 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Oh, hi, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show. I'm back home. It's going to be back home after, what, about eight, nine days traveling London and Amsterdam. I guess you only saw my hotel room in London. You never saw my hotel room in Amsterdam. No time in Amsterdam to do shows. But it is good to be back. I'm not back for long. Don't get used to it. I'm here for another two and a half weeks, and then I'm off to Latin America for about 10 days. So I'm looking forward to seeing you guys in Latin America, Argentina, Chile, still trying to figure out whether I'm going to Brazil or not. We'll find out soon. I'll find out. I'll let you know once I know something. But definitely, Argentina, three days of content, three days of lecturing and workshops and content. And then we'll be doing two days in Chile, two days in Santiago. So I hope that if you're listening from Latin America, you have an opportunity to come by and say hello. I think those of you in Argentina, I can't say anything yet, although I should be able to say something very soon. I am for a fantastic surprise. So I think make an effort, make an effort to sign up for the conference in Argentina, some good things happening. All right, talking about good things, let's jump into the news. Bad things, mostly bad things. Do I have any good stuff? No, I think today's news is all bad. All bad, almost all domestic. Yeah, this is life, life we live, right? All right, let's start with Millet. Talk about Argentina. Millet suffered a serious blow. This was it yesterday for his agenda. He might have signed like 300 pieces of deregulation by executive order. And this is after decades of Argentinian presidents doing stuff through executive order, and Congress basically letting them get away with it. Anyway, in this case, the Senate, the Argentinian Senate, has voted against those, that is they voted to overturn the executive order that Millet signed. This is an executive order that dramatically deregulated the Argentinian economy and was already being put in place. Now, that doesn't go into law until the lower house votes for the same thing. But Millet does not have a majority in the lower house. I mean, we talked about this originally when he was elected. Millet has a very small political party. And therefore, from a legislative perspective, there's very, sadly, there's little he can do unless he rallies support from political parties that are clearly opposed to him and his agenda. So not only is the package of privatization and changes in spending, the omnibus bill that Millet proposed, not only is that basically being killed by the legislature, but now the legislature has attempted to kill the deregulations that Millet passed in the first few days of his administration. Millet is going to fight this. He's going to fight this in the lower house. But again, he does not have the political backing. He does not have the political support. And unless the Argentinian people start turning out in his support and start putting pressure on politicians, his agenda is going to get completely scrapped. To talk about the omnibus bill, Millet is not proposing a trimmed-down version of that bill, for example, that does not include the privatization of the Argentina oil company, which is sad. And so it's a bunch of other things that needed to happen, needed to happen in Argentina he is backing off of in order to get the support of Congress. We will see if they will support even the trimmed-down version, if they smell blood, if they think they can derail him and defeat him, then they might just say no to everything he proposes and make him look as bad as possible. So tragic, sad, but completely expected, completely predictable. It's exactly what I told you I thought would happen when Millet was first elected. And what I think a lot of commentators, can he get anything done? Can he get stuff done? And of course, these two things, the executive order and the omnibus bill, only the beginning of everything he would need to do, which includes dollarization and everything else. And if this can get done, then certainly the more radical stuff is going to really be difficult. Now, as I said, I will be in Argentina and we'll have a broader, better, more thorough perspective on Millet and what's going on in Argentina from that trip. I will know, we will hear a lot about the program, what the plan is, what they, the Argentinians, think the probability of success is, including people at the very top. So yeah, major setback, not good. I don't know. I don't know what he could do other than basically fire Congress and declare himself a dictator of Argentina, but probably not something he can, should or will do. I mean, then you get the army. Yeah, there's no click cut way to get these passed without the Argentinian people being willing, in a sense, to go out now into the streets and demand of their Congress to support Millet. And make it very clear that if they don't, they're going to vote all the bastards out. They're going to vote all the bastards out. The problem, of course, is the people who elected Millet were excited. But are they excited at any particular thing? Are they excited at any particular spending cut? Might affect them, for example. Are they excited about any particular de-urgulation? Might affect them? Are they excited at any particular privatization? Again, might affect them. So much of the Argentinian economy is controlled by the government today. Anything he does is going to affect people. And will those people take the long view, take the broad view, take the rational view, or will they just try to pursue kind of short-term emotions? I don't know. Again, I'm curious to speak to Argentinians to see if we can find out what they think. OK, let's see. TikTok. We talked about TikTok a few days ago. And the House passed the law that requires TikTok to either sell to an American, to a non-Chinese entity. And there are a number of American groups putting money together to try to vie for TikTok, including the former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin. Trump's Treasury Secretary wants to try to buy TikTok. Or if they can't sell it, then the US regulators will shut it down. I told you this is not going to be easy. They're going to be a lot of legal roadblocks placed in this. There's going to be lawsuits. Might go to the Supreme Court. But in the meantime, it has to get approved by the Senate. And as of right now, at least, it seems like the Senate is