 principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday. Well, it's night over here. I'm not sure where you guys are. Let's see. I don't think we have any duplication. Alright. Cool, hopefully everybody's doing well. As you know, when I'm on the road and I'm in Barcelona today, overlooking, it's beautiful here. I'm sitting at the desk and overlooking the marina here and the Mediterranean Sea. I always get sentimental when I'm overlooking the Mediterranean Sea just because that's the sea I grew up with. But yeah, it's beautiful here. It's a beautiful hotel, beautiful city. However, it's always a question mark when we do these shows on the road as to the internet quality and whether it's sustainable and whether we get cut off or whatever. So have patience with me. We're always trying these things out. We're always experimenting. But have patience and hopefully we'll be able to put in a complete show without any technical problems. It seems like that would be unusual. But let's hope that actually works. Let's see. I think there's some reason. I feel like I'm too close to the camera. Am I too close to the camera, guys? I don't think I can move the camera maybe an inch back. Half an inch back. Maybe that's a little better. So we are, as I said, I'm in Barcelona. For the next couple of weeks, I'll be moving around Europe. So you'll have the opportunity to experience the on-book show from a number of different locations. Hopefully, as I said before, the internet holds up and we have great connection no matter where we go. So we will see. But hopefully you guys stick with us and stay patient. All right, today about Solona. Let's see. Tomorrow we'll be in Valencia. Not tomorrow, but Monday we'll be in Valencia and then Rome and then Amsterdam and then back home. So next two weeks, going to be bouncing around. But I will try to do as many shows as I can. There will be off hours, obviously. There won't be a regular schedule. I will try to fit them in whenever I see. Hey, John, it's great to see you. You haven't been on live in a long time. That I know of, at least. But we really appreciate the $50. Thank you. Anyway, so in Barcelona, great food in Spain, a favorite food place in the world. So some fantastic restaurants here. I'm staying in a beautiful hotel. So that's really good. As you know, I was in Israel for nine days. And we talked about Israel. I gave you an update. As kind of news comes out of Israel, we'll fill you in on what's happening with the judiciary and what's happening with the will of law in Israel and what's happening with Israel more broadly. So we'll do that. No need to jump into that right now. Today, what I want to do is catch you up on the news or catch me up on the news or catch us on the news. So we're going to do a bunch of news items. And of course, I'll answer your questions and we'll go as long as we need to go. We'll go as long as you guys want. So I don't think we have any real challenges here in terms of going forward. All right, let's see. I mean, the first item, obviously in the news today is an item equal to reality is bringing up. And he says, would you mind saying a few words about the new king, new British king? Yeah. I was actually planning on saying a few words about the new British king. It might not be words you guys want to hear. And I think I'll have to censor myself. But what the hell? We live in the 21st century. We live in the age of iPhones and CRISPR gene editing and in an age of unbelievable wealth and progress and science and technology. And hundreds of thousands of people are lining up the street to welcome a king. We have kings or queens. I think the whole institution of monarchy is despicable. It should have been trashed in 1776. The British should have engaged in an uprising against their own monarchy to get rid of them. Basically, I view the monarchy as leeches and parasites. This is a family that has done nothing productive, creates nothing of value, adds nothing to anybody else's well-being. They're parasites on the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. They own palaces, like several of them. They're billionaires. What have they done to earn any of that? The great-great-grandfather stole it all? I think it's a corrupt institution. I think it's a primitive institution. I think it should be gone, gone, gone, gone. I'd say the same thing of all the aristocrats, all the fancy titles and fancy names and snubby noses and House of Lords and whatever. House of Lords is fine if you attain membership in the House of Lords and merit through something you did, through some achievement. Fine, but to have heritability associated with that, because you are knighted, your kids are somehow better, or superior is absurd and ridiculous. Anyway, it really is time for the British to get rid of these monarchs. They do nothing but provide fodder for the gossip newspapers. They've done nothing but, I don't know, embarrassed Britain. Anyway, the whole thing is nutty and quite disturbing. I saw pictures of King Charles III. What happened to Charles II? Wasn't Charles II deposed because he was like a Catholic? Isn't that when William of Orange came and kicked him out and threw him over the channel to France? You're named after a loser king. So, he is Charles, who happened to be born to Queen Elizabeth. What gives him any ways this funny big hat? And then Camilla next to him with her big hat? Yeah, I mean, I think I've said what I want to say. I don't like it. I didn't like it when Elizabeth the Queen had a certain... I don't really have any respect for Elizabeth. I watched that show The Crown. I don't know if you guys ever watched The Crown. Everybody reeled about how wonderful it was. And I watched the show The Crown. I found it most of the time boring. The best part about The Crown was the interaction with Churchill. Now, Churchill is somebody interesting. Churchill is somebody I'm willing to watch a whole TV series about. Fascinating. So, the most interesting part was the post-war stuff, with Churchill and switching governments and the politics of it. But Queen Elizabeth was basically a woman who put her own life to the side, basically engaged in massive sacrifice for the sake of, I don't know what, it's not like the British people needed her, so it's not like she even sacrificed for her. For some mythological thing called the monarchy and tradition, her husband, again, a complete sacrificer, compromise, didn't live the life you wanted to live. Neither of them really lived the lives they wanted to live. She never thought she would become Queen. She became Queen only because her father's brother abdicated. So, they lived compromised, sad, unhappy, and altruistic lives, living for others. The symbols of what we really shouldn't have. And yes, she lived what might be considered an interesting life, only because she lived so long and so, so much happened, and she got to interact with prime ministers and was engaged somewhat in the politics of England. But the politics was interesting, not her and not anything she contributed to them. So, I'm very negative on monarchy. I'm very negative on aristocrats. I'm negative on monarchy everywhere. I really, really think in the 21st century we shouldn't have kings and queens and princes and princes this and princes that and books and deals and gossip and all that. I think it's absurd. But it really, the obsession of people with this really shows, okay, so here's the big thought for today, right? Human beings in the West, in the rest of the world it's even less. But humanity in the West has only been really free for about 250 years and much of those people even less than that because maybe it's only 150 years and even those 150 years were mired by massive world wars and all kinds of other stuff. So, the experience of actual freedom, the experience of individuals living free, the experience of individuals actually using their minds to shape their world, to choose their values, to pursue their lives in, let's call it, semi-freedom is truly a great exception. And it's a young phenomena. And human beings, we're just not, it's too early, we're just not quite ready for it, we're just not quite embraced it. And we're still looking, people out there are still looking for authority figures for people outside of themselves to consume their time with and to worry about and to think about. This is why I think it's so easy to imagine the world returning to authoritarianism because people seem to, in some part of their consciousness wanted, some part of their mind wanted, they seem attracted to it, they seem attracted to personality worship. And I think we're seeing that, just a little bit of that with the British obsession with their own world family. Even though I don't think, I know the British don't want their world family and their political power, they still want them for something, for something that they can't really name, tradition, stability. But it's not the kings and queens that bring stability, it's the British people, it's the elections, it's the transition of power done peacefully. That's what brings the stability, not having a kingdom. So the thought is, and Lenin Picov said this years ago, it's a hard concept to understand, but it's like, human society's not quite ready for liberty, it's not quite ready to live as individuals based on one's own reason in pursuit of one's own values. That way of life just hasn't built up enough traction and enough understanding. It isn't modeled properly, it isn't taught, it isn't educated. None of these things are in the culture. So again, we live in a world right now that's holding on, I don't know, desperately to the enlightenment, to these ideas of individualism, the ideas of reason and political freedom. And yet so much of the world and so much of humanity is still caught up in kind of a romanticization of the pre-enlightenment world and a longing to return to it. And of course, I'm talking about the West where freedom is 250 years old, but what do you do with Asia, which has never really felt freedom and the places that have, let's say Korea and Japan and Taiwan, and what is it, 40, 50 years? Japan a little longer, but that's it. It really is a new phenomena that as a species we're still learning how to manage our own independence, how to manage liberty, how