 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday, March 26, almost the end of the month, and I'm almost on my way to South America next week. Tuesday, a week from today, I'm on a flight to Sa Paolo, where I will be giving a talk, and then Buenos Aires, where we'll be doing three days of lecturing, conference talks, meeting with Mele, all of that, and then from there to Santiago, Chile, where we're doing two days of conference talks, and then back home. So yeah, busy, busy, busy schedule, but looking forward to it, it's great. Alright, let's see, anything I need to announce, let you know, there will be a show tonight, still working on the topic, so to be determined that there will be a show tonight, 8 p.m. East Coast time, stay tuned for that, and yeah, other than that, I think we're good. You know, we can rock and roll. Alright, you guys have probably seen the news about the Baltimore Bridge. If you haven't seen videos of the bridge collapsing, they're quite striking, it's worth seeing, it's interesting engineering in terms of how the whole bridge collapses, the central section of the bridge, it's a bridge that's made of section, and the whole center of the bridge just collapses. I mean, basically what happened is a ship on the waterway exiting, I think it was exiting, the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest ports in the United States, lost its, basically lost control, and drifted. It let, I guess the authorities know that it was losing control, and it was likely, or there was a probability they would hit the bridge, they landed up hitting one of the columns of the bridge, and because it is a vertical force on a column, a vertical force, most of the force a bridge is designed to handle is obviously horizontal, it's from the top, it's down, and this is a vertical force on a column, it just, it buckled, and the whole bridge just came crashing down. The photos, I mean, the video is quite striking, you can see it from multiple angles, and horrible, and quite tragic. The bridge could have been a lot worse in a sense that because the ship had let the authorities know they had tried to close the road off, so you can actually see cars passing as it's drifting towards the column, and then there are very few or any cars driving along once the ship, once the ship hits, so that reduced the number of casualties, there were some workmen, the bridge was not a repair, so there's some workmen on the bridge who hit the water. Last I saw, I mean, originally the estimates were about 20 people, 20 people from the construction crew were missing in the water, one had been rescued, one or two have been rescued, last I saw there were only six missing in the water, but I think we'll know more as the day progresses. It is an interesting engineering feat today, a bridge like this would be, a number of different things would be done in order to prevent it from an accident like this, I mean this is not a crazy accident, right? You would think a bridge could withstand this force coming from the side, but remember this is a, I don't know, I saw some way, what's, you know, this is the ship that went 500 feet, of course, again that's pretty rare, but you could imagine that the bridge should have been designed to deal with it and why it would collapse, but let me just give you a quick update on this. So we're talking about, you know, we're talking about a large bridge, a span of, my internet is for some reason suddenly slow, I guess maybe because of, okay, let's start from the beginning, the bridge, the bridge, other bridges have collapsed from similar strikes in 1980, a Sunshine Skyway bridge collapsed when a vessel strikes again, one of the columns that's the weak point in a bridge like this, this bridge was hit by a container ship, a container ship that was fully loaded, we're talking about well over three million pounds, right? No bridge I think is designed of three million pounds of that's equivalent static force of hitting a column from the side, the bridge had three spans, but once you take out one they all collapse on top of the other, the other spans a whole because the centerpiece is hinged and once those collapse the rest of the bridge is fine, so this is designed to work like this, designed to collapse. What usually happens is that you, a modern bridge is built to prevent a ship from hitting the column, so what they do is around the column, they will put lots of rocks and other things sand and rocks and build it out, so the ship doesn't literally hit the column, it hits the sand barrier with the rocks and it, so the whole force is not hitting a thin column on which the bridge rests and you'll see that when they rebuild this they will build it quite differently, so it's going to be interesting, it's going to be interesting also you know modern bridges often have cables, the cables are there to take some of the stress off of this center column, so the column could get weakened but the cables would hold it up at least for a while until you came in and reinforced the column so a lot of modern bridges would not collapse the way this bridge did and you know it'll be interesting to see what the bridge looks like once they rebuild it and you know what the cost is and everything, talk about costs, this bridge, the bridges collapse was built in 1977 and it cost $61 million which is about $343 million in 2024, I'm gonna make a guess that the new bridge that replaces it will cost anywhere between I don't know five to ten times that amount, so probably looking one and a half to three billion dollars, not because it has to cost that much but because and not because of inflation, we're taking into account inflation from 61 to 343, that's inflation, no but because of regulation and all the constraints on building today and the environmental concerns and the million things that you have to do today when you construct anything that you didn't have to do in the column the old days, so yes this bridge is gonna cost a fortune to fix the other thing that I don't think people are taking into account, this is gonna take quite a while to build, again everything takes a lot longer than it used to take and this is not a section of a highway that collapses like in Philadelphia, this is a bridge of a waterway, in the meantime this is gonna have a pretty negative consequence to the Port of Baltimore, again one of the busiest ports in the United States, I'll also note that you know they're gonna have to dredge this area, they're gonna have to take out the bridge and take out the stuff that collapsed into there, there is a foreign dredge act of 1906, which you're probably not familiar with, but the foreign dredge act of 1906 says that dredging operations in the United States waters, in US waters, must be the dredging equipment, must be built in the