resisting. That is, all senators were pretty passionate about not letting this bill pass. I mean, kudos to Ron Paul, for example, for standing up against the passage of this bill that forces TikTok to sell or to liquidate. He says correctly, this is not the government's business. That the government should not intervene in these business decisions. TikTok is not a national security threat. TikTok is not, even if it is giving user information to the Chinese government, that is not a national security threat. There's no weapons involved. There's no systematic. Anyway, there is a group of senators fighting this. They are rallying. I think what happened in the House of Representatives, this bill came very quickly. And I think the pro-TikTok side did not have time to rally. In the Senate, they are rallying. So there's a good chance that they will not do this. And TikTok users are flooding Congress with calls. They were doing this when the House voted. Now they're flooding the Senate with the calls. I mean, TikTok users are pretty passionate. A lot of TikTok creators are worried about their income. And I am not one that cares much about TikTok, although I'm hoping my one-minute videos start going up on TikTok on a regular basis. And I'm not impressed by one-minute videos, generally. But good for the users. Let them fight for their values. This is not my values, their values. And they are trying to fight for it. And they are engaged. And right now, the Senate will have to figure out if they support it or not. I told you that one of the arguments about why Donald Trump, Donald Trump, by the way, supports, does not support the bill, is anti-the bill, is that a major donor to Donald Trump and to the Republican Party and many Republican senators and the Club for Growth is one of the biggest shareholders, or certainly the biggest American shareholder, I think, in TikTok's company. And there's a Wall Street Journal article that basically articulates all of this. And the reality is that there is a significant opposition to the TikTok bill. We'll see if it passes the Senate, and then it'll go through the courts. And that should really make it interesting in the courts. TikTok has already said they would challenge this in the courts. And if this bill passes, I mean, this is the beginning of massive infringements into the First Amendment rights of tech companies. All right. Anyway, expect this to drag on now for several months. By the way, one interesting fact that hopefully Mnuchin knows given that he's about to want to buy TikTok is the TikTok itself, the US TikTok, not by dance, but TikTok itself. TikTok, the US company actually loses money. It is not profitable, which is interesting, right? TikTok is said to have lost several billions of dollars last year on revenues of roughly $20 billion. So they're being in $20 billion, but they lose several billion as part of that. All right, that is the update on TikTok. I'll keep you updated as we go. I think this is a crucial, super important, super important story because of its First Amendment implications, because of the implications for free speech. All right, let's see. Yeah, here's some good news. If you're a home seller, a home buyer, then you will be pleased to know, I guess, that you know how when you sell a buyer house, the realtors basically say, look, there's a 6% commission, 3% on the buyer, 3% on the seller. And that's just the way it is. That's how all realtors agree to that. The Realtors Association has basically mandated that for all realtors, and this is how we run things. And it's 6%. And I think I've negotiated down a little bit from that in California because there was huge numbers of realtors that were just everywhere. And you could get a little bit of competition going. But generally, there's no competition in this space. The 6% has just been how it is. And it's been like this for decades. Well, anyway, people have sued. They've sued, sadly, under antitrust laws. Now, I think that's always bad to use those kind of laws. But in this case, the National Association of Realtors, in a sense, has a government-granted monopoly. You have to be a licensed realtor to sell to be a licensed realtor. I think you have to be a member of the National Association of Realtors. And National Association of Realtors, which represents a million realtors, has now agreed in a settlement in court versus a group of homeowners. They've agreed, basically, to pay $418 million of damages. And they've agreed to eliminate rules on commissions. That is, they are going to allow commissions to float. Commissions will be whatever. You as a home buyer, a home seller, negotiate with your realtor. They've also agreed to a bunch of changes to the rules. So expect a different dynamic when you're buying and selling a home moving forward. I think this will create, indeed, more competition. It will create new options in terms of buyers and sellers. And it's going to be fun. It's going to be interesting to watch. People expect estimates, expect commissions to drop maybe 25% to 50%. That's a lot of money. A million dollar home, a commission was $60,000. $60,000 in a million dollar home. If it drops to $30,000, and the buyers and sellers are saving $30,000, that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. So yeah, I'm excited. I think this is good. I expect to be buying, selling in the future. And I'm happy to pay less to realtors. I'm not sure they added 6% of value. And certainly, in a competitive market, it just seems like every home in California is a million dollar home. It's $60,000, $30,000 to each side. Does that really make sense? They do $30,000 worth of work. Now, one of the things that will happen is commissions will go down. The number of retailers, realtors will go down because it won't be as profitable. And commissions will probably creep up again. So they probably won't go back to 6%. But while you might see a big drop early on, you're probably not going to see a big drop later on. You'll probably see a big drop early on. But I doubt that you would see. I think a lot of that will bounce back. So I don't think you're going to see it dropped 3%. I think you'll probably see 4%, 5% ultimately settle after there is, in a sense, a lot of realtors will leave the profession. So we'll see how that plans out. President Biden obviously has nothing else to do. But he has come out against the merger or the purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel of Japan. Sheffield is for this. The board of directors of US Steel likes it. Nippon