 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Hey there, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday afternoon. I hope you're all having a fantastic weekend. Having a fantastic weekend, getting ready for a brand new week. I am on my way to the airport, I guess. In a few hours, I'll be taking off to Europe. So the next few shows are kind of iffy, or the next two weeks of shows are kind of iffy, in terms of when exactly, what times. If you are in Europe, please look up on my website. There's a list of all the events, except the ones in London at the beginning of March. Those will be up, hopefully, in the next few days. But those have not been finalized yet. But please consider coming to see me, particularly in Eastern Europe. Prague, Bono, Bratislava, Tbilisi, Warsaw, Zurich, Budapest, and Uppsala, Sweden. So it's cold in Uppsala, Sweden. So I hope to see some of you there. I'm looking forward to that. That'll be a lot of fun. So if you are in Europe, and if you can make it to one of these events, please come and introduce yourself. That'll be great. All right, today we're going to do another episode of the Capitalism 101. These are kind of shows where we take some basic concepts in economics, basic concepts with regard to capitalism. And we look at kind of what's going on in the world today, and how they're either being confirmed, contradicted, or how people are abiding by them or not. We did want to kind of basically just introduce you to capitalism. And we've done one on antitrust. Today we're going to do one on trade. And of course, the opposite of trade, which is protectionism of all its different types, we'll talk about by America. And it's a distortive effect on the US economy, on any economy that introduces by local, and why it is the exact opposite of any sense of capitalism, freedom, free markets, all the kind of by local, by America, by Boston, by whatever, by your neighborhood, a violation of the principle. But let's start with a positive. Let's start with the value of trade. And of course, the benefit from trade. And this is a really simple concept. And it's a simple concept that really predates trade in and of itself as a concept that predates capitalism. If you go back and you look at tribal societies, tens of thousands of years ago, you will find goods in one area that were clearly produced in another area. Even at the dawn of mankind, at the dawn certainly of civilization, a trade was an important feature of human life. And the reason is that it has embedded in it this massive advantage, the advantage of specialization. And that specialization could be a product of a unique skill that an individual or a group of individual has. It could be specialization as a consequence of the particular geography that a particular group inhabits and therefore have access to particular natural resources or particular needs. And therefore, they develop a particular kind of product. And so specialization is really specialization. It's at the heart of production. It's at the heart of economic growth. It's what it makes it possible for people to, again, specialize in a particular field, become really, really good at it, become incredibly productive, and therefore reduce the thing's cost or increase its quality, which is what it means to be more productive. It means reducing the price of something or increasing its quality per unit of inputs, the inputs going into producing that things. So specialization increases productivity and specialization benefits from trade because if everybody's producing everything for themselves and there's no trade going on, and let's say trade is banned, let's say you're not allowed to talk to the other tribe, you're not allowed to do anything with the other tribe, you're not allowed to engage with the other tribe. As I'm sure some tribes had policies like that, then what happens is that there is no incentive to specialize because there are economies of scale, all you can do is sell your goods to the particular people in your tribe. That might be very little good, you're getting very little in exchange. So specialization and trade go hand in hand. The more trade, the more specialization, the more specialization, the greater the benefits of trade. And what is trade? Trade is extending one good for another. All trade at the end is barter, all trade is the exchange of goods. So trade is the exchange of one good for another and why would people, why do people engage in trade? What is the purpose of trade? Well, the purpose of trade is to enhance the individual's life, to gain access to products one doesn't produce oneself or to raw materials that one needs in order to produce the products that raw materials one doesn't have access to oneself. So if I raise cows and you raise chickens, I have cows, you have chickens, our life is better off if we both have both cows and chickens. And as a consequence, it is, there is a value there of each person gains from the trade. I gains chickens that I didn't have and those chickens are worth a certain quantity of cow which I have too much of, my life is better off, your life is better off. And that's the underlying beauty of trade. The underlying essential nature of trade is that people seek their own benefit and in the material realm, most people are at least seeking their own benefit at least in the short run. I'm not gonna call them moral egoists because moral egoism requires a lot more than just seeking your material interests in the short run or even in the long run it requires a lot more than it requires moral principles and living a moral life. But the reality is that whether in primitive societies or advanced societies, for the most part, people don't sacrifice their economic interests. In trade, they don't go, I feel sorry for what you saw by your product for more than it's worth to me. They typically haggle, they typically, and you can see that in every market around the world, they're trying to get the best price, they're trying to get a price where the product, achieving the product is of greater value than what it is that they're giving up in order to gain it. So trade, because people are pursuing their self-interest in this context, because people are pursuing their own betterment in this context, trade results in win-win relationships, trade results in everybody who participates, gaining, benefiting, being better off. So trade is the exchange of one good for another and it is only done when the exchange is beneficial to both parties. Implicit here is the idea that there is no coercion, that nobody is being forced to buy, nobody's being forced to buy at a particular price, nobody is being forced to buy a particular quantity, that the exchange is a voluntary exchange and indeed implicit in every discussion of trade is the idea that the trade is voluntary. I'm selling it to you because I wanna sell it to you, you are buying from me because you wanna buy you're giving up your chickens and I'm giving up my cow because we both want to do that. Anyway, in terms of the chat, I have no idea what the hating on chicken is, where that's coming from. And of course, yeah, so trade is this, it truly is this beautiful thing that creates value when there was no value there before. I need something smaller than cows to exchange. Let's say I go tomatoes and you have chickens and we're gonna exchange tomatoes for chickens. If I have 20 tomatoes and I don't really wanna eat 20 tomatoes, indeed after eating 10 tomatoes, every additional tomato actually makes me feel ill and reduces, in a sense has negative value because I'm not enjoying, I'm not benefiting from it. So I have 10 tomatoes that have positive value and then I have 10 tomatoes that if I keep them, actually have negative value, I have nothing to do with it. You on the other hand have chickens, you have three chickens. You plan to eat one, I don't know, one of them lays eggs and the third one, you just have to feed it and it's costing you and you're not benefiting anything from it. You don't intend to eat it and you don't eat its eggs. By exchanging, but you would benefit enormously from tomatoes. So your wellbeing is enhanced by giving up the chicken you don't need and gaining tomatoes you want. And my life is enhanced by giving up tomatoes that yeah, I can't eat any more tomatoes and gaining a chicken that yeah, I really do want to eat yummy chicken. And notice that everybody's, again, this win-win relationship, everybody's better off. Value has been created. Quality of life has been created. Things are better as a consequence of the transaction. There's still, you know, before we eat them, there's still just as many tomatoes in the world and there's just as many chickens in the world. But through trade, the chickens and the tomatoes have gone to the people who value them the most in the context of this particular market. And as a consequence of that, their life is better. Now extrapolate that over hundreds of people, thousands of people, millions of people, billions of people. The things that they are producing, the things that they're creating are now each flowing to where they are most valued. And just through that flow, again, without