United States, be owned and chartered by a US citizen, that's the Jones Act for dredging, so one can anticipate that there are fewer dredging capabilities than would otherwise be available, that these dredging capabilities are far more expensive than they should be because they have to be American built and American owned and American flagged and American personnel and American this and American that, so we have kind of a Jones Act for dredging, that's kind of interesting, let's see what else, yeah there was a great post by you know, so this bridge collapse tragic and unfortunate and sad, but it highlights a bunch of issues in our economy, like the foreign dredging act, which is absurd and ridiculous, but so this is gonna cost a fortune to fix, it's gonna cost a fortune to dredge, it's gonna cost a fortune to reopen the Port of Baltimore, these are real costs on the economy, these are real costs to all of us, these are real costs to progress, it's sad and yeah, you know, I think Mark says the ship was dealing with power issues, yeah basically they lost power and it drifted into the column and they kind of had a sense that that was happening and it's one of these big container ships, so God, I mean that hits a column, it doesn't have to be at very high speeds because of the mass involved, that is the force, but here is Thomas Massey, Thomas Massey for those of you who do not know is a representative, I think from Ohio, maybe not from Ohio anyway from the Midwest and he is considered the most libertarian, I mean seriously the most libertarian member of Congress, member of Congress, yes Kentucky, I think you're right, he's from Kentucky, so the most libertarian member of Congress, this is what he writes, my district has 250 miles of the Ohio River with three dams, city water intakes and a dozen bridges, the Jones Act requires shipping on inland waterways to be conducted with vessels built, registered and crewed in the United States, I support the Jones Act, even if it is protectionist, I have no idea what he's talking about, so he doesn't want foreign vessels traveling in the inland waterways of the Ohio River because in Kentucky because of what, you know American ships that are built flagged the safer, I mean is there evidence of this, is this just xenophobia, I mean this is the most libertarian member of Congress, now he's really really bad on foreign policy, but I thought he'd be good on this, but no, he's supporter of the Jones Act, the number one stupidest act that we have in the books, well they're probably stupid, but certainly one of the most stupidest acts that we have in the book, Massey's, I mean this is it, the Republican Party is finished, it's history, it's junk, it should be trashed in the junk keep of history if this is the most free market person, now it turns out that in spite of what Thomas Massey is saying, foreign vessels can and do operate on US inland waterways, so in spite of the Jones Acts, foreign vessels can navigate through these inlands, they just can't go between two American ports and if you think the Jones Act vessels don't collide with bridges and other infrastructure, then you're delusional and it's a completely arbitrary assertion, but there's a number of examples, one at least of a Jones Act vessel hitting a bridge in Kentucky right on in January 26, 2012, so this idea that Jones Act ships don't hit bridges, bizarre, silly, ignorant and very non, I don't know what you'd think traditionally of libertarian, but here is a libertarian, member of Congress, Republican, coming out for the Jones Act because somehow it protects the bridges in Kentucky, which it doesn't, it's just stupid and this is politics today, stupid, squared, you know, what else can you say, what I mean, I don't know what else you can say about this stuff, anyway right now ever this moment, I guess the websites where you can find who is operating on the waterways, as we speak right now, they are foreign vessels on US inland waterways, not just American vessels, so I guess you should be very, very, very worried, I mean it might even be the case that some of those vessels operating in the inland waters of the United States, maybe some of them I even, God forbid, maybe some of them are even owned by the Chinese, you know, and that of course would be the end of times. Alright, I don't know, where do we go from here? Yes, there is a rumor all over Twitter, which is of course the standard of all truth and all knowledge and we, unfortunately most people get their news or get information about the world, there is a meme and or maybe it's not a meme but there is a conspiracy theory out there that's saying, oh my God, the reason housing is in such crisis in America today is because Wall Street, people like BlackRock, big Wall Street firms are buying 44% of all homes this year, 44%, 44%, that's a big number, almost half of all the homes being bought by Wall Street firms, firms that own at least 1,000 homes together. Now, those of you who are worried about that, let me first say, I'm not sure why that's a worry, I don't know, but let's just factually say that's not happening, it's just not happening, not even close. Large corporate buyers share of the purchase market, right, that is institutional investors, people who buy homes for institutions like BlackRock as investments and then rent them out. We're not talking about the mom and pop who buy one to 10 properties and then lease them out, we're talking about big institutional investors that buy hundreds of these. That is peaked with those about 100 plus homes, this is 100 plus in a 12-month period, right, institutional home buyers that buy 100 plus homes in a 12-month period, that's peaked to 2.5% of the housing markets, 2.5, not 44%, 2.5, a blimp, not a real impact on housing. Now, it's true that if you take the entire market share of investors, including mom and pops, that buy a few homes and rent them out. I know people who do this, lots of people who do this, it's not a bad way to diversify your wealth and get rental income and get steady income, and hopefully if home prices go up, you make some capital gains as well. If you include all of them, every buyer who buys homes as an investment, that total is 30%. And that is what creates a robust rental market in homes. And as I've said in the past, there is no great necessary advantage to buying over renting. Renting is perfect in certain circumstances, at certain points in your life. Early on in my life, I spent most of the years early on in rental properties when I was an adult, right? I mean, rents, you rent when you're in school, you rent when you first get a job. I even rented when I first had a family. And it took me years before I owned something and usually rented apartments. It took me years before I owned a house. And it's not clear. It's not clear, depending again on your values, depending on what you want to do and everything. It's not clear. Anybody should own a house. You know, it's not clear. You should own a house necessarily. It depends on your values. It depends where you are in your life and what you want to achieve. So there's just no basis for this, zero. If you look at the market share, total market share, not just what they, you know, in 12 months of landlords, total landlords with a thousand plus properties that peaked in 2021, I think at 2.4%. 