 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Hey everybody, welcome. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday night. Night here in Puerto Rico anyway. I hope everybody is having a fantastic week. Hopefully the week has started up productively for everybody. I am here, never really went away. Next show will be tomorrow at 8 o'clock. We're doing the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday because Thursday is my wedding anniversary and didn't want to do a show on my wedding anniversary. All right, we're going to talk about Ukraine, Russia, just to catch up. We've talked a lot about Ukraine and Russia, so we'll talk a little bit more. We'll talk about Trudeau's emergency powers and we had a fascinating article. There's an echo again? God, really? I didn't change anything from last time. Anybody else hear an echo? Let me know if anybody else hear an echo. Let me know. Yes, and then there was an excellent article in the Atlantic magazine about the doctor shortage in the United States, which is important. The standard for echoes in the show is Wanda Freeman. He always is complaining about the sound quality, so nobody else seems to see an echo. Wanda Freeman hasn't complained, so I'm assuming everything is good. He says, Yuan's last appearance of Lex Friedman is about to become his most watched YouTube video. Whose most watched video? Mine? Certainly not Lex's. Lex says, I don't understand that. I'm not even sure that's true with regard to me, although I don't know what the number is up to these days. All right, so we're going to talk about those topics. I've got two other topics we're going to talk about quickly in the beginning before we get to that, so we'll see if we can cover everything today. Of course, Wanda Freeman said it's only slight. I told you he was gold standard when it comes to these things. It's about to be Ruben, but my all-time most watched video is neither one of those. My all-time most watched long video, the short videos that have been watched more than both of those, but my all-time most watched long video is the debate at Yale on inequality, which is on the Federalist Society's website. I think it's the most watched video ever for them, and it's on my website, and if you add those two up, it's by far the most watched long video I've ever done, more than interviews, more than Lex, more than, yeah, I think the Yale video is 440,000 on Lex Friedman. That's great. That's amazing. For an interview on nationalism and conservatism and individualism, that's amazing to get that number, usually. But the video at Yale is more than that, particularly if you combine both on my channel, where it's the most watched video ever, and on the Federalist Society website, where it is the most watched video ever. So, yeah, of course, the first question I get on the Super Chat is about Dr. Pieckhoff, about Leonard. Not surprising, it's why so many are here today. I know you're eager. Yeah, I will address that in a minute. And Hoppe, I'll address it in spite of your disrespectful, ridiculous way of asking the question, if I can say so. So, you know, that's just absurd. Anyway, there he goes again. You'd have to ask Iron Man if she'd be proud of me. Ask Leonard Pieckhoff if she'd be proud of me. But I'm not going to answer that question yet. We will get to that. We've got other topics to cover first, but we will get to that. But I know that there are many of you that are just so eager to create and embrace conflict between myself and Leonard Pieckhoff. All right, let's see. It won't be last. I'll cover it early, because otherwise everybody will be in suspense the whole time, as will I. Yeah, I mean, some good news. Two items of good news. Two items of good news, I want to report. One is, I don't know how many of you know who Mark Andreessen is. Mark is one of the premier venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. He's a big name in the valley. He's a big name in our culture, I think, particularly among computer nodes. But in the venture community, he started tech community. This is a big name. And Mark Andreessen started to write about Ayn Rand today, interestingly. So his first tweet two hours ago, I think it was about two hours ago, whenever, earlier today, maybe three hours ago. His first tweet was, overhood in Silicon Valley, Colin. Ayn Rand's heroes are fake, but her villains are real. Interesting, and that's the tweet. Interesting the way he phrases that, because it's not necessarily him saying it. But it's, I think, what a lot of people think, but overhood in Silicon Valley, Ayn Rand's heroes are fake, but her villains are real. Now, I was going to talk about that and what that reveals about the people who say that, that they can't live up to be the heroes. It's not political. It's not anything. It's just a statement about Ayn Rand's heroes, about who they are. So I think here you really get a sense of how defeated so many of these entrepreneurs and people are. It's kind of sad. They are the ones who should be Ayn Rand's heroes. But Mockery says not saying it funnily enough in his own words. It's like overhood in Silicon Valley. But then, about an hour ago, an hour ago, he posted a whole thread, and the thread from beginning to end is a quote from the Fountainhead. It's, it's, it was with Tui. It's one of the bad guys, one of the villains. And it's one of the most powerful, impactful, you know, I think, passages that Ayn Rand ever wrote. I'll just quote some of it. And I'm quoting Mark Andreessen's tweet. The soul is that which can't be ruled. They must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it, and the man is yours. You won't need a whip. He'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse, and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Want to know how it's done? There are many ways. Here's one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration in integrity. That's difficult. The worst among you, gropes from an ideal in his own twisted way. Direct man towards a goal destructive of all integrity. Tell man that man that he must live for others. That altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it or will ever. His every living instinct screams against it. Don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as his noblest virtue. And it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp. He gives up on all ideals, all aspirations, all sense of personal value. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up self-respect. You've got him. He'll obey. He'll be glad to obey because he can't trust himself. He feels uncertain. He feels unclean. That's one way. And it goes on. And at the end, at the end of it, he writes, this is, yes, this is Tui talking to Keating. At the end of it, Marco Driesen writes, a fictional character who could never exist in real life, I assume. Now, that's powerful. It's a powerful statement. It's a powerful scene. It's reflective of so much of the evil in the world around us. It's a direct, direct criticism of altruism, of the more code that dominates the world out there, embraced by one of the great venture capitalists in Silicon Valley right now. Well, by the way, funnily enough, follows me on Twitter. I encourage you, if you're on Twitter, if you engage in Twitter, then go and make a comment, like it, retweet it, comment on it. Give this some energy. Don't let this die. Let this be a commentary that keeps going. So that, I thought that was terrific. It's just terrific. And to see somebody, I don't know if he's just discovered it. I don't know if, I think he knows I'm Rand. It has known her for a long time. But why he would put this today, what's the context? I don't know, but it's great to see it. So that's the good news. I think that's good news. Hopefully you guys think it's good news. The second, I'll just mention quickly, I am, as I told you, reading David Deutsches from the beginning of Infinity, and I'm on Chapter 3. I have a lot of reservations about Chapter 1. He's so freaking close, and his epistemology just keeps missing, just keeps missing. I wish he would read, I wish somebody would give him, although it's probably too late, but I wish somebody would give him to read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. I'm so curious, and listen to Lena Peacuff's talks on induction. But it would be fascinating to see his response to that. Chapter 2 is really good. Chapter 3 is brilliant. Chapter 3 is truly brilliant, and it makes out for any misgivings I have, although the misgivings still undercut it, undermined it. So it's so much fun reading an author who, I think, based on my limited knowledge, seems to be taking an original view, presenting an original perspective, critiquing what needs to be critiqued, presenting a positive, inspiring view of mankind, of human ability to reason, even though he doesn't call it human ability to reason, of what progress makes possible. Of the infinity that is progress, he comes so close to Rand's view with regard to concepts, in a sense concepts are this beginning of infinity. There's a lot that can be integrated there, and it's interesting, he really needs her epistemology, but you can see what I think is an original mind, a truly brilliant mind, grasping with certain philosophical and certain issues, but just that pro-human being, a pro-life, pro-progress, pro-success, pro-progress, just fun to read. So far, and I'll keep giving you updates as I read through the book. I'm listening to it. Yeah, chapter three is definitely worth reading and listening to, so that's two good pieces of good news. Don't skip it. All right, so let's