to manage freedom, how to figure it all out and know what it means really. And I think this adoration of monarchy is a leftover visage of that pre-enlightenment mentality that unfortunately people still have. All right. Shasbat says, it would take Shasbat to raise this up. Shasbat says Barcelona is the home of Manuel from Faulty Towers. I wonder if he has considered a hero there. I don't know, that would be really interesting. He certainly is one of the great comedic characters. It says almost nothing, but in Faulty Towers except I know nothing constantly. If you guys haven't watched Faulty Towers, I highly recommend it. One of the greatest comedic shows ever. John Cleese after Monty Python and Manuel who plays the, John Cleese runs it with his wife. He runs a hotel in England and Manuel is the waiter and just generally the guy who, you know, they ask to get stuff done. He doesn't speak in English. He's from Barcelona and it is truly one of the great, great comedies of all time. So Faulty Towers, I can't remember if there's one or two seasons of it but you can probably find it. It was a BBC show from the 1970s? I think 70s. I think it'll stand up to the Monty Times. I think it's worth watching it now to see if it stands the test of time. I think it will. Okay, so that was the big one. I did want to say something about the Monarchy. Got that off your chest. That's good. Let's see a few other things. You know, this is testing something out. I want to say something quick about banks. I'm not going to talk about the bank crisis that's on right now. I'll do that on a separate show and it's still ongoing and we'll see exactly what happens and how it all plays out. But I wanted to give you a perspective on the bank crisis and maybe a perspective on one long-term solution to it, a long-term solution that I've been advocate for for a very long time. But I looked at the world's 100 largest banks. So the 100 largest banks in the world. And I actually have in front of me the top 30 banks. And this is based on, I'm pretty sure this is based on assets. Yes, this is based on assets. I don't know how different this list would be if it was based on market cap. But to the point, market cap being market capitalization. But to the point I want to make, it doesn't really matter for that. So if you look at the list of the 30 largest banks in the world, you would expect, given the relative size of the economies, you would expect that the United States would dominate this list. In the other category, when you look at the biggest businesses in the world, the most profitable businesses in the world, the largest businesses in the world, the U.S. dominates those list. Not necessarily do they have the number one or number two, but they have a significant number of companies that appear in the list. I don't have with me just the general largest companies in the world list, but maybe the Saudi oil company ranks high. But Apple, Microsoft, and many others are going to rank high. All companies, all kinds of America, Walmart, retailers, a lot of American companies are going to make the list. And that's not true in banking. One of the, I've argued for many years and I've argued on this show, one of the problems with the American banking system, one of the many problems with the American banking system is we don't have enough big banks. Now this goes counter to the Biden administration. It goes counter to almost all administrations thinking about this. But what the United States clearly needs is more very, very large national banks that are diversified geographically, diversified across industry, diversified in the kinds of loans they make, diversified in the deposit base, diversified generally in the source of capital. Banks that can raise capital on a global scale, they can raise additional capital when needed. We need more banks like JP Morgan Chase. If you look at the top 30 banks, the first four are all Chinese. Then you get the first number five is JP Morgan Chase. After that is a Japanese bank. After that is Bank of America. Then it's a UK bank, two French banks, another US bank, two Japanese bank, a Chinese bank, a Japanese bank. Then it's Wells Fargo. Then you get a UK bank, Chinese bank, a Spanish bank. Spanish bank, other than four banks, Banco Santadar is bigger than all American banks except the top four. JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo. If you look at this list, France has as many banks, France, which has a GDP that is tiny as compared to the United States. France has as many banks and the top 30 banks as the United States. Japan has the same number of banks as the United States. China has more, significantly more. Even Canada has a bank in the top 30, even though Canada is much smaller than the US. The UK has a couple of banks in the list. What the US needs is a lot more bigger banks. What the US needs is lots more consolidation in the banking system and not just consolidation of small banks, but consolidation of small banks into bigger banks into bigger banks into even bigger banks and big banks into mega banks. What we need is diverse, big, and I think as a consequence, much safer, much more competitive on an international scale, banks. Until we really get that, our banking system is going to be in trouble. It's very susceptible to things that happen locally in small regions. Jonathan, thank you, really appreciate the support. Banks have specialized, like Silicon Valley Bank, and they are very, very attuned to their local community. But of course, if there's a problem in the local community, it's a mess because they're not diversified. They don't have other sources. If loans go bad, they don't have other places geographically where loans might be going well. If people are withdrawing deposits in a particular geographic area, again, lack of diversification. So, yes, one clear, easy, straightforward, and there's always been the solution. I'll just give you this stat. Again, I've mentioned it before in the show. Over the last 250 years, the United States has had this massively fragmented banking system. Lots of small banks. Canada, on the other hand, has had a very concentrated banking system, a geographically diversified and few but very large banks. Canada, the United States during this period has had, I guess, with this crisis, 13 bank crises. 13 bank crises. Canada, zero. Canada has never had a bank crisis. Now, Canada also had better free banking than the United States. It had a better system of free banking in the 19th century, early 20th century. Canada also has introduced a central bank later than the United States. The United States is 1914. Canada, I think, is in the 40s or 50s, so relatively late. So, yes, here is one area. One. There are not many. One area in which the United States could learn something from Canada. Oh, here's another thing. It just occurred to me because I was reading about it in the news today. It just occurred to me that Justin Trudeau, in an interview, just in a conversation he was having the premier of Germany at some university on a stage. They were kind of having a chit-chat interview. Justin Trudeau actually said that what Canada needs and what he sees in the future of Canada is 10 years from now he sees Canada having invested significantly in nuclear power plants and he sees Canada having several small nuclear power plants. And the nuclear would be a significant source of energy in the Canadian mix, if you will. So that's Justin Trudeau speaking next to the premier of Germany who just insanely shut down three nuclear power plants. So Justin Trudeau, one of the worst politicians out there, one of the worst human beings maybe, suddenly a leftist authoritarian type gets it on nuclear power where the Germans don't. You have to give credit when credit's due even when people you despise do something right. You have to give them credit. It happens once in a while. Alright, so we talked about banks. Alright, let's talk about, huh, why didn't this link work? Let me just try, I'm going to try to make sure this link. This is an amazing story out of Chicago. I talked before about the CFPB, the CFPB which is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is Elizabeth Warren's baby. This is an organization, a federal agency, a federal bureaucracy regulatory agency established by the Dodd-Frank, the law Dodd-Frank. Elizabeth Warren wanted and tried to be the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It was her ideas and academic and she made sure it passed. Congress, the Senate wouldn't approve her. So she had one of her cronies take command of it. Anyway, the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau has now sued Townstone Financial, a small Chicago area non-bank mortgage firm. So this is a firm that gives out mortgages. And it sued them for statements that were made on a podcast, a podcast by Barry Sterner who is the owner of Townstone. And on the podcast, he made statements that would discourage African American prospective applicants from applying for mortgage loans. What were the statements that he made? Again, these are statements that would discourage them from, let's see. And this is, it's him, other company officials all made statements on the Townstone Financial show, which is, I guess, a podcast, a radio program and a podcast. And again, these would discourage prospective applicants on the basis of race from applying for credit. So I thought when I read this, okay, so what he's probably done is he's a racist and he said some really awful racist things on the show. I mean, even then, it's a podcast. I don't see if the CFPB can sue him over that. Maybe under the Equal Opportunities Act, the Equal Credit Opportunities Act that was passed, they can do this. But no, but it's not even that. It's not even that the guys are racist. What did the guy say? The guy said that South Chicago, the neighborhoods in South Chicago were awful, crime-ridden, that they were overflowing with hoodlums, can't say hoodlums, that when you go to those areas, you drive very fast through them, you don't slow down. He also said that you don't look at anybody or lock on anyone's eyes. Now, South Side of Chicago is super violent. It's one of the most violent places in the country. Chicago, generally, is a very violent city. And yes, these