 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Thursday night. Another one of those days with two shows in a row. Hopefully, hopefully we'll get a good audience tonight. I hope everybody's doing well, having a great weekend, a week, looking forward to the weekend. You know it's a Iran Book Show chat when the discussion is how many times you show Rush live on the chat. Not whether you've ever seen him, but how many, right? And of course, Jennifer wins by a mile. Nobody even comes close. Alright, let's see. I was told today that the problem with viewership and subscriptions on my show is that I'm not covering the same topics as Ben Shapiro and pretty much everybody else out there. I guess I'm guilty as charged. What can I say? I don't know what they're covering because I don't follow them, so I have no idea. You get coverage here of the topics that I find interesting. Hopefully you find interesting, at least some of you find interesting. I guess the world is not interested. I think that is the bottom line. The world generally is actually not interested in the same things I'm interested in. But that is not really that shocking. Really not that shocking. Alright, we're going to jump in. We've got two topics today. We're going to talk about trade. We're going to talk about the evil billionaires and why they destroyed the economy. That one we'll have a video with. The trade one will be covering an article that I found really interesting. So that's what we're going to do today. Remember you can use the super chat to support the show. You can use the super chat to ask questions. Join us on the super chat and let's support the Iran book show and let's make sure it keeps going. Let's jump in with our topics for today. We're going to start with talking about trade. I guess I should say that if you want to support the show and they're not listening live, which most of you are not, not most, a vast majority of you are not, but you can still support the Iran book show on Patreon. I think that's my preferred mechanism right now. Subscribe, start locals and your on book show dot com slash supports PayPal Venmo. Any way you want to really just let me know. And I really, really appreciate that support because that's what keeps the show going. There's no way for me to do as many shows as I'm doing and not without your support. You make the show possible and you guys were not yet supporting the show. You should again, because it's value for value and hopefully you're getting some value out of the show. All right. So, you know, I like to follow this. The writer Scott Lindsey come, he writes a lot about economic policy issue, not theoretical, but economic policy issue. I think he's excellent. I don't remember if I've ever actually disagreed with him on an economic policy question. Anyway, he wrote an essay this week, which I thought was really good about global trade, the global trading system. I thought it was a good opportunity to talk about global trade. I know, I know it's not sexy. I know nobody really seems to care, but it's crucial. If you value the quality and standard of living that you have, the quality and standard of living that you have is a consequence of a particular trading regime. It is a consequence of particularly approach to trade. And if we are going to maintain our quality of life and standard of living, we better have the right approach to trade. So I think it's important to talk about trade. We've talked about it in the past, but it's always good to talk again. Scott Lindsey come Rob has spelled it out for you. Again, CIO, M.E. He writes at the dispatch, he writes at the dispatch for capitalist, capitalist T.O. instead of T.A. He also is a senior something or other at the Cato Institute and does a lot of work through the Cato Institute. He is, I think, also a lawyer by trading, but exceptional work and excellent essays and excellent writing on economic issues. Again, I don't think his primary is theoretical economics. This is about policy, policy prescriptions, policy suggestions, policy of how to solve issues. And this particular article, December 14th, is titled, Donald Trump Staggering. No, I'm misreading. Donald, Wonder Freeman says, John actually knows about economics. It's like, he doesn't know anything about anything else, but economics, he kind of knows. You should pay attention. Not on other things, but economics. That you should pay attention to. Thank you, Wonder Freeman, for the confidence. I appreciate it. So the article is called, Donald Trump Staggered the Global Trading System. Joe Biden might finish it off. And it's an excellent piece, both giving a good history of international trade in the 20th and 21st century, which I found valuable and I will convey to you and hopefully you find valuable. And then the kind of dent in that system and the way in which that system was dented, the way in which that system was undermined by the Trump administration and then the way in which Joe Biden has basically doubled up on the Trump administration. Basically, the conclusion is that there is no difference between Trump and Biden on trade. Both were terrible. Both were awful. It looks like Biden is trying to take it to the next level. Building on the evil that Trump created to go even further bad in terms of restrictions. So that's where we are, you know, Biden getting to be worse than Trump on trade, which