just remind everybody that we have a super chat is open. You can make contributions to the show through the super chat. You can also just make contributions, but you can also ask a question. We really have a number of questions. $20 questions get priority in terms of answering the question. Michael just asked a $50 question that'll certainly get priority. And I will answer the question generally after I, particularly if the questions are not on a topic, I will answer them after I finish everything else. But please use the tool both to ask me questions and keep the show exciting and interesting and fresh. And of course, use the question, use it to support what I do. So thank you all for your super chat contributions. I really, really appreciate them. You can use them to make $2. Michael's already made a $50. You can use all of those, all of those. So really, really interesting, interesting stuff. All right, let's jump in to topics. So Russia today announced and there's some reason to believe that they've taken some of the troops away from the Ukrainian border and sent them back to base after the exercises were done. Biden basically comes out and says, I don't believe them. It's like Biden wants, so I'm not convinced that Biden wants Russia to invade Ukraine. You know, shift the focus away from his failed domestic policy. It'll have, it'll keep him talking. It'll make him appear tough. He'll have all these, you know, all these sanctions against the Russians and everything. And he, you know, it's almost comical the way the West has behaved towards Putin. I've said this many times before already. It's like Putin's like a little child and what he wants is attention. What he wants is, is, is to appear big in front of his own people because, you know, he's not necessarily the most popular guy and he's an authoritarian and he's, you know, he's a thug and all that and he's weak domestically. And so he, he creates this, you know, this, this stuff going on. And then the West just flips out, gives him all the attention that he wants just like a spoiled child demands attention. They give him all the attention they want, which is exactly what he wants, exactly what he needs because he can go to the Russian people and say, look, look how important I am. You know, I'm important, everybody, all these, the French and the Germans and the British come here to gravo before me and the Americans, they call me every single day. I get, you know, Biden is called Putin more than any president has ever called a Russian or Soviet leader ever. It's just comical to watch apathetic. I mean, it's, it's worse than comical because it's so pathetic. A pathetic little leaders gravo before this guy and, and just panic. You know, I used to a long time ago have a view, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. Okay, you know, people, the people in the White House that are extraordinarily educated and able and really, really, really smart, super smart. And, you know, even if the president is not that smart, he's surrounded by really smart people who know a lot, who studied a lot, who know the world, who know how the world works. And they just have bad ideas and I disagree with them about ideas. And I have a completely different view of politics and of the people in the White House today than I did back then. And I think it's true, not just the people in the White House today, but going backwards. And part of it is that I've met people. I've met senators, I've met congressmen, and I've met people who've worked in White Houses. I've met people who worked in, I knew people who worked in the Trump White House, I've met people who worked in the Bush White House. And I've read the stuff of people, you know, read articles and stuff of people who worked in other, in Obama and so on. And my conclusion now is that they're not that smart. They don't know very much. They have very little understanding of history or of the world. That yes, they have bad ideas, but those bad ideas don't just shape some sophisticated strategy of evil. Basically, the bad ideas make them stupid. They make them unable to comprehend what's going on in the world. They make it unable for them to actually have a strategy that most of them are just pragmatists, most of them are emotionalists. They don't really know what's going on in the world. They have no clue. Just look at them right now. They're like chickens whose head has been cut off and they're just running around in circles and yelling at everybody. I don't know how a chicken yells when its throat is cut. Maybe that's a bad analogy, metaphor, as most are. No, they just, they have no clue. Really. They just don't know. They're not that smart. And they don't know history. And they don't understand, if they know the dates, they don't know causal relationships. They don't understand how thugs work. They're completely unintegrated. Completely unintegrated. So it's not a bunch of smart people that we're opposed to. It's a bunch of people who have a lot of power. And this is why I'm so skeptical about conspiracy theories and I'm so skeptical about all of this stuff. And it's not even that they love war. It's not that they want Americans to go to Ukraine and they know that's political suicide. I don't think they love war. I think they just have no clue. They have no clue. You know, they really try to retreat from Afghanistan. But they don't understand Afghanistan. And this is true to some extent of the generals as well. They don't understand Afghanistan. They have never managed anything in their lives. They've never employed anybody in their life. They have no ability to organize and orchestrate actual policy and actual anything. We're talking about the political classes. The generals know how to orchestrate things, but very little. And again, they haven't won a war in a very long time. And it's like the enemy is naked. The emperor has no clothes. There's no there, there. They're just empty suits. Binken is, Anthony Binken is just nothing. And Biden is nothing on steroids. And you know, the economic advisers, it's like Powell and the people at the Fed, they don't know what's going on. They didn't predict inflation. They couldn't see it coming. They've got models up the kazoo. The Federal Reserve employs more economists than any institution in the world. They run more models. They have a bigger budget. They're hugely smart people who don't have a clue, completely disintegrate. This is what a disintegrated mind does. It might have a bunch of horsepower, but it's revving in all directions. It can't go straight and it can't orient anything anyway. But it's not just this administration. This administration is particularly weak. But it's all administration. Why was somebody like Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve? This is a Trump nominee. What qualifications does he have? What does he know? Who is he? He's a nobody and then nothing. I said this when he was appointed and a Trump. He's a nobody and then nothing. And he was appointed because he's a nobody and then nothing. Because the last thing any president wants is actually somebody at the Federal Reserve who has ability and knowledge and knows what he's doing. But it's really, really, really amazing to me. The incompetence of these people. It's most incompetent. We can attribute evil to it and ultimately it's driven by evil ideas. But they mostly just have no clue what they're doing. Have any idea what they're doing. Vegan Zombie says 27 million Russians died in World War II versus 418 Americans. And you've got to tell me America is a great hero. Yeah. Russia should have lost that war. I mean, whose side are you on? I mean, Russia wasn't the hero of anything. They beat one evil authoritarian installed by embracing their own evil authoritarianism. There's nothing heroic about what the Russians did. Russians are the bad guys. Not the good guys. So they beat Hitler in the name of Stalin. Big deal. Anyway, and Russia would have not won anything if not for American help, which was a big, which was, it shouldn't have been an ally. The United States should never have accepted Russia as an ally in World War II. You know, Russia was part of the problem. Russia wasn't the solution. And the fact that, you know, we funded Russia. I mean, Ivan said throughout the world in the 40s, she said should have just let, you know, not given Russia one IO to have help. And let the Russians and the Germans bleed each other out. And by the time we'd enter the war, they'd both be much weaker. Eastern Europe would have never been taken over because we would have taken Eastern Europe by the Soviets, 70 years of slavery. So no, there's nothing noble about what the Russians did, nothing good about what the Russians did. And Russia should have never been our ally back then. Now Russia today is not as bad as it was under Stalin. But it's not good. It's not a friend. It's not a, you know, it's a thuggish authoritarian regime. And compared to them, not that Ukraine is good, not that Ukraine is a great regime, but compared to them, Ukraine seems like a model of civility. All right, so yeah, so it looks like there's not going to be a war in Ukraine. I think the Biden administration is going to be disappointed because they wanted a distraction. They want something that they can pretend to be strong on. But it, I don't think, I don't think Putin is going to give them the war, partially because I think Putin doesn't want to fight the war because he's afraid of what that'll do to his popularity domestically. I think a war would be very unpopular inside Russia. And he can't afford it. Whoops. Oh, I asked a