places are primarily black, but they're violent. And it is one of the most violent neighborhoods in the entire city. And I guess it's not just South Chicago, but it's also the West Side neighborhood. And these talk show hosts on the podcast, they were pointing this out. They were pointing this out. Now, how can this be considered, I don't know, a violation of the law? At the very least, you would think that this would be protected under the First Amendment. This speech under the First Amendment. You have a right to hold views. Now, as it happens, these particular views are just factual. Are they hoodlums in the South Side of Chicago? Oh, yeah. Is there a lot of violence in the South Side of Chicago? Yeah. Do you ever happen to be in the South Side of Chicago? Do you drive really, really fast to the neighborhoods? Yeah, probably. And is it probably not a good idea to luck eyes with people? Yeah, probably, because of the violence. The fact that these are majority black and majority African-American neighborhoods, that has nothing to do with it. It's just the crime statistics. The accusation is that by saying this, he is, I don't know, what's he doing? He's discouraging people in those neighborhoods from applying for a mortgage. I don't see how. I mean, one of the realities is that a lot of banks probably are hesitant to give mortgages in these areas other than as part of the Community Reinvestment Act, which forces them to do so, because, you know, home values in these neighborhoods are not particularly stable and because of kind of the violence and the awful condition in which these neighborhoods are in. And by the way, the fact that the South Side of Chicago is violent is, again, a fact. But more than a fact, the current mayor of Chicago, the new mayor of Chicago, you know, Mr. Johnson, who's the new mayor of Chicago, right, Brandon Johnson. Brandon Johnson described Austin, the West Side neighborhood, as one of the most violent neighborhoods in the entire city. I don't think he should be mayor if he dares describe a neighborhood as being violent, which of course it is. So this is just insane. CFPB, I think, is an unconstitutional entity. I'm hoping the Supreme Court rules. I think there is a ruling coming over the CFPB and I hope they rule it unconstitutional. I certainly think it is. A CFPB, whether it's constitutional or not, is one of the most evil institutions we have. It is, I think I've told you this, that it doesn't get its funding from Congress. It's not accountable to Congress. The head is appointed by the president, but it's funding. It's funding. All the money to run it comes from the Federal Reserve. So it does not get a budget from Congress. It basically has no boss. It basically has no limitations on the purse strings. It is completely can do what it wants. And this is an example where it's clearly violating, I think this is the First Amendment case. I don't see how this can qualify as discrimination. They did nothing. How this could be a violation of the Equal Credit Opportunities Act. If it is, then the Equal Opportunities Credit Act, which I'm sure it is, the Equal Credit Opportunities Act, just by the name. I'm sure it's a terrible bill. But it's even more terrible if this disqualifies you. And if it is, then it's a contradiction of First Amendment and the whole law should be thrown out. The whole law should be thrown out. It gives you a little flavor of what is going on. I mean, Chicago, there's a good article today I read about Chicago. Chicago is a complete and utter basket case. It's getting worse by the minute. You know, this city has four big pensions, but it has many other small pensions that are kind of hidden and not on the books. And all the pensions are underfunded, which means they can't pay out what they promised. But I kept afloat with taxpayer money. Fewer and fewer taxpayers, because a lot of wealthy people are leaving Chicago, and a lot of businesses are leaving Chicago. So Chicago is desperately trying to raise taxes on anything and everything and raise this tax and that tax. They're desperate for revenue and finding revenue any way that they can. And that's what's been going on. But Chicago is a completely bankrupt city. It's just a matter of time before that manifests itself. It keeps cutting costs on everything so that it could keep funding its pension system because who holds the political power in Chicago? The political power is completely held by the unions, primarily the teachers' union. You could see that in the last elections where the guy from the teachers' unions came from behind to win, even though his opponent ran on a crime platform getting rid of crime. You know when Chicago is riddled with crime, you think that would have been a winning proposition? Both Democrats, by the way. No, the teachers' union guy won even though he's clearly and explicitly soft on crime. Chicago is a complete and utter basket case. Every time you read a story about it, it just seems worse and worse. All right, just to remind everybody of the nature of the Iran Book Show, which is I offer this show for free. And what I ask you is to either contribute monthly to support the show on Patreon or SubscribeStar or PayPal, IranBookShow.com. You can do it there. So that's one way in which you can show support and keep the show going and fund the show. You guys do fund the show. This show exists because you provide the money to allow me to devote the time to do the show. Without your money, I couldn't do the show. I'd have to find something else to do. And of course, the other way is through Super Chat. You can ask questions. You just contribute money like Jonathan did before with a sticker. And we have targets. And again, those targets are calibrated to make the pay. And as I said before, it's just a value for value. Again, I offer them free. I put them up as podcasts. I put them up on YouTube. You can watch them live. You can watch them after a fact. All I ask in return is a monthly contribution or a Super Chat contribution or both. Even better. And we've done very well. And given the number of subscribers I have, I think the income coming in from this is respectable. But the Super Chat is important. It's also an immediate feedback mechanism to tell me that what I am doing is value to you. Because it's how you showing me that it's a value to you. All right. So thank you for all the Super Chatters. We have about a $450 still to raise to get to our target of $650. So just keep that in mind if you'd like. Maybe what we should do is see if you guys can do $20 questions instead of $5 and $10 questions that will make it easier to get to our target. All right. Let's see. What was I looking at here? All right. Yes. Next news story. Yeah. A few updates from Russia. I mean the last couple of days. Wow. No yet counter offensive by the Ukrainians. So we haven't seen that. It's anticipated later in May. So I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of May we saw a significant move on the front by the Ukrainians. Against the Russian forces. I think Russia continues to flounder on the battlefield. Continues not quite to know what it's doing. I thought this was a pretty funny story that came out I think yesterday. Well yesterday the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group put out a couple of videos. And in one of the videos he announced that his forces are going to retreat from Bakhmut. And he was just swearing constantly. And in the background he was standing in a field. And in the background the field was filled with corpses, corpses of Russian soldiers. This is Prigozin who was the owner and head of the Wagner Group. And there were just these corpses lying on the ground behind him. And he's just calling the Russian military commanders, the defense minister, the chief of the general staff. He's calling them scumbags. He said they would rot in hell. They would burn in hell. He argued that they had not provided the Wagner Group with ammunition. And as a consequence he was abandoning Bakhmut. He was leaving. Now it turns out today he came out with a different video. And he said he's not leaving, but he is leaving, but he's planning to hand over his Bakhmut positions to the Chechen forces under the command of the leader of the Chechen Republic, the dictator of the Chechen Republic, a brutal guy. And that's what he's doing. But he continued to call the Russian defense minister and the chief of the general staff just names and just horror. And in the meantime, again surrounded by these body bags, he said all these corpses are their fault. They didn't provide enough ammunition. They didn't allow him to win. He could have taken Bakhmut a long time ago. They didn't allow him to take Bakhmut. So it seems like in Russia there's this real upheaval, real confusion, real fighting going on internally between different elements within the Kremlin. I mean the only way the guy can get away with calling these senior officials, get away with calling them and the names that he's calling them is because he's very close to Putin. So as the defense minister says, you have to wonder Putin's kind of playing them both against each other. Who knows what's going on there, but it really does seem like it's just a complete disaster there. Everybody's kind of waiting to see what the Ukrainians are going to do. In the meantime, we've seen a number of attacks inside Russia. So a number of rail lines have been destroyed. A number of oil facilities have been bombed. So there have been explosions in a number of different places. There was also that weird video of a couple of drones supposedly being shot down above the Kremlin where the Russians claimed that it was a Ukrainian attempt to assassinate Putin, which seems completely nutty, completely nutty to me. Probably a couple of kids playing with their drones and they got them shot off over the Kremlin. So that is interesting. They've been car blasts. They've been bombings. So it looks like for whatever reason Ukraine has become very active in the background, maybe to try to block the means by which the Russians could reinforce. A particular sector, if the Ukrainians are going to attack that sector, we will see. But the Ukrainians now have significant numbers of Western tanks. I think they have 200, maybe 250 Western tanks, Leopard