2.4% versus 44%. You can see how these things go online. Very few people question them and they just become this panic about nothing. Now again, it's not even clear why it's bad, even if it happens, right? It's not clear. But yeah, let's see. All right. So I've talked often about sugar, about the fact that sugar in the United States, there's a reason why you, in your Coca-Cola, you have corn syrup and not sugar. And the primary reason for that is because of the sugar lobby. And the sugar lobby is not just sugar farmers, primarily in Florida, that are supported by people like Rubio, that basically have forced very, very large, basically limits on how much sugar we can import. It's not even tariffs. It's literally quotas of how much sugar can be imported in order to drive prices of sugar up so that American farmers who have high costs to produce their sugar can compete. And of course, American farmers, this is a national security issue. If, for some reason, there's a war and we become completely dependent on sugar from an enemy state like Mexico, what will we do without any sugar? Oh, wait a minute. It's sugar. So there's no national security issue. All right. So that's not why. So we could use Brie's sugar, which is her honey, right? She produces honey. Brie is a honey producer. So we could use honey. But because sugar prices are so high, we import very little. And because they're quotas, and because the United States is not exactly ideal for production of sugar, so we don't, and it's expensive. We don't produce much sugar. Because of that, the biggest pro restrictions on sugar lobby that the United States has is the corn lobby, the corn farmers in the Midwest. They're the ones who really advocate for sugar quotas. And the reason for that is because then they get to sell their corn as a sugar substitute through corn syrup. And that's why drinks have corn syrup. Now, I've gone through this before for you guys. So when you think about the corn lobby, you remember Bob Dole was called the ethanol president, the ethanol senator, because he was, corn is also used for ethanol. Corn is a very, very, very big lobby. They control them at West and therefore they have ethanol and then they have corn syrup. But they also could be called the sugar lobby because they basically help the sugar farmers make vast profits. Now, I found this graph and I thought I'd share the graph with you because the graph kind of illustrates just the point about sugar. And again, people wonder about sugar in the United States. Here's the answer for you. This is sugar. Wait a minute. Yeah, that's sugar. And you can see, I don't know why it's not centered. It's supposed to be, let me just move that. There we go. That's better. All right. This sugar is not a few years, but this pattern has been consistent forever. Right? Basically, what you see in this graph is the red is the price of sugar, the price of sugar worldwide. This is the average world price of sugar. Right? And the blue is the price of sugar in the United States. And basically what you can see is that the price of sugar in the United States is almost always, whether the price of sugar is low or whether the price of sugar is high, always double, double. So price of sugar in the United States is literally double what it is everywhere else in the world. And it's amazing how this tracks. It's, wow. Only government could make a track this beautifully. This is why government limitations and the importation of sugar create. And when you buy a thing of sugar in the supermarket, know that you're paying double the average world price that you would pay in any other country. By the way, the largest import of sugar to the United States is Mexico. And sugar farmers in the United States right now are very upset at the Mexicans. And see if you can follow this. The NAFTA agreement allows Mexico to sell sugar into the United States on one condition. On the condition that all the sugar it sells into the United States at these at high prices is produced in Mexico. So Mexico can't import sugar from somewhere else, I don't know the Caribbean, and then resell it to the United States. They can only sell Mexican sugar into the United States. However, this is a problem, right? Because what happens if, how do we know it's Mexican sugar? Sugar, sugar. Well, you know, so for example, over the last two years, the production of sugar, the growth in sugar in Mexico has declined significantly. And yet the exports to the United States have stayed the same. And that has made sugar farmers in the United States suspicious that Mexico is actually, what they're doing is they, yeah, they're shipping all all the sugar that's being shipped to the United States is indeed Mexican sugar. But for domestic consumption in Mexico, they're using imported sugar, which goes against the NAFTA agreement. I don't know if you followed that, but hopefully you do. And therefore, sugar farmers right now are lobbying the government with the help of people like Marco Rubio, and I'm sure I'm sure the great governor of Florida is also involved in this in order to restrict the amount of sugar being imported from Mexico even further. Because, I mean, farmers in the United States, if they can get even higher prices in sugar, why not? It'll just mean greater profits for them. And they'll have more money to contribute to the re-election campaign of Marco Rubio and more money to contribute to the presidential campaign of our wonderful free market governor of Florida. So the US Department of Commerce is planning to look into whether the supply deals that Mexico has with the United States right now, skirt the trade rules preventing Mexico from bringing in sugar from other countries to meet domestic demand while exporting its own supply to the United States. And people tell me there's free trade, there's free trade, you know, NAFTA is a free trade deal. NAFTA is managed trade. It is a nutty, insane system. And you know, why we have tariffs on sugar at all? I mean, think of, just think of, the economic advantages to all of our lives, the cost of living decline that would happen if we just eliminated tariffs, just eliminated tariffs on everything. You don't view national security, well, no, just eliminated tariffs on everything. Just imagine what would