 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rocks. This is The Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Monday morning. Hopefully everybody's having a great start to the week. I'm looking forward to a productive week. Alright, today we're going to talk quick, some updates from Ukraine-Russia war. We're going to talk about the passage of this reform bill in Israel, public attitudes to public schools. We'll talk about that and then some backlash, backfire, nationalism backfires in the economic sphere. We'll talk a little bit about that and then finally we'll also discuss homelessness and the minimum wage. Interesting study coming out of California on the relationship between raising the minimum wage and homelessness. Alright, so let's jump in. So first, remember you can ask questions on the Super Chat. We have a goal raising $250 on the news roundup shows. It's important for us to keep those going and there'll be a show tomorrow news roundup. There'll be an evening show tomorrow and then Wednesday I'm off because I'm traveling. I'm traveling to Aspen, Colorado. So I don't think they'll be shown Wednesday. I don't think I get into Aspen in time. And then Thursday we'll see. I'll do it from my hotel in Aspen during the day. Friday I'll do it from the hotel. Saturday, Sunday, Monday or hotel. So somewhat contingent on internet, my time, other stuff going on. So the rest of the month is going to be touch and go. I'll be back at home on the 1st of August. Alright, Ryan, thank you. Robert, thank you doing stickers to support the show. Really, really appreciate it. All of you can do that. That's pretty easy. Don't have to ask a question. But it's just a value for value. Easy to do. So a bunch of news out of the war in Ukraine. First is Russia had backed out of the grain deal. This is a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea from its port in Odessa out into the Mediterranean and then to the rest of the world. Ukraine is number two supplier, maybe number one supplier of grains in the world. It feeds a bunch of the world. It's Ukrainian soil is some of the most fertile soil in the world. Unless the Russians are starving the Ukrainians, as Stalin did in the 1930s, Ukraine is an endless communism reduces the ability to grow food. Ukraine and Russia are some of the most productive agricultural places for grains in the world. And they're net exporters. Russia is actually exporting quite a bit of grain that they are growing from Ukrainian farmers in the places that they're occupying. But Russia said they're no longer going to let Ukraine export food out of their support to the detriment of Africa and many other countries that are dependent on that grain for basic food. As part of that, because Turkey at some point it said its navy would escort Ukrainian ships. So Russia's turned to a different tactic, which is to lob missiles and bombs into Odessa with the aim of destroying the facilities that load grain onto ships and warehouses where grain is stored. Of course they're bombarding Odessa, so they're also bombarding the center of the city. They're destroying what is said. I've never been to Odessa, but what is said to be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and certainly in Eastern Europe. And they are destroying some beautiful historical buildings. I think the cathedral was destroyed last night. And Russia, and of course killing civilians, but destroying the facilities that would allow things to grain to be exported. So that's a big part of what the Russians are doing. They're not winning on the battlefield, but they certainly have, I guess, enough bombs and missiles and drones that they're getting from the Ukrainians to create havoc within Ukrainian cities. And again primarily Odessa. Again Odessa is a beautiful city on the Black Sea. One other aspect of this story about Odessa is that most of the population in Odessa are Russian speaking. And if you'd ask people in Odessa, I think before the war started, where their alliance lies, many of them I think would say with Russia. I think there's the people in Odessa, Russian speaking, they consider themselves Russia. And this war has really changed that. So the people in Odessa today have become far more anti-Russia than they used to be, far more pro-Ukraine, far more pro-separation of Ukraine from Russia. So Odessa has certainly been a place where you've seen a pivot, a public opinion, as a consequence of the war, the fact that the war was engaged in the way the Russians are fighting the war and the failure of Russia partially to achieve its goals during the war. Odessa is shifting its alliance towards Ukraine. And I think if Odessa was ever threatened militarily by ground troops, the defense of Odessa would be robust. One of the challenges that the Ukrainians have is that their anti-missile, anti-aircraft defenses are all centered or mostly centered around Kiev. That was the primary target of the Russians and not Odessa. So there are a lot more of these missiles and projectiles landing in Odessa and few of them are being shot down because they just don't have the air defense systems to knock them all down. Hopefully they will be able to get more air defense systems in the west and be able to protect Odessa better in the days, weeks, months to come. So that's one story coming out of Ukraine. The second is coming out of Russia and that is Putin over the weekend. I don't know if you saw this interview that he did, this talk that he gave. Pretty shocking stuff. I mean, it's just unbelievable the delusion that these people have. And I guess this is part of the whole propaganda machine. Hard to tell whether Putin is delusional or just he has a propaganda