Steel is for it. But the president of the United States, the central planner-in-chief, is against it. Of course, what is the excuse? Well, he writes, he says, US Steel has been an iconic American steel company for more than a century. And it is vital for it to remain an American steel company that is domestically owned and operated. Why is it vital? Nobody can say. Nobody can say. Maybe it's national security. That would be a good reason, national security. Now here, my expectation is that Trump would agree with Biden. I think this is something that they both agree on. They are both central planners by their very nature. And with Biden, though, it's pretty clear. And I think you'll see the same thing for Trump. The union opposes this. The union is worried about maybe efficiency gains. Maybe the Japanese will bring in some robots. Maybe the Japanese will expect a little bit more from the union workers. Maybe part of the reason US Steel has to sell to begin with is because of the ridiculously high labor costs. Maybe some of those labor costs are protected because of tariffs that Trump installed. So those jobs are not really that productive. The union is worried about this. So basically, Biden and Trump are both fighting for the union vote. It used to be traditionally a democratic vote. No more. Now it's up for grabs. The union voters voted for Trump and could vote overwhelming for Trump this time. So they're going to stake out positions that support the unions. It was sad. Nippon Steel announced that it will advance American priorities by driving greater quality and competitiveness for customers in the crucial critical industries that rely on American steel or strengthening American supply chains and economic defenses against China. Note that Nippon Steel has no interest in shutting down US Steel. It has no interest in stopping making steel in America. And also note, just in case you were wondering, that Japan is an ally of the United States. Japan is our friend. Japan is not an enemy state. It's not like TikTok where, oh my god, a social media company might be owned by somebody we don't like. Like China. Japan we like, officially like. I mean, by all, everybody likes Japan. Who doesn't like Japan? And yet it doesn't matter. The central planners want to fidget. They want to manipulate. They want to change. And they'll always use national security as some kind of faint excuse. But there is no national security issue here. This is purely buying votes. This is purely central planning. And it has nothing to do, nothing to do with the national security interests or the economics or anything like that. This is actually great for America as an economy. And it's great for US Steel shareholders. And it is good for Nippon. It is win, win, win. The only people it's not good for because I don't know why it's not good for them. But politicians, right? It's just not a good look, I guess, for politicians who are statists and who are explicit statists when big, well-known companies in the US sell to foreigners. Just not a good look. All right, talk about bad looks. Oh, by the way, just to mention, it's pretty unusual for president to comment on a case, to comment on a merger. I mean, I remember Trump doing it once or twice. But it's very unusual, very unusual for this to actually happen. So Biden is going out of his way to do something presidents don't usually do, to win votes, to affect his audience, to make a statement, I guess. All right, let's see. Yeah, talk about bad looks. So Boeing's been in real crisis mode for years now. If you remember that before COVID, there were a couple of jets, Boeing jets 737s that crashed, killing everybody on board. One, I think, was in Ethiopia. And the other one was in Asia. And these were 737 Maxes. And there was a real issue. And it was a quality control issue. And there was lack of training of pilots. And there was a computer issue that should have been able to foresee. And they did not. And as a consequence, they fired the CEO. And they brought in a new CEO. And the new CEO is trying to up the standards. But then, of course, recently, on an Alaska Airlines flight, a panel just blew off, a 737 Max 9. This is Alaska on Alaska Air. As a result of this, the FAA has gone in to evaluate the manufacturing process. It's found dozens of problems, of issues, both with the suppliers and with Boeing itself. And it is tragic. I mean, Boeing is one of the great American companies. Now, I believe that Boeing basically has grown too big. I'm against the anti-trust. I'm against the government getting involved. But certainly, size matters and size in business can be a significant detriment. I also think that Boeing relies too much on its profitability on its defense business and on government contracts from the defense business. And it has slipped dramatically in its commercial side, in its quality, in its engineering focus that Boeing used to be proud of. Now, Boeing is vowed to figure this out. The Department of Justice is actually pursuing criminal investigation over the panel that blew off. I think there was a story that the panel blew off and that there were some bolts that were missing, just missing. Now, how did Alaska not see that the bolts were missing? And how did Boeing sell a plane with missing bolts? Now, this is having a huge impact on the industry. A lot of airlines are suspending their purchases of planes from Boeing. United is basically told Boeing to forget about delivery of the 737 MAX-10s, focus on the 9s, and it is shifting a lot of its orders to Airbus. The gap in valuation between Airbus and Boeing has never been higher. Airbus is doing significantly better. There are only really two companies in the world right now making appliance. And when Boeing loses customers, Airbus gains customers. A Boeing whistleblower who had exposed real manufacturing problems at Boeing was found dead this weekend. It appears that he committed suicide, but it does seem like all coming together in a weird, strange kind of way, right? Anyway, this is a real problem. This is because of the way regulations play out, because of the way the airline industry is regulated, because of the size of a commitment that capital expenditure that buying an airplane involves. This industry, basically, there were only two players, certainly on the large aircraft. Small aircraft, there's a couple of other players as well, I think Canadian company. But when it comes to large aircraft, there are only two players, Airbus and Boeing. Probably not a healthy situation to be in. The