tanks, British tanks, some Swedish tanks. They have been trained by Western forces on their use. They have other weapon systems that they've gained from the West that they have been trained on their use. We'll talk about one of them in a minute. And they're basically getting ready to move and we will see what that movement looks like and where they plan to attack and what they plan to do exactly. But I still hold what I've held since the beginning of this war that Russia is much, much weaker than people expect. Russia is overwhelming force. It has numbers, but it has awful strategy, awful weapon systems, unmotivated soldiers. And that has taken a massive toll on the Russian military to date. And even though Russia occupies Ukrainian land, Russia is in a position still to lose this war. And Ukraine, I think, is in a position to regain their lost land over time. And what happens in the next couple of months is going to be key. It's going to be really crucial if Ukraine wants to win this. I think the next couple of months are going to be very crucial to that victory. We will see how that ultimately plays out. But yes, I will be giving, once the counter offense of the Ukrainian starts, I'll be giving many more updates and we'll use maps and we'll do it the way we did it originally. I'll show you what's going on live. Well, not live, but as it happens, as it happens up there. Let's see. I've got one other little problem here, which is weird. Give me a second. I know I'm going to be in the dark for a little bit. All right, let's see if that'll work. All right, let's see. Where was I? Yes, so that's kind of an update quickly. One other update, which I think is quite interesting and important because it has much wider implications and this is one. And I apologize for the new setting, which is much darker, but we'll survive. This one is really interesting because it has manifestations or it has implications on a much larger front. According to Ukrainian Air Force or if defense authorities, the people in Kiev responsible for air defense, they claimed on Saturday, Friday night, they actually downed a Russian hypersonic missile over Kiev. So this is stunning, right? Hypersonic missiles that the Russians have and the Chinese have are supposedly untouchable. It is assumed that these missiles cannot be shut down by any known technology. It turns out if this story is true, this is massive because if they shut it down, they shut it down with an American Patriots defense system. And if the American Patriots defense systems can shoot down hypersonic missiles, that takes away a big advantage both the Russians and the Chinese were supposed to have had over the United States in terms of weapons systems. This has implications for the Pacific front where the Chinese have hypersonic missiles and they have hypersonic anti-ship missiles. But if the American Patriots system can knock them down, I mean it's still nice to have hypersonic missile systems, but it takes a big chunk of the advantage, the benefit that China and Russia have and the advantage over the United States that they might have is gone. And if you remember, we talked about hypersonics because the United States was considering using lasers on them and developing whole new laser technologies when they don't need to because they already have the Patriots. And if the Patriots system can knock these down, it wouldn't be that difficult and I'm sure this is really happening that Patriot-like systems are on some of our aircraft carriers and some of our destroyers and therefore could take down these hypersonic missiles that were being shot at our ships. And this takes away a massive advantage that I think the Chinese assumed they had against the United States. So this is a super important figure out if this is true. Now it's true that I've said all along that Russian weapon systems are not good. It really did seem like the hypersonic ones were a real advantage they had and the United States doesn't have hypersonics yet, but it looks like they're not. So at least Russian hypersonics can be shot down by Patriot defense system. Now the question is can that apply to Chinese and at the very least this places a little bit of doubt in the Chinese mind and again reduces the probability that the Chinese would engage with Taiwan, would risk a war with the United States. Because if they thought they could win such a war, they thought at least they could neutralize the American fleet, then that would encourage them to engage in such a war. But if they think that the key weapon in destroying American ships is susceptible to being knocked out of the sky by a Patriot missile systems then it causes them to again think twice, third time, fourth time, whatever, before launching such an attack. So I think it's really important and hope this is real, hope this is not fake news, that this is true and it's indeed a Patriot defense systems. By the way this particular missile was launched by MiG-31K aircraft. It was launched like everything else that the Russians do. It was launched from Russian territory which is amazing to me because I mean at this point in the war Russia should have dominance over the airspace. It wouldn't have to shoot missiles from its own territory. It should be able to fly everywhere over the skies of Ukraine and now it can't because of the Patriot missile systems which you think they would have been able to in the past. All I can say is the Russian air force and the Russian military and the Russian weapon systems just being pathetic, just being pathetic. Shockingly so even to me and I've never thought much about them. China is the real danger but again I think China has to have second thoughts about its superiority with hypersonics because it was assumed again that the U.S. couldn't shoot down hypersonics no matter from whom, Russian or Chinese so who knows. As I've told you before I'm worried about China but then I'm not too worried about China either because it's another authoritarian state with an authoritarian army that is dumb. The Chinese army is dumb. It's not a smart army. It's not a well coordinated army. It's not a modern army in any respect. It's still an army that has much of the same kind of... I think thinking that the Russian army has you just throw numbers at it and that's not going to be a solution in modern warfare. They've only started modernizing their thinking about combat since 2014. They've tried this the way behind. Modern warfare is an intricate, difficult coordination effort between air, ground, sea, special forces, armoured, infantry and artillery and everything else. It's a very, very complex, highly advanced technologically. I don't think China has the capabilities. I don't think they have the thinking and they don't have the experience. The reality is that the last war China fought was in 1979 against Vietnam. It didn't do particularly well. It beat Vietnam but that wasn't a big deal but it didn't do particularly well. But of course that was before China modernized and grew rich but it has no experience. I mean if you compare that to the U.S. which has fought several wars, which is engaged in complex delivery of weapon systems. So I am dubious about the Chinese military's might. I would still take the American military any day and I think now that the United States is focusing more on China which it is now and more so even under Biden than under Trump. Yeah, I mean I don't think China has a chance. All right, let me just ask that questions coming in from now on because we've got a lot of them and I'll start answering questions in a minute that questions be $20 or more so that we're getting close to our goal. So we're not far from goal. We've kind of crossed that halfway mark because I think we're heading in the right direction. But if you are going to ask a question, please make it $20 or more question. Let me just quickly go through the news items just to make sure that I've covered the things I wanted. Yeah, I think that's it. Let me just because I want to end on like a positive note and well just one funny one. You know the White House Thursday invited chief executives of the big tech companies in to tell them that they really needed to think about AI and they really need to be careful and they really needed to consider how their industry should be regulated. And I just find it funny anytime politicians try to intervene in a space they know nothing about. But there were a few good really interesting news stories. Science, science was stuff that's good. So another positive news on the All Time was fund. So All Time was slowed by up to 35% of reduced development in volunteers of a 1700% study for a new drug called Dunnan Mab. It's manufactured by Eli Lilly. These are the first generation, we're really in a customer, the first generation of Alzheimer's treatments. They won't cure the disease but will slow it progression. They will add valuable high quality, life quality time to people who are susceptible to Alzheimer's disease or who have Alzheimer's already starting but is still not debilitating. What's interesting about this first generation of drugs, these are the first drugs that target amyloid deposits that are actually working. For 30 years it's believed that amyloid deposits are a sign of Alzheimer's and if we could get rid of those deposits, Alzheimer's would get better. Drugs that targeted amyloid deposits did nothing. These are the first drugs that are actually having an impact. Part of the reason they're having an impact is because they're being given to people very early. So now we can detect Alzheimer's very early so we can give the drug very early to slow its progression. But also because the drugs have gotten better. So there really is progress being made in the fight against Alzheimer's and for the first time I think since the beginning, since attempts were tried at this. So it's really, really exciting. Let's see. Okay, a longevity breakthrough. Scientists have been able to increase the lifespan of drumroll please. Yeast cells. I know it's not that exciting but if you can extend the lifespan of yeast cells at the beginning of technologies to advance the lifespan of human beings. Anyway, they have increased the lifespan of yeast cells by up to 82%. They are targeting a process by which cells fates