happen. I mean, life in America would become suddenly so much cheaper to live. Our stand of living would suddenly become so much higher. We would have so much more money to save, to invest, to grow. Economy would grow so much more dramatically. Yes, there'd be a realignment of jobs. Sugar farmers would all go out of business. Good riddance. Who needs sugar farmers in the United States? But just imagine how much distortion and convo- I mean, corn farmers would go out of business. Maybe we'd grow something on those fields that Americans actually wanted to consume rather than corn syrup and ethanol. Just imagine if you just did get rid of all the tariffs, the distortions, the perversions, the craziness, the insanity that they create in all the stuff in the economy. And they got rid of the dredging act and the Jones act and subsidies and just simple stuff like that. Forget the welfare states. Forget even for a minute deregulations. Just get rid of all the subsidies, all the tariffs, all the little tax breaks could give everybody a flat tax at the corporate level. Just get out of the government trying to manage the minutia, a particular economic phenomenon. I mean, what a boon. What a boon to the U.S. economy, to U.S. quality of life, to our standard of living, to our welfare generally as individuals. It's just hard to imagine a world like that. And yet it's easy. And indeed, getting rid of tariffs is something a president could probably do unilaterally. At least many of those tariffs. Maybe not the sugar tariffs. Maybe that's a different law. Or maybe you would have to scrap NAFTA. So we're scrapping NAFTA. We're just going to have a free trade zone. We're going to allow Mexico to export anything they want to the United States. And the same with Canada. Oh, my God. Isn't, you know, whoa, cognitive dissonance and people going into cardiac arrest. This is so easy. So easy. And just like that, you make every single American, or almost every single American, not every single American. You make most Americans richer. And over the long run, every American you make richer. And instead, we're going to get a president who is going to promise to increase tariffs by 10 percent across the board on every good coming into the country. And then selectively on stuff he doesn't like, like 100 percent tariffs on electric cars from Mexico, 60 percent tariffs on everything coming in from China, maybe a few tariffs over here, over there, over elsewhere, depending on who lobbies him, and depending on who begs him, and depending on who funds this campaign or pays for his bond or whatever. We live in a crazy, crazy world where even the most libertarian member of the House of Representatives wants to maintain the Jones Act. God. Hopeless. All right, let's see. All right, a few other, you know, I'm on an economic fallacy thing, and then we'll get to a couple of other issues. Immigration, a number of different studies coming out or being reported on, they've been out for a little while. Being reported on in the media is a story in Forbes today that basically the headline says it all. Research shows immigrants benefit U.S. taxpayers. A number of different studies, one by a group here in the United States and one by a, this is from Wharton, from Penn, and one by a professor from George Mason. Both of these studies basically show the huge advantage we get from immigration and that if we allowed more immigration, the impact on things like, for example, federal deficit would be substantial. Federal deficit would be dramatically lower than without immigration. And another study by Michael Clemens that takes into account the capital investors, capital investment employers make when they hire an immigrant, when they hire for another job, which then if you take into account all the effects the immigrant has on the economy, there's a massive net positive benefit tax-wise. That is, the immigrant pays dramatically more taxes over his lifetime than anything he consumes, even if you take into account all the different stuff that in terms of taxpayer stuff that he consumes, all the different stuff that he is consuming. So I encourage you to go look at it. I mean, there's a lot of data coming out now that basically says that maybe one of the reasons we didn't go into recession while interest rates were going up, I've said this on a previous show, is because of all those illegal immigrants coming in and getting a job in spite of the fact that we don't want them to work, finding jobs anyway, all those asylum seekers finding black market jobs, or ultimately getting a job, a work permit, and going to work, all of that actually raises GDP, raises economic activity, improves the economy, and prevented us from going into recession. So maybe the crisis in the border is not a net negative, maybe it's actually a net positive. Maybe. At least the number of economic studies that seem to suggest exactly that. All right, let's see. Three-body problem. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the three-body problem. And the three-body problem is a science fiction novel. It's actually a trilogy of novels by a Chinese author. It is considered kind of a modern classic in the genre. It's one of the, I think he won the, I forget the name of the big science fiction award for best novel, first Chinese author to ever win it. And the novels are supposedly really good. Unfortunately, I haven't read them. But Netflix has just come out with a series called American Production. There was a Chinese series of the three-body problem. And now it's just come out with the Netflix version. Same people who made Game of Thrones. So massive, high quality production values, great acting really well. The Hugo Award. Thank you, the Hugo Award. And, you know, it came out and the first episode, which I watched is, first of all, it's really good. It's really well done. You know, I don't know exactly where it's going. Don't tell me. I want to read it. No spoilers coming. But I highly recommend watching the first episode. And as I said, I don't know where it's going, but it's very well done. But the first episode opens with the scene, which is creating a lot of angst in China. And indeed, the scene comes out of the book. And it's hard to believe that the scene was allowed in the book originally, but it was in the book itself. It's somewhere in the middle of the book. Here it's right at the beginning. A lot of Chinese have been watching this using a VPN. But the scene at the beginning is very powerful, worth watching. It's violent, but it's worth watching because of what it says and because of what it tells us about a real history. It shows, I think it's 1966, in the midst of the China's cultural revolution, a revolution that was spurned by Mao Tse-tung that basically encouraged young people to purge