relevant question, so I'll take it. Do you feel that way about AOC now too? She's not smart, just okay with words, but stupid with bad ideas. I don't know how smart she is. I think she is because she manages to answer questions pretty good on the fly. She's got really bad ideas, but she's incompetent. She's good at marketing. She's good at presenting those ideas. She's good at tilting the conversation in her direction. She's good at the marketing of politics. Does that make her smart? Probably not. And she's certainly stupid because of the bad ideas that it dumps her down. It makes it impossible for you to know reality. It makes it impossible for you to have an integrative view of reality. What she has, it's really good. What she does well is she knows how to pivot to talking points on camera really, really, really well. Really, really, really well. Okay, so that is that. I'm not going to read Harper's question because the whole point of the question is to insult me. So I'm not going to read it. I'm just going to say that he asks about my view of Dr. Pieckoff's statement about the Russians, about the truckers because I want to talk about two-dose emergency powers. So it's on topic. Look, I agree with almost everything Leonard Pieckoff said. Our only real disagreement, and this is the disagreement that goes back 10 years. He goes back to disagreeing about immigration because we don't disagree about immigration in a free country. During my debate with Leonard, he basically acknowledged. It's his philosophy more than it is mine. He is the objectivist. So he basically said what I knew that he thought that in a free society immigration should be open. Our disagreement was about the state of the world as it is right now. And whether it was so bad right now, whether we were so close to complete collapse, and whether that complete collapse was a result of immigrants voting for the Democrats or not, was a big part of that disagreement. It was a disagreement about our estimates of the state of the world and the relative damage of Democrats winning elections relative to otherwise. And I think that is the source to a large extent about disagreement about Trump. And I think that's the source of disagreement about the truckers. I completely agree with Leonard that if we're in a state of tyranny or on the verge of a state of tyranny, if tyranny is here, first of all in the state of tyranny, everything's allowed in a sense. Whatever you think will move us towards a state of freedom or a slightly greater freedom or making your voice heard or just standing up is absolutely legitimate. I said that. I said particularly if what we were talking about was a revolution, then if we're in tyranny then let's have a revolution and I'd be supportive maybe, right? Depending on who exactly was revolting and what were they revolting for, what were they trying to achieve? So I don't think we're on the verge of a state of tyranny, although Trudeau is trying to prove me wrong on a daily basis. I don't think this trucker demonstration is going to do or does any good. I don't think it wakes anybody up. I think it's supported by people who supported getting rid of the mandates anyway and it's hated by people who disagree with the mandates or support the mandates in Canada. It's way too narrow in a sense of, you know, I just heard the declaration of the demands of the truckers. They just put out a short statement on John Peterson's show. John Peterson interviewed the guy and he made a short statement of their demands. And the demand basically says they want to get rid of the mandate and they want to get rid of some kind of vaccine passport that you have to use in order to get back into Canada that I guess is an app which then monitors your movement. I'm in support of the demands. That's great. But to be a big deal, I think it's just too narrow and too limited. I just don't think it's going to have a defect that they would want it. And I think that if we truly believe we're on a verge of tyranny, we need more. Or not at all. I think this has the potential of doing more harm than good because of that. So we disagree about our assessments of the specifics, about our assessment of the state of the world and our specifics in terms of the effect of different actions out there. But we don't disagree about the philosophy. We don't disagree about the mandates. We don't disagree about what action is valid if you're in a state of tyranny. And look, every time I say I disagree with the line of Peacoff, it's, you know, I say it with great trepidation because I don't like to disagree with Dr. Peacoff. And every time I disagree with him on one of these political issues because we don't disagree about anything else really, I'm almost ready to say, you know, he's probably right. He's smarter than I am and he knows objectives are more than I am. But I have a different view of the world in terms of where we are and where we're going and how bad it is and how bad it's likely to become quickly. And on top of that, what are the actions necessary in order to stop it? And this idea that, you know, this insulting commentator put out, what did he say? I'm going to read it anyway, I guess. I'm sure you disagree that we should just carry on asking politely for our freedom back. It should be any day now. I mean, it's just insulting and stupid. I've never asked politely for my freedom back. I've said, I considered the revolution if I thought we could win and if I thought there were enough people on my side. What politely? What are we talking about? What have you done? What has any of you done that's more than I've done to try to bring about freedom in this country? And I've actually spoken at protests. I was thinking about that as I was complaining about protests. I've spoken at protests. I've gone out into the street. How many of you have done that? So I know anytime Leonard Pickoff disagrees with me and makes it public, it's a fantastic opportunity for you guys to come after me. So be it. I'm big enough and I can handle it. And, you know, I have immense respect for Leonard. And as I said, whatever, you know, I don't disagree with him or anything in terms of the philosophy. And it's mostly, you know, when we do disagree, it's about our assessment of the state of the culture and the actions, the efficaciousness of particular actions that will slow it down or not. So that's my view. You guys want to call me names? I think some people aren't. You want to, you want to, you know, this guy sent in a $20 question. So he's supporting the show. Thank you for supporting the show. I really appreciate that. All right, let's talk about Justin Trudeau's emergency powers. Wanda Freeman is keeping a constant count on my debate with Yom Chazzoni on Lex Friedman. It's up to 440,021 views now. It's just terrific. I mean, it's terrific because it was a good conversation, I think. I think I did a good job. And because that's a big number for kind of political philosophical debate. It's a big number. Taze says, I'm sensitive to that. Yeah, I'm always sensitive when people bring up Leonard Peacuff. Right? I'm sensitive. All right. Justin Trudeau has put into place a law that many of us didn't even know existed, but I guess the United States has variations of this law as well. And that is kind of an emergency powers law. And it basically, you know, government violates our rights regularly, kind of on a standard basis. It just elevates the violation of rights to a new level. It basically takes away the necessity of due process in restricting assembly, in restricting property rights, in restricting money flows. I think, I mean, I'm not an expert on this law. It does away with some privacy protections. And this is the kind of thing that makes one think, yeah, maybe we are in the verge of tyranny because something like this is tyrannical. Now, if you want to protest, this is the kind of thing I would protest. Because this is a sweeping law. Now, it says only applies in a narrow context, but it doesn't. It's a sweeping law that gives the government this extra level that the law shouldn't exist. Indeed, there are laws on the book in Canada that prohibit what the truckers are doing. So the truckers are violating the law. He could use that to send the police in. But no, he has to declare an emergency law so he can now take over all kinds of other powers. Now, this is real... I'll tell you, there's many governments, not many. A few governments around the world did this during COVID. Maybe the one that was the worst was, interestingly enough, Tucker Carlson's favorite government out there and the rights darling these days. And that's the government of Hungary. The government of Hungary during COVID basically gave Orban the prime minister basically a blank check. You have emergency powers to do whatever needs to be done in order to protect us from COVID. So that is... It's crazy. It's... I think one of the things we should really be monitoring, those of us who care about freedom, should be monitoring is how quickly this law goes away when the truck has finally fade. Is this a law that's going to stick around for a long time? Are they going to use COVID as an excuse just like they did in Hungary to keep this on for a long time? It should only last a month and then go away. That'll be a good sign. It shouldn't exist. There shouldn't be such an act. If there are any politicians in Canada who are in a position to try to get rid of this law, they should. Now, the same kind of stuff we saw, I don't know if they did it through a special law, how they got away with it. But what they did in Australia and New Zealand is unconscionable, just unconscionable in terms of the liberties that are going away. By the way, one of the things that's happening with COVID is that state after state and province after province in Canada are eliminating restrictions. The mandates are going away. New York has done away with them. Another state just announced today. Washington, D.C. is doing away with mask mandates. So the mandates are basically going away so far from this round of COVID. Now, we'll see if there's another variant. We'll see what else happens. We'll see what happens if there's a spike. But so far, almost all the mandates in the United States and many of the mandates in Canada, particularly in the west side of Canada, are slowly being phased out and going away. Many countries in Europe now have no mandates. I mentioned this in the show before. So this thing is going away. In spite of, I think the power lusters wish that it didn't. I think they know that the populations have given up on this and they're fed up with it and they don't want it. I think people have made their voices heard all around the world well before the truckers went on the road. You know, they've made it very clear what they think about all this. So we've got an echo again. And what happened to the sound? Something happened to the sound. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, everybody defied the mandates in the Super Bowl. Did you see anybody wearing masks in the Super Bowl? I watched the audience almost nobody was wearing them. Certainly not the governor. Nobody pays attention to this stuff. I mean, some people do, but almost nobody pays attention to this stuff. For all intents and purposes, I mean, that's right, California today announced that they're doing away with the mandates. So, I mean, what would really be nice, I said this the other day, what really would have been appropriate is for us, everybody, to have ignored the lockdowns. Just walk outside your home. Just stand outside. Not blocking anybody's traffic, not blocking anybody elsewhere. Just go about your business outdoor. Restaurants, stay open. Businesses, stay open. That is the kind of civil disobedience I would be a thousand percent behind. That is the kind of civil disobedience that I think gets the point across. It's just we want to live our lives, leaves us alone. You don't have any right to limit our freedoms here. Stay out, butt out, go away. So, that would have been awesome. That's the kind of civil disobedience that would have been cool to see. Just ignore the mandates. Just ignore them. But it didn't happen. It didn't happen. And I don't know if it ever happened. I don't know that it'll ever happen. Unfortunately. Ah, Scott. LP said, I believe that the utilitarianism is in the form of some kind of national socialism is on its way, that the Democrats are pushing forward. Isn't it fair to see that the Democrats is the main threat? It's no question that the Democrats are pushing forward, but I still think that the main threat is the response that they will get. It's the Hitler to the communists in Weimar Germany. I don't think it's the communists. The communists that I'm going to take over the United States. The left will not dominate the United States. The left will not establish an authoritarian regime. And therefore, our focus should be, our effort should be, our energy should be dedicated towards saving the right, being an opposition party, trying to help people who have good, who can serve as good opposition. That's fine. We are going towards national socialism. I've said that all along, right? But I think, and I've said this over and over again, it's going to come from the right. It's not going to come from the left. And, and that doesn't reduce the threat that the left poses. I don't know how, I don't know what words to use to explain this to you that I haven't already tried to explain. The left is evil, awful, destructive, tearing this country apart. What we need is someone to oppose the left, who is not a fascist, or who is not leading the country towards fascism as the solution to the socialist threat. They're both fascists. I know the left is also fascist, but it's a left fascism. And what you're going to get is a backlash of right fascism and the differences that the left will couch itself in terms of critical race theory and helping the poor and egalitarianism and nihilism. And the right, that's one fascism. And the right will wrap itself around a flag and Americanism and God and nature. And you've got two forms of fascism. And I agree, they're two forms of fascism. I happen to think that the right's fascism is more palatable to American people. But the only way that fascism can be successful is because the left presents itself as the only alternative and people will reject the left. So what am I asking? I'm asking for a Republican party, I'm asking for a right that is not fascist, wrapped around the flag and wrapped around God. I'm asking for an opposition, any kind of opposition, some kind of opposition that will stand up to fascism of the left and fascism of the right. I'm not pro-left, I hate the left. I despise the left. Is culturally left-wing fascism more prominent? Is it? I mean, culturally, if you mean in schools and education establishments and things like that, yeah, but politically it's not. Politically it's not. If the Republicans don't screw this up, they will have a large majority in the House of Representatives come to the 2022 election and the Senate. And they have a real possibility, a real possibility of defeating Biden or whoever the Democrat comes up with in 2024. But the question is going to be with whom? With somebody who is really opposing the left or somebody who's going to bring fascism with many of the left's agenda as part of it. To America. But in the guise of flag and God and all that, which is what I fear Trump was doing and is doing and will do. That's all. It's not an issue of who's the bigger threat. The left or the right. The fundamental question is, is authoritarianism a threat to America today? Yes. And the challenge we face is, how do you confront that authoritarianism? And to me, and this is where people disagree, but to me, Trump is not a challenge to authoritarianism. He's not. And the Republican Party needs to be punished for voting for Trump so that we can, so that we can get somebody, so we can get somebody better. If we don't get somebody better than Trump, then it was all for nothing, but then it doesn't matter. We're heading towards authoritarianism no matter what. If Trump is the solution to the left, we are heading towards authoritarianism faster than any of us could imagine. If that's it, if that's the solution, then we are on the verge of national socialism. Yes. I hope that Trump is not the alternative to the left. Vaccines are not mandated in the United States. The Supreme Court was quite clear on that. Come ask if Dr. Peacock hates me. It seems like it. All else, I got a friendly email from Leonard just this week, so I don't think so. I hope not. I hope he doesn't hate me. I don't think he hates me. There's no reason for me to think that he hates me. But you know better, Cobb, because you have a direct link, I'm sure, to what he's thinking. God, you guys are something. That was a paid question. That's why I answered it. I try to answer all paid questions. Read your insults. You have to put dollars behind them. And then I will... Colt says there's an outsider to objectivism. Look in the bright side if you disagree with Leonard Peacock. You can use it as ammunition against trolls who call it objectivism or call it good workbook. I mean, I agree. I think it's good that there is disagreement among objectivists. It would be a little scary and a little bizarre if we all agree. So I agree. The United States is going to sink, whether it's Biden or Trump. The question is what gives the most hope to America longer term? And the most hope is the defeat of Trump because then there's a chance, not a good chance, but a chance, that America won't sink because the Republican Party will reform itself and somebody better will come out of it. I still hope that that will happen, although my hope is not very strong. Yeah, thanks, Stephen. All right, let's see. Yeah, I'll just say this and then we'll go on. It just shocks me, shocks me, that people still want Trump back. I mean, I get it that they want a Republican back. I get it that they want somebody back. But there are really good candidates out there who have much better views. And people want Trump, who remind you, lost the House, lost the Senate, and lost the presidency. So I don't know why you would want a loser back in the White House. I think you'd want to go for a winner, win and help move the country away from the left's agenda. All right, you know, people often complain and people often point out that, no, not Mitt Romney, but people often point out that the United States has some of the highest cost of health care in the world. And it's true, we pay a lot for health care and there are lots of reasons for that, lots of reasons for that. But one of them certainly is the fact that the United States, on a per capita basis, has fewer doctors than almost any country in the Western world. The United States has a doctor shortage, primarily primary care physicians, but generally we have. And I didn't know this, but there was an excellent article in the Atlantic magazine illustrating this. Yes, Stephen, I didn't answer the question. Sorry. I thanked you for it, but I didn't answer it. And I'm not going to. The United States has fewer doctors per capita than almost any other country in the