the creation of anything more, just through the process of trading in what we produce, everybody is better off. There is more wealth in the world. There is more satisfaction in the world. There's a high standard of living in the world. Things are better. Just through the transaction, just because of the trade. Now of course, you know, in modern society, we don't trade goods for goods. We trade money for those goods. Money is just a medium of exchange. It is a medium of exchange that makes it possible for you to exchange your, whatever you produce, whatever, which is your labor for the goods that you need in order to live. And money evolved out of the marketplace to make it smoother for, you know, for the tomatoes to go to the person who most desires tomatoes and is willing to bid the highest price for them and the chickens to flow. And you know, it makes it possible for me not to have to cut up my cow so that I can, I don't have to sell half a cow. I can sell a whole cow and then take the money and buy the more smaller units of the things that I would want to buy. Money, the purpose of money, the whole point of money is to facilitate trade. It's to facilitate this exchange of goods, to facilitate this ability for us to improve our lives through win-win transactions. So trade is a, you know, unqualified good. It's fantastic. And again, it has been part of human life since the beginning of the history as of what we know as history, since prehistory, since the beginning of what we know in terms of archeology and in terms of, because it's so obviously good for everybody. So obviously good for everybody. Now, you know, so, and of course, so when we place barriers in trade, any kind of barriers, any kind of restrictions on tribe A, you know, communicating with tribe B and therefore having the ability to trade with tribe B because tribe B are no good. We don't like tribe B. So stick to tribe A, produce stuff. We reduce the ability to prosper. We reduce the ability to create wealth. We reduce the ability to flourish. We make everybody worse off relative to the alternative. And there are lots of ways to restrict trade. There's a prohibition, you just can't do it. And, you know, we see that not just in foreign trade, but we see that domestically within a country. There's certain products you cannot buy even if you want them. Hey, I want that medicine. I heard about that, you know, Pfizer's experimenting with, can I go to Pfizer and buy it? No, no, no, we've created a whole bureaucratic mechanism to separate you from the seller so that some third party can come in through coercion and dictate when and how much and what you can buy and ultimately for what price. You know, every time a regulator steps in and says, you can't employ somebody for $6 an hour, they are restricting trade. Most of the regulations that we have on the books in the United States they are trade restrictings. Regulations, controls, taxes, sales taxes, reduce the quantity that I'm going to, that I would like to buy. Now, the government takes a cut. The higher the price is, the lower the demand. If taxes were lower, demand would be higher and human well-being, individual human well-being would be better. So whenever government steps in and interferes in the process of trade, whenever tribal leader, whenever individuals interfere in the process of trade, they are in restrict ability to communicate with one another. To that extent, we hurt human well-being, human well-being. We hurt our economy. We hurt standard of living and wealth creation. Now, that is true inside a country. You know, one of the things that the constitution has done in America, for example, is it's restricted the ability of states to be protectionist vis-a-vis other states. So California can place a tariff on stuff that's made in Nevada. Or it can restrict people in California from going to Nevada and buying things. They can't restrict people in California buying stuff from Nevada. Although I would note, there have been attempts recently, for example, in the state of California, because of Texas's stance on abortion, the state of California is saying, well, state employees can't travel to Texas. They can't buy this in Texas. So there are attempts to restrict trade even within the United States. But note that when they do that, they realize that it's penalizing, and they think it's penalizing Texas. But it's actually penalizing both sides. Both parties lose. Texas loses Texas, the people in Texas, the individual in Texas who were trade with you loses the revenue, but you lose the ability to buy the stuff. So we somewhat understand, somewhat understand that internally, any kind of cursive means to restrict trade raises prices, reduces efficiency, makes things more expensive and reduces therefore quality of life and reduces therefore standard of living and reduces wealth, and is a bad thing. But for some reason, we have this notion that if we expand this overseas, then it's okay. That is, tariffs on Canadian goods, that's okay, because Americans and Canadians, but tariffs are taxes that Americans pay on a good imported from Canada. So first of all, it raises the cost for Americans. But it does benefit some Americans because the price is higher, there will be fewer imports of Canadian goods and more American companies will sell. So some American companies benefit. Overall, there'll be less trading because as prices go up, demand goes down. So there'll be less consumption of that good, which is hurtful. But American producers will benefit. Canadian producers will obviously lose some, but they'll lose some, but we don't care about Canadians, that's just Canadians. The government will gain some revenue. But here's the thing that if you actually examine this from an economic perspective, if you actually look at the numbers, if you draw graphs, if you look at the gains and losses, the gains of American producers and the gains of the government, to the extent that we believe government gains, the gains of American producers and the gains of government actually less, actually less than the loss, I'm sorry, actually less than the loss to the consumer. So tariffs and any kind of trade restriction, like by America, we'll see by America specifically in a minute, actually reduce wealth, reduce prosperity, and at the same time, in terms of long-term effects, for example, American producers, when their tariffs on foreign competitors become less competitive, they become less innovative. So that reduces long-term productivity, long-term wealth creation. But in addition to that, I mean, we saw this with tariffs on steel. When you raise tariffs on steel, steel becomes more expensive for people who use steel and people who use steel, automobile manufacturers, I don't know, refrigerator manufacturers, anybody who's using steel, their profits go down, their employment goes down, the consumers, and often their prices will rise and then they'll go and demand tariffs to protect them from foreign competition and now you have more tariffs, tariffs breed tariffs, breed protectionism, and there's no end to it. And all of this spirals and continuously spirals to create a situation where the quality of life and standard of living go down. All right, so that's the basic principle. So the capitalist basically has a simple position here. Morally, morally and politically, government has no business in the business of business. It has no business in interfering, in stepping into the transaction between a buyer and a seller. And it doesn't matter, morally and politically, whether that buyer lives in a different country, on a different continent, looks differently than you than the seller. That is the location of any particular buyer or any particular seller does not matter. Government has no business interfering. Remember the only time government has a business in interfering according to the theory of capitalism is if somebody's rights are being violated. If the transaction is basically making possible the violation of rights or the transaction is a rights violation in and of itself. So in this situation, right, so can you imagine a situation where the government should get involved? Well, yes, right? You know, the weapons manufacturer in the United States selling arms to an enemy of the United States. Clearly that is going to violate the rights of other Americans. Indeed, you could argue. All trading with enemies is a violation of rights. Because if traders win-win, the enemy is winning. If the enemy is winning, it is a greater threat to everybody else. And therefore by you trading with the enemy, you are increasing the threat that the enemy poses to your fellow citizens and thus, I think, violating their rights. And that's the only circumstances where trade should be eliminated, restricted, and that is when it constitutes a threat. Can we think of domestic examples? Domestic examples, selling weapons to an own gangster, selling a product by fraud, by lying about it. That's coercion, that's violation of rights, and therefore the government has a job in stepping in. But as long as there's no fraud being committed, and as long as one of the transaction party is not clearly a threat