are decided. The team tricked cells into delaying the commitment to deteriorate. This is pretty funny. The cells actually at some point started deteriorating and there's a precursor to the deterioration which is the commitment period. Scientists can delay that commitment period and this is a major, I guess, mechanisms of aging. And the authors of the study and everything are convinced this is going to be applied to more complex organisms and ultimately to human beings in a form of gene therapy which could extend human life significantly. Anything. Anything. Even in yeast cells. Anything that seems like it's advancing the possibility of living longer gets a thumbs up from me. Finally, small modular reactors. We talked about nuclear before and Justin Trudeau's comments on it. New scale power which is the only small nuclear reactor design that's been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States. It's actually broken down, broken down, broken ground on their first reactor this week. This is from their press release. Well, actually it's pretty simplistic. But anyway, this is super exciting. The promise of small nuclear reactors is that they are modular, they're easy to construct, they are super safe. They can be built anywhere. They can provide electricity on a local basis. You don't have to build massive power plants. They can be built relatively quickly, funnily enough. They can provide backup for solar and wind for when the sun doesn't shine and when the wind doesn't blow. But the real advantage is their modularity, their ease of construction, and the fact that they can be built pretty much anywhere and they're super, super safe. So I think that's super, super exciting and I'm looking forward to more of those kind of new actors being built and being deployed in the world. Why am I frozen? Let's see, am I frozen? Guys, am I frozen? Doesn't look like I'm frozen. Look, okay, I'm frozen over there. I'm not frozen over here. All right, so that's our news update. It's a little longer than usual because I had a lot to cover and I haven't done one of these in a long time. All right, let's do super chat. Let's jump into the super chat. We are still about $300 short, so please consider the value for value associated with that. How many, you know, five bucks from everybody listening right now would get us over the top, so please consider that. Okay, Richard, Richard is here. Richard, for $50, so Richard said, I will be visiting the Pentagon. Wow, to present my group project and supply chain resilience. What are some of the most important issues to emphasize when speaking to the military? How U.S. regulations and immigration laws harm U.S. national security? Yes, I mean, what the Pentagon should be most interested in for national security purposes, but also for liberty purposes and maintaining just the U.S. and the nature of the U.S. is in technological progress in the United States keeping its dramatic advantage it has over China, certainly over Russia, but over China in the technological sphere. We need to have the most advanced weapons systems. We need to have the most advanced telecommunication systems. We need to have the most advanced, you know, lasers. We need to have the most advanced capacities to be able to take on anything that China throws at us in a war. And we need to be able to do this at a low cost to lives, to American lives. And so I think what they need to be convinced of, I think they know that. And then the question is what generates technological progress? And I think to a large extent, generals probably think it's just throwing more money at it when they need a bigger budget. They need to be able to throw more money at technology. But the real thing is most of these technological advancements or most of the, certainly most of the improvements of the technologies, most of the advancements of the technologies ultimately are generated in the private sector. And what the Pentagon needs is a thriving technology sector, not a technology sector that is demonized, not a technology sector where big tech is afraid of being broken up, not a technology sector which has just a few players, but a technology sector where venture capitalists are investing money in significant new ventures where that is dynamic, exciting, break new innovation, not a technology sector that is on pause on AI or where the government is going to regulate AI, but a technology sector that is dynamic and constantly pushing forward. And for that you need, as you know, two things. You need deregulation, you need government to get out of the way. And the technology is relatively easy because it's not heavily regulated yet. It's the threat of more regulations that is at the forefront. And it's the regulations that are coming into the tech sector because of things like the CHIP Act that have all the baggage associated with it. It's subsidies from the government which is destructive, not helpful. So deregulation, getting rid of subsidies, getting rid of planning, getting rid of government planning for these things. I mean, other than a defense department for the government to spend on CHIP manufacturing and then to be massively pro-immigration, we should be importing every engineer who wants to come to this country. I mean, we should be importing a lot, we should be allowing a lot more people to come to this country. But suddenly, every Chinese engineer, every Korean engineer, every European engineer, every Israeli engineer, every Nigerian engineer, every Mexican engineer, any Brazilian engineer who wants to come to this country should be allowed in. That would give us such a huge advantage over insular countries like Russia and China who are losing engineers. And particularly, Russia has lost tens of thousands of engineers. China would lose them if they had some way to go to, like the United States. So that is not something you can, it's not something, we can pretend that we're going to improve our educational system and we'll get more American engineers. It's not going to happen. You want the best engineers in the world, you've got to allow them to come in. You've got to hire them. You've got to bring them to the United States. And then finally, they've got to reform the way they do the purchasing at the Pentagon. You've got to create more competition. You've got to allow for more defense contractors. And the way to do more defense contractors is something that needs to be worked out, to create more of them, to have more diversity of them, to create competition between them. The way to do that is less central planning, is less dictates from the government and more opportunities for newcomers of startups from new entrants into the field to be able to present against, I don't know, the Boeing's and the Northam Grummans and the big, big, what did Eisenhower call them, the military industrial complex. You want to be able to refresh and bring in new minds, new blood, it's really new minds into that field. And of course, in terms of supply chain resiliency, I think we've talked about that, you want to bring the supply chains to friendly waters, but also you want to dramatically beef up the U.S. Navy to continue what it has done since World War II, which is protect the global supply chains, to protect the global shipping lanes, and that is essential for U.S. security, it's essential for the U.S. standard of living and quality of life, it is essential for global trade and therefore for global standard of living and wealth creation, which we benefit enormously from. Thank you, Richard, $50 very generous. Let me just do two more for Richard on similar topics and then I'll go to Frank. Richard said, military officials, I have spoken to so far being receptive to these arguments and are shocked when I mention specific stats. For example, permitting for new semiconductor fabs takes five years, by which point the chip's obsolete. Yes, but why build fabs in the U.S. when we don't have a labor force that can actually man the fabs? I mean, what you want to do is build them in places where you can protect the shipping lanes. Yes, there are too many fabs in Taiwan and South Korea which all have the same shipping lanes across the Pacific. So let's think about Europe, let's think about Canada, let's think about Mexico. Any of those places are good for fabs. They don't have to be in the U.S. And let's make it easier, therefore, for places like Mexico and Canada and Europe to build fabs and for us. And then if the Pentagon knows the kind of chips and specific chips that it needs and it's worried that in times of crisis it won't have enough access to those chips, then build the fabs that are necessary for the Pentagon in the United States at whatever cost that is required and get around all these ridiculous permitting requirements and build it national security. If we can put on tariffs for pretend national security causes, can we dismiss a bunch of regulations for real national security concerns like building a fab that just produces chips for the Pentagon? Okay, and then Richard goes on. On a different note, what should the U.S. have done during World War II vis-a-vis the Soviets? Was our alliance with the USSR necessary to defeat Nazi Germany? Do you have any sources you'd recommend on the early Cold War? I don't have any sources on the early Cold War, unfortunately. I mean, as a military historian, I really like Victor Davis Hansen. I really enjoy his military history. I don't like a lot of other stuff he writes, but the military history is very, very good. I don't think the United States should have supplied weapons to the USSR. I think the United States should have left Stalin to fight by whatever means he had. And if that man he would lose, then that man he would lose. It's not clear that he would, but it would have slowed down his progress. That is, I think that Stalin was holding back Hitler without the U.S., but suddenly he wouldn't have been able to advance as fast as he did in Eastern Europe without U.S. help. The U.S. should not have supplied one little piece of material to the Russians. I mean, if the U.S. had slowed down Russian progress, then A.E. Eastern Europe might have been part of the West, so tens of millions of people might not have been enslaved to the Soviets. I think also it's not clear that the