world. Countries like Switzerland have a substantially higher number of doctors per capita than we do. And a country like Sweden has, relatively speaking, a freer health care system than most of Europe does. And probably in some ways, less of a mess than the American health care system that's neither here nor there and is in some respects the worst of all worlds. So I didn't realize that one of the reasons that health care costs are so high, why doctors charge so much is because of shortage of doctors. And the question is, why does the United States have so few doctors? And it turns out that, I don't know, around 19, about 40 years ago, 45 years ago, doctors decided that there were too many doctors in the United States. And they basically used their influence to start dramatically shrinking medical schools. They started making it more difficult to get in, started shrinking the numbers of students going into medical schools, started shrinking the number of people studying medicine in the United States. And they dug this massive hole where we have a shortage of doctors now, but it was worse 10, 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. And even though we're now accepting more students into medical schools, it's not catching up. And part of the reason for that, of course, is, well, I mean, what happens when there's a shortage? Well, when there's a shortage of something, you can charge a higher rate for it. So doctors have been raising their fees while making sure there's no more competition. So the American Medical Association and other associations are basically being actively, actively. We're trying to restrict the number of doctors that get licensed in the United States. Yeah, now, we can get a whole debate about whether government should license doctors or not. Clearly not. It's a violation of rights. Somebody should license doctors, probably medical schools and medical associations and, you know, different professional groups. But licensure is wrong. And then you use the licensure, which is what the doctors are doing, to limit the number of doctors who study in your schools. Now, it's not just that we have fewer students going in. It's also that, as compared to other countries, studying for medicine is a lot longer of a process than it is as other countries. In the United States, first you go to undergrad school. And then you go and get a medical degree. And it adds, and then you do, you know, you do, in a sense, an internship, what counts as an internship for three, four years. And it's insane. The amount of debt these students go into and the amount of time it takes them. Most other countries who are under world, you can go into undergraduate as a medical student. And within six years, you're done. You don't do these two, four-year, five-year, six-year things. And they don't have this crazy internship system. And they produce more doctors per capita out of their medical schools. But again, this is all meant to slow the process down, weed out people, let them drop off, and ultimately reduce the supply so the cost can go up. But then, of course, so that's one way in which they do it. Then, of course, there's another way. One of the ways in which they do it is they dramatically restrict the ability of foreign doctors to work in the United States. Even though these foreign doctors are trained, some of them are some of the best medical schools in the world, they can't just come to the U.S. in practice. Again, they have to get licensed, which means they have to do a whole, have to go through a whole process. I had an uncle, an uncle who lived in South Africa, who was a dentist, been a dentist his whole life. And his three daughters all moved to the United States. They all lived in L.A., my first cousins. They all lived in L.A. And he would have loved to move to L.A. and start up a dentist's practice. But he couldn't. Even though he'd been a dentist all these years, fully qualified. He would have to take a test, go back to school, take a test, do all these things to get a license. That's ridiculous. So one way in which they restrict them from coming in is through licensure and through restrictions and immigration. Indeed, it turns out that when NAFTA was negotiated, you know, the North American Free Trade Agreement, so much of free trade, one of the restrictions placed in there explicitly was to limit the ability of Mexican and Canadian doctors to talk about Canada, Canadian doctors to practice in the United States. Why? Because they're not as good? No. There's nothing to do with that. It's in order to maintain the shortage of doctors for the sake of American doctors, at least for the short-term superficial sense, the sake of them. This is the kind of short-term irrational thinking that permeates licensing laws, that permeates professional organizations, and that permeates politics. And it's complete insanity. You know, why not? Allow anybody with a medical degree into the United States. It's not like they're going to go on welfare. It's not like these doctors are automatically going to ruin American culture. So what is it that prevents us from allowing highly-trained doctors from all over the world to come here and practice medicine? Think about the quality of life that that would improve for all of us. Who cares that their countries need these doctors? I don't care about other countries. And who said they need those doctors? How do you know? But why are we thinking at that level? This is about individuals who want to come live here and practice medicine here and improve the quality and the cost of medicine in the United States for you and me. Instead, we've got a cartel limiting the number of doctors in the U.S. through the government, reducing the quality of our care, and increasing the price. I don't care that other people need their doctors. Other countries need their doctors. Why would anybody care? So, anyway, it's, you know, there is a writer... Let me just see if I can find the article. There's a writer in the... Let me do this one second. Yeah, good for Travis. That's a national socialist belief that doctors should stay in those countries because they need the doctors. It's exactly national socialism. But that's exactly the way it is. Let me just pull this up. Ah, pull this... I'll show you the... Let's do a quick screenshot of that. Yeah, there's the article. It is by Derek Thompson. Derek Thompson is... writes quite a few good things. I mean, he's obviously left of Santa, but he is pro-progress, and he's looking for ways in which we can increase progress. He talks about abundance as the goal is to... It's a good article. I encourage you to read this article and to follow this guy. I wanted to show you the... No, not that chart. This chart. This is a chart of physicians for $10,000, 10,000 people in the population. The dark red is general practice. The light red is specialization. And you can see here, Austria has the most doctors per capita in Iceland, Germany, Denmark, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Iceland. What surprised me is how low Israel is. I always thought Israel had very high levels of doctors per capita. But look where the United States is. We haven't even got the United States. There's the United States just above Mexico and just below the United Kingdom that has one of the worst socialized medicine in the world. And yet, we have fewer doctors per capita than they do. That's insane. We should have a lot more doctors per capita would dictate this as wages of doctors went up, as it became a more and more lucrative profession. More people would come in and prices would come down. That's how markets work. And what happens when you don't allow markets to work is you get distortions. And in this case, the distortion is hurting people, hurting people with counseling, their health. They can't get primary care physicians. And this is the little... This is... It's the Atlantic magazine. These are kind of the little things that would use the quality of life, that would use the standard of living. You have to wait in line for hours to see a doctor. You can't ever see a particular kind of doctor. And it's... And for a lot of people, it's expensive. So... It's good to see good articles being written out there about real problems with real solutions. The solution here is to expand our medical schools to do away with any restrictions. To let real competition be there to stop these controls and to open up our borders generally. But certainly to doctors. And to get rid of licensing laws broadly. Now I know people don't like the idea of licensing laws in the United States, right? Jennifer, do you think that malpractice litigation is higher here? Yeah, much higher. Malpractice litigation really is an issue outside the United States. The... It really is an American phenomena. For all kinds of reasons. Liability laws are looser here. It's much easier to sue here because of liability laws. We have a culture where that's the way in which we seek retribution. And then when you have socialized medicine and doctors, for example, in the UK working for the government, government doesn't... You're not going to get very far with that. I don't think doctors in the UK have to buy liability insurance because they govern employees. At least those who are not in private practice. And it's only a small number, relatively speaking, of doctors in the UK who also have a private practice. What do you call a person who graduates last in their class from the worst medical school? Your argument assumes all MDs are equal skill? No, they're not all. Some of the work... I don't know. It's Stanford Medical