to people out there, then the government has no business interfering in trade, period. And again, it doesn't matter here what the other government is doing. This has to do with, I don't know, was it, well, let's take China for an example, let's assume here for the moment, and this is an assumption you can agree with or not, but just for the sake of it, let's assume that China is not an enemy of the United States. Then the fact that China is investing heavily in a particular industry, the fact that the Chinese government is stealing from their own people and investing in their businesses has nothing to do with the US government. It's none of the US government's business. Let me just remove somebody from the chat because he's disgusting. There was some anti-Semitic guy advocating for killing Jews and burning them alive and stuff like that, so I just blocked him. Some things, even on my chat, I just, ugh. How do people like that even live with themselves? I mean, it must be pretty, pretty disgusting to be that person. Where was I? Yeah, so it doesn't matter what the other countries do. How much they subsidize, how much they give them benefits, how much they, the fact that they have tariffs and trade restrictions, those tariffs and trade restrictions are primarily hooting their own citizens. We are not the policemen of the world. We should not be going around the world forcing people to behave themselves towards their own people. If they don't wanna buy our stuff, we have no right to force them to buy our stuff. So, trade, free trade with everybody in planet Earth who is not an enemy is, should be, is the only really strategy of a capitalist, of anybody advocating for capitalism. There are no exceptions, there are no, but we have to have tariffs on this just for a little while. We have to, you know, we have to violate people's rights. We have to just for a little bit, just for a while, just to help this industry, just to help those guys. I mean, the people who lobby for protectionist policies are the industries that gain a little bit from it. And the politicians who benefit from the ignorance of their constituents by selling them on, look, I brought jobs to America, look, I did these wonderful things when clearly what they've done is a net loss to America, clearly what they've done. When I say a net loss, it means fewer jobs, lower standard of living, lower wages, tariffs, trade restrictions, protectionist policies, always lower standard of living, lower wealth creation, lower quality of life, and reduce the number of jobs in an economy. Okay, let's see. So let's talk a little bit about, by America, because this is a big policy of both Republicans and Democrats support and they advocate for, and it's part of our laws and it just seems to be growing in the Biden administration. I mean, Trump elevated by America and then Biden administration's elevated even more. I mean, in so many respects, Biden is doubling up on Trump's bad policies. It's truly amazing how similar they are and in a sense how, if you believe in Trump was make America great again, then Biden's make America great again on steroids. And now, as you know, I don't think either one of them, either one of them is. All right, so by America's been a policy that's been in the United States since the beginning of, I'd say, big time statism in the United States and that is since the 1930s. The first by America Act is actually called the by America Act of 1933. And it requires all federal agencies to give a procurement preference to items that have been manufactured in the United States substantially or from articles, materials or supplies mined produced or manufactured domestically. Now, the law never defines what substantially is but presidents have then used it. It typically was 50% so 50% of particularly good had to have articles, materials, supplies, mined produced or manufactured domestically. Trump then increased that 50% to 55%. This was as big make America great again, thing, they're increasing it by 5%. And now Biden has pushed it at 60%, saying he's gonna push it at 65% in 2024 and to 75% in 2029. Since then we had a barrier amendment in 1941 which requires the defense department to purchase to be 100% domestic and origin. If falling into one of five categories, five categories, note these, they have to buy American if it's textiles, clothing, footwear, food and hand or measuring tools. This is 1941. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this today are the very, very few American shoe manufacturers who sell to the Pentagon massive quantities of shoes because the Pentagon has to buy 100% domestic. And guess who lobbies to keep the barrier amendment alive and well, well, the American shoe manufacturing business. The Kistel amendment of 2009, part of the American Recovery and Investment Act after the financial crisis. It requires the US military to use US vessels for transporting cargo, I know that's another one, sorry, it requires the Department of Homeland Security to purchase American made textile clothing and footwear. So all those uniforms that TSA officers are wearing, you should be relieved and happy by the fact that all of those, all of those are made in America. Then I'm made in Vietnam or Bangladesh or somewhere where it's cheap to buy uniforms. They're made by American textile manufacturing. At least my guess would be, my guess would be that what remains of the American textile industry is making uniforms for TSA and the military because there is no other US textile industry anymore. Then of course we've got the Jones Act and the Military Cargo Preference Act and then you've got Biomeric Act of 1978 which applies to federally funded transportation projects, highways, public transportation, aviation, intercity, passenger rail. Even when they're done by localities of states, the content varies by product, but generally iron, steel and related manufacturing products are subject to a requirement that they be wholly 100% made in the United States. And then you're surprised that our train system is not that good. You're surprised that it takes, I don't know, 100 years to build another few, what do you call it, subway stations in New York City. Surprised that California can't build a high-speed rail. Well, of course not. We'll talk about that a little later. And then finally, the New Build America Biomeric Act B-A-B-A, BABA, which just passed, buried in the 1,000-page trillion dollar Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was the Build America Biomeric Act of 2021. It expands traditional US localization requirements in two ways. It covers most public work projects, dams, buildings, electrical transmission, facilities, et cetera. No wonder we're not building any of those. Not just transportation or water-related stuff. And it covers the usual iron-steel products plus non-ferrous materials like copper, plastic, and polymer-based products, glass, composite-building materials, lumber, and drywall. This is the law that President Beiner was discussing in the State of the Union Address and that he got a bipartisan standing ovation for. Bipartisan standing ovation for this, I'd say nonsense, but this is worse than nonsense because you will pay for it, your kids will pay for it. We all pay for it every single day in lower standard living, higher taxes, higher cost of living. Now, I'm getting a lot of this stuff from, as I do in economics, from Scott Linsicum who writes for the Dispatch. He has a BiAmerica article that came out on the 15th of February. Just three days ago, it's excellent. I encourage you to read it. You're getting a lot of it from me, so I'm not sure you need to read it, but. Now, in addition to those, there are dozens of lesser known BiAmerica restrictions that apply to specific goods, services, just ridiculous stuff all over the place. Now, what does this actually do? In what ways does it harm America? Well, one, it raises the cost of anything the government buys, anything the government buys, anything the government builds, anything the government tries to do, the cost is gonna be higher because the number of suppliers is limited. Those suppliers don't face competition from overseas, and it's simple. These kind of restrictions, when you strict the number of buyers, raise prices. You know, just as an example, European and East Asian manufacturers of trains, you know, trains, trains, sell train cars at 30 to 70% less, 30 to 70% less than American manufacturers of trains. But like almost all train projects in the United States have to buy American trains, which are less efficient and, you know, up to, you know, 30 to 70% more expensive. Now, that's billions and billions of dollars that is being wasted. Now, people say, yeah, but what will happen to all those jobs of the people making trains today if we just buy all the trains from Europe or Asia? Well, what will happen is that we'll free up all that capital, we'll free up all that talent, and we'll free up all the capital that's generated from lower prices to actually deploy that skill and capital for something that is better. Or we will try to make trains cheaper than the Europeans and the Asians can and we will enter the