'll talk about that as well. So anybody, everybody who wants and is talked about and asked about those kind of issues, please join us tonight. It should be interesting. All right, let's see. We've got a few questions. Got about 60 people watching, which is not bad for the early hour and the late announcement. But we are like 180 short of our goal. So maybe $3 a person in the, as a sticker. If everybody who's watching right now does $3, we'd make our goal. So please consider doing that. Robert says, Hey, YBS listeners, for my Pride Month show on Thursday, I need to pick the title number one, targeting pride, number two, boycott immorality, number three, pride month, right on target or number four, there's proud boys and then there's proud boys. All right, you know, let Robert know what title. Thank you, Robert for the support. You know, and this is expensive marketing for your shows. And again, so the titles are targeting pride. He's got the target in there, you notice, to boycott immorality, three pride month, right on target. Again, he's got the pride and the target there, or four, there's proud boys and then there's proud boys. All right, Robert is on a roll. No one being enjoying your shows during the week. Therefore, exchange value for value. Thank you. It's $20 and a cut for YouTube. And are there any good examples of things like the nutrition labels and food emerging organically in a market? I think food labels would have emerged organically in the market and they were starting to before they were mandated. I have to really think about this, but you know, products come with all kinds of disclaimers and explanations and you know, the market drives towards these things. It reminds me, this is not exactly to your question. I'll have to think about it. To think if I know of anything that's actually emerged from the marketplace, the equivalent of food labeling, but they always show this graph of once OSHA, the workplace safety entity regulator, came into being workplace accidents. There's a graph that shows that it declines steadily once OSHA is introduced. But what they don't show you is what the graph looks like before OSHA was introduced. And before OSHA introduced was the same slope in some ways, even steeper. They show you poverty declining, slow decline, when poverty declining slowly after the workplace state is introduced and they drive a causality. They don't show you poverty declining before welfare state introduced and it's a steep decline. Electrical stuff are self-regulated or there's regulatory agency that's private that does that. I don't know that they have the equivalent of food labeling for consumers. I think there's so much government regulation that it's very hard for something to emerge privately when the government is forcing you to do so much. Okay, thanks Apollo Zeus for the sticker. Thanks Wes for the $20 sticker. Thanks Robert for the sticker and for the questions. Yeah, we've chipped away at that gap but we're still like 140 short so consider keeping on sticking stickers. All right, Twerow Zek1223 asks, I'm 18 years old. I have a thorough understanding of objectivism both conceptual and realistic application. How far ahead of the curve am I? Well, I don't know because the fact that you are telling me that you have a thorough understanding of objectivism with all due respect. I mean all of us thought when we were 18 we had a thorough understanding of objectivism but it is, you know, when one learns a lot over time I think the study of objectivism is a lifelong pursuit. But you're far ahead of the curve, right? I mean how many people at 18 have even heard of objectivism? Never mind having a good understanding of it. But yeah, I mean you're way ahead of the curve in the culture and what I would recommend to you if you really want to fine-tune that understanding and advance your understanding is to sign up for the Ironman University and to become an actual student at 18 you've got a real future here starting very young and already knowing so much but I would definitely, definitely, definitely go for the Ironman University and sign up as a graded student. Robert, bring on the superchats before YB has to ask. Yeah, I have to ask anyway. The more I ask the more it happens and then people complain that I ask too much but people respond to my nudging. What can I say? So, you know, I'd love it that I didn't have to nudge, that I didn't have to say a word about superchats or about stickers or about money but you respond to it. I guess if you stopped responding I'll also stop asking but that wouldn't be a good outcome. Okay, Tworzeck, again, is it rational for Serbia to represent a constant David versus Goliath heroism never submitting and always picking fights with bigger enemies? Well, I think it would be rational for them. It might be rational for them like Israel if they were on the right side and if they represented a rational set of values and a rational set of alternatives. The problem is that they are tribalists and what they're interested in is just ethnic protectionism and all they're interested is the ethnicity of a particular people and all they're looking for is a fight over ethnicity. Now, they're in a region where everybody is like that which is a problem but this is what