strategy around this. But basically Putin came out and said over the weekend that Poland, a lot of the land that Poland had is not really Poland's and it's maybe Russian's, Russian land and that Poland should really watch out. And indeed, historically Putin said a lot of the land that Poland has today was gifted, I emphasize gifted, to it by Stalin. So that Poland should be incredibly thankful to Russia, Soviet Union, Stalin for the land it received after World War II, which was not really Polish land, but the Russians gifted it to them. Now this is so nasty of a statement, particularly given the history. I mean, the history is that Poland was invaded by Stalin. I mean, people forget this and certainly Putin doesn't want you to know this because he wants to present Stalin and the USSR as the element that defeated, that land up defeating the Nazis. But the reality is that in the first two years of the war, Stalin and Hitler were allies. On the same day that Hitler invaded Poland launching World War II, Stalin invaded Poland from the east. They basically split Poland into two. Under an agreement they had reached in advance. The Soviets killed massive numbers of Poles, particularly those in the military, those in senior positions. I mean, this idea that Poland owes something to the Russians, luckily the Polish know this. And then post World War II, Russia forced Poland to become part of its communist empire. And maybe the borders that were established were larger than the pre-war borders. But given the oppression, given the horrors of communism that were inflicted on the Poles, given the fact that Poland was invaded by the USSR, which inflicted massive numbers of casualties on them, Putin is saying Poland owes Russia? Other stories coming out this weekend is the Prygosyn who is now in Belarus with his troops. And they have weapons and vehicles. Coming out of Wagner is the idea that maybe we should invade Poland now that we're here really close to Polish border in Belarus. Poland has a long border with Belarus. I mean, really Poland is a NATO country. That would be basically war with NATO, which Russia would not survive for a week. It would also be against Poland, which as I've told you is beefing up to become the largest military force in Europe. It's not quite there yet, but it has far better, more advanced weapon systems than Ukraine does. It has NATO. And yeah, not a good move for the Russians if they want to survive this war. Just astounding delusional stuff coming out of Putin. The Polish owe the Russians. There's a new one that the Poles must be. On the battlefield, Ukraine continues to attack in advance very, very slowly. One must add in the south and to some extent in the east, primarily around Bakhmut, where it is slowly recapturing position that it lost to the Russians in the winter. But in the northeast, Russians are attacking and seem to be advancing slowly in the northeast. Ukrainians better show up their defenses up there. This is areas that were taken by the Ukrainians in the fall last year, and now the Russians are trying to seize back. So the war is still ongoing. It's still aggressive. Neither party is dominating the battlefield, but I still think that the Ukrainians have a good shot at ultimately throwing the Russians out of much of these occupied territories. How much we will see depends on a large extent on the weapon systems that they can receive from the United States and NATO. But it's tough out there. It's tough out there. And whenever talking about the Ukraine-Russia war, remember that there are kids, Ukrainian kids defending their homeland, their land, their families, their country, their people from Russian brutality, occupation, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. And there are Russian kids who probably don't even know why they're there fighting these Ukrainians, and these kids are dying, and they're dying for what? For Putin's grandiose vision of the world and completely, completely delusional and detached. Completely delusional and detached. All right, let's see. Israel this morning passed one part of its legal reform bill. This is the one piece, the one piece that they passed today is a piece that actually limits the Supreme Court's ability to overturn legislation and certain actions by the government. It has basically determined what has been used in Israel, a reasonableness test to overturn certain government decisions. The problem of course with reasonableness is that it is used subjectively by the court. And with appropriate or inappropriate, it is perceived to be subjective and since the left controls most of the justices from the left in Israel, it has been deemed this reasonableness standard has been politicized. So the government has taken away this standard from the court system, from the Supreme Court. You know, of all the things that they wanted to do, this is probably one of the less offensive ones. Given the Supreme Court still has other tools to overturn laws, particularly laws affecting rights, property rights and other things, basically by reference to Israel's basic law, which is not quite a constitution, Israel doesn't have a constitution, it's one of the many flaws it has. But you know, at least it gives them some leverage still over the government, over the legislation, over the executive branch. But this, even this passage has caused a lot of angst within Israel. They've been protesting all weekend, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have been out in the streets. Israel is torn, ripped, divided, divided very, very deeply. These are divisions that are going to be very difficult to heal. These laws, including what was passed this morning, are