Center and some of the work at Ho Dung Hospital in the middle of nowhere, but Ho Dung Hospital in the middle of nowhere would rather have a relatively badly trained doctor from a third-rate medical school than no doctor at all, which is the alternative that they face. And indeed hospitals and clinics in the rural parts of this country have no physicians, have no doctors. The other thing that the doctor's associations is they've restricted the ability of nurses to do things that they should be able to do. They require that only doctors can treat XYZ when it's not true where nurses can do a lot of this stuff. Again, partially away. Again, let the market filter. Now, again, what happens? What about, I don't know, all the nuclear engineers who graduate and some of them graduate from Ho Dung universities. What's going to happen to them? They're going to build nuclear power plants. They're going to implode. What's going to happen to all the pilots? I mean, when you get on a plane, do you make sure that the pilot is the best pilot from the best school? I mean, every industry builds in mechanisms, so even the people who are mediocre are not doing too much damage and the people who are bad get filtered out. But the solution to that, it's not like in Switzerland there's doing really, really horrible things to people. No evidence of that. No evidence of that. But markets are really good at weeding out people who are not very good at what they do. But what we rely on is government licensing instead of allowing instead of allowing the private sector to figure out ways to qualify doctors and to make sure that we're not letting the really bad ones in. That's what markets... Markets do that brilliantly. Brilliantly. Governments screw it up, and they're screwing it up now because a lot of places just don't have doctors. For a second or third level, they just don't have them. And that's the worst of all worlds. All right. Let's go to the super chat questions. I am going to leave Teezy's question to last. Because it's such a good one. No, seriously. You know, giving an opportunity to end the show on a positive note. Oh, but where are we? Oh, we're about $300. So, you know, we still got $300 to go to make this a $600 show. Hopefully we can. Also, don't forget to like the show. We're at 84 likes, 160 watching live. So please like the show. I don't know. What do you guys think of the pinned statement at the top? Do you think it's too long? We are going to have a front row event. You can sign up for the front row event. It'll be in April. It's like a small group, 10 to 20 people, on Zoom with me. And we're going to talk about self-esteem. The requirements for self-esteem, what self-esteem is, how you get it. And it's going to be a small group event, $100 a person. You can sign up at the link up there. Earlier, sign up. The more guaranteed you are that there will be room for you. You can sign up at the link. I don't know if you can see the whole thing. Is it too long to be pinned up there? I don't know. I only see like half of a sentence. So to me, it doesn't look right. But I'm curious what you guys think. I have to click on it to see the whole thing. So I'm not sure. I think we might want to, if Action Jackson is there, I think we might want to make it shorter. All right. So anyway, $300 to get to $600 to make and to continue a $600 streak, which it's pretty amazing how what we've done over the last month and a half, really two and a half months of hitting that $600 almost every show. Not quite every show, but almost every show. All right. Ashton asks, it is okay to just stick to myself, be self-dependent, pursue what I rationally want. I ignore the critics and pursue my goals with a lentistoic mindset. Well, I'm not sure. Stoicism is the right approach there. Ashton, but I think I know what you mean. Yes, you should follow your values. You should think about what you want. You should go for it. And you should be self-dependent and independent and doesn't mean you shouldn't have relationships and friendships and other people around you and hopefully other people support your goals. Just stick to them and go for it. That is the rational, proper attitude. Absolutely. Liam, no, I'm going $20. Campbell, Adam. Christianity's heroes aren't real either and it's villains are the people that follow their ideas. Yeah, I mean the problem with Christianity's heroes is, I mean I mean its heroes can be real. They do have a reality. Certainly in aspects of them, but even as holes they are real. I don't think they're unrealistic and her villains are, but Christianity's heroes are unrealistic because to be a true Christian hero you would have to crucify. Be crucified. Because that's what it ultimately means. It ultimately means sacrificing everything which is life to the demands of fill in the blank. The needy whatever altruism demands. Christianity depends on your interpretation of Christianity, I guess. Oh, Michael had a $50 question. Since when did obesity become acceptable? You look at pictures of people 40 years ago on the beach, not a single overweight body. Well that's not true because I knew some overweight people 40 years ago. You went alive 40 years ago, I was. Also the buff people have gotten a lot more buff. Athletes have way more muscle definition today than generations ago. Yeah, I mean there's this whole you can't body shame people, you can't criticize them for their weight. All body types are beautiful. No, they're not. They're just not. Somebody types are more beautiful than others. And some bodies where the person has neglected the body completely are not nice at all from a beauty perspective. They have no aesthetic value. And since obesity is unhealthy you know that's the primary reason not to be obese. But yes, we've abandoned that attitude of self-respect towards ourselves and towards being healthy and taking care of ourselves and you know treating our body and our minds well. It's so crucial. And today people are more buff because people are wealthy and they have more time to buff up. So the people who take care of themselves have the time and the science and the resources to really take care of themselves. But health is beautiful. Health is part of what makes beauty. Part of why certain people are beautiful is because they look healthy. Now sometimes we just because of our features even when we're healthy can't look that beautiful. Beauty beauty with regard to the human beings is symmetry which reflects a certain symmetry and health. So choose to be beautiful. Choose to be healthy. Dave asked I think you should have named your book inequality who cares instead of equal is unfair. You would have got way more interviews invite you to views. Do you think you will reach 40k subscribers by June? Everybody's a critic these days. Everybody has an idea of how to make your stuff better and more successful. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're not. I don't know. It's equal is unfair. Will I get to 40,000 subscribers by June? By June. By June. So how many months do we have? March, April, May, June. So by the end of June it's four months. That would take about 2,000 subscribers a month. No. I don't think I'll make I don't think I'll make it by June. I hope so. I mean, that would be phenomenal. At the pace we were going at I would have, 200 a day would have made it well before June. We'd have to go at a pace of what? You know, we'd have to go at a pace of 60, 70 a day. That's a tough pace to keep up. We'll continue to do well and yes. If the short videos fizzle out then no. Right now we're still at over 100 a day. Although today was under. We'll see what today will end up as. But it's quite possible we will make it by June but when it comes to these kind of things I'm pessimistic because I'm going to say no. Not a lot of questions left. Not a lot of time left to support the show. With short 300 bucks would be great to get there. Let's see, Ashton asks Putin is just sitting back and laughing at all the incompetent world leaders giving him attention. Absolutely. And putting him at big tables. Actually, did you see the picture of him today with his foreign minister? His foreign minister could have been in a different city. The table was bigger than the table he used with Macron. He was like way over there. I would be worried for my job if I was the foreign minister. And they were speaking the same language one another to hear it. Let's see. Chris, two things. One, if altruism charity is your ideal for selfish reasons is that compatible with living an objective life? No, altruism cannot be an ideal for selfish reasons. Altruism is the negation of all selfishness. Altruism is the idea that you place the lives of others above your own. That their lives are more important than yours. That your whole purpose in life is to serve them. That can't be egoistic. That's the opposite of egoism. And charity you can make charity an ideal in a sense that you could work for a charity and you can be the CEO of a charity or you could do really important work for a charity and so on and be productive in that capacity. A few people can do that kind of work. Ultimately, charity is dependent on somebody producing wealth. So charity is a secondary type of activity. The fundamental activity in an economy from an economic perspective is production. So that is you can't have altruism and selfishness. You can have charity and selfishness. But I don't think most people do. I don't think most people think of it. I don't think most people engage in it for those reasons. I think most people are charitable out of guilt, not out of a selfish desire to help