Chinese institutions from bourgeois values and get rid of anything that was supposedly counter or anti-revolutionary. And that meant getting rid of a lot of the scientists at the universities. And in the scene, a scientist is accused of teaching Einstein's theory of relativity and other modern scientific ideas that are viewed as anti-Mao, anti-communist, anti-revolutionary. And you see the kind of mindlessness of the crowd. Scary because it looks so familiar. But you see the kind of mindless of the crowd. You see the almost orgasmic passion that they exude and then how this devolves into horrific violence. This is the Mao's cultural revolution in which two million people were killed. Two million people killed. And many, many more millions, tens of millions, were sentenced to labor camps or resettled in villages. Deng Cha-peng, Mao's number two, was actually a victim of the cultural revolution, was sent to work in a small farming community somewhere. And then when he returned, I think one of the reasons that when Mao died and Deng took over that he was more open to other ideas was because of his experiences during the cultural revolution. But Mao needed him. So he brought him back. But he did live in a small village for several years. And his son was actually thrown off of a third-story building and became a paraplegic and was crippled for the rest of his life. That is Deng, Deng Cha-peng. Anyway, this is a scene from history. It's worth watching just for this scene out of history. I think the series is probably going to be worth watching. I intend to watch the whole thing. And it looks interesting. I'll review it later. But I think this is, you know, there are not a lot of movies. I've talked about this in the past. Not a lot of movies that depict the evils of communism. Here's one short scene that does so and is causing a real stir in China. And maybe in some, one of the things that the crowd is doing is waving Mao's red book as part of this kind of craziness. They're waving Mao's red book. And that is probably stirring up some negative feelings among some in the American left who are pro Mao Tse-tung. There are people like that. Believe me, there are people like that. So I definitely worth watching. Three-body problem. And finally, because I did a show, is Andrew here? Yeah, Andrew's here. Because I did a show about fear and bravery. Well, about fear. Put aside the bravery. The bravery doesn't come into this. I thought I'd read you this post because a lot of people on Twitter are commenting on this. It's getting a lot of views. And it's something that Mark Andreessen posted. He says, this captures the mood of the times perfectly. And this relates to my show. I don't think we're going to have to comment on this very much, but I do encourage anybody interested in watching the show I did on Saturday about fear and what it's going to take for us to reestablish bravery or just reestablish normalcy and the ability to face the future. So this is this is this post. He goes, I am 57. Not only does it feel like something wicked this way comes, but there is also this feeling that the whole world is holding its breath. Almost as though we are waiting for some catalyst or sign or event that puts an end to this feeling of being put on hold, this vague unexplained unease we feel, something terrible looking just out of our field of vision, but we all feel it closing in. I cannot count the number of people who have told me they wish that whatever is going to happen would just get on with it. That this waiting for the thing in the darkness is unbearable. I think that actually does capture a lot of the mood. You know, whether it's economic collapse is going to happen or whether it's World War three is going to happen, something out there is going to happen that's really, really, really bad or AI taking over the world and all of us losing our jobs and starving, something really, really, really bad is going to happen. We don't know what it is, but we know it's going to happen. And it's coupling us. It's coupling us. And I think I talk about in a sense this and maybe some of the causes for this on the Saturday show, but yeah, and the intellectuals are feeding on this. I think much of our culture is feeding on this. Certainly social media is feeling on this. This is fear for the sake of fear. It is white people go with conspiracy theories. It is this millennium, do moreism on steroids and the steroid here is social media. And it's fueled by a lack of philosophical clarity, a lack of clarity about what not only what do we believe or what should we believe, what should we believe, what does anybody believe. And it's, this is debilitating and a big cause I think of economic and cultural and scientific and everything else stagnation. It really, really, really is a sad phenomena. I think people used to know what they wanted in life. I think people used to have a certain clarity about, I don't know, the goodness of America, about the positive value of the West. The people used to be positive about science and technology. People used to be positive about their life and the progress they're making. And I think all of that has been lost. And I think it's been lost because our intellectuals have been feeding us this constant stream of uncertainty, of skepticism, of cynicism, and of mysticism in various forms. I think post Enlightenment, the world is generally being positive, and at least the West that we positive, and pro-science and pro-industry and pro-progress. And that over the last 40 years that is tilted, we've tilted away from that, first by the cynicism, skepticism of the left, and then by the mysticism and conspiracy theories of the right. And that combination has now brought all of us this kind of dread, this kind of dread. And there was this positive attitude after World War II, we won. And yeah, it's pretty sad. And anyway, go watch the Saturday episode. I'm not going to resurrect it here. All right, we've got a bunch of questions. We're going to go to the super chat. I do want to remind everybody that you can support the show on a monthly basis on you on Brookshow, on you on bookshow.com slash membership, you're on bookshow.com slash membership. I don't know what this is doing. All right. So please consider doing that. You can also support the show on Patreon. Remember, this is a listener-supported show. It couldn't survive without support from you guys. So please consider your support. Those of you who are listening live, of course, can use the super chat to support the show. That's a fun way to do it. It's also a way to kind of get you engaged and to help shape the show itself. All right, again, it's not working. All right. It will get there. All right, let's see. We have some questions. Oh, one more reminder. Iron Man Institute is a sponsor of