very unpopular. Survey after survey shows that they are super unpopular. It is likely for the elections will held tomorrow Netanyahu's government would fall. It would not survive a vote. And we will see where Netanyahu takes it from here. Does he puts up for vote the other parts of this bill, which are even, which are much worse and which really would move Israel away from a system of checks and balances to putting the locus of control firmly and exclusively in the hands of government. Remember, there's no separation really of the executive branch from the legislation in Israel because it has a parliamentary system. Now, if you take away any kind of checks and balances from the courts, you have an even bigger issue. So Israel's heading towards more conflict internally, more division. Not good for a country that still, whose survival is still always questionable, that is threatened by all sides from people who would like to kill it, who is challenged on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who is challenged by the Hezbollah, challenged by Iran. A country and a government that's going to have to make some big decisions about Iran and its nuclear program. And it's going to be very hard to mobilize the troops, the country for war footing when Israel is so divided about so much. The reality is Israel is not that divided. It's this government has created divisions. And to a large extent, I think for artificial reasons, this is not necessary. They could have done this very differently. Judicial reform needed to happen. But this judicial reform is ultimately, I think, a travesty. So we'll keep an eye out on Israel, see how things develop. All right, I came across this story. Gallup poll, I've been telling you about different aspects of the Gallup polls that have been released recently. Anyway, one other aspect of the Gallup poll that was released is the fact that public schools today have a very, very, very low confidence among the American people. Only 26% of respondents to the Gallup poll said they had a great deal or fair amount of confidence in public schools. Since COVID especially, I mean, public schools have been declining in terms of popularity for a long time. But particularly in the post-COVID era, this deterioration has accelerated. And public schools are now less popular than I think certain branches of government, less popular than big business and big tech, which are very unpopular. And of course, I think this is ultimately good. This is ultimately going to encourage and is encouraging parents to move their kids out of public schools, government schools, and into alternative programs, whether it's homeschooling or private schools or small private schools, or educational pods, or all the variety of options that exist that the market is creating for these schools. And this is ultimately a move in the right direction. I wish this was, and this is happening both in states that have school choice where the government is funding it and in places where they don't. That is, there is basically, I think all across the country, a movement to get kids out of public schools and into alternative education or by parents. Parents are fed up as they should be in the school system, it's betraying the parents, it's betraying the students. And of course, over the last few years, we've all seen an escalation of the politicization of schools, whether on the right, whether you're on the left, school curriculum is now determined by political affiliation. Governors get involved, curriculum is written, all to promote a particular political agenda. Parents are sick and tired of this. They want control. They want to be able to their kids basically to learn. Most parents, I think, want their kids to learn the basics, the three Rs. And those are the things that schools are failing them the most. I think the schools know a lot, kids in schools know a lot about how to connect with their emotions. They know a lot about, I don't know, playing with Barbie dolls. Maybe they know a lot about the politics and maybe they know a lot about sex. But they don't know how to read and they don't know how to write and they don't know math. Certainly don't know math. So yes, the move out of public schools is continuing. Good thing. And again, Gallup is documenting the facts, the reality that public schools are incredibly unpopular. All right, quickly, you know, all these policies started, I think primarily with Trump and then I think reinforced by Biden, we call them economic nationalist policies, bring manufacturing back, you know, discourage importation through tariffs and all kinds of restrictions. Try to build up infrastructure and manufacturing in the United States. And we've talked about kind of all the challenges that this has entailed and all the problems that this entail and how it's doomed and destined to fail. Of course, immigration is part of this. A big part of this economic nationalism is restricting the number of immigrants who come into the United States, including immigrants who have STEM. And I noticed a number of stories in the last couple of days that emphasize this, you know, over on Econ Lib. There's a story by Scott Sumner, the unintended consequence of nationalism and, you know, he gives two examples. One is the restrictions in immigration, particularly stems are basically delaying all the stuff that all the supposed chip manufacturing that's going to be built in the United States is all being delayed. And nobody knows if it's ever going to happen because we don't have the people. We don't have the actual people to make it. You're also seeing just the United States is losing competitiveness in a lot of STEM areas to other countries, because