Ironman warned us in his essay on global balkanization. This is what happens when you become tribal. This is what happens when you balkanize, when you fragment, when you disintegrate and I think Serbia is looking for a fight in the name of irrational values in the name of something negative and that's why I would say stop it. I don't consider them a David at all. I consider them the instigator of the violence. What they did in the 1990s and what they're doing today is horrific. What they did in the 90s was horrific. What they're doing today is just stupid and again, they're not fighting for positive. James, have you done a high-speed real video on the U.S.? It makes no sense. The country has none except on the east. Even the east, that's not real high-speed. Cities like Raleigh and Charlotte ought to be connected. Another example is Atlanta to Charlotte. You should have LA to San Francisco, LA to Las Vegas. Yeah, I mean basically it's impossible to do in the United States because of the cost and the cost is driven to a large extent by environmental regulations, by all kinds of city, state, local, federal, all kinds of regulations that make it unbelievably expensive and therefore out of reach for the private sector to build it. And when the public sector tries to build it, it gets even more expensive because of the inefficiencies and the inefficiencies and just the inability of the private public sector to build anything. But look how much it's costing New York to build a subway, one subway stop. It's costing more than it would cost to build a whole network under a rational system. So the problem here is regulation, regulation, regulation, anywhere from labor regulations to environmental regulations and everything else in between. James asks, does $175 right PayPal cover the Texas video? Sure, we can do that. Thank you. Thank you, James. All right, I look forward to the PayPal and then I'll work on getting the link up, analyzing the video. Might have to be after I return from Texas, which might be in a couple of weeks. Frank says, how can we fund a U.S. military that has woke soldiers, no plans for victories and a general willing to call China if the American plans to attack it? Well, I mean, all of that is exaggerated, right? We don't have woke soldiers. We might have some woke staff at West Point. We might have some woke trainers, but we don't have woke soldiers. The general willing to call China is a general willing to call China because he evaluates the president of the United States as being completely bonkers and irrational and therefore to prevent nuclear war that would annihilate all of us is willing to try to call China. I don't consider that completely irrational. But I do agree, no plans for victories. That's been the case since World War II. The United States has no plan, no strategy to win. And it is, it is, it's not good. And it saddens me. And I am for shrinking the defense budget and focusing on winning instead of spending all the money we spend on nation building, on social services, on woke, on training for stupid things. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of waste there. And there's a lot of reasons not to want to fund the military if they're going to be this bad. To our check again, opinion on Nikola Tesla. I mean, that's a much longer debate discussion. But I'd say Tesla was a genius, was a great innovator, had amazing ideas that were proved in reality. But he was, from what I can tell a little crazy, a bit of a bit of a kind of a utopian in some respects, and a little just not completely there. And as a consequence, many of his inventions and many of the things he did, did not get the recognition that they deserved were not turned into industries and into production as they should have. I think the world would have benefited significantly if Tesla had been saner. He was clearly a genius and somebody to be admired for his, for his invention. And for the solutions, he came up with problems. Robert says, question I've noticed that most my YBS super chat comments aren't questions or widely off topic, or are confusing or cryptic. The question is, is this annoying? Or do you just shrug it off? It's not annoying at all. I don't, yeah, not annoying at all. I enjoy the humor and I, you know, going off topic, not that bad. All right, let's see. Robert says, looks like a lot of super chatters are saving their pennies for the open closed discussion are all spent out from the holidays. Who knows, hard to tell. But yeah, it is, it is getting more and more difficult the last few weeks to get, to get us to the goal. Richard has just jumped in to help out. Richard says, I have many friends who are officers in the Army, Navy and Army was a few objectors, but all among the smartest and most rational people I know. Yeah, I agree. I mean, the soldiers in the Army are not woke. And many of the men and women who actually serve and not so much, I wouldn't say the same for the generals, but the people who actually serves and many of the commanders are completely rational people who understand what is necessary, understand what is necessary to win, understand what a military is for, but are constrained by the people above them and often don't have the moral intellectual backbone to challenge those