the show. Soon we're going to have a new sponsor, but we haven't finished the exact sponsorship. Soon we'll have a new sponsor. But for now, Iron Man Institute is a sponsor of the show. And you can, they're looking for people to sign up for the Ocon conference, for annual conference, which is pretty cool and pretty exciting and a lot of fun. And you can get a full scholarship to attend the conference. So please consider doing that. Please consider coming to the conference. I'll be there. A lot of the intellectuals associated with objectivism would be very quick. So Mary would be there, Tara Smith, Uncle Garte. And if you're a student, you can apply for a scholarship. So whether you attend and pay or whether you apply for a scholarship, you can go to ironman.com slash start here and apply for a scholarship or just register to attend the conference. And I look forward to seeing you all at the conference. It's a blast. You know, socially, you're in an environment with 400, 500 people who basically share your values. It's being like in a kind of golf, golf for six days. It's just fabulous. It's exciting. It's fun. I hope to meet many of you there. All right. Andrew. He says infrastructure would be unimaginably better under capitalism. Responses to the claim that big, ambitious infrastructure projects need the government. Otherwise, private interests would conflict and be unable to organize. Purely incorrect, right? The first canals in the United States in the 19th century built by private enterprise. It's only later that the government took over those canals and started building them themselves. But imagine many of the first roads are built by private enterprise. A lot of the roads built in order to feed developments, whether it's a business development or whether it's residential development is built by individual companies for the profit motive. So absolutely not. Infrastructure projects can and should be built by private enterprise, by people who have a selfish interest in seeing these projects being put up and then maintained. They would be a lot better. A lot of these bridges should be told so that people actually pay for their use and that at least payment would pay for the maintenance of the bridges if they were private. And there are a lot of interests here. Trucking companies who need to truck the containers out of the port in Baltimore and take them across the country would have a strong incentive to do so. There are a variety of different organizations, entities who would have an interest in building roads and building bridges and facilitating easier and quicker and more effective transportation. That is true of what's called public transportation. That's true of roads. That's true of bridges. That's true of desalination plants and electric power plants. All of this should be privatized. All of it can embody competition and again can create opportunities for profit motive and whether that profit is directly in payment for the particular use of the infrastructure, whether that profit is just from the fact that, hey, I need to get to the factory and if I can't get to the factory, I can't make any money and therefore I need to build the road in order to get to the factory and other people will use the road. That's fine. Who cares as long as I can get to there? There's a lot of positive externalities in a private economy. A lot. Already there's a huge amount of positive externalities. If we privatized infrastructure, there'd be a lot more positive externalities in such an economy. Thank you, Andrew. Michael, when are you doing a show on RANDs? I say the missing link. I'm really curious to hear your breakdown. I'm not sure when exactly, but maybe soon we'll see. Maybe this week, I've got two shows in the evening this week. Maybe one of those shows will be on that. I do want to do it soon, but I need some significant prep time for it. Thanks, Michael. Let's see. Not another account. All right. Not another account. Just a previous account. I've never heard you mention national security aspects of letting anonymous millions walk across a river to enter the US instead of going through official entry points. Do you not perceive a security problem in that? Yeah, I do. But the reality is that this is caused by the fact that we have restrictive immigration. I don't support the current system. Never have supported the current system. I also don't think there's a panic to be involved in the national security threat, because the national security threat so far has been hypothetical, but it's not to say that there won't be a terrorist attack from somebody coming in. The current immigration system sucks. It is destructive. It's destructive for everybody, and yes, it increases a national security risk. It would be much better if all those people came in through design checkpoints, but they would if they were told, yeah, you come to checkpoint, we run a background check on you. We make sure you're not coming from a country dominated by terrorism. We make sure you're not in contact with ISIS or Al Qaeda, and if you're not, you can come in. And if that were the case, then the national security risk would disappear. Would disappear. So I'm not for the current system. I just don't think there's this hysterical fanatical crisis happening on the border. And is there a national security threat? Sure. But how big is it? Hard to tell. And will there be a terrorist attack done by illegal immigrants from some Muslim country who cross the southern border illegally and do a terrorist attack in the United States? Probably at some point. So the immigration system needs to be changed. It needs to be improved. It needs to enhance legal migration. I mean, my proposal is, and I've said this many times, right, set up employment agencies all over the world and let those employment agencies issues work visas for people to come into the United States to work and let them be connected to the FBI database and they will be able to run background checks on anybody who applies for a visa. And if they clear the background check, they'll be allowed in. And if they don't clear the background check, they won't be allowed in. And of course, they have to have a job. So they will have to, you know, the employment agency will have to confirm that there is actually a job waiting for them in the United States. And if so, let them in. That's my proposal. I'm not for the current system. But I'm also not panicking over the current system. There are plenty of terrorist attacks by domestic mass shooting events that happen from people born in the United States. You don't violate rights in mass in order to prevent crime. You know that the current rate went down dramatically during COVID because when you lock people down, you get less cases of rape, probably more cases of incest, but