Soviet Union would have been as strong militarily. They wouldn't have captured as many German scientists. They wouldn't have developed their rocket systems quite as well. I mean, there are many, many things that would have happened if the Soviets would have been bugged down against the Germans rather than pushing them and moving fast and taking Eastern Europe. So my view is the U.S. should have never helped the Soviets. I mean, it is ridiculous and pathetic that we sustain a regime as horrific as the Nazis in order to defeat the Nazis. We could have defeated the Nazis without supplying weapons to the Soviets. All right, Frank, $50. That's terrific. Thank you, Frank. Really appreciate it. We're about $200 short of our $650 goal, so hopefully we can still make it today. Let's see. Frank says, isn't leftism and rightism the playing out of Christianity the belief that objective truth is impossible and all that is left is power politics and control to mitigate man's arrogance? Yes, I think it is fundamentally. Certainly communism, I've talked about this before, is a manifestation of Christianity to secularization of the Christian moral theory and also the platonic theory of truth is not accessible through reason and reality but through some kind of form of revelation, even if the Communists didn't call it revelation, I think that is true of both the Fascists and the Communists and therefore, yes, of the consistent forms of leftism and rightism, they both left and right, statism, authoritarianism, embrace altruism completely, embrace collectivism completely. They replace God maybe with the state or replace God with the parliamentarian, but it's still true that your life is meaningless. What is meaningful is your sacrifice to the state, your sacrifice to the parliamentarian, your sacrifice to the global working class, your sacrifice to, I don't know, your race, your sacrifice to God. It's all the same. Epistemologically, you have no access to truth, you have no access to real knowledge. It all has to be mediated through a pope, through a church, through a dictator, through a leader, through somebody else. So absolutely Christianity is sadly has dominated the world for 2,000 plus years and now continues to dominate through its secular step-children. Okay, Moondog, I don't know Moondog, all right. Moondog says, as a person from Boston, I take great pride that my ancestors refused to pay taxes to the monarchy any longer. The monarch's response was war. The same bloodlines we are celebrating today, it's offensive. I agree with you completely, although I'm a little skeptical about you taking credit for your ancestors doing the right thing, but put that aside or taking pride in that. But yes, I mean, I guess I take pride in the fact that I think I would respond it like your ancestors. And yes, this monarchy business is horrible. John, John $50, thank you, really appreciate it. John says, I'm in bustle on the latest month. Would love any great restaurant recommendations. I understand if you don't want to take time on the show to answer. Yeah, I mean, I have a little database, John, of my recommendations, happy to do it. How many nights are you here? I could probably fill every night of your stay with a world class. I mean, bustle alone has some of the best restaurants in the world, and the food here is phenomenal and amazing. So yes, let me do this. I will send you an email with those recommendations. If you don't hear from here later tonight, please drop me an email and remind me. But absolutely happy to do that. All right, thank you, John. Thanks for the support. Amazing. All right, Richard again. Oh, well, no, no, let me go back to Andrew. These have been here for a while. Andrew has, this comes from conservative media, so not sure if it's accurate. But what do you make of Ford losing 60K on every electric vehicle it makes? Doesn't surprise me. 60K sounds like a lot, so that's surprising. But it doesn't surprise me they're losing money on it. Electric vehicles are expensive to make, particularly given the new rules by the Biden administration that make it impossible for American, or if American car manufacturers use like Chinese batteries or Chinese lithium in order to make their cars, they don't get the tax credit. So in order to get the tax credit, American manufacturers have to build expensive cars because they have to use batteries that I think made in Canada or made in the U.S. with lithium sourced from who knows where. So there's a real challenge, so the cars are very expensive to make. They also, as with any kind of manufactured product, to really get the cost that you have to make them in large quantities and they're just not selling enough electric cars in the U.S. to make them worthwhile. Similarly, Tesla, which does make large quantities of electric cars and has been doing for a long time and therefore got the art of making these cars down, Tesla cut its prices dramatically over the last few months and Ford has had to match Tesla's prices. And as a consequence of Ford having to match Tesla's prices, I'm just not surprised Ford is losing money. It can't use the cheapest, best technology because the Biden administration doesn't want it to. It hasn't been able to ramp up production enough to get economies of scale and it has to match Tesla, which got subsidized years and years ago to get to the point where it can produce so many cars as it does today. It can't match Tesla's prices. So it's a really difficult business to be in. The company is doing probably best with electric cars in the world right now, the Chinese companies because the Chinese companies can build in large quantities. The Chinese auto market is massively going to electric. One of the reasons China is accelerating the building of electric power plants is to be able to provide electricity for all the charging stations for all these cars. The United States, even if we switch to mileage all electric, our grid would collapse. The Chinese have a much more modern grid and they're building a lot more electric. They have no problem with nuclear, they have no problem with coal, they have no problem with gas. They're not obsessed with sunshine and wind to provide energy and therefore they are far ahead of us in terms of producing electricity. So it doesn't surprise me for it is losing, 60,000 seems like too much. That seems wrong, but who knows. Andrew Wilson says, a co-worker from Chicago was explaining how people have failed flash mobs now. Yes, they're these flash mobs now in Chicago, forming and attacking people on its main streets for restaurants, etc. That has been happening more often. In a Iran voice says, move, seriously, move! What's wrong with you Chicago people? But yes, I've seen pictures of these mobs outside of some of the nicest areas in town. Outside of fancy stores, nice restaurants, and they just start pushing people and harassing people. Chicago is just right now, it seems like. I've been in Chicago in a few years now, since before COVID, doesn't seem like a pleasant place to be. Doesn't seem like a pleasant place to be. Now, granted, the media twists things and it always seems worse, listen from the media, but I really think bad stuff is happening there and I don't see where the good is going to come from. Alright, we're only $134 short of our goal today. Did you see the leaked memo titled, this is from Josh, Google, we have no moat and neither does open AI. Interesting read and curious for your thoughts, I have not. Let me put that aside and see if I can read it and see what it's about. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff being listened to and thought about and about AI. Here's a thought about AI that's kind of interesting. One of the reasons AI has been able to learn in quotes so much is it's had access to gazillions of websites for free. Since being able to absorb all these images and not absorb, I mean analyze images and text from all these websites for free. And since all these websites have allowed Google and have allowed open AI to do this. But now they're changing their minds and here's what AI might cause to happen on the web. The web might become more less free or set up some kind of restrictions to prohibit bots, AI bots from just accessing its information. They might let you access the information but not bots. And I think people are working on bot identification stuff that will be able to restrict bots from accessing websites. So the Getty Images Library, massive, massive, massive library of images of artwork and architecture and photographs. I mean one of the ways AI is creating images is by basically analyzing the images from the Getty Library. And the Getty is saying, wait a minute, we didn't give you permission to do that. We didn't give permission to use it for that. And I think there's a lawsuit going on right now. I mean this is an area that's going to have to develop in the law and in technology of how to deal with AI and should AI just have access to everything as if it's free. So there's a lot to think about a lot that's going to happen, a lot that's going to change in the next 10 years because of AI. But I'm interested in seeing the no-mote, which I assume means a moat would keep Google AI inside Google, right? But if there's no moat, Google AI can go anywhere and do anything, scary stuff. I'm not scared of AI. I'm more scared of people being scared. I'm scared of the fear. Richard said, thanks, Iran. The more I read about it, the more U.S. policy toward the USSR seems insane. We saw no grain. Yes, we did. Throughout the Cold War and a major argument was that this helped reduce U.S. trade deficit. Oh my God. Well, the Cold War was a waste in many respects, right? First of all, instead of conceiving of the USSR as a failed entity, instead of conceiving of the USSR as ultimately collapsing because communists couldn't be successful, we thought we had to be active in order to cause it to collapse, which led us down all kinds of bad paths like wars in Korea and South Vietnam, or in Vietnam, which cost the U.S. gazillions and cost blood and lives and all of that, which is just horrific. Imagine all that talent. Imagine all that capital being invested in the U.S. instead of being wasted on the battlefields in wars we lost anyway. You know, we think about the fact that