competition. But the economy is going to be better and therefore have more jobs and there'll be more wealth if we get rid of inefficient companies that are charging way too much and buy cheaper, more efficient, more productive, better, higher quality stuff. It's just pretty straightforward. It's just basic economics. So economists have kind of measured some of these bio-America rules and their effect on prices. Basically, the bio-America rules are equivalent to somewhere between 26 and 43% increase in the price of goods across the entire economy. Well, not in price of goods. They're equivalent to a 26 to 43% tariff. They cost the US government well over $100 billion a year. $100 billion, that's a big number, $100 billion. And they raise the prices of domestic goods by 6%, which all of us are paying, all of us are paying because we're all taxpayers and this means taxes are significantly higher and if we want to reduce, if we want to reduce government spending, if we want to reduce the deficit, if we want to reduce them on a borrowing the government takes on, if we want to reduce right now, what are they talking about? Increasing the debt ceiling and Republicans want to insist on reducing government spending. Well, what easy way to do it is a simple bill. A bill that basically does away with all capital A, capital L, capital L, all by American requirements in all bills since 1933 or even before, I don't know if there's anything before. And immediately you get a cut in government spending and you get generally in the economy a massive benefit and a reallocation of capital and resources, a skill to better uses. Second, in addition to just straight up, it's more expensive, things are much more complicated. There's a lot more paperwork and they're massive delays and here every government project out there you can see. People on proof that it's made in America, you have to have certificates, you have to have paperwork, you have to have people signing off on it, people will question it, people challenge. Is it really, is every single piece of this equipment made in America is it just 50% or is it 55%? Mass of paperwork nightmare. Every project that is even partially funded by the Recovery Fund Act, for example, is required to fulfill all the paperwork requirements. This means that every participating contract, the supplier and manufacturer must fill out and submit a different set of paperwork, certifying that the parts being supplied meet the Biomedical Clause of the Recovery Act. And you can go on and on and on. And in some ways, this might be the most expensive of all the things that it does. This might cost projects in terms of time and dollars more than the higher prices. This is how debilitating this. Every single part used in a government funded project, even a $10 part needs to be certified. You have to have paperwork. You have to have proof that it's made in America. And sometimes an agency will approve a certain supplier and then it'll be challenged. And other suppliers will challenge it on the basis of, but wait a minute, he doesn't qualify for buying, for Made in America. We do. And courts will get involved in this delays projects and makes them go on forever. Now, this is also true for things that are considered local projects. It's just unbelievable the amount of paperwork, bureaucracy, inefficiency that this creates. I mean, the 2nd Avenue train station in New York City, which received federal funds, they've been trying to build it for decades now. And it's cost overruns, time takes forever. And a lot of it is this nonsense of paperwork bureaucracy. No, this is Made in America. Assembled in America is not good enough. Every part has to be, every part that is being assembled has to be Made in America. Now again, there's a 50% rule. Now it's 60% rule, only 60% of the parts. There are all kinds of exemptions. It's complicated. It takes forever to figure it all out. So if you look at, you know, the funny thing is, or the obvious thing is that, you know, everybody's looking for an exemption. Everybody wants out because everybody recognizes that the Bi-Americans are destructive and hopeful. Because you have Bi-American standards, you have fewer exports. Why do you have fewer exports? Because U.S. companies lose their advantage. So, you know, fewer export. Major U.S. companies like Caterpillar and General GE have long opposed the expansion of Bi-America wars out of a wealth fund of fear that foreign governments, which typically have larger crime sectors than we do, will borrow them from bidding for government projects. So what happens is, we place restrictions in foreign companies and then they place restrictions on us. And American companies that are good at exporting don't want that because they will be borrowed from selling their stuff overseas. So trade wars, including and by America as a form of a trade war, as the Europeans right now who are ticked off over this and they are going to restrict their own domestic industries and they're gonna restrict their ability to buy from America. If U.S. companies have a comparative advantage, they don't want Bi-America wars because they can compete. Who wants to Bi-American wars? Those American businesses who do not have a comparative advantage. And the reality is in America, we have a lot of companies, particularly in these kind of infrastructure projects that have comparative advantage, not just Depele and GE, but Bechtel, Flo, Kellogg, big construction companies, we have huge advantages in medical equipment, drugs, milk, Pfizer, Gilead and so on. And of course, computers, Dell, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, these companies don't need protection. Indeed, who lobbies for the protections? People who lobby for the protections are the companies that are no good, that are not competitive, that cannot survive without government help. Now, I've just gone through some of these costs, right? There are massive unintended consequences to every single one of these. There are massive macroeconomic costs. There is, I think there's corruption, huge. Whenever you have paperwork and bureaucracy, you add corruption. And yet these laws are, and the tariffs, we've talked about tariffs before, but tariffs on steel, tariffs on all kinds of stuff, on milk, the milk industry is protected from Canadian competition. Now, it's collapsing anyway, but it's been protected for decades from Canadian competition through tariffs, through trade restrictions. Look at the baby formula, right? What happened with baby formulas? So protectionism does not just involve the Buy America, it involves tariffs and FDA restrictions and all kinds of regulatory restrictions that prohibit our ability as individuals to import stuff from overseas. And thus, reducing the number of people we can trade it with, reducing the benefits of trade, reducing the gains from trade, reducing the number of win-win transactions we have, and therefore hurting all of us. And what are politicians, why is it so popular? It's popular because it plays up to nationalistic fervor. Ooh, we don't, people realize it's win-win in this situation. We don't want to help those other countries, people in those other countries that differ from us. We want to only help Americans. It plays into economic ignorance, militarism primarily, that is dominant in both political parties, but even more so among the American people themselves, and nobody seems to be educating them. Where are the Milton Friedman's of today educating people about the benefits of trade? There's a great video of Milton Friedman in 1993 saying, why does anybody care about trade deficits? This is so ridiculous and stupid. Trade deficits are not bad, trade deficits are neutral, and he gives the usual explanation, and Milton Friedman was awesome in giving simple straightforward explanations on basic economic concepts. You should look him up on YouTube. And where are the Inans of the World saying, this is immoral, two people voluntarily want to exchange goods, who are you to interfere? Who are you to step in the middle? Who are you to stomp it? What's a taxant? To prevent it, who cares? Where they come from, these people. Remember, trade is done between the individuals. Government's don't trade. Even when a government builds a railroad, or builds a building, it's private contractors building those buildings, and they are buying material from other private contractors. Even if the money is money that was taxed and the money is being spent by a government. All of those people should be free to buy the best products on the best terms for the best win-win relationships possible for them. You know, government deficits, spending deficits matter, trade deficits do not matter. But so we benefit, I mean, our politicians benefit from our ignorance, they benefit from our pseudo patriotism, and they benefit from our general attitude to its coercion, which is it's fine to deploy coercion for the better, for the good of society, for the good of somebody else. You know, it's basically a benefit. This is all altruism, but it's okay to force somebody to do what's good for him. It's okay to force somebody to do something and make the two