whereas in the past, the best scientists, the best thinkers, the best entrepreneurs, the best would come to America, would come to Silicon Valley. Now, they are going, they're staying home, or they're going to Canada, or they're going elsewhere. So I will keep you abreast of all these kind of situations because I think one of the things that we really need to fight is this notion. He also, Scott also, Scott Sumner also talks about the fact that a lot of this restriction on chips for China is kind of backfiring. China has now started restricting American designed or chips manufactured by American companies, even though the chips are not actually manufactured in America. China is restricting, for example, the use of micron chips in China. They have dramatically hurt the micron chip business by basically imposing restrictions on the use of micron chips in Chinese products. The beneficiaries of this, of course, are the South Koreans, particularly Samsung and SK. Heinecks also make memory chips, the kind of chips that micron makes. U.S. companies, even if they move manufacturing out of the country, out of the U.S., are still being hit by restrictions, particularly by China, as retaliation for the kind of restrictions that the United States imposes on them. China is also restricting the exploitation of rare earth materials, which is going to make it very difficult unless people come up with alternatives and quickly to build high-tech products in the United States. If there was a ban on U.S. companies from selling chips to China, or if China put a ban on importing chips from U.S. companies, it means that U.S. companies, U.S. chip companies would lose $83 billion annually, and they would have to lose 124,000 jobs in a very high-paying industry as a consequence of that. So there are consequences to these trade wars, there are consequences to these decisions around trying to detach ourselves from China. Another example of this is a black and decker craftsman factory in Fort Worth, Texas, that was built as part of a movement to build, being quote, manufacturing back to the United States. An idea was they got subsidies, they got tax bakes, and they built this plant in Fort Worth, Texas, and they were going to make it 100% automated, and by making it 100% automated they could deal with the higher cost of labor in the United States and still sell their different tools in the U.S. at low cost. So reduce dependence on their factories in Asia and increase this new factory in Dallas, Fort Worth. Well, it turns out that this was a complete flop. It turns out that much of the mechanization, the robots, the automatized functions that needed to make these things, you had to import them, you had to bring them in from out of the country. We don't make the automation, the automated stuff here in the U.S. She still had to depend on, in a sense, foreign labor. One of these machines, an important machine in the process, is made in Belarus, right, of all places. It turned out the machine never functioned properly. It never produced the kind of results error free. It turns out that it's very difficult to get the machines to replace certain types of high skilled labor and the ability to manipulate steel and manipulate metal that is melted is very, very difficult. And the consequence of this is the plant has been shut down. The employees have been fired. Gazillions of dollars have been wasted in an attempt to quote, bring manufacturing back when craftsmen was making nice money on making these tools in Asia and import and bring them into the United States and selling them at Lowe's and Sears and everywhere else. And they just spent a lot of money. Money they don't really have because their profit margins are not very high on an experiment all in the name of, not in the name of maximizing profits, not in the name of maximizing show the world, not in the name of maximizing the benefits of the company, but in the name of some political agenda called bring manufacturing home again, which sadly both Democrats and Republicans share that is one thing that is uniform across all of them. And, you know, this is continuing. The Biden administration is talking about increasing tariffs. This time, the tariffs will be on tin plate steel, a component used in cans for goods, like tuna cans, super cans, nice tomato cans, things like that, consumer stuff. It's all it seems like it's always steel. This is on top of all the other steel tariffs and aluminum and tariffs and all the other tariffs that put it together, put there by Trump and not eliminated by Biden. All these tariffs, the steel tariffs, aluminum tariffs have been shown by economists to have destroyed many more jobs than they created. And yet the explanation for these new tin plate steel tariffs is, of course, to save jobs, even though they'll destroy jobs. It's to boost employment even though they'll reduce employment. And all this will do is raise prices, raise prices for people who buy tin can food, low income people primarily. And it hurts the people can least afford to be hurt. It destroys jobs and it makes things more expensive. But both Biden and whoever the future Republican president is, particularly if it's Trump, huge fans of tariffs, huge fans of what's called managed trade, of trying to manipulate trade, and the consequence of all this is the destruction of American jobs. Of course, who's lobbied for this? The United Steel Workers Union. Even though the reality is that, yes, steel jobs aren't going to be saved, other jobs will be destroyed. All right, finally, quickly, a study just released out of the University of California by an economist by the name of Seth Hill, shows that when cities raise the