problem is that the only potential for a third player in the space is China. China has recently launched their own commercial airplane business. They want to compete directly with Boeing and Airbus. And at this rate, they will, and they could, capture significant market share from Boeing. People will consider a Chinese company, given how bad Boeing is performing right now. So there's a real potential. And my strong belief is that in an unregulated environment, and an environment where the government played a much smaller role in procurement, that there would either be more aircraft manufacturers or these companies would be so much better. It is possible that I think the Canadian that makes the smaller planes will get into competing at least at the 737 level, kind of the mid-sized jets. We will see. But this is super interesting from the perspective of markets. It's super interesting from the perspective of the economy. Boeing is a big chunk of several states' economy. It's a really interesting story in terms of how this all evolves and builds. And it goes forward. I don't know if it's Bombardier. There is Amber Air. The people who make, I think there's an A-200, which is the name of the airplane, but I can't share the name of the company that builds it. Let me just look it up. I'll tell you. No, the A-220, the A-200 is actually an Airbus, an Airbus company, so I'm not sure. I'll keep looking. Yeah, it's probably Bombardier. Oh, that's the A-200. Yes, the A-200. The Bombardier C-Series could be renamed the Airbus A-200. So it looks like basically Bombardier built the plane, designed the plane, developed the plane, and then sold it to Airbus. And Airbus is the one that is going to actually build it and send it out there. So it is Bombardier. And then there's Embraer, Embraer Brazilian. I thought Embraer and Bombardier merged at some point. So Embraer and Bombardier, I thought it merged. But maybe they have it, or maybe the merger was never approved. I don't know. But anyway, an interesting industry to watch. I find these things interesting. And so we will see the world of business is fascinating. It looks like the Embraer is still independent company. But there was at some point a merger attempt, and maybe the merger attempt got crushed by some regulator somewhere. Bombardier bought Canada Air. All right, cool. Anyway, Embraer aircraft, I fly on them all the time. And American Airlines uses them as their regional jets. And so I fly on them all the time. All right, let's see. I don't know. Somebody must have been listening to Tucker Carlson. But Tucker Carlson's hatred for dollar stores has now resulted in, no, Tucker Carlson has nothing to do with this. A dollar tree has announced it is about to close 1,000 family dollar stores. So there's a brand called Family Dollar Stores. And they are going to be closing 1,000 of them. Now, note that Tucker Carlson will be, I guess, very happy about this. And because he hates dollar stores, and dollar stores are a sign of American decadence, or American whatever, I'm not sure lower income and lower middle class people are going to be too happy about this. This is kind of sad that these stores are closing. This is a place where people who can't afford to shop at more expensive stores can shop. I think the main reason is inflation. And they just can't make money. They are $8,415 tree and dollar family, and another $8,359 dollar store. So of the 17,000 stores, only 1,000 are closing. But hey, I'm sure the neighborhoods in which these stores will close will become much, much nicer and much, much better, Allah Tucker Carlson. Finally, some good news. If you want a job that pays well then with this very little competition, oh god, what happened to this? This is ridiculous. I fixed this, then become a plumber. There is a massive and growing shortage of plumbers. More plumbers are retiring than going into the field. And the wages are not bad. This is true of plumbing. This is a pipe fitting, steam fitters. The average, the mean average, not median, the average, wage is $65,190 a year, which is higher than the national average of all professions, which is $61,900, taken very widely. In California, you can pull in six figures. You can pull in $100,000. I had a plumber in California. Oh my god, did he charge a lot of money. But it varies anyway from $43,000 maybe in North Carolina to over $100,000 in California. Massive shortage, shortage is only going to get worse. Reports are that by 2027, there will be a shortage of 550,000 plumbers in America. So the challenge for all of us non-plumbers is that we can't find plumbers, right? I mean, even if you're willing to pay, it's just almost impossible to find one, to find one good who can come in and fix your pipes. So yeah, if you're young, if you're looking for change of professions, if you'd like to make some money, yeah, you have plenty of schools now where they're instructing plumbing. This is a plumbing apprenticeships. And you can do quite well as a plumber these days. Of course, the solution to the shortage of plumbing ultimately is immigration. And this is the sense in which I don't like the skill-based immigration programs. Skill-based immigration programs will never identify plumbers as the people we need in America. And therefore, we'll give a high score for people who have plumbing skills. It just doesn't happen. It's always based on education and stuff like that. And here, you don't want too much education. You want plumbing education. The market will fix this, right? If what you have is an immigration system that allows people to come in based on whether they have a job lined up or not, then you'll get a flood of plumbers coming in because there's a bunch of plumbing companies looking for plumbers, pipe fitters. So it would be nice if we shifted. It would be amazing. I mean, the standard of living, the increase in the standard of living for Americans, if there was a dramatic shift in immigration to pro-work immigration policies and doing so dramatically, the increase in the standard of living quality of life for Americans would be stunning. It would be stunning. I don't think people have any appreciation for how big of a deal it is that the United States economy cannot feel it doesn't have enough people to do the jobs that are needed. And of course, the more people will come, the more jobs that were created. You have no sense of how much wealth, how much prosperity, how much quality of life you are leaving on the table. You are not benefiting from because you are ignoring