parties pay more so that some US manufacturer is struggling benefits from it. Why? Because they're American. It reverts back to that. And again, the economic arguments are all wrong, all mercantilist, all being proven a million times. There's almost no economist with anything who thinks that free trade is not the right policy. Unilateral, by the way, free trade. Even Paul Krugman, one is Nobel Prize in Economics for an article advocating for free trade. There's just no economic argument for buy Americans, zero. And that applies even more so to buy local and buy Austin and buy your street. And know what it all does by buying local. It reduces the amount of specialization. It reduces the scope of markets. It reduces our ability to trade. The number of people we trade, the number of specialists they are, it reduces the economies of scale. It takes us back to tribes separated and not allowed to trade with one another or with distances with such where they couldn't. And it gives us the quality of life and standard of living of those tribes. Anytime we restrict an individual's ability to trade with whomever he wants on the best terms that he can provide for himself, negotiated by himself, or in the marketplace. We restrict specialization, we restrict win-win, and we restrict the quality of life, standard of living, and well-being of people in our society. So dump trade local, certainly buy America. I mean, just a simple act that bands, sorry, that eliminates, that overturns. Every single law that required a buy American transaction would go a long way to improving the quality of life in this country and increasing wealth. $100 billion, just like that, just like that. A year. And that's not including that into any consequences, not including the bureaucracy, not including all the rest of it. All right, thanks everybody. Hopefully you enjoyed that, benefited from it. Trade, remember the trade thing, yeah. All right, we've got a bunch of super chat questions we're gonna go to. We have one at $100, and a couple at 50, so we'll start with those, and then we'll do the $20, and then we'll go down from there. We are short of about $300 to meet our goal, so hopefully some of you will be jumping in with other questions or just support. That would be great. If everybody put in right now $3, we'd be where we need to be, but anyway, Clark says, evil is something that is all around us, in the office, on the road, at the gym, at the movie theater, in our families. Always looking for an excuse to unleash itself. I used to think evil was something you read about, that you would never see it up close. No, it is up close. I mean, if the essence of evil is evasion, if the essence of evil is the rejection of reality, even if there are consequences not hooting other people, people committing evil all the time. And of course, we know that other people's evasion is going to hurt you. Their evasion is gonna cause them to do a lousy job, to not drive as well, to be horrible people, to cut corners, to do things that directly hurt you, to support a politician or a cultural movement that is unbelievably destructive to you. So yeah, absolutely, Clark. Just a point that people always make about tariffs. The United States, during its first 100 years, 140 years, was basically funded almost exclusively from tariffs. And people say, look, the United States grew amazingly in spite of the tariffs. So maybe tariffs are good. But this is a good example among a gazillion others of correlation does not make causation. Indeed, you could argue the exact opposite. And I know a lot of economists that argue the opposite. That is that if the United States didn't have tariffs, then it would have grown even faster. And that the United States grew as fast as it did in spite of its tariffs, not because of them. That I think is true of most Southeast Asian countries that had tariffs and trade restrictions in order to promote exports and to shield the local companies from competition. But is that indeed optimal? That is, what that is saying, holding that view is saying, sometimes it's better not to be free. Economy goes faster. But that's a perversion. That is a rejection of Iran's morality of her politics. It's a rejection of the, and it embraces the idea that the model is not the practical. But if tariffs enhance an economy, if that were true, it's not, but if it were true, then that would violate the idea of the model as the practical. But it doesn't. Tariffs are not good for the economy. While they might not destroy an economy in terms of not allowing the US to grow while they grew, it didn't help the economy grow. I would argue it held it back, could have gone even faster. So, you're basically rejecting Iran's morality if you're arguing that something like, well, sometimes government regulations, sometimes government taxes work, because tariffs are taxes. So sometimes you have to tax people. In other words, another way of thinking about this is, sometimes you just have to use force. Sometimes you just have to use coercion. Then you just, you know, you've abandoned principle. You certainly abandoned objectivism. I mean, you embrace pragmatism. Nobody said it's impossible to grow without free trade. It's a hindrance. It's a hindrance. Nobody said it's impossible. The United States, South Korea, Taiwan, lots of countries, examples of having tariffs are still growing. All right, Michael asks, a Russian guy told me, one of the reasons Putin invaded Ukraine was because Ukraine was becoming more Western capitalistic. Standard of living of the people of Ukraine was higher than the cousins in Russia. Putin wanted to shut down that rising tide. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a big reason why Putin invaded Ukraine. It's not so much the material benefit. It's the fact that Ukraine was Westernizing and Russia was not. And he was afraid of having more and more and more Western influences directly on Russia. Remember, a lot of families live partially in Ukraine and partially in Russia. There's a lot of cross, there's a lot of strong close relationships there. There's a lot of personal relationship, business relationships, a lot of cultural relationships between Ukraine were between Ukraine and Russia. And as Ukraine was accelerating, it's moved towards the West and embracing Western ideas, Putin was afraid. Because, you know, this war was a war to logic stand, to maintain his regime and his vision for what Russia is. And Russia, according to his vision, is the anti-West, stands up to the West as a counter to the West. And he did not want the Western virus, the Western infection, the West of Western ideas to be right there on Russia's doorstep. It was bad enough, it's in the Baltics, it's bad enough, it's in Poland, but he did not want it in Ukraine. And yes, and Ukraine was slowly becoming more economically successful than Russia. And that did not please him. And he wanted to end that, you know, the end of the day, Putin wants Ukraine to be part of Russia. Ukraine is part of the motherland, fatherland, part of mother Russia. It's one in, you know, one people, one piece of land, one culture, even if he has to impose it on them by will. And when he talks about denotification, what he's really talking about is eliminating the remnants of Western civilization in Ukraine. He is equivocating between Nazis and the West. Now, we know that's BS, it's evil BS. But that's what he's really talking about. It's about eliminating the influence of the West and Western Ukraine on the East and Eastern Ukraine. I mean, I think Putin would be fine by taking most of Eastern Ukraine and leaving Lviv to the Poles or something. Lviv traditionally was not part of the Russian Empire, whereas Kiev was. Kiev was the heart of it. Kiev was the capital for a while. More ancient than Moscow. All right, we're still about 300 short of a goal, so just reminding people if they want to support the show. James says, it drives me nuts when people say, don't take yourself so seriously. Or I took myself too seriously when I was younger. Why do people declare this so profoundly? Can't, one should obviously take their existence extraordinarily seriously. Yeah, but once you internalize two ideas, one is that you don't have really the capacity to take yourself seriously. The reason is not efficacious and life just happens and you're not in control. So don't be too serious because you're not in control of it anyway. Or they buy into the determinism or they buy into the impotence of reason. Then taking yourself seriously is just a waste of time. It's spinning wheels because you can't achieve anything anyway. And the second is, of course, altruism. Taking yourself seriously means being egoistic, being selfish in some way, in some dimension. And they reject that. Right, the more you take yourself seriously, the more egoistic you are. That's wrong. That's immoral. You're gonna lighten up a little bit. Other people are just as important to you as you are. So think about them as well. Don't think just of yourself. And what do you think you ever, you think you can shape your life. You can think you choose your own values. You can think you can live your life by your own