minimum wages by 10%, relative homelessness increases by 3 to 4%. And what they're arguing is a big part of homelessness is, again, not driven so much by mental health and by drug abuse, but is driven by lack of income. People who can't afford to live, who can't afford to own a home, who can't afford to rent, who can't afford to live an independent life. When you raise the minimum wage, people at the lowest rung, the least productive people are the first ones to lose their jobs. These are people who find it very hard to find other jobs. And given the cost of living in California, they're the ones who become homeless. So it seems like minimum wage laws are laws that almost always hurt and harm the people that politicians tell us that the minimum wage laws are supposed to help. But indeed, some people benefit from them, but the poorest of the poor, the least productive are the ones that are harmed by it. And that is part of the homelessness problem in places like California is because in recent times they've increased the minimum wage as much as they have. Just to quote economist Thomas Sowell, among the effects of a minimum wage law when it is effective is that many unskilled and inexperienced workers are priced out of a job when employers do not find them worth what the law specifies. So yes, we now have actual economic studies that show you that homelessness, unemployment, rates of extreme poverty rise when you raise minimum wages. As if we needed that, I mean I think the theory is well established and kind of anybody who thinks economically knows that that has to be the impact of these. All right, let's turn to questions and let's see. Yes, and we are way, way behind on achieving our goal. So I've got a lot of these five and $10 questions, so maybe a few $20 questions. I mean, $920 questions get us to a goal. So please consider doing a $20 question. For those of you who don't want to ask a question, you can use just a sticker to show your support. We've got almost 90 people watching right now, so two bucks from each person will get us there. That's less than a coffee at Starbucks. Robert, thank you. Ryan, thank you. Catherine, thank you. And a friend Harper, thank you. Those are all people who've done their stickers of $2 or more and therefore contributed to the show. Show value for value. If you enjoy the show, you get something out of the show. Please reflect it back by asking a question. All right. John Davis asks, oh, God, is Leonard Picoff morally perfect? You'd have to ask Leonard if he's morally perfect. I mean, only he knows really. And yeah, I mean, you would have to ask him. And please don't ask me to evaluate the morality of, oh, and I've told you this. I'm not interested in discussing other objectivist intellectuals. I mean, Leonard Picoff is my teacher. He's a friend. He is somebody I admire greatly. He is a role model for many of us within the intellect, within the objectivist movement, particularly intellectuals, and as a standard bearer for the objectivist movement. So whether he is morally perfect, whether he's never evades, never is irrational, I will leave that to him to answer. I guess only he knows really. All right. Thank you, John. Thank you to John, John Bales and John Parker and Linda. Thank you, all three of you, that cut in nicely into our deficit, but we still, so that about 150 to go. So keep it up. And the stickers are amazing and really appreciate the support. Michael says, what are the dominance of nationalism lead to another world war, or has it been watered down to the point of being more of an annoyance than an existential threat? No, I think it's an existential threat. You're seeing that in Russia and Ukraine. The question is, a world war is a different question. I mean, is it suicidal enough, as countries suicidal enough to engage in nuclear war, because that's what a world war would mean. And I think the answer is, I don't expect a nuclear war. I don't expect a world war like that. But I wouldn't be surprised if you had more and more and more conflicts, conflicts between countries all across the world, because as nationalism will increase, wars will increase. Wars are a feature of nationalism and a product of nationalism. And just like nobody expected a major land war in Europe in the post-World War II era, or certainly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we're seeing that in Russia and Ukraine, and what we're seeing there is a complete and utter consequence of Putin's mystical empire-seeking nationalistic tendencies. So we're already seeing the damage of nationalism right now. Well, James has just come in with $75 and moved us much, much closer to the goal. So now we're just looking for $62. So everybody on the call right now could do $1 and we're done. All right, let's do James. What are your thoughts on the UK becoming more woke, liberal? It appears that the UK will enter a recession. How do you see policies and economics getting better or worse over the next five years? Do you see opportunity to buy cheap assets there? Well, I don't think yet. I think you want to wait until you reach a bottom. And given that it's likely that in the next election the Labour Party will win. I think the Conservative Party is unbelievably unpopular. If the UK is experiencing very, very low economic growth and is likely, as you say, to go into a recession, the Conservatives have basically completely and thoroughly mucked up Brexit. They've made Brexit into an unmitigated disaster. They're basically no benefits, no upside, no good has come to England to the UK from Brexit. The Conservatives have managed to completely muck it up. It could have gone the other way, but it didn't because the