is saying a lot because Trump was about the worst president on trade that we have had since World War II. So I want to go back a little bit in talking about trade and let me just do this. One of the issues we hear a lot about trade is how rigged it is, how bad it is, how multinational this stuff is bad, how it's all guided by conspiracies and problems. So I want to go a little bit about the history because there's so much conspiracy theory around the whole idea of multinational trade and trade among many nations and about these trade agreements like the WTO, which I think people are convinced is some kind of major conspiracy like the World Economic Forum and that they're conspiring to take over the world and we should all be opposed to it. So I want to do a little bit of trade history, bear with me. I think this is interesting. Hopefully you will find it interesting too. So trade, trade overall, global trade was very high, the highest it's ever been in human history during the 19th century. It was basically the first era of real globalization. It was an era where the British Empire basically secured the shipping lanes, engaged in diplomacy to secure low tariffs. Sometimes that diplomacy required using cannons, gunboat diplomacy it was often referred to, in which the British Empire basically secured the ability to trade with Britain, the ability of countries to trade with one another pretty freely. I don't think it intervened too much in the domestic tariffs. I don't think it intervened too much in domestic subsidies and all the rest of it. But if a Brit wanted to buy the stuff from whatever country it was, the British Navy would make sure that that stuff would get there and that they could buy it. And after I think it was the Corn Acts of the mid-19th century, tariffs in the UK were basically very, very low and it flourished through trade. Arguably that system started coming to an end before World War I. One could argue that both World War I and World War II were impacted significantly by the beginnings of restrictions in trade. Certain countries feeling like they were excluded from global trade. Certainly World War II has a lot to do with the Great Depression, which to some extent at least was triggered by the collapse of global trade, partially a result of smooth holly, which was passed in the United States by the Hoover administration in I think 1931 and resulted basically in spiraling downwards of the economy in the US and in the rest of the world. You know, we fought two wars that were basically shaped by nationalism, by protectionism, by anti-trade, anti- and as a consequence, strong nationalistic, separatist sentiments. Coming out of World War II, the focus of the United States in terms of its foreign policy was very much geared towards expanding trade. I think the people, economists at the end of, and indeed economists almost to this day, but certainly economists at the end of the World War II realized that if we were going to rebuild the world, if the world was going to rebuild itself, one of the crucial elements to that were going to be the free movement, free not meaning zero cost, but the free movement of goods across continents, across countries, across borders. And the first recognition of this was a treaty signed in 1947 called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, G-A-T-T. The agreement did two main things. And again, this is out of Scott Linsicum's article, which I think is very good and worth reading. It created a baseline set of multilateral, i.e. global rules for member countries to voluntarily follow. And second, it established an impartial process for resolving government-to-government disputes relating to those rules. So it set out rules for trade. It set out rules for government on how to deal with trade tariffs, subsidies, benefits, but it also set up rules for how to arbitrate disputes between countries when they engaged in that trade. Ultimately, G-A-T-T was very successful in increasing trade. You know, countries agreed to reduce the non-tariffs' restrictions on trade, basically to zero, and concentrate just on tariffs. So one limitation on trade. And then they generally, over time, agreed to reduce tariffs significantly over time, and they indeed did. Tariffs came down. We'll talk about that in a minute. Tariffs are the easiest trade barrier to deal with, because it's straightforward. It's monetary. It's visible. You can hide it, and you can then negotiate to lower it. You can negotiate to make it down versus other restrictions on trade, like subsidies and outright bans and other ways in which you favor your domestic industries over the importation of other materials are much more difficult to identify and to negotiate and to deal with. There was a lot of success in incrementally capping these tariffs and lowering them. And there was a lot of success in stopping member countries, people signed on to the GATT to favor certain goods from certain countries over goods from other countries because of other kind of relationships. They got rid of most favored nation statuses. And, of course, there was the elimination of favoring domestic industry over what could be imported. So kind of the national interest, national treatment, the idea of nationalism. And over time, tariffs went down, predictability and transparency increased, and non-discrimination increased, and trade