we basically allowed the Europeans to free ride off of the United States so that Europe never invested in its own defense. Part of that was to prevent Germany from building up a military, but I'm not sure there was a good enough reason. Because we provided them with a nuclear umbrella, because we provided them with troops on the ground, the Europeans were expected not to build a military force. We're still suffering from that fact today. So many things about the Cold War were done wrong. We should have embargoed the USSR. We should have basically had no embassy there, had no trade with them, zero trade. This idea of reducing the trade deficit is bizarre and ridiculous. We should have let them starve. We should have let them starve and let them impoverish themselves by building up their military and let them and ignore them. We should have just ignored them. And if we'd done that, maybe the Soviet Union would have fallen much earlier. Maybe Europe would be in a much better situation today with much more responsibility for its own defense. There's so many things that were done wrong during the Cold War that we are suffering from today. So yes, the whole phenomena could have been dealt with and done dramatically differently. But you could do a whole history there. And one of the things that I'm worried about is that both Republicans and Democrats today seem to want a Cold War with China. They want to recreate the Cold War in some way. They're nostalgic for the Cold War without really understanding the Cold War, without learning from it, and without thinking about what victory looks like and what is actually going on. There's a large extent, I think China is propped for this, but we are egging China on. We are encouraging it and we are causing it to kind of be more aggressive towards us, because we don't have a strategy, a really thoughtful, thorough strategy on how to deal with it. Iron Milk, have you tried prompt engineering Chad GPT? The results are hilarious. I talked to it into acting as an editor who writes clickbait and asks for a Tinder bio. Which is like giving it crack. That sounds hilarious. I have not. I guess I don't have the time or the creativity or the imagination to do stuff like that with Chad GPT. But it sounds pretty fun and it sounds hilarious. And yes, I'm sure you could do some pretty crazy things with Chad GPT. And I know some of you do. Hopefully some of it's productive and something good comes of it. I have not played around with it much at all. All right. We have time for some more questions, but please make them $20 or more if you're going to do questions. We just need six more questions and we achieve our goal, so that would be great. Michael says, we are currently in a race between technology and politics. I actually think technology is going to win. I hope you're right. I think technology buys us time. And I hope that technology buys us enough time so that ultimately we can win the political race. I don't think that technology wins. I think all technology can do is buy us time. And then we have to win. Better ideas have to win. It's only ideas that shape history. But it is true that technology can buy better ideas time to shape that history. Liam says, if everyone were honest, there would be no schisms in our movement. Oh, no. I think if everyone were honest, there would probably be more schisms in our movement. And it would happen sooner and in some ways would be deeper. So I don't think it's lack of honesty. I think schisms are a consequence of honesty. A consequence of honestly dealing with people. Do you think people just had enough of altruism and crime in the late 80s and 90s? Why did they start accepting it again? There's a sense in which they had enough crime. I don't think they conceived of it in terms of altruism, but they certainly seem to have enough of people telling them what to do and how to do it. You remember the 80s, the baby blooms were called the me generation. There was a certain attitude of, you know, I want to be successful. I want to pursue wealth. I want to be, and they were and they did. I think it bounced back because there was no justification for it. The altruism was still there. The collectivism was still there. The statism was still there. And, you know, and at the end of the day, the bounce back of the 80s and 90s was not deep enough. So the economy was still regulated, still controlled, so there was still a dot-com bubble, and there was still crises in 9-11 happen. 9-11 would have never happened if in the 80s and 90s we would have a proper foreign policy. So as long as you're a mixed economy, you're not going to create an environment in which people can't say, well, you see capitalism failed. You see freedom failed, ignoring the fact that it wasn't free, but blaming it all on that. So, I mean, if we'd had had decent foreign policy in the 90s, we would have had no 9-11 and that would have changed a huge amount of dynamics of the last 30 years. Richard, thank you, thank you, Richard. Flash idea. It seems like authoritarians use a purity and order to justify the use of force. Can you think of other rationalizations? Oh, they use a lot of rationalizations to justify the force. The fact that the world is complex and you need somebody to make sense of it for you because you can't make sense of it. You need somebody to be in the commanding heights to take a look and to evaluate and to assess, again, because of the complexity of the world which is beyond you. They definitely use purity and order, but a lot of order has to do with understanding and planning and control, which they tell people is necessary. How can you let markets deal with education or healthcare? Healthcare is too important to leave the markets, to leave to the profit motive. So, it's a lot of different rationalizations like that, all emanating for the same kind of platonic, they're the philosopher kings and you don't know, the markets don't know. Do you think, Richard, thank you, do you think that the end of the Cold War was also a mistake, that we failed to proclaim the moral superiority of capitalism and practice it at home? I fear a new Cold War, U.S. should become freer and inspire the world without need for co-ops. Yeah, or co-ops, or coups. Yeah, I mean, the end of the Cold War was a mistake. The conclusion at the end of the Cold War was that history had ended. There was the famous book by Fukuyama at the end of history, which basically said, communism's fail, in other words, all ideology has failed, all consistent principle of ideology has failed. What has succeeded is the mixed economy, subjectivism, moral greatness and uncommittedness. Nobody declared the victory of lasific capitalism. What they declared is the victory of the mixed economy and we're still suffering from that. So, yes, we should have declared the moral superiority of capitalism. We should have preached it and lived it at home. And I, like you, fear another Cold War. I think we're heading to it head on right now, as we speak. All right, only $61 short. Hopper Campbell, how is Eric Adams doing as Mayor of New York City? He seems to be holding off the crazy left. Do you believe the Marines should be charged for killing that black man on the subway? Again, from everything I can see, Eric Adams is doing a decent job. He is holding off the crazy left. Crime in New York while bad is nowhere near as bad as other cities. And still nowhere near, not even close to how bad it was in the early 90s or in the 80s. So it's still pretty good, you know, overall. You have to give Adams, and given what's his name, Barr, or whatever his name is, the guy, the District Attorney, who's awful. Eric Adams must be the guy who's somehow holding it together because certainly the District Attorney is not holding it together. Let's see, about the subway killing. I haven't read the story, so I just don't know. I just don't know, so I don't want to comment because I have no idea. I would have to really investigate and figure it out. It seems the left has created a homeless industrial complex. The homeless have essentially been granted free reign over the subway systems in downtown. Candisone calls it cartel culture. There's certainly cartel culture. I don't like anything coming out of Candisones. Candisones is one of the worst elements in our culture right now. And so I'm not a fan at all. I mean, worse than not a fan. I'm a detractor. So I don't like to give a credit for anything. You know, is there a homeless industry? There is, in a sense, there's a lot of nonprofits. There's a whole, in a sense, there's a welfare industrial complex. There's a whole welfare industry. There's a whole welfare bureaucracy. There's a homeless bureaucracy that is very motivated to keep the homeless problem in existence because that's how they have jobs. They've been granted control of a place like San Francisco and parts of other cities. This is altruism in force plus special interest groups that are motivated by it. The solution, as I've told you, to the homeless problem is more housing and legalization of drugs. Those are the two solutions, but those are the two solutions nobody's interested in. But yeah, we live in an altruistic culture that takes people who are most needy and gives them more and more and more and more. Q2Santos, will big banks have any reason to innovate? Sure, they have to compete with other big banks. They have to compete with other big banks in other countries. There's massive competition between banks that is constantly going on. If you had 20 megabanks in the United States and 20 megabanks outside the United States, 40 is plenty of competition to have innovation and so on. Plus, I'm not against, I mean, you would still have fintech. And of course, if you got rid of regulations, who knows how many banks there would be and who knows what they would look like and who knows, you know, the whole banking system would be different without regulations. The modern banking system exists in the way it exists because of the structure of the regulatory state. James Taylor says, what segment of society will have the hardest time when we finally start shifting to a free market society? Government employees, people with rent control departments, welfare recipients. You know, it's really hard to tell. We finally shift typically