means. Really? You didn't build that. You didn't make that. You don't shape your own soul. You don't shape your own values, your own mind. So that's, I think, the source of it. And yeah, it comes from Kant, but it comes from so many philosophers, almost all modern philosophers. Okay, Ali, haven't seen Ali in a while. Thanks for joining us today, Ali. How can we battle against conformity and engineering? Conformity is the killer of all innovation. I don't see it intact, but I see it a bit of engineering and science, like physics, i.e. airplane, string theory. Well, I mean, the challenge is, the reason conformity you see, particularly let's say in airplane design and in other forms of engineering, is that a big motivation for the conformity beyond the cultural aspects, a big motivation of the conformity is government regulations. Because government regulations force you to comply with what the government expects. And the government isn't innovative. The government regulators aren't pushing the envelope. The government just wants, you know, hear the specs. You have to do it based on the way it's always been done, because that's what we understand. That's what we know. If you propose something new and different, well, that's risky. I don't know. I've never thought of that. How do I judge it? How do I evaluate it? There's this wonderful true story, Frank Lloyd Wright designing a building, an office building. I forget where. I think it's in Wisconsin. It's an office building, the Johnson something, Johnson building. You can find pictures of it on the web. And he designs this new type of column. And which is very narrow at the bottom. And it kind of, it looks like a mushroom. It's very wide at the top. And he's going to build this whole ceiling with these columns. And these are very unusual, innovative, real engineering feats. And if you know Frank Lloyd Wright's story, he studied engineering, not architecture, like Howard Rock. I don't think he, you know, so like Howard Rock, I don't think he completed his degree, but he studied engineering. Anyway, he is going to build this building and they're getting ready and they're pouring concrete and they're getting ready and the regulators come in, the building inspectors come in and say, wait a minute, we've never seen a column like this. We don't believe it can carry the ceiling. You're not allowed to build it. You can't use it. Nope. They were crushing innovation. So, Frank Lloyd Wright does this little exercise for them, he invites them all over and he props up one of these columns. And he starts loading sandbags on top of the column. And he loads them and he loads them and he loads them. And the column holds and he keeps loading them. And the column continues to hold. And it gets to the point where he's just loading these sandbags and the inspectors go, okay, we got it. All right, it's strong enough you can build with it, right? But he had to prove it to them. And that took time and effort and probably they didn't want to come and who knows what strings he had to pull and he was Frank Lloyd Wright, he was pretty famous. And even he had to do something like that. Now today, regulations are a hundred times worse and they are in everything. So if you want to build a new innovative, completely different airplane, well, it's going to take you a long, long time, not only because you're innovating and changing and building and so on, but also because you have to convince all these regulators, all these government bureaucrats that what you're doing is, quote, safe. You're saying, I'm going to kill a bunch of people. And they have small minds. They are very restricted. They have very finite. Look at the nuclear power industry. But it is true that this affects the rest of the culture. And this is, I don't know if I'll leave, if you've read The Fountainhead, but The Fountainhead, this is partially the theme of The Fountainhead. Conformity second handed us. Peter Keating in The Fountainhead represents exactly this mentality. And so many of the characters in the book represents this mentality. Of, it's simpler, it's easier. It's, you know, if you're lazy or if you just want to get along with people, if you don't want to challenge people, you don't want any conflict. If you don't want any difficulty, you just go along, just do what everybody else does. Just do it the way everybody else has done. And, you know, and I think that, unfortunately, that's how our educational system now encourages. It's what our culture encourages. And the only way to real shatter this is to give people, or gain confidence in their own mind, in their own reason, to get the government off people's backs so that they can develop and produce and create without having to get permission. One of the great things about the 19th century is from a business innovative perspective, it was a permission less economy. And that's what you want. Capitalism is permission less. You don't ask for permission. If you do something bad, somebody has to show that it's bad and prove that it's bad. And then there's a court system to penalize you, but you shouldn't be asking for permission. So, yes, and you're starting to see it more in tech as well, more conformity, more of the same, same old, same old rather than new, innovative, brash, great ideas. And for that, you need a real cultural shift. You need that embrace of reason, self-esteem, people need self-esteem to stand by their own ideas, by their own innovations. You need other people to trust other people, again, respect for other people's reason. So you really need a cultural revolution and that requires a philosophical revolution. That's what we do here. That's what we're talking about. All of this is the ultimate, what it leads to is people with greater self-esteem, greater confidence in their own mind, a greater confidence in other people's minds and a free society in which people are encouraged and rewarded for innovating and adding value rather than just mimicking and copying everybody else. All right, Andrew says, $20 to make good on IUU question, you previously answered plus 10 to follow as I mangled that question and we'll ask another, why would it be selfish to pay one's debt if one could get away with not doing so? Well, I mean, it depends on the context, it depends who you owe the debt to. I would say generally it's an issue of integrity. It's not your money, it's a form of stealing. You acknowledge by stealing or by not paying back a debt that you owe, that you can't take care of yourself, that your word is not worth anything, that you don't have integrity, that your honesty is questionable and you're admitting this to yourself even if nobody catches you. So it undermines your own self-esteem, it undermines your own ability to be successful at life. It's basically what it is and what it constitutes. So it's an undermining of your moral principles, it's an undermining of who you are to yourself. This is true of any breach of virtue is it's not about what it does to other people, it's about what it does to you, what it does to the integrity of your mind. You're acknowledging to yourself that you cheat, you lie, which is an acknowledgement to yourself that you live off of other people, you live off of people who supply you with debt and don't get it back, you live off of people by stealing from them. Not through your own productive effort. All right, thank you, Andrew. Martin, what's your thoughts on urban planning and government impact on cities? And most of you, especially the Netherlands, it's a joy to walk a bike, whereas in most U.S., it's a nightmare and could barely survive without a car. I mean, it's a complicated question. I mean, there's a lot that goes into the differences between the U.S. and Europe, but here's a few things. I mean, I think city planning, city planning generally is a violation of rights. Zoning, telling people what they can and cannot do with their own property under the assumption that they bought a property, that they really own the property. To own the property means you get to decide how to use it and how to dispose of it and what to build on it. And as long as you're not violating any other people's rights or as long as you're not violating some contractual obligations, it's none of anybody's business. So generally, I'm against zoning. Now that doesn't mean that you'll get the cities that are best for what you like, Martin, for example. It might not cater to, now what will happen, I believe, is that developers will build developments. Some of, you know, they'll build developments if there's a desire, like yours, to have walkable places and multi-use and you can go down from your condo. If there's value to that, if the population values that, then developers will build those kind of properties, they'll build those kind of communities, and you'll get that. You won't get it maybe in the scent of city, but you'll get that in new cities that arise, new population centers that arise. But if, for example, as many Americans do, Americans can afford big houses. They like, have big cars, they enjoy driving, but they enjoy having a big house with a big yard. And for that, you have to escape from the