flourished. And if you add to that the invention, if you will, of the container ship and containers, trade exploded. It increased significantly. And at the same time, interestingly enough, and not surprising, I think, at all, global conflict decreased. That is wars decreased. Trade increased. Trade went to the wolf. Roof and war decreased. If you look at tariffs, if you look at pre-World War I tariffs, sorry, pre-World War II, tariffs peaked on average. This is weighted tariffs on imports. In the United States, in the 1930s, tariffs peaked at about 60%, just under 60%. So every good you imported was taxed at 60%. They then declined during the late 1930s and into the 1940s. They basically collapsed after World War II, dropping to levels below 20%. This is U.S. tariffs. And then by the time we reach the Trump administration and they have gone down to below 5% on average. So the tax that you pay on imported goods has gone as close to zero as we've probably ever had in the United States. And that has been true. It's been super low since the mid-1970s. And I think a big reason why the United States, in spite of everything, has done fairly well over this period, in spite of the regulations, in spite of the controls, in spite of government spending, tariffs have increased our well-being in the United States and decreased the cost of our goods. We haven't seen as much inflation because of the prices going down, because we could import them at cheaper prices across the board. And the government stopped taxing that so that I think this has had a profound, massive impact on the quality and standard of living in the United States over the last 40, 50 years. Really, since World War II, I think it's played a huge role. But tariffs were already low once GATT was instituted and have just gone down with the World Trade Organization and everything else. Now, GATT was flawed, it turns out, in significant ways. Rules didn't cover important growing, important trading areas like investments, finance, really, and services. It had big loopholes for certain non-tariff barriers, and it had no real dispute resolution mechanisms, appeal mechanisms, dispute resolution mechanisms. So it was incomplete. Countries were not too happy with it. Lots of loopholes, lots of cheating, lots of getting around it. And when two countries disagreed, there was no real mechanism to actually resolve the dispute. The World Trade Organization, which came together and came online in 1995, was an attempt to resolve this. In other words, it was an attempt to bring about greater free trade. Trade is free when tariffs are low. Trade is free when goods move from one country to another without barriers, barriers to entry, bans, restrictions, and without overt favoritism towards domestic industries or towards particular countries, industries over others. Trade is free when you, as a consumer, get to choose what you want to buy, where you want to buy it, without being penalized for those choices, without being penalized because you want to buy something made in Mexico versus something made in the United States, where basically where something is made does not influence... Well, it's not a barrier to you buying it, unless you choose it to be, unless you make the decision you don't want to buy stuff in Mexico, which you are free to do. The World Trade Organization, by lowering barriers, by lowering barriers, by lowering barriers, by lowering tariffs, has increased free trade. Has it made free trade completely free? No, of course not. But it has made trade free-er than it was, free-er than it would be without the WTO? Yes, significantly so. And you can see that in a chart of tariffs. You can also see that in a chart of global trade. And you can see the impact of the WTO has had on that, as has treaties like NAFTA and the Pacific PP, whatever it was called, and everything else. So the World Trade Organization replaced GATT in 1995. And again, it's not perfect. Perfect would be zero tariffs. Perfect would be no barriers to trade, other than real, real, real with a capital R, national security concerns. But what the WTO did is it improved the dispute settlement and it brought on many more nations and expanded the scope of free trade to services, finance, banking, investments, and a bunch of other things. So basically much more coverage, much more uniform coverage. It created an appellate body where you could appeal the rulings if the WTO ruled against you. By the way, I think this essay is motivated by the fact that the WTO just ruled against the United States. It ruled against the United States basically saying that the Trump steel tariffs were illegitimate, were outside of the legitimate structure of a treaty the United States signed with the WTO. I think everybody knew that including Trump. Trump didn't care. I don't think Biden cares either because Biden is not doing away with this, but we'll get to that in a minute. You know, if you didn't comply after you lost appeal that allowed other countries to penalize you in return. There were all kinds of other penalties that could be exercised against you through the WTO mechanisms. Right. So what is the WTO? It's just a set of rules to obitrate disputes, to generally move the world in the direction of greater trade. And I know I'm getting trouble with this because there are people out there, many people out there, maybe some on this