this. Anyway, that is our news update for today, March 15. Let's see. We've got some trooper chat. A few more would be cool. But we've got John, who put in $100. We'll get to that in a minute. We had a few stickers. So thank you, Stephen. Actually, only Stephen did a sticker. People are not doing stickers today for some reason. But we are looking for another $50 of stickers worth to get to where we need to be. All right, reminder that you can support the show on a monthly basis on Patreon or on urunbookshow.com slash membership. Also, reminder that the Ironman Institute is a sponsor of the show. And you should sign up for Ocon. Ocon is going to be so much fun. And it is such a great conference, 500 people who share your values, who share your ideas, all in one place. It's great lectures, great discussion, great breakout sessions. I will be doing my show from there. I'll get to meet a lot of you people. And it's in California, right across the street from Disneyland. So bring the kids. Let them hang out in Disneyland while you go and attend sessions at the conference. So I know it's relatively late. The conference is in June. But June is still months away. And you've got plenty of time to register. So don't forget to do it and do it soon. Make sure that you guarantee a spot at this exciting Objectives Conference. The conference in Amsterdam was truly terrific. I don't know if I think everybody who went was excited to be there and was thrilled by how it went. And I'm looking forward to next year. I don't know where it's going to be. But I'm looking forward to next year wherever it is. Hopefully they'll invite me to speak because it was really, really cool. All right, let's go through these questions. Let's start with John for $100. Thank you, John. John has been a big supporter through the super chat of the Iran Book Show over the last few months. John says, please remind me what the link between metaphysics and epistemology is. Is it concept formation? Also a link between epistemology and ethics. Reason, ethics and politics link you mentioned in a recent episode is man's life. Ethics is linked to which branch? Aesthetics is linked to which branch? It's linked to ethics. Aesthetics is linked to ethics. And to epistemology, it's linked to both. Now, let's be clear. Everything is linked to everything. Objectivism is an integrated system of thought. Every principle in objectivism is linked directly to every other principle in objectivism. You should be able to take A as A for metaphysics and link it to any principle in aesthetics. You should be able to take any principle in aesthetic and link it up to any principle in epistemology or in ethics or in politics. They're all connected. So it's not like there's one link. There's one move for metaphysics to epistemology. And there's not even necessarily one direction by which one goes. There is a certain sequence. There's a hierarchy of knowledge. One has to know certain things before one can validate other things. But in terms of connections, everything's connected to everything. So let's take metaphysics and epistemology. Well, epistemology is the study of how we know. Metaphysics is the study of what's out there. The link is reality and consciousness. So metaphysics says existence exists. It says consciousness is the means by which we observe existence. It is the law of identity. An identity of consciousness is crucial. And it is the idea of causality. Now, all of those ideas are relevant in epistemology, right? Epistemology is we observe what? We observe that, which is, from concepts, we do everything with what? With this stuff that we observe in reality. If A is not A, then what is epistemology? What do we do? How does reason work? How does the reason know when A is A, when A is not A? How do we know any of this stuff? So in order to know stuff, we have to know that it exists. And we have to know it's fundamental characteristic as an existent. So we have knowledge of something. We have knowledge of existence. That's what epistemology teaches us. It teaches us. It basically is not teaches us. It's basically the theory of knowing what, knowing reality. So that is the link between those two and the link between epistemology and ethics is basically the recognition that man's nature is as a rational being. That is, and this is, by the way, a metaphysical point. It regards the nature of man, the metaphysical nature of man. The metaphysical nature of man is that man is rational. That is his means of survival. His basic means of survival is his reason. OK, but reason is a feature. Reason is epistemology, right? Reason is what we discover in terms of how do we know? How do we know what we know? Through reason. Concept formation is just one aspect of reason. It's an explanation of how we form concepts using our reason. And where was I? Man is a rational animal. It's also an essential point in ethics. Once we understand that man is that all living beings, the primary choice that they have is life or death. And when they choose life, when human beings choose life, you must then choose the values to guide your life. They don't come to you automatically. Well, it's obvious, being a rational animal, that the number one value needs to be reason, rationality. Because that's the way in which we live. So if we consider about survival, then we must be rational. Of course, a core metaphysical principle about the nature of man is that we have free will. Again, this relates to our nature. And the fact that we have free will is crucial to morality and crucial to epistemology. Because in epistemology, we know that knowledge doesn't come automatically. That you actually have to focus. You have to engage. You have to turn your mind on. So reason is not an automatic functioning. That's essential for ethics, because key to ethics is man's choice to pursue reason. Man's choice to be rational. All right, what else did I mean? Again, any two concepts can be connected. Ethics and politics is easy. The link between ethics and politics is basically individual rights. Once you know that morality is concerned with the survival and thriving of individual human beings and that they need to use their reason in order to do it, the enemy of reason is forced. So you need a concept to describe how we must protect a human being so we can thrive. That's individual rights. The idea of rights is the idea that man must be free in order to be able to pursue his happiness guided by his reason. And then since force is the enemy of reason, force must be extracted. Force must be