Conservatives are so pathetic in the UK, that I think that there's a good chance that Labour will win or the Conservatives might still manage to hold on by their fingertips and I just don't see that the Tories are going to wake up and do the right thing. I was very hopeful for the UK around the Brexit and a little bit afterwards, but God, they've blown it in ways even I didn't think they were capable of. And that was pretty skeptical all the way through. So I don't see anything good happening over the next five years in the UK. I think things are going to get worse before they get better. I think you're likely to get a Labour government. I don't think the Labour government will mean socialism, but it certainly will mean really problematic policies, probably raising taxes and spending more on the NHS and stronger unions and a bunch of other things that are going to hurt the economy. So I think there's still time where asset prices in the UK might drop even further and there might be even more opportunities to buy it. I mean Boris Johnson was a bust, but so as Sunik has been a bust, they're all a bust. And the one, Elizabeth Truss, tried to move things in the right direction and just got steamrolled, but partially that's her fault because she didn't know how to defend her policies. She wasn't prepared to defend her policies. And the Tories just folded, folded like a deck of cards. I mean, just unbelievable, like a tower of cards. I don't know what you would call it. So I think I see things getting worse in the UK over the next five years and tragic, tragic. They have a better educational system than we do. They have all the potential for significant upside in the UK. Deck of cards, like a house of cards. There we go, house of cards. That's what I was looking for. All right, we're just only $12 short because West came in with $50. Thank you, West. Thank you, Jeff. And thank you, Antonio. And thank you, James, for the $75. Incredibly generous. We're still $12 short though. So somebody needs to step up and get us over the threshold. Okay, Ryan says, I Iran, I'm traveling with my wife to both Tel Aviv and Athens. I'm thrilled to visit two incredible cities that are tied to enlightenment principles in different ways. Have a great week, everyone. Yeah, I mean, enjoy Israel and Greece. I mean, both are beautiful. I don't know how much time you're going to be in Tel Aviv or in Israel generally. But there's a lot to see. And of course, there's a lot to see in Athens. And yeah, I hope you don't get caught up in the demonstrations. That are happening all over Israel and blocking traffic everywhere and making it really, really difficult. Michael says, well, Israel move forward towards greater economic freedom now that the leftist courts are being kneecapped. No, because the leftist courts were not holding Israel back from an economic perspective. It wasn't the leftist courts that were holding back economic reforms. The leftist courts, to the extent they were holding back anything, were holding back violations of property rights against Arabs and things like that. They were holding back laws that discriminated against the Arab population. So they were holding back things that needed to be held back. On economic issues, the political parties in charge in Israel that move forward in Israel have no interest in economic liberty and freedom. We've seen no indication that they're going to move towards that. And that's not what the courts have held up. Jacob says, file change company, everything wrong, lied in pandemic masks, early treatment, locked down, school closing, asymmetric spread. But 100% right on vaccines, hilarious. Yeah, they are 100% right on vaccines, not because it's them. Indeed, they had nothing to do with the creation of vaccines. The vaccines were created by BioNTech and Moderna. And BioNTech and Moderna saved with the vaccines millions and millions of lives. They've saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States alone. And because Fauci was wrong, I mean he wasn't wrong on everything, he was wrong on some things, just like everybody else. They're wrong on some things, does not mean that they were wrong on everything. And that's a tribal mentality. Fauci, no good, therefore everything that the scientific community in the United States does is no good. That's just tribal non-thinking. It's absolutely non-thinking. You know, Jacob then says, when CDC FDA reflexively approved EUA COVID vaccine boosters for kids, I lost all faith in all vaccines, stopped all for the vaccines in my chair. I feel sorry for your kids, your kids are going to get sick for no reason. And this is exactly kind of again the kind of tribal mentality. The vaccines for kids, while I don't think were necessary, were also not harmful. Nobody's going to, nobody's going to hood from those vaccines. To stop all other vaccines that do no harm and yet protect your kids from real diseases is really, really sad for you and your kids to do such a thing and to do such a thing with no scientific basis, zero. It's just silly. It's just silly. But the whole anti-vax thing is zero science, zero, zero science. And particularly the COVID vaccine, where the science is very, very clear that these vaccines, you know, are unbelievably safe, unbelievably safe. So it's just tribal non-thinking to respond that way to crisis. You know, the government is involved in everything in the United States. And therefore you could say everything, all products, all things are bad because ooh, Biden controls them. That would basically stop life as it exists. You couldn't do anything. You'd have to abandon everything, really. If that was the standard, if we could collectivize the responsibility