chat, maybe not on the chat, that are convinced that the WTO is a negation of American sovereignty. It's a treaty. You can walk away from a treaty if you want, but it's a treaty. It's a treaty you sign for your own self-interest, otherwise you shouldn't sign it. It's a treaty that, yes, gives up some authority ultimately on rulemaking. That's what treaties do. There's no meaning to a treaty. If you can still do whatever the hell you want, then why are you signing a treaty? So in a sense it does limit you, the whole purpose of this kind of treaty. It limits you to an agreement that increases freedom. And fundamentally that's what the WTO has done and what the WTO tries to do. The arbitration, the rules, the enforcement, all driven by the members themselves, they're all part of the treaty. You can leave whenever you want. And the WTO to a large extent is just an independent arbiter of the rules which everybody has agreed upon. So it's not perfect. Again, perfection would be lower tariffs to zero and screw the rest of the world. But nobody's going to do that. No politician has the balls to do that. Nobody will ever do that. WTO is a cover for politicians to lower tariffs under the guise of multilateralism. We're lowering tariffs, so is everybody else. We're lowering trade barriers, everybody else. And that's how they can get away with it politically. It's not a cure-all because at the end of the day all the other members have to agree to this lowering of tariffs, lowering of trade restrictions. And they don't always. Not on every industry, not on everything. Since 1995 until today they have been massive benefits from trade. Again, there are many economies that have generated huge efficiencies. The world is better and I think ultimately safer and more secure as a result of this trade. We have for the most part limited amount of self-defeating protectionism and trade wars and tariffs of side deals and agreements and cheating and all that stuff. For the most part, that has been eliminated. And it's been remarkably successful. You know, at the end of World War II, surely after World War II when GATT was first instituted, average tariffs of all participating countries, all the participating countries in the original GATT was 22%. In 2018, in 2018, there were loads of tariffs the tariffs that applied in the war on average were 9%. 9%. That's not a bad tax rate. It's lower than most countries VAT. It's lower than most countries sales taxes. It's lower than many state sales taxes. It's still too high in my view. Zero is ideal. But 9% is pretty good. It's much lower than 22%. And it has increased trade dramatically. Trade volumes have grown by 4% annually since 1995. And again, that's hugely beneficial to everybody around us. I mean, it really takes an ignorant person like Donald Trump to believe that trade is a bad thing. That somehow because we send dollars to China and get Chinese goods, we are losing somehow. When we clearly benefit more by giving up dollars and getting stuff than the other way around. Alright, WTO has also been pretty good at holding countries accountable for violating violating the terms, violating their commitments. And when the United States has been challenged in this it has won 85% of its cases. 85% of the cases were the United States which challenged WTO over certain actions it is engaged in. It has won 85%. This is not an organization that is hostile to the United States. And when a country loses even China when a country loses this arbitration at the WTO it turns out that almost all of them comply. They comply voluntarily before any kind of sanctions for other parties intercede they apply. Now today there are 164 participating member governments in the WTO. It's a pretty global phenomenon. So when we say 9% that's pretty global. And many of those countries almost all those countries have eliminated their protectionist measures and have agreed to accept the WTO authorized retaliation when they refuse to do that. So it's not a perfect system. Again perfection is free, zero should be its alternatives. And that was all running pretty smoothly pretty well. I mean there were complaints but pretty smoothly pretty well until Donald Trump became president. And when Trump became president the problem wasn't that he objected to particular issues around the WTO. I don't know disputes took too long to resolve. Certain rules needed updating it was hard to get consensus among 100 plus members and on and on. That wasn't really his problem. Those are real problems in the WTO but it wasn't what bugged him. What bugged him was trade. What bugged Trump was the fact that the US was running trade imbalances that it was giving up more dollar, it was importing more goods than it was exporting. What bugged Trump was the very existence of a multinational agreement. What bugged him in his base is this idea that there are these oohh multinational organizations that conspire against us that we give up sovereignty. So for example what Trump did was not just race tariffs and disrupt trade what the Trump administration actively did was subvert the World Trade Organization and they did this by by one big mean and then by a way in which they dealt with trade. They blocked the seeding of a WTO appellant body. They blocked the ability of the WTO to actually arbitrate disputes and they pledged that they would not allow this WTO appellant