not allowed in civilized society, or any society for that matter. And then the link to aesthetics, so that's the link between, and of course, the only political system that protects individual rights is capitalism. Capitalism is the system of individual rights where the government's sole responsibility is the protection of individual rights. The link to aesthetics is that man, because he is a conceptual being, epistemology, and because he strives towards his own happiness, morality, and has, again, all this assumes he has a particular nature, metaphysics, requires aesthetics, requires aesthetics to take abstract, difficult, very, very abstract concepts, and concretize them. So his particular form of consciousness requires the concretization of his abstract ideas, of his most basic abstract ideas. And if you think about what art is, according to Inran's definition, you will see the connection of metaphysics. Inran's definition of art is an artist's selective recreation of reality based on his metaphysically value, metaphysical value judgments. Sorry, metaphysical value judgments. What are metaphysical value judgments? They're value judgments with regard to the very nature of reality. Is reality knowable? Is AA, or can it be B, at the same time? Is existence, does the world of causality work? So all of that is reflected in art. Is man capable of living a good life on this earth? All of that is captured by art. Those metaphysical value judgments are what the content of the art projects, what is being concretized for our mind. And our mind needs it, just like it needs food, just like it needs oxygen. It needs that concretization. It is our nature, by our nature. We need to understand. We need to concretize these abstractions. Otherwise, we cannot fully embrace a rational heroic life. All right, how's that? Thank you, John, for the $100. You made me work for it, as you should. As you should. All right, let me know what you think if you have any follow-ups. Michael, will truth always conquer lies? Well, I mean, in the long run, over time, I think the answer is yes. Of course, the world could be nuked and all humanity could die, and then truth will not win over lies. But so there's no metaphysical force in the universe dictating that. But as long as human beings are alive, as long as they are rational, as long as they are seeking truth, that truth will win. John said, thank you. I messed up what you said about the link between ethics and politics. It's individual rights, that's right. I'm sorry about that. You're the best. Thanks, John. Appreciate the support very much. All right, Michael, do we know what happened to Ayn Rand's siblings or parents? Does she have any surviving relatives in contact with A.R.I.? I think A.R.I. is being in touch with some cousins in Chicago, the cousins to which she came when she moved to the United States. I think A.R.I. is being in touch with them. I don't think she has any relatives left in Russia, or at least none that we're in touch with. Sister visited her in the United States. It didn't go well. The sister hated America, hated capitalism, had been completely brainwashed by the Soviets, and was a committed communist. She ultimately died. Somebody died during World War II, so some of her, I can't remember which one of her parents. I don't remember the exact biographical information, but they basically all died. A lot of the letters that she sent them were destroyed, so we have some of the communication because she made copies of a lot of things, but we don't have all the communications. But we have hundreds of letters, I think it's hundreds, of letters that Ayn Rand wrote to her parents and the letters that they wrote back to her. They've now all been translated from Russian to English, so they're all available to scholars who want to study Ayn Rand's biography or anybody who wants to actually see or read what happened Ayn Rand. I'm still waiting for the definitive biography of Ayn Rand, which is in the making. I'm hoping one of these days that'll come out, we will see, but there is a definitive biography of Ayn Rand which will have all this stuff, including what happened to parents and all this stuff in it, it's just taking longer than I would have expected or hoped or hoped. All right, what else? Let's see, thank you, Michael, as usual. Harper, is it fairly common for mixed economies to collapse into fascism mixed economies appear to have a long half-life? It's hard to tell because the reality is we've only had mixed economies for a very short period of time because we've only had capitalism for a very short period of time. So the mixture of capitalism with something else is short-lived, so we don't really know. I mean, mixed economies are creations of the last, what, 100 years, they weren't any mixed economies before that or a lot less mixed. They were either status, and there was some capitalists. So at best, you could say the 200 years of history was mixed economies, so you can't tell, but the logic of it says that mixed economies either ultimately move towards freedom or move towards centralized control, and that centralized control probably is most likely to be in kind of a fascist form or in some new form, but it's gonna be centralized control or freedom. And at this point, freedom doesn't seem to be the direction any of these economies are moving in, so you're likely to get more centralized control. You're likely to get more fascism. I think that's inevitable. That is the inevitable path, but there's not enough history to point to lots of examples. All right, Ryan, I am in Florida and visited the Kennedy Space Center this week with my family. As a student of Objectivism, it is a huge value to make the trip. There are so many links and examples that make Rand's philosophy come to life. Yeah, I mean, I agree. It's such a testament to human achievement and human success. It's such a testament to, in many respects, what happens when the government does these things and even if they're successful for a while, it kind of dies out. There's no way to sustain it versus, for example, I think, examples of SpaceX and stuff, but yes, there's just so much of the human mind at NASA. There's so many great scientists and engineers that there's such a positive attitude for the most part, not all, towards life and life-enhancing technology. And it's ambitious, which is, again, very consistent with Rand's philosophy. Oscar, I wonder if the recent wave of family dollar store closures might be related to the 42 million fine they've received for allowing