above them the way they should. But there's certainly these irrational smart people. Thank you, Richard. James, what will happen to states like Florida and Texas and California's insurance companies leave? Does it make sense for people to keep living in high disaster areas? Florida and Texas both have horrific hurricane records. I mean, you have to make a calculation. The problem is that today, insurance is subsidized by the state. So we don't know how much insurance would really cost in Florida, for example, for hurricanes, because all of it is subsidized by the state. Flood insurance is subsidized by the state. What we need is a true market in insurance, true market prices without any government intervention. And then if insurance gets very, very expensive, people will stop having it and people will ultimately move because not having insurance could bankrupt you. And that's how we'll get people out of danger zones is by raising the cost of insurance. But as long as government subsidizes insurance all over the world, particularly in flood zones, can do that. That won't happen. And what you get is people moving into dangerous places and you get an increase in risk for people. And so you provide bad incentives. Jaykin says, no fan of Tesla, but the EV platform is miles ahead of any Chinese competitor on average. They own 10K costs sold. Not sure how much comes from subsidies. Germans and Toyota struggling. Yeah, Germans are struggling. Toyota struggling. The Koreans, the Kias and the Hyundai is that electric that I've seen seem very good. And they seem to be pretty advanced. The Chinese are behind. But again, so I accidentally Tesla is in China and I'm sure China is learning from them. The Chinese are the other ones to watch when it comes to electric cars. A lot of the electric batteries are made in China anyway. The cost structure is very, very low. And they can also afford to lose money for quite a while exporting these cars. I wouldn't be surprised if China came to dominate a big chunk of the electric market, particularly at the low end, particularly cheap electric cars, replacing those little European cars with electric cars. There's a good chance that the Chinese will be the ones to do it. Suddenly, in the third world, you're going to see lots and lots of Chinese cars because they're so cheap. They are pretty junky cars, as everybody says, but they're cheap. So there are some parts of the world that will take that trade off. But the Germans and the Japanese are certainly struggling. Demon, Iran, have you looked into SEC versus Ripple yet? I've asked a couple of times also, interested in chair, gentsla, fishy action in the crypto space. I find figuring out what's happening in the crypto space very difficult. I've looked at the SEC versus Ripple. It looks like SEC is clearly going outside of their scope and doing something wrong here. But I don't have a complete understanding of what Ripple exactly does. What are they involved in? But look, the SEC is on a mission. The SEC is on a mission to destroy crypto. And so is the US government generally. And we've seen that with how they've cheated banks that deal with crypto. We saw that with how they've closed banks that deal with crypto. So it's part of a bigger picture which is dedicated to the destruction of crypto no matter what. Demon also says, also live the show. Thank you and keep it up. Thanks, Demon. And Richard finally, and this will be the last question. What do you think is the best part of Silicon Valley culture? I think there is quite a bit of dynamism and can do attitude in New York. But I want to be surrounded by rational creative people. Is this most common in Silicon Valley? Yes. I think what you get in Silicon Valley is a level of dynamism, a level of enthusiasm, a level of excitement and just really, really, really smart people. People willing to take risks, people willing to fail, people willing to invest in people willing to take risks and invest in people willing to fail. All of that drives Silicon Valley. And those are people that are super fun to be around, super fun to work with and work for. And really, those are the people dominance. I do think Silicon Valley in that sense is even better than New York and more dynamic and exciting. Of course, Austin, Texas is the real air for the whole, we assume. All right. Krish, first time super chatter from Australia. I take it $150, $160 Australian dollars. That's a hundred US dollars. Thank you, Krish. That has taken us over our goals. So we're at 296 US dollars. Thank you, Krish. That's amazing. And that's a first time super chat. So that's amazing, too. Thank you all. I need to run. I've got another meeting in nine minutes, but really, really appreciate the support. Thank you for coming through today. Tonight, on Kogate, we're going to talk about close versus open objectivism and any other controversial issue you want to throw at us, moral sanction and judging people and fact versus value, fact and value. Bring it on. We're going to take them all these issues on tonight, 8 p.m. East Coast time right here on the Iran Book Show channel. And I'll see you all. Thank you, Krish. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, all the superchatters. Really, really appreciate the support of