other people. But I am, I do think it's consistent to being both selfish and charitable up to a point for the right reasons if it's thought through, if it's rational, if your charity is rational. Altruism is a different thing. Altruism is an ideology. It's a set of ideas. It's a concept. And it means the negation of any selfishness. Two, did you receive my email with an album review for Vernavrim and a trade? Thank you. I might have. Let me, let me check. Let me, let me save this. And I will check because it sounds familiar but I don't remember it really. I don't remember enough detail to be able to say yes. But let me put it aside and I'll find the email and I'll answer the email. Tom asked, many people use the terms like tyranny, authoritarianism and totalitarianism very sloppily. When do you think authoritarianism crosses into totalitarianism? Even in anti-Germany and Stalinist Russia some limited choice was allowed. No, I think in anti-Germany and Stalinist Russia were totalitarian. In a sense that they wanted and tried and strove to regulate every aspect of your life and you could be condemned to the gallows, to concentration camps, to the gulags for any aspect in any aspect of your life. So it was all encompassing complete totalitarian. I think China until recently was authoritarian not totalitarian. It's moving towards more totalitarianism but for most of the, I'd say 80s, 90s and 2000s China was authoritarian but not totalitarian. That is, it was ruled by an ultimate authority but they did not try to impose its will on every aspect of life and try to regulate and control every aspect of life. So that would be my definition for the difference between those. It's the extent of the control. Like I always said Islamic totalitarianism is totalitarianism. The consistent application of Islam based on some people because it's bringing religion into every aspect of life. It doesn't believe in a separation of anything from anything. Everything is dictated by the religion. Everything is dictated by the Quran. Everything is dictated by the authorities. So it's totalitarian. It's not just authoritarian. And China was very totalitarian on the Mao Zedong all the way up until the late 1970s. Maybe until the end of the 70s. Alright, thank you Ashton. I think we're very close to the very, very close to 600 mark. So Catherine might not be disappointed today. Okay, Ashton asks, is the United States an empire? If he has to agree that such an empire goes against its own ideal written in the Declaration of Independence. The United States is an empire. I think the United States has a horrible foreign policy and has troops in too many places around the world. But it's not an empire. It doesn't control land in other places. It doesn't control other people. It doesn't try to impose its will by force on other countries in the same way as oh, I'm sorry, we're 150 short. I thought we, for some reason, I thought we were 565, not 465. We're 40 short of the goal of 600. So I was a little too optimistic there. So I don't think the United States is an empire. I think it does, in many respects, it goes against the ideals of Declaration of Independence and part of those are the extent to which the kind of foreign policy that it runs where it's got troops in 120 different countries. But it's not trying to rule those countries, funnily enough. I mean, it's a real example of foreign policy of altruism. They're there to really serve mostly the tyrants of these other countries, which is really bizarre and weird. But that's what they're there for. They're in Kenya and Uganda to fight the terrorists there. But the terrorists there are not a threat to the United States. They're in Saudi Arabia to protect the Saudis from the Iranians. But the Saudis are an enemy, not just Iranians. They're all over the world. For what? To protect whom, from whom? And why? It all goes against the Declaration of Independence. Spirit of it, at least. I'm going to wait with Teji's question. Ian says, did you ever read P. J. Rourke? He passed away today. Parliament of Horses and Eat the Rich are classics. I've had pieces of it. I didn't read the whole thing. But yeah, I mean, he was very funny. He'd obviously read Ein Rand. He was a bit of a fan, but much more conservative than Ein Rand would be. But he was very funny and he was smart funny. He was the kind of humor that I like and admire because it wasn't like it wasn't just ripping everything to shreds. It wasn't just tearing down everything. And it wasn't gross and it wasn't offensive. It was just smart, tearing down things that need to be torn down. So yes, sad that he passed away today. Richard asks, my answer to heal all the eldest question. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? No one. And being only for yourself, what am I? A strong anti-objectivist. What do you think? Yeah, no, I agree with you. If I am not for myself, who will be? No one, but it doesn't really matter. Because it's not a question of who's going to be for me. It's a question of, well, of course I should be for me. It's my life. So it's not exactly the right way to formulate it. If I am not for myself, who will be? It's if, okay, everybody's going to be for me, so I shouldn't be for myself. My mother's going to be for me, so I shouldn't be for myself. No, I should be for myself because it's all I got. I should be for myself, and being only for myself, what am I? Well, that's a narrow view of what it means. I am only for myself. But what does that mean? What does it mean to be for myself? What it means to be for myself is to care about the world in which I live, the people that I care about, the, you know, the well-being of sometimes even stranger. But that's because I care about myself. Sense these all extensions of me. My values. So it's he wasn't the, you know, he wasn't an accurate philosopher, and he certainly wasn't an objectivist. What do you think hospitals need to do in order to bring in more nurses after so many quit due to terrible treatment during the pandemic? Well, I think, again, I think we need to train more nurses, and we need to open up the borders. There are plenty of nurses being trained overseas that would love, love jobs in the United States. Bring them in. I mean, the solution to so many of our economic problems is immigration. Certainly to all employment problems. All right, Steve, I'm going to wait with that. So I'm going to wait with Tasey and Stevo's questions till the end. We're 100,000 people in the United States. So I'm going to bring them in. I mean, the solution to so many of our economic problems is immigration. So I'm going to wait with Tasey and Stevo's questions till the end. We're 130 short. So if anybody wants to jump in and get us over the 600 mark, that would be great. What did I just do there? I've got Frank. I'll get to that question in a minute. Okay, Liam asks, what does the left mean? The left, no, not like that. Yeah, I mean, what's an interesting phenomena has happened to the left. The left has abandoned Marxism. It's abandoned the idea of the working class. There's a whole article about it. Where did I see it? And so the left has completely abandoned the working class. In some aspects, you could argue the working class has abandoned the left. The left has become rich of the educated, particularly educated, more than the rich. It's become the ideology of the educated. Of the people who go to universities. And it's completely detached from what working class wants and what working class cares about. And the left doesn't care about working class anymore. So they're not about workers of the world unite. They're about, I don't know, ethnic group X of the world unite. And even then, only in our terms, and you can't really unite, because even within ethnic group X, there are 92 different genders. And some of those genders are being are more discriminated against than other of the genders. So you can't really unite anybody, because we're all fragmented into tiny little units of oppression. And it's a competition of so the left is incompatible. There's no unity, and they don't talk about unity. So the left is completely gone and what's happened is, and I don't think this is necessarily a good thing, but what's happened is that the right, both in the UK under Johnson, and in the US under Trump has figured out that they can capture the working class, because the working class hates the left as, you know. And so what they've done is, they catered to the working class. They've dropped their opposition to the welfare state, the conservatives in the UK and the conservatives in the US, the new conservatives, are not opponents of the welfare state. They want to protect Medicare, they want to protect Social Security, they want to protect welfare. They will, you know, they promoted checks to everybody. They promoted the inflationary policies of writing everybody a check and sending it home. They want to bring jobs back, so they want industrial policy, which is what the left stood for. They want tariffs, which is what the left stood for. They want limitations in trade, which is what the left stood for. They want better labor conditions all over the world, which is what the left stood for. So what the right has figured out under Johnson and Trump, is that they can carve out a whole section of the left's economic policies. And by doing that they can attract the working class to them. Now that's not a good thing, it gives them power but it just makes them right wing socialists. And that's what they are. That's what Johnson is in the UK an environmentalist, welfare state loving right wing socialist. And that's what