a rodent infestation in their food storage warehouse to persist. It could be, I saw that, it's not clear, but it certainly put a significant burden. I mean, I can't believe dollar stores have high margins so they're not unbelievably profitable. And when you have to pay a 42 million dollar fine for rodent infestation, which is horrible, yeah, that is gonna eat up, eat into your margins quite a bit. So I wouldn't be surprised if the two are indeed connected. Tom, thoughts on if the housing market is left free, corporations will buy up all housing and price out individuals, leaving rentals as the only option whereby they become enslaved to the greedy corporations. Wow, wow that. I mean, there's so many things that just don't make any sense there. Why is renting gonna be profitable? Corporations are gonna have to spend a lot of money buying all these homes. As the supply of homes shrink, prices would go up and up and up, and they would have to pay more and more, which will reduce the profitability and then it'd have to rent them out and why are corporations in a better position to pay for a home than an individual is? Corporation has to earn a return on the house. An individual doesn't. I don't have to earn a return on the house. It's a consumption product for me. So actually I'd be willing to pay more for the house than a corporation would. And in a free market, there'd be 10 of new houses being built. And if the 10 of new houses being built, that would drive prices of homes down. And indeed, ultimately, rents down. And corporations couldn't prevent people from buying new homes or from building new homes. So no, it's completely upside down. In a free market, the gap between rent and ownership would not be there. It would be expensive to own and rent it out because there would be constant supply coming into the market, which would mean rents would not be only going up and home prices would not only be going up. Home ownership would stop being an investment and would stop being what it should be rationally, which is a consumption good. And therefore, homeowners would value the home more than a corporation would because the home has very little economic value. It has vast consumption value. You want to live in it. So none of that makes any sense. All right, I want to remind you guys that tonight at 8 p.m., 8 p.m. Eastern time, sorry, it's an hour later than usual. 8 p.m. Eastern time, I'm going to be interviewing Ilan Juno on All Things Farm Policy. We were planning to talk about the Lex Friedman debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Lex's debate only dropped yesterday. It's over five hours, and we're just not going to have time to do it by tonight. So we are going to do that debate. We're going to analyze the debate. Ilan Juno, we're going to analyze the debate. The Lex Friedman debate will analyze that next week. Ilan will come back on Thursday next week and we will be analyzing the debate. From what I hear, the debate was pretty bad. That is, the pro-Israel side, not shocking at all, was very weak. I mean, Betty Morris is terrible. He is a terrible new historian who wrote a lot of bad things about Israeli history and doesn't know what he's talking about. Now feels a little guilty because he's a Zionist and he's trying to make up for it by being pro-Israel, but can't quite make it. And of course, Destiny, who I don't know what his qualifications are, zero as far as I can tell. Anyway, Ilan and I will watch it and then critique it based on what they actually say rather than based on my expectation of it. So Ilan Juno, who is writes on foreign policy for the Iron Man Institute, will be my guest tonight. And then again on Thursday, tonight we'll be talking about a whole variety of issues. Some on the Israeli Palestinians, some in Ukraine, China, a bunch of different things. And then on Thursday we'll be analyzing and pulling apart the Lex Friedman sponsored debate between two pro-Israelis and two pro-Palestinians. From what I hear the Palestinians want it, not surprising they had much more kind of certainty behind them and much more conviction. The pro-Israelis were very weak and I would have predicted it. I'd be shocked if Destiny did pretty good. I'm going to watch it, but I'd be shocked if he did pretty good. He's just not, he just knows nothing. He's not knowledgeable about Israel. So he can poke holes here and there but he can't do the fundamentals. Like what is a legitimate state? What makes a state legitimate? What makes a country a government legitimate? What makes Hamas even before October 17th, before it inflicted violence against Israel an illegitimate government? You can't answer those questions from the perspective of a middle of the road uncommitting, middle, you know, centrist like Destiny. Oh, oh, you know, the Israeli historian. All right, Liam says, I would rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right. Yeah, I get that, I understand that and I agree with it. I too would rather live with a sense of optimism, live with a sense of dread and pessimism. Daniel, did you see the Shapiro so China is using TikTok to turn Gen X women gay non-binary? No, I didn't see that. That's a good story. I should have caught on to that. I don't know, has been losing it? I mean, is that the conclusion? Probably. I mean, at some point, if you sell your soul to the new right, even if you try to be rational, you're not gonna be able to. So yeah, that's insane, but that is where the right is going. That is where the right is going. And it's all a Chinese plot. They figured out how to turn young women into gays. I mean, they're brilliant. It truly is brilliant. John, I can see equal is unfair back there. Great book that everyone should read. Thank you, John. Yes, it's right there. It's my book, equal is unfair. All right, this environment is gonna change. Even by Monday, you should see dramatic changes in the background. Not all the changes that I want more to come later, but at least some initial changes you're gonna see in by Monday, I think. I think we'll make some changes Sunday. All right, James, you should have been one, having it out with Norman, Ficklestein, and Lex instead of Destiny. I know, did you get a chance to see the debate? Will you be reacting to it tonight? As I said, reacting to it next Thursday, next Thursday in detail with Elon. Probably won't take us five hours, but we will give you some highlights of what I think the detail is. I'm sorry if any of you watched the whole thing. By the way, I am doing a debate. Two debates