for somebody being wrong or somebody associated with the government to every single product being produced in the United States is shit because it has a government collection. And the only, you know, the thing is it's your kids. You can do what you want. I feel sorry for the kids, but you as a parent can decide not to vaccinate them and it's within your right and go for it. The problem is when this propaganda is spread and innocent people buy into it. And as a consequence of that, harm really does affect a lot of people. A lot of people, obese people, elderly people in the United States died of COVID for absolutely zero reason because they bought into the propaganda around a COVID vaccine and shame on the people who are spreading this propaganda. Shame on you because it has an impact. It has an impact on people's lives. And there is zero, zero scientific backing for these conspiracy theories. And look, again, if the evidence says Fauci was wrong on one, two, three, four, five, then he must be wrong on six. That's pretty pathetic, particularly given that Fauci was not involved in developing the vaccines and the science behind the vaccines or in approving the vaccines. And indeed, I think the approval was too slow. The vaccine should have been, as I said at the time, the vaccine should have been, should have been released in the summer when they were available. All right, Andrew, good times on the member show. Yes, that was a fun show last night. A laissez-faire society is the distant future, but it's important to view the ideal as possible and practical. How do you keep that mindset given how far away it is? Well, it's just, I don't know, it just seems, in my mind, it just seems pretty straightforward and pretty simple. To think about how laissez-faire system works, if you basically have the knowledge that human rationality can solve all problems, that if you understand how markets work, then it's just a matter of playing out a scenario in your mind to resolve these issues and to solve these issues. So it's really easy to do, particularly when you look around the world and you see what irrationality is doing and how incompetent government is and how incompetent a status system is. It's relatively easy to project. And then you see, like Silicon Valley and you see Moderna and BioNTech, which to me are illustrative of what happens when you unleash the private sector, when you unleash the scientific science and you, in a sense, take away the regulatory barriers. And you say, you know, if you guys develop a vaccine, we'll release it. We'll do it really, really quickly. And look how fast they did it. And I find it funny everybody goes, ooh, but it's a big pharma. What big pharma? BioNTech is a tiny little company. Moderna was a tiny little company. They're not big pharma, they're tiny. Pfizer teamed up with BioNTech for marketing reasons. Pfizer then developed the vaccine. BioNTech did. And when you release the constraints over the entrepreneurial spirit, like you did with the vaccines, wow, amazing, beautiful things happen. Now extrapolate that to the rest of the world if you unleash, if you release the regulations. I mean, I wonder what all the anti-vaxxers, ooh, it wasn't tested enough, all this BS stuff. What would they do in a private market where there's no FDA and where, you know, who's going to test it then? Why are they going to trust it? You know, the people testing it then are going to be motivated by the, ooh, profit motive, just like big pharmer is. And we don't trust the profit motive. These are supposed to be free market people. All right, Adam Reed. Since Putin's invasion, Ukrainian refugees registered 25,000 new businesses in Poland, 10% in a country who are starting a new business is a cultural ideal. How can anti-refugee Americans keep on believing the opposite? Well, because A, they don't know the stats, they don't care about the stats and uninterested in the stats. Then you see, you think that facts are what determine people's attitudes towards immigration and it doesn't. I mean, the stats are unequivocal in terms of the number of entrepreneurs, the number of businesses started, the number of unicorns in Silicon Valley started, or who are partnered with immigrants. The numbers are a clear cut and unequivocal. Also, you know, some people will argue, well, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, so they have the genes for it. It's the South Americans we object to. But it's all rationalizations BS. You know, what Americans have become on nativists? What Americans have become a xenophobic nationalist who buy into any kind of primitive, mercantilist economic story, even though and evade the fact that it's false. I mean, humanity, it goes back to something came up on another show recently. The preconceptual mentality, so many people out there are preconceptual. In a sense that, you know, to think economically, to integrate facts that into new knowledge requires thinking with a capital T, if you will. And unfortunately, a big chunk of our population doesn't think left and right. They just don't think they buy stories that their political allies and people who look like them provide them with, whether it's on the left, the story of the benefits of welfare, the stories of CRT or the benefits of woke, or whether it's on the right, the benefits of nationalism and the benefits of mercantilism. They buy it and you see it throughout. And then, of course, there's a, it creates a whole industry of politicians and consultants and others who have a profit motive and profit incentive to keep the BS coming. Andrew says, what's your view of the degree of success of the libertarians attacks on central planning? Would