city and go to the suburbs. Then developers will build that because that is what people want. So a lot of this is dictated by what the market actually wants, what the market actually desires. Now it is perverted again by government. So for example, why did we get suburbia in America? Well, to a large extent we got suburbia in America because government built highways. It built highways not to create suburbs, but these consequences of building the highways and making it very easy for people to commute and to move using a car was the creation of suburbs. So city planning is very interwound with government central planning. I don't think that should exist. So the way American cities evolved is very different than the way European cities evolved because to a large extent, American cities saw their growth spurt during a time where the United States government was spending gazillions of dollars building a highway system and therefore in a sense providing very easy ways for people to go out and live in the suburbs, which also then fit into a baby boom, Americans having lots of kids and wanting to live in a house, not in an apartment and wanting to have a big backyard and therefore wanting to move to the suburbs. So suburbs were a combination of American desire for bigness and a combination of the federal governor Eisenhower building the highway system. But there were a lot of attempts in the US to gentrify the sense of cities and to create mixed use developments and a lot of people in the US live in mixed use developments where they can't walk around and get everything. Walking, some people like that, they go live there, other people like the suburbs and go there. That's the beauty of it, the beauty of it. I think the beauty of American cities is you have options. You can find whatever you want. And in a place like Houston, which has no zoning, I think there is more different types of options, even more different types of living and much, much, much, much lower cost of living so that you can afford a lot more. All right, oh God, PB says, what is your opinion of Andrew Bernstein and the publication called the Objective Standard? They have a conference in June in my hometown, worth engaging. Look, I try not to comment on other objectives in publications and intellectuals. If you do a little bit of research, you'll know that I have a big falling out with the Objective Standard. I was there at the beginning, in many respects, I would say that I helped shape the journal at the beginning, but I and none of my friends, if you will, none of my colleagues have published there since 2010, I think, and there are reasons for that, which I don't see any reason in this context to go into. So I do not approve of it. I do not approve of the people running it, organizing it, funding it. So what you do is up to you, examine, evaluate, and make your own choices. So that's my view of the Objective Standard. It's generally negative, but for reasons that I'm not, reasons if you want, you can go look it up and all the arguments and so on, but I don't want to get into it and you should make an evaluation about whether you think it's worth it for your life or not. I would suggest that if you're really interested in Objectivism, if you're interested in the Objectivist ideas, then OCON is a far better conference and you'll get a lot more out of it, which is the OCON is Objectivist conferences that the Einstein Institute puts on. And this year it's over the July 4th weekend in Miami. It's longer than a weekend, but it includes the July 4th weekend. Liam, in Eastern Europe, like South America, having a hard time with the Enlightenment because both cultures actually take Catholicism seriously. To some extent, I don't know that Eastern Europe is having as big of a hard time as with the Enlightenment. I mean, in many respects, places like the Baltics, Czech Republic, some other places are having a wonderful time with the Enlightenment ideas. I think Catholicism has something to do with it, but I also think that in Latin America in particular, it has a lot to do with the popularity and influence of continental philosophy. I think the more removed you get from British influence, from the influence of the Anglo-Saxon world, from the influence of the English and Scottish Enlightenment, the more difficulty you have with the Enlightenment. So Eastern Europe is much more influenced by Germany than it is from England, or much more influenced by German thinkers. And that's certainly true of Latin America. Latin America has been dominated from the beginning by intellectuals and academics who were influenced by the Germans. So you get that German continental philosophy dominating in Latin America with no real opening for the Enlightenment. Places that had, I think places that had some influence of the Brits, whether through colonization or just culturally, have done a lot better because they were exposed to the British and Scottish Enlightenment in ways that other places were not. But I'm not so pessimistic about Eastern Europe. In many ways, Eastern Europe's doing better than Western Europe. Hopper Campbell, in your lifetime, will you see objectivism not change the culture but become a force, an intellectual player that cannot be ignored? How would you consider that a victory? Would you consider that a victory? Yeah, I would definitely consider that a victory. If it was an intellectual player that cannot be ignored, I would consider it a victory. But it seems like as optimistic as I like to be and every time I make predictions about these things and oh, in 20 years, it seems to keep moving forward. It keeps escaping my grasp. So will it be that in my lifetime? I hope so, but I also hope to have a very long lifetime. But it's hard to be optimistic given that I thought that 20 years ago, that in 20, 30 years, it'll be a force and it hasn't happened yet. So 20, 30 years go by very quickly and I just don't see it. There's just not enough of us. There's just, I mean, look at, the Iran book show is a good example. It's just not big enough. It's not influential enough. It isn't capturing hearts and minds enough. And I'm the biggest show in objectivism. So extrapolate from that what you will. Iran's books are still selling but they're not selling more. You're not seeing more influence. You're seeing about the same. So that is, I find it difficult to project into the future at the rate at which we are now growing, at the rate we're growing. Wes, thank you, $50. That's very generous. Fred Hopper, thank you. Daniel, thank you. Volta, thank you. I appreciate all of your support. And William, wind him in the back. All of your support that came in without asking a question. Colt, thank you, Colt. Okay, PB asks, please provide a couple of detailed examples that demonstrate tangible wealth creation by trading transactions. Explain where the stuff comes from. I need help to explain this mechanism to others. I mean, the stuff doesn't come from anywhere. The wealth is created through the fact that you have a value that is more important to you. I mean, I give my iPhone often as an example to this. I paid $1,000 for the iPhone. But the iPhone constitutes in terms of improvement in my life and in terms of the value I get from it, far more than $1,000. There's the wealth. My life is better. How is it better? It's better because I can read a bedtime story for my kids by video at a cost of zero post iPhone, I couldn't do that before iPhone. It's better because I don't have to use a physical map to guide me, to take me everywhere. It's better because I spend a lot less money on other things because it's all in this one phone and therefore I probably saved, it saves me much more than $1,000 just having it. So it makes my life better. It's made me wealthier in that sense. Not in a sense that you can measure directly monetarily, but in the sense that it's improved my life and it's made me richer because I don't buy maps, I don't buy a million different things that add up to a lot more than $1,000. Then I don't buy music. Think of all the music you used to buy. Now you just have a service. You pay one fee a month and you have unlimited music. That's created wealth in a sense that you spend a lot less than you used on music and you consume just as much if not more. The marginal cost of another song or another symphony is zero and take that every single trade you make. Your life is just a little bit better and by making it a little bit better, you've created something that didn't exist before. So think about this. So here's a, if you want to monitor your wealth, right? Apple took all this other parts that go into an iPhone. I don't know how much they cost. They cost less than $1,000. They cost, let's say, $300. And then they paid people, all the people that went into producing the iPhone from the designers to the programmers to the people just assemble it. And maybe that's another $200. And yet I'm willing to pay $1,000. We just created, for Apple, $500 worth of wealth in monetary terms. And we've created, for me, massive amounts of wealth, tens of thousands of dollars of wealth in non-monetary wealth, non-monetary source. Win-win, we both won. We both benefited. Jack says, hello, fellow objectivist. Just saw that I could send this. Ha-ha, thank you, Iran, for everything you do. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Jack. Appreciate you being a member of the show. He was sending a message through the membership feature. Gail, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. We just need like three bucks when everybody's watching right now and we would make our numbers. All right, two last questions. And then we'll call it a day. At some point I have to go here and get some dinner and then catch a flight. Apollo Zeus says, because of philosophy of evolution is gradual and we currently live in a mixed premise society, this should be phased out gradually. How does this apply to initiation of force in the meantime? Well, in the meantime, the scent of initiation of force that exists as we phase things out is the fault of the bad ideas, the bad philosophy, the bad people who imposed it of the past. This is part of the theory of phasing out tomorrow. Okay, so this is one question. I see. So it's inevitable that when people do bad things, there are bad consequences. One of the bad consequences of all the government policies that we have today, all the regulations, all the controls, all the interventions is that we can't just get rid of them that they're gonna have to be phased out and that means that phasing out during that phase up period, we're gonna have to violate rights, continue to violate rights. And this is again the sense in which rights violation are, they are awful in that they have long tails. They have huge influence over long periods of time. But there's no way around that. That's just part of reality. And it's part of getting rid of them is the fact that to get rid of them takes time. And it's a phase. But the fault lies with those who put them in place, not with those trying to get rid of them. Frank says, did you ever read grapes of wrath? Yes, why I should care about these people, low skill workers who leave to go to California, pick food? I mean, it's not the most entertaining story. It's not the most interesting story. The main reason I think to read it and to care about it, I mean, it is well written, if you will. He's a good writer per se. But is to understand the, today, the reason to read it is to understand the perspective of kind of an American socialist. I mean, this is one of the books, Steinbeck was a real socialist. And he was one of the popularizers of socialism in America. You know, and part of that was to depict the hard lives of manual laborers and part of it to depict the injustice and the difficulties of their lives. And to understand kind of where the left is coming from, an economic level at least, I think authors like Steinbeck provide an important guide to what it looks like. What were the influences on people to get them to the kind of economic ideas that they carry today? And I think the fact that everybody reads them in school and everybody's sympathetic to these characters is one of the reasons where we have so much sympathy towards these leftist economic ideas. Novels have a real power to convey ideas. They have a real power to convey certain values. They have a real power to shape a culture. And grapes of wrath is a good example of that. Thanks, Frank. All right, we are $250 short of our goal for today. So unless somebody just jumps in and gets us there, we'll have to live with that, which is unfortunate. I was hoping we could get our goal. That would be good given that I'm going into a period where I don't know how many of you will be able to listen to live shows while I'm on the road and therefore how much super chat we're gonna be doing in the weeks ahead. So I was hoping that end with a bit of a banks, but so be it. Let's see, what do I wanna tell you? Those of you who'd like to support the show on a regular basis, one of the best way to do that is on Patreon, a subscribe star. I've seen a good, nice increase on Patreon subscribers. So I'd like that to continue. If you're not yet a supporter, particularly those who don't participate live and do not do the super chat, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon, value for value. We talked about trade today and the value of trade to both parties. I'm doing these, I'm producing these shows. You guys consume them. Shouldn't you be paying something for that consumption? It's voluntary, but the trader principle would suggest that you should, and you can do that at Patreon, subscribe star and then you're on bookshow.com slash surprise. Subscribe, not surprise, subscribe. Okay, Andrew says, why did you think the great libertarian economist of Randstein ignored or denied her premises to economics rest on morality? Well, because that would have suggested to them that they had to challenge their morality and that that was a level of thinking that an area they didn't wanna go to, they didn't wanna reach. Also, economics, both Austrian and Chicago school have this tendency, but they believe that once you understand economics, you don't mean morality. The economics explains everything. And so there's a real hubris there of, what do we need morality for? Look, everything, and this is Mises with this prexology. We just need to understand human action and he is it all laid out, but and Mises appreciated Rand and what she had to say and yet you rejected philosophy, qua philosophy and rejected her philosophy because he thought his was better because he didn't think you really needed one as a separate field. You know, I think they were revolutionary theories that the reality is that most people out there, most geniuses out there, never mind most people out there, can only innovate in a field in one field, can only be really radical and different and new in one field. And they were already fighting this big battle in economics and they were already incredibly radical and incredibly pushing the envelope in one field and they didn't want to go up against all the economist friends who were sympathetic or religious or who were Kantian and indeed Mises was to some extent a Kantian and so one thing at a time and I didn't think, I don't think they could really get their mind around it around how conventional they were when it came to morality and when it came to philosophy. So many of them understood that economics rests on morality like Hazlet but then Hazlet writes a book about the moral basis of capitalism. This is after he's nose I ran and he bases it all on altruism and Mises writes his pexology and so it's complicated. People are, you know, because you had to embrace a whole new system and they weren't ready to do that for whatever reason. All right, thank you, Andrew. What was I saying? Monthly contributions, that's good. As I said, next week, we're gonna be playing it by the next two weeks, we're gonna be playing it by ear. I'll be back on the sixth, so the first regular show. Again, we'll be on the seventh of March until then basically, Pierre, wow, thank you. $50, really appreciate that, helping make a dent in that deficit towards the target. Until then, as I said, I'll be on the road and doing these shows when I can. Daniel says, you mentioned Mises was in part a Kantian. What are the biggest epistemological problems with Mises' pexology? Well, basically that it is, you know, I haven't read pexology in a long time but even his economics, even the stuff he writes and economics, there is a real tendency to be very, what do you call it, deductive. And to assume that you can deduce everything from first principles. And there's a certain detachment from reality and a certain detachment from inductive knowledge, from using induction for these purposes. So I'd say that is true of his pexology. But also I think the pexology just doesn't go deep enough. It doesn't have a metaethics. It doesn't have any of, you know, it again starts with a certain axiom from his perspective which is not really an axiom and then deduces everything. But the axiom is not true. And then you can't deduce all the philosophy. You can deduce everything. You have to induce, and Invan's philosophy is fundamentally induction. All new knowledge is fundamentally inductive. Even Mises' knowledge is fundamentally inductive. Even when he presented it as deductive, it's inductive. He couldn't have come to it any other way. Frederick Sebastian Olson says, looking forward to seeing you in Uppsala. Cool, well it's gonna be cold. It will be cool. But it's cool that there's somebody who knows me, who's on the super chat and over here. And I look forward to seeing you, Frederick. We'll see you in Uppsala. I've never been to Uppsala. I've been to Stockholm, which is not that far away. But I've never been to Uppsala. So I'm looking forward to that. All right, everybody, I will see you all when I see you on the road somewhere. Maybe tomorrow, when I get to London, I have the energy, I have the time. I'll try to do a show for my hotel room. Maybe Monday, but if I do a Monday, it'll be very early in the morning for you guys. So I won't see many of you. I might see some of the Europeans. So we're just gonna have to, as I said, play it by ear and see when I can do.