this week, next week. One debate on, I think, Friday. If it's livestreamed, I'll let you know. With a welfare statist, so it'll be about the welfare state, the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the welfare state. If you remember, I did a debate with this kid. What was his name? This young, young kid, a while back. I got quite a few hits on it, and we got quite a few new subscribers from it. But what was his name? Let me see if I've got this written down. Yeah. Yeah, Econos something. Anyway, young kid. Anyway, I'm debating somebody on this kid's account. It's on Discord. We're debating on Discord. I don't know how that's gonna work. And the debate is welfare is right. Is it right, and does it work? All right, that's on Friday. And then on Sunday, this will not be live, so it will not be streamed. It wasn't Varsh, no. This will not be live, and it won't be streamed, but it will be going up afterwards. This is on Robert Breedlove's podcast. Robert Breedlove, the Bitcoin guy. I'll be debating, and I can't pronounce his name, which makes me feel bad. Saifuddin Amos, Saifuddin Amos, the big economist, Bitcoin guy, wrote books on Bitcoin, written books on economics. He is a Palestinian and very anti-Israel. So I will be debating him. We've scheduled a four-hour debate, so it will be a long debate. It'll be, I think, a much, much better debate than what you had. So I'll be debating Saifuddin Amos. Amos, I'm not sure how you pronounce it. Hopefully, on Sunday, he'll teach me how to pronounce it, and we'll get it right. But that'll be four hours. It'll be moderated by Robert Breedlove, even though Robert Breedlove would be on the other guy's side, not on my side, so it'll be two against one. But that's fine, I can handle two against one. Anyway, it'll be a deep dive into the Israeli-Palestinian issue, covering pretty much everything. It'll be Mouthi, that's good, Mouthi Infidel, yes. It'll be on Mouthi Infidel's discord. The other debate, the welfare state debate, the Israel debate will be on Robert Breedlove's channel, and hopefully I'll be able to put it up on my channel once he releases it. I will let you know, but that one should be good. I'm preparing for it. I'm actually studying up for it. I'm not taking this one for granted. This is not an easy one. I want to get the history right. I want to have the history facts behind me. I want to have sources and everything. Writers on my side, I want to make sure I win the debate thoroughly, so that'll be on Sunday. So I'm preparing for that. And then, God, I've got a bunch of other very, very exciting things that are going to be happening that I will let you know of in time. But let me do all this first. All right, so I don't know if you noticed, but this guy suffered, challenged me on Twitter to a debate, so I landed up agreeing, and it's finally going to happen. All right, Brownie, what has been the movement of the Gazan population of October 7th till now? What do you mean? The Gazan population has basically moved south, so I'm not sure what, in what sense you mean, is this movement geographically, where they've moved to Rafa, a million of them live now in Rafa, out of the two million population. The rest live, many of them outside of Rafa, and many of them in the north. So I'm not sure what movement of the population means. Robert, Amy and I are missing, oh, kind of shit, God, how could that happen? Due to a schedule conflict, and you chose the other one, how does that happen? And given the location, speakers and attendees, I know it's going to be totally awesome this year. Have fun without us, and we'll be back. They'll be back. I don't know how they're skipping. Something's wrong. Robert Osso says, your honor's back in town, but 45 minutes in and only a dozen likes. You know you like it, so tap that like button, friends. All right, yes. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Jennifer says, do you know Mike Roe is? He might be a good guest to have on. He has a show called Doody Jobs about jobs. Yeah, I came across his name regarding something else recently. Yeah, I do know who he is. Yeah, he's an interesting guy. I will definitely consider it. Thank you, Jennifer. Ryan, an update on a super secret business venture that you can't discuss. Thanks for a great show. Yeah, it's not so much a business venture. It's connected to this business that I can't discuss. I will, I think, be able to discuss it. I think by the end of March, early April, we should be able to discuss it. At some point, I'll need people's help, particularly if you live in the Miami area. I will need your help with something. So at that point, I'll discuss it fully and let you know what I need. Frank says, tell us about damaged Cambridge Balfour painting. Yeah, I mean, some vandals, pro-Palestinian vandals, came into a museum. I think the museum was a Cambridge of Lord Balfour. And Lord Balfour, I mean, was a prominent British politician in the early part of the 20th century. And he is depicted in this painting in heroic fashion. But he also was the one who put together, as part of the government in 1917, the Balfour Declaration, which declared that the British mandate was committed to establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. And that state would have equal rights to all its citizens, including Arabs, Christians, and Christian Muslims, and Jews, and whoever else. And he was a friend of the Zionist project to establish a state in Israel. And they literally ripped up the painting. You know how the environmentalists throw paint? Well, they throw paint in paintings mostly that have glass. So they have avoided actually doing damage to the paintings themselves. Here, they ripped it. They literally shredded it with a knife, just disgusting, horrible. But this is the nature of, sadly, the state of the Palestinian cause, that it is violent and ahistorical and does not understand. And again, wants to have nothing with Jews in what they consider Palestine. They want the Jews out. They want the Jews dead. All right, tonight, 8 PM East Coast time, we've got Ilan Giorno talking from policy, all things from policy. Bring your questions, anything you're wondering about. Europe, NATO, Ukraine, Russia, China, Taiwan, Middle East, all the different elements within the Middle East and all the different things that are going on. Bring it on, bring it on. In terms of foreign policy, we will have a discussion about all those things. I look forward to it. I'll see you all tonight, 8 PM Eastern time. Bye, everybody. See you then.