older people who are part of the previous system and who have the least time to adapt. Suddenly, government employees, you know, regulated and controlled businesses that are used to the controls and used to the regulations, subsidized businesses. So anybody on the government dole, I think in a sense, welfare recipients, maybe the first generation would have a hard time, but they would recover very quickly, as would businesses, as the regulations went away. But the initial piece of it would be difficult for lots of people, lots of people. Q. Santos says, how can these unsafe neighborhoods all around the world improve their own condition? Well, the first thing you have to do in order to improve your condition is establish peace, is eliminate violent crime. I mean, the number one responsibility of government is to eliminate violent crime too, eliminate crime, period. So if the government won't do it, neighborhoods could have neighborhood watches. You know, I don't know. It's very, very hard to establish peace without a government. This is why anarchy doesn't work. Forming your own gang is not going to do it. So you need a monopoly over the use of force. You need a government to institute a peaceful coexistence. And only then can you start investing and building and creating and making stuff and pulling your neighborhood out of poverty. Clark says, did you see Gloria Alvarez is running for president? Guatemala, can't you win? Yes, I've known Gloria Alvarez has been running for president for a long time. You know, Gloria, I promise Gloria that if she wins the presidency of Guatemala, I will become her economic advisor. So that might be my entry into politics. I think Gloria's chances of winning the president of Guatemala are unfortunately close to zero. One, she's too young to win. Guatemala has a constitutional, I think, provision that says you have to be 40 years older. I don't think Gloria is 40 yet. But even if she was, I just don't think... Guatemala might be of all Latin American countries the most ready because of Universidad Francisco, Malacuin, which Gloria went to. But I just don't think any country is quite ready for Gloria Alvarez in a position of political power. But you know, crazy things happen. And imagine if she gets a significant number of votes, even if she doesn't win, and then maybe next time she is over 40 and she starts building a track record and maybe she can't win. Maybe I'll have to become Gloria's chief economic advisor, which would be a blast, which would be super fun and super interesting to actually take these ideas and put them into practice and see how we can turn an economy around. Richard, catching up with my fellow Richard to reach the goal. Thank you, Richard. Yeah, thank you, Richard and Richard. Thank you both of you. Really appreciate it. That was $20. We're only 16 short of the goal. Andrew says, you seem wary of over-applying nihilism to explain cultural events. Doesn't the high amount of cynicism in the culture apply high levels of nihilism? I don't think, I'm skeptical about everybody being who's cynical is a nihilist. I mean, nihilism is a rejection of values. I think a lot of cynics sound cynical, but they have personal values and they pursue personal values in their personal lives. They have things they care about. I think the number of people who are truly nihilistic that want to see it burn, that want to see destruction, that have given up on all values, that have given up on life in a sense. I just think in any society is small. Now, they gain influence. The nihilists under the Nazis certainly gained influence. They were still a minority, but they were enough a minority that they could leverage the cynicism of society to get people to do horrible, horrible things and to feed off of whatever elements of nihilism were in the culture. So, I don't want to minimize the problem, but I just don't see it as a, it's just as a massive, in terms of quantity of people. I just think to truly hold the nihilistic view of the world is so evil and so horrific and its implications are so dramatic that if a truly a majority, if everybody was cynical, I mean, let's take the ultimate cynics. Let's take, what's that TV show? South Park. South Park is the most cynical TV show ever produced. It has no values, no positive values. It makes fun of everything, good, bad, middle, everything. It makes fun. A lot of it's super funny because a lot of stuff deserved to be made fun of, but it made fun of everything. Are the creators of South Park nihilists? I mean, there's an element of nihilism in the knocking down everything, but are they the same kind of nihilists that want to see the world burn? No. These, as individuals, they have values, they have things they care about, they want to present a certain view, they have ideas, but they're cynical and they are as dangerous because I think it promotes the kind of cynicism that leads to nihilism. By the way, we've reached our goal, so thank you everybody for allowing us to reach the goal. Valdrin says, we're going to run through these quickly. Alon has embraced and amplified the worst segment on Twitter. Yes, he has. Some are as bad as the usual illiterate bigots on your chat. Some are former criminals. I don't understand why. I think Alon, unfortunately, has been captured by many people on the right who don't quite get the bigotry, they don't quite get the implication, they don't quite get what it actually means. But exactly why Alon has done it, I don't know, but clearly Alon was captured by the Jordan Peterson's of the world and the Jordan Peterson has definitely facilitated this kind of attitude on the right. Ayan Mirkat says, is the Joker a good representation of nihilism? Definitely. Definitely in what he gets, what the Joker, you know, what he gives permission to people to express their nihilism because he, and this is how nihilists can set fire to the world because you've got a lot of people out there who might be elements of nihilism in their thinking, elements of nihilism in their soul, but they won't express it because they're ashamed of it, they're embarrassed by it, they suppress it, they repress it, their cynicism, they still want things in their own life, and then a Joker comes around and he gives them permission for it and he emboldens them and he is the guy, he's the guy who brings down the world by rallying the people, giving them permission I guess is the best word to burn it all down. Okay, Michael says, in the early days of Objectivism, did our intellectuals believe Rand's ideas would simply march through the culture like a hot knife through butter? I think some people did, a hot knife through butter probably not, but I think they thought it would be a lot faster and easier and I thought Rand did as well. At least among certain people she thought this would go faster and easier. She thought she'd see some intellectual support, some support among intellectuals and I think she thought she'd see a lot of support among businessmen and she didn't quite. Michael says, choose your battles widely because if you fight them all, you'll be too tired to win the really important ones. Thanks for the advice Michael, it seems like I'm choosing lots of battles. Michael says, anything that is forced becomes a crime. Yes. J. J. Jigby's, given the past humans intellectually justified slavery by categorizing slaves as less than human, does that now show that people knew on some level that slavery was morally wrong? Yes, and indeed if you go back far enough, they didn't categorize other people as less than human. I think that categorization was only done maybe in the post-Christian era in order to justify it, but I think in the ancient period, slaves were just people who lost. The Romans and slave people, they didn't think they were less than human, they just thought they were lost and therefore they should work for me. They'd lost in a war, everything was perceived through the lens of power. Gale says, super thanks, dollars on YouTube is not available on your replays. I'm a premium member, anyone else, not be able to do that. I don't know why, super thanks. I don't know why, it's supposed to be there. I'll research it and see if I can let you know. Gale, thank you Gale. Thank you, Ertan. Let's see, last question from Vash. Vash says, nothing to comment, but I suppose why not help? You seem like a decent gent. I suppose one question. Can you explain productive work and its relation to a meaningful life, going through Rand's work? I'm glad you're going through Rand's work, but yes, I think that Rand thinks that human beings need a purpose in life, that they need a central purpose in life, they need something to integrate their life around. And for most people, that thing that they integrate their life around that central purpose is productive work. And productive work is the creation of values in the world out there, creation of values that you can then trade in order to live, in order to be able to survive and to thrive and to build and to create and to make and to produce and to live a good life. So productive work is both necessary in order to survive because you have to gain the material things necessary for you to survive and to thrive. But it's also where one finds one's own self-esteem, where productive work is where one challenges oneself, where one confronts reality and in a sense challenges oneself to deal with reality in a way that allows one to move forward. So it is essential for self-esteem and for the idea of self-worth. So it's hard to have a meaningful life without a central purpose in one's life. And again, for most people, that is productive work. All right, guys, thank you. Wow, it's late. It's over here in Barcelona. It is 11 PM at night. Thank you all for joining me. I hope you enjoyed the show. I'll try to do as many of these shows as I can as I'm traveling. Tomorrow I'm still in Barcelona. I'll try to do a show tomorrow sometime. It might be earlier. It might be actually in your morning. But it's going to be what it is. So thank you all. Don't forget if you want to support the show monthly, Patreon, SubscribeStar, or you're on bookshow.com. And thanks to all the superchatters. Really, really, really appreciate the support. And I'll catch you all maybe tomorrow. If not, one of these other...