Trump was. So again, the left has won. It's won without even knowing it Marxist ideas have moved over to the right. And all they have is identity politics. And identity politics, as I said many, many times are never going to work. There's never going to be a winning coalition in America long term, based on identity politics. Won't work. Won't work. Thank you, Mark. It's 70 Canadian dollars, Canadians who support me. Wow. There are quite a few of them here. So thank you, Mark. Really appreciate it. So we're now really close. We're 525. So just three $25 questions and we're there. Let's see. We're leaving Stevo to the end. We're leaving Taze to the end. So let's do Michael. Is tipping necessary for good customer service? No, not necessarily. In Japan, service don't get tips and provide better customer service than the US. Sometimes. They don't provide economic incentives to a degree. Very much so. Some of the best restaurants in the world don't allow tipping. And service is superb in first class. There's no necessity for tipping for good service. It depends how the waiters are treated, how they're trained and what the expectations are of them by management and then by customers. Tipping is not necessary. You usually tip at the end. You know, often they're providing you a service without knowing if they're going to get tipped or not. So it's very much dependent. Tipping is not necessary anyway. Shay says I'm 20 minutes behind. Wanted to share that P. Marker also tweeted out excerpts from Rand's apollon Dionysus earlier this week. Oh wow. He did. That's a real thing. That's meaningful. I don't know what to make of it. And I think I'm going to talk to the Ironman Institute. Somebody should reach out to him. But good for him. Again, Malcolm Driesen is one of the giants of Silicon Valley. Adam reminded me that he was one of the people responsible for sickening Microsoft, for sickening the Justice Department of Microsoft when he did that. He should be condemned for help for that. But he's made up for it by having an incredibly productive career and now by promoting Ironman. So maybe he'll live to regret it. Yes says deeply respect Dr. Peacock but it doesn't mean stop thinking for yourself as long as one changes their views in light of new understanding. Yeah, but you know, you got to respect and you got to when somebody who you respect says you're wrong, you've got to really think about it. You've got to make it for granted. Alright, Michael asks why is it so hard to sue people in Europe? Don Watkins pointed out that the left made litigation easy as a way to redistribute wealth. True. Since the left is so dominant in Europe you think they would have adopted the same policy. They didn't and I'm not sure why. This is the book. I think I've told you about this book before. This is a brilliant book. I'll do a show about it. I need to reread it and then do a show about it. The consequences liability. This documents how the left at Yale and at the top law schools in America, particularly Yale basically basically remade litigation in America remade liability litigation in America to use it as a mechanism for redistribution wealth because the government wasn't redistributing enough. I think in Europe they use the political process to do it. They don't need the courts. They redistribute a ton of wealth through the political process. They don't feel like there's any need for the legal mechanism. In the U.S. there was frustration on the left of the inability to get Congress to pass big legislation to redistribute massive amounts of wealth. They got what they got was too little and so they used the legal system. They went around Congress. Ali says what do you think about a lawn musk that's getting $5 billion? It depends on what he donated it to. Is it for tax deduction? Wouldn't it be better if you put it into a new project of bounces for hardworking employees or bonuses? Yeah, I don't know what he gave it to. Maybe he gave it to promoting capitalism in Africa. I don't know. Let's wait and see if we find out what he gave the money to. But remember a lawn musk is not John Gault. He's not right out of Iron Man's heroes in the novels. He's confused. He's good on some things. But he's still confused. And you saw that when he sold all that stock because Twitter poll said he should sell the stock. Now the $5 billion reduces his taxes but he still gave away $5 billion. So, did he give it for altruistic reasons? Did he give it out of guilt? Did he give it to get people off his back? He really believes that what he gave it to would be a huge benefit in the world more than anything else he could use the money for. I don't know. I don't know. So, yeah, you'd have to know his motivation and you have to know what he gave it for. But he's not perfect in the sense that when he talks, you can get the sense he's got the right sense of life. He's got a lot of good things going for him and he's undermined by certain philosophical premises that he has. He's not quite broken free from them. Okay, Michael says, why is it scary if we all agree if truth is objective and absolute we should all agree if someone is wrong if he doesn't understand objectivism? Why is it scary if we all why is it scary if we all agree if truth is objective and absolute we should all agree if someone is wrong and doesn't understand. Someone is wrong. But reality is complicated. It's complex. The facts of reality, how to integrate them what to integrate them around your particular context of knowledge versus somebody else's context of knowledge remember, knowledge is contextual it's true that somebody is right and somebody is wrong but it's not obvious who is and it's not at all obvious that who is right and who is wrong is a reflection of their knowledge of objectivism. So, it is scary if we all agree about everything because then it's a cult and you're not thinking for yourself it can't be that we all evaluate every single phenomena out there in the world the same way because we all bring a different context of knowledge to it it doesn't make us all right but it's very difficult particularly in complex predictions about the future. Imagine if we all agreed we would never trade we would never trade stock we would all agreed about the future there would be no trading because we would all agree this is the price it reflects exactly the future why trade? I'm not going to buy it, I'm not going to sell it. All right Frank says outside of INRAN what do you think of Professor Robert Nozick's work like Anarchy State and Utopia did he get into INRAN's ideas or undermine I mean, I don't know I'm not a philosopher, it's a good question to ask a philosopher, I think Nozick was probably one of the better philosophers of the 20th century certainly better than his rival what's his name theory of justice Rawls who also worked at Harvard Rawls is much more influential unfortunately he's not a match of INRAN who's a genius of a millennium did he add a subtract to the cause I don't know, my guess is better than nothing that he was a plus not a minus but I don't know enough about him whoops, what'd I do all right no, that's the same question okay all right Travis, thank you Travis put us at exactly $600 we made it Catherine's side, a big sigh of relief and jumped a big jump of joy excellent all right Taze says watching in the heat of the night such a classic, yes excellent movie in the heat of the night I think Rand loved that movie she wrote about it it's very well done it's very dramatic it's aesthetically well done it's a good story and it's Sidney Poche is really good in it and he really had class and Taze said did you know he got his break because he refused to play a typical black janitor and a CAA agent admired him for that and picked him up tonight is a good movie so I recommend you watching the heat of the night one of those classics that's definitely worth watching very, very intense and and suspenseful and interesting all right, Stevo says two movie recommendations right at the end Stevo says thank you for recommending this line to his mind it was a wonderful movie I was expecting that it would be good because your suggestions were always good I expected it to be so powerful better than Casablanca I said it was top five of all time it's one of the great movies it really is so if you haven't seen this world this line is mine go watch it, this line is mine somebody said it's on prime or something like that it is a great movie it's a great movie and theme of the movie I'm curious what Stevo thinks in action heroism in spirit in speech and in action and the hero at the end of the movie is the person you'd least expect to be the hero he overcomes obstacles he exercises his free will he pursues his values against all odds and he stands up in the face of evil it's a beautiful movie beautifully acted Cas Charles Lawton is one of the great actors I think of all time anyway ok no spoilers no spoilers next show is tomorrow 7pm east coast time same time same place thank you everybody if you're not a subscriber click that button and subscribe and then you'll be notified every time I go on live every time I put up a new video a short video a semi short video a super short video please consider supporting the show becoming a monthly contributor at your on book show dot com slash support or a patreon or subscribe star and please don't forget to like the show before you leave it really helps with the algorithms and the people who supported the show through the super chat today it was great I really appreciate that and we made it to 600 and I will see you all tomorrow bye everybody have a great rest of you