things be a lot worse without or not much different? Well, I think there'd be periods where it's been successful. I think the 1970s, it was relatively successful, partially because Iron Man was there as well in the mix. But it's not successful today. I don't think anybody pays attention much to the libertarian arguments about the evils of central planning. Everybody seems to be a central planner these days. So I think in the Ronald Reagan era, it certainly played a role and leading up to Ronald Reagan, I think Milton Friedman played a big role. But I think without a charismatic person like Milton Friedman, it doesn't seem to play much. It doesn't seem to have much of an impact, unfortunately. Enric, what is the Concierge Health Service you use and what do you see its advantages? It's health nucleus, health nucleus or what do they call it longevity, human longevity, human longevity.com. I think you can find it. It's out of California. They have office in Southern California, office in Northern California. The advantages once a year you go for full checkup, including MRI scan, brain scan, echocardiogram. Every couple of years, I think they do a calcium score, dexter, bone mass. They do the whole thing. And every year they do it. So they have a benchmark from the first year they did it and they can see how you're aging or what's happening or if there's any changes. You know, one of my loyal listeners here on the podcast, actually I encouraged him to go and he went, and I think I've told this story, he went and on the first time he went they discovered a growth on his lung. And because of that he went to see other experts and they ultimately biopsied it and they discovered it was cancer and he had the lower lobe of the lung removed and it saved his life. If he had waited, let's say a few months, they probably would have had it removed with the entire lung, the left lung. And if he had waited even more than that he would be dead. So basically this thing saved his life. The thing about cancer is if you catch it early, many cancers are curable. If you catch it late, many cancers are not curable. So there's a massive advantage to catching early in what this program does because it gives you a full body scan is it's likely to catch it early. Now you have to deal with false positives and all the rest. Plus you get a doctor on call, you get a doctor, you can talk to about these things. They monitor you, they're not your primary care physician because you need somebody local. But they're basically monitoring you and they can provide you with a second opinion about anything and then they can refer you to world-class experts anywhere in the world. Justin, is it unfair that women are expected to wear makeup and men are not? I don't know. It depends on the woman, right? I think women can decide whether they want to wear makeup or not. I think that part of femininity involves looking your best from a physical perspective and part of that for women involves makeup. I don't think part of masculinity involves that. So no, I don't think it's an issue of fairness. And women can opt out for, you know, they can choose not to wear makeup. Frank, when COVID started, why did the Dow Jones go from 33,000 to 18,000? But it was not a depression. Did you view this as a form, as a form of crash? Well, it went from 33,000 to 18,000 and it was a crash. There was no question it was a crash. There was no depression because basically the government bailed it all out, right? So the government locked us down, which should have caused a recession or a depression, but then gave us money to spend. And while the consequences in the moment, no consequences, right? Everything was fine. Everything was great. The consequence ultimately was inflation. So the bailout is never free and the cost of the bailout was inflation. So there's the direct link between the amount of bailout that the government spent used in the COVID to get the stock market up, to get us consuming again, to keep certain businesses alive, to keep the banking system healthy. That ultimately resulted in inflation, but it also resulted in malinvestment. It resulted in lower economic growth in the future. Now, the US economy is incredibly resilient. It can handle even crazy stuff like that, but there's a price to pay. There always is a price to pay. Andrew, how would the nightclub music problem you are having that you recently talked about Well, it would be considered a violation of my rights. Given that I was here first and that, you know, in a residential area, there would be laws that say you cannot play music after a certain hour, above a certain volume. And there would be a violation of those laws and they would be arrested and if necessary, they would be shut down. So it's a rights violation. It's a property rights violation. It is an intrusion on my property through sound waves in this case, but it is an intrusion on my property and there has to be, you know, nightclub confunction but not in a residential area and not if the music escapes. Now, you could build sign proof walls. There are all kinds of ways you can do it if it's all inside, but you can project it onto the outside. You can project it in a way that hurts the, literally hurts damages the people around you. And it's upon them to sound proof it. Again, this is a residential area. Now, there's some commercial stuff but not nightlife. All right. Thank you everybody. I appreciate the support. Thanks to all the super chatters. We make our goal and I will see you all tomorrow. Not exactly what time I think one o'clock, but we will be doing our news roundup tomorrow and then tomorrow evening we'll have our normal show. Talk to you soon. Bye everybody.