less cases of rape. You know, if we locked all the male population down from 7 p.m. every evening until 7 a.m. in the morning, we said you couldn't go outside. Rape and murder would go down in the United States. But that doesn't justify the violation of rights. So yes, there is the potential for terrorists to cross the southern border. But that doesn't mean you lock down the border. That means you come up with a better system. And nobody, nobody, zero, zilch people out there are proposing a better system. I am. I am proposing a better system. A system that would better protect the United States. By the way, defeating the enemy would be also step number one in making the system better, right? But I'm proposing a much better system, but people reject it because I don't think the national security issue is what is constraining, is what is causing people to object to immigrants. But the reality is the immigration improves the economy. Immigration, if done right, you know, reduces national security threat. Immigration, if done right, reinvigures the American spirit. In every aspect, immigration is good. And yet, many of you oppose it. And you use, come up with all kinds of excuses, national security threat being one of them, to want to build a wall instead of massively expanding legal migration, massively expanding legal migration, which is the real solution. Sylvanos, thank you for making sure these shows, these news roundup shows, we always make our target. Really appreciate it. I have a relative that is described, that is described by that mood of fear perfectly. They've been certain, the end of times, have been just around the corner since Y2K. I remember Y2K. Sad to see what has become of their mind. Yes, I mean, fear is a crippling emotion, particularly when it's an irrational fear, when it's not based on anything legit. And it truly is sad what that kind of irrational fear, what any kind of irrationality, but when it's matched with that kind of emotion, the extent to which it'll cripple your mind and it'll cripple your ambition and it'll basically destroy your life. And the only remedy to that is ideas, better ideas, a better philosophy. A philosophy that actually explains the world and shows how so many of these things that we're so afraid of. There's so much that can be done that could easily, dramatically improve life in the United States and even improve security in the United States, but people will not do it because they're crippled by fear. Immigrants, oh my God, they might blow us up. MS-13. I'll take my job though. I mean, you go on and on and on and on. And so you're crippled. You can't think, oh, how do we solve this? I'll just note that so far, and I'm not saying this will hold forever, but so far, no illegal immigrants has committed a terrorist attack. So far, it'll probably happen. It'll probably happen. But given the millions and millions and millions of people who come illegally, they were 11 million, maybe they're now 15 million illegal immigrants in the United States. That's a pretty cool number, zero. And even if there's one, that's a one. So it's, I mean, I don't know how you even weigh that and why that would weigh on you. And you're probably of dying from a terrorist attack. I mean, we shouldn't, we should stop them at all. You know, we should stop them whenever we can. But you're probably of dying from a terrorist attack is about as close to zero. You're much more likely to die of a traffic accident than have a terrorist attack. So, you know, we should stop people from driving. That'll save lives. So it's just, it's just, we need to really rethink our priorities and what we're focused on and what we're fearful of. And I've always said building walls is a sure sign of crippling fear and, you know, a decline in civilization. Building walls, not good. Silvanos, is the success of three body problem a sign that the old communist idealists of Mao's generation are gone? Yeah, I think that's right. I think very few communist idealists remain, even in China. The communists running China today are more fascist than they are communist. And they're more interested in making money and yeah, than in any kind of communist ideal. I just don't think they have any communist ideals. There's communist ideals out. All right, John says, will Biden's betrayal at the UN give Israel the incentive to go ahead and do what they need to do without worrying about what the U.S. thinks? I doubt it. I mean, maybe, but I doubt it because I have acquired Israel to have a strong perspective on this, on what they need to do. And it's not clear that they do. You know, I think that, I think that, you know, Nintendo's angry right now. But what's really going to spur Israel on is the fact that Hamas won't agree to ceasefire. So it doesn't really matter what America does at this point, unless it demands that the Israel do a unilateral ceasefire, and it hasn't so far demanded even that, although it did abstain at the UN as just a stick it to Israel. I think Israel's going to have to go into a fight. What choice does it have? And the Biden administration will pretend to see them and to be really, really upset. But in the end, everybody realizes that Israel has to do this. They'll secretly be happy that they're doing it, because doing it helps America. But they will pretend that Israel is being awful and terrible and non-cooperative and betrays whatever. But so yes and no, I think Israel is going to go to Iraq no matter what. The U.S. did, I don't think, dispose them on faster. But it does close off more options. And it does give Israel the sense that they are alone. And I think they should have had that sense in the beginning, because they've always been alone. Nobody really supports Israel. They do it out of a sense of electoral politics. And it's not clear where those electoral politics will ultimately fall. Mary Lee says that Jones Act is evil. I agree completely. Evil and stupid. Scott says, if the court rules Biden can jawbone social media into suppressing content he doesn't like, will you still think free speech is the best it's ever been? No, because it was better before. And it wasn't just the Biden administration. I know Scott is unbelievably biased. But it's also the Trump administration did the same thing and Trump himself jaw-boned social media and regular media on several occasions. It was free before that. But you know, there were periods in American history where even newspapers didn't have a complete freedom of speech. So you know, we'll be less free than we were today right now. We're free here because right now the Biden administration is banned from jaw-boning social media. I'm not sure what this stupid rating system Scott has in mind. I list all the dates in American history and rank them based on the extent to which we had free speech. I mean, the reality is there's more free speech today even with the jaw-boning of this than we had in the 19th century and to a large extent than we had in the 1960s. There was a period just before maybe Trump came into office that we had more free speech. But it will be terrible if they allow social media to be jaw-boned by the administration. And if they do allow it, I hope they allow it only with really stringent restraints. But I think those restraints can be easily overcome. So it'll be sad for the Supreme Court to sanction the government basically using implicit force to dictate what is said. And this is a conservative court. This is the most conservative court we've ever seen. And it will just prove counter to what Scott implies in every single one of these sessions that conservatives are more pro-free speech than the left is, I think. Unfortunately, nobody in America is intellectually pro-free speech. And it's just now a battle between whose speech they want to regulate and control. Daniel, isn't it interesting that Republicans want parents to have a say in education? But when it comes to social media, government must step in. Florida is banning social media for kids. Yes. And that is pretty typical. And even in parents having a say in education, in Florida, it's still true that the government was dictating what classes can or cannot be taught at schools. It wasn't up to the parents. It was the government deciding these things. And no, there's nobody there. Even, you know, there's some Republicans who support school choice and really allowing for private schools to teach whatever they want and for the slow decline of public schools or government schools phasing them out. But that's still a minority. Most Republicans want government schools. And many Republicans want conservatives to control what is taught in those government schools. So this idea that one side is more pro-freedom than the other is almost daily being refuted. And it's not, you know, they're both awful. It's not the one is good. It's not the left is good. The left is awful, horrible, maybe worse than the right. But the right is awful, horrible. There's no good guys in this battle. Most Republicans support choice with all these constraints and all these limitations. Just look at the bills that pass Congress and look at all the education bills that not pass Congress, pass the state houses and look at all the constraints and limitations that all these red states are passing on what can be taught in the classroom. They want control. They want control over your children. Have no, no doubt about it. Roland, nice to know there's a most libertarian member of Congress. Hope he isn't planning to protect America. Super chatters from foreign competitions too much. I hope not. You know, I hope not. Yeah, that would be, that would be, I'd lose a bunch of revenue if he prevented foreign super chatters from contributing. I guess they're okay with money flowing into the United States. They don't like money going out because when money goes out, we lose. That's using Trump's terminology. Mike, in the 1960s, there was a popular song called The Eve of Destruction. Google it. It didn't age well. Here we are still muddling through. Yeah. Yes. I mean, this millennial cult thing has always been around. There's always been people who thought the world, the end of the world is around. It just seems like it's worse today. Maybe it isn't, but it just seems that way. Savano says, reminds us all to like the show. Please like the show before you leave. It really helps the algorithm. So really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Sylvanus, for reminding us. Shazvat, why are some people who are against free speech offended when they are accused of being against free speech? Because a lot of these people on the left who want Biden administration or any administration, and of course, if the Supreme Court allows the Biden administration to do this, that means any Republican administration will be allowed to do this. They believe that it's the government's job, yes, to allow free speech, but also to correct misinformation and to prevent people from getting hurt from misinformation and so on. So they want the government involved in truth seeking, which is bizarre, right? So they think they're for free speech. So they're offended when you attack them. So it's kind of a, and this is the problem. Here's the problem. People don't understand what free speech is, where it comes from, what it implies, why it's important. They don't understand any of these things. They don't understand what it has to do with government, why you shouldn't be able to force, I mean, so many people here in the chat and among my so-called objectives friends, think that the government should pass a law that says that social media cannot limit who says what on their channels. That is that they force them to give equal time to conservatives. Ted Cruz believes that, a lot of conservatives believe that, and sort of some people in the chat. So there is a massive lack of understanding of the concept of free speech, how and to whom it applies, the right to free speech, how and to whom it applies. Frank, in million dollar baby, the mom of the girl boxer gets mad at her for buying her a house. She worries about losing her welfare. Was Matt defending this? Yes. I mean, anybody who defends welfare defends this kind of stuff. But he would claim that that doesn't happen. There is no mentality like this. There are no people permanently poor. There are no people in a sense addicted to welfare. That's just a blimp. That's insignificant in comparison to the benefits welfare provides so many people. And he'll say, that doesn't happen in Norway. It doesn't happen in Sweden. So if it's happened in America, it's unique to America. So we need to adapt the welfare system of Sweden and Denmark and so on. Andrew, Andreessen's post reminds me of your point on Saturday show about free will. People feel there is something imminently bad that is going to happen and that we have no ability to alter that. Yeah, I think that's right. They feel out of control. They feel out of control. That is a big part of the fear. If you don't have a sense that you can control your life, whether it's because you don't have free will or whether it's because forces greater than yourself, forces outside of your control are imposing their will on you and you have nowhere out of this, then yeah. And that is exactly what happens. That is the kind of doom, fear that they get. All right, everybody. Thank you. Show tonight, 8 p.m. East Coast time, topic to be determined, and I will see you guys then. And then, of course, there'll be a news round up tomorrow. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week or great day. See you tonight. Bye.