body to come together until the organization undertook quote major reforms. Major reforms that they never submitted, they never asked for, they never that is the United States, the Trump administration never actually came and said these are the things that we have to do to prove this change. Never did that. So basically the WTO's dispute settlement system doesn't function properly anymore. It's broken and it can't function until the United States agrees to have this new appellant body you know be able to do its job and the United States refuses to do so. Refused under Trump. So that's one. The second big issue that the Trump administration was primarily the tariffs that imposed on steel and aluminum which were obviously bogus. They were done in the name of national security but that was obviously BS. And once in a while, Trump admitted that it had nothing to do with national security. It was just he wanted the tariffs. He wanted to protect American jobs supposedly. He wanted to protect the steel industry. But everybody knew including the defense department including the Pentagon which said that we only need about three percent of US production for the defense department. We didn't need to stop importation of steel particularly tariffs on steel from allies tariffs on steel from our friends. That's not exactly a national security issue. And yet Trump made it and by doing so completely undermined the rules of the WTO and that's what the WTO just ruled that there's no national security threat and the Trump administration was completely out of line in placing the steel and aluminum tariffs. And of course from my perspective it's just harmful to the US economy. Just a disaster for the US economy. Now he used that. He was threatening to do auto tariffs on automobiles from Europe for national security reasons which is even more bizarre than steel and aluminum for national security. I mean Trump was anti-trade. He hated trade. He believed that everything we consume in America should be made in America which is mercantilist Adam Smith debunked that 250 years ago. It is primitive and just horrific. Just economic you know an economic ignorance at a level that is hard to imagine. He was anti-trade. And Trump implemented anti-trade policies wherever he could to whatever extent he could give it his limited power without congressional approval and given the fact that the United States is a member of the WTO as a signee on the WTO. So what this did was both inflict significant damage in the WTO system and this idea that you could just invoke national security for anything to anything to get a you know was such a blatant disregard for the rules of the WTO from the most important member in the WTO. The member that got the whole thing running. The member that facilitated global trade. The member whose military whose navy guarantees trade around the world guarantees the open shipping lanes around the world and provides secure was just a massive hit against freedom and liberty and wealth creation in the United States of America. So this is what Trump did and most of what he did was against China and you know it was bad it was bad and the WTO but the WTO has continued to limp along and continue to survives and tariffs are still pretty low and trade is still massive and in spite of all the supply chain challenges supply chain challenges that we've experienced over the last few years trade continues to grow and continues to explode and continues to be significant. But once Trump was out of office I think many of us expected that much of this antagonism to trade much of the antagonism to the rules of the WTO would disappear but the reality is that all Biden has done is double up on Trump's irrationality all Biden has done is double down on Trump's antagonism towards trade. So Biden has made things worse the tariffs on steel and aluminum continue this appellate body that's supposed to be established and to help smooth out WTO dealing with international trade is being held up now by the Biden administration and we now have more and more and more appeals of unfavorable panel decisions and it's appeals into what they call into the void there's nobody there because the Biden administration like the Trump administration would not approve the process and the people to actually deal with the appeals and then the Biden administration in terms of this is just it's absurd and ridiculous just like it was under Trump there's no difference I mean in the sense Trump and Biden exactly the same thing and in addition Biden has doubled up double down on Trump's metal tariffs on his tariffs on steel and aluminum which all remain in force even against friendly countries not against China but against friendly countries and he has continued this completely absurd ridiculous national security defense which undermines real national security issues and has now caused other countries to use the same kind of excuse to raise barriers to trade so what is happening today is the Biden administration and before it the Trump administration are undermining the ability of countries to trade in the world economy they're placing tariffs and restrictions and there's no way to challenge them because the WTO is broken and WTO is broken for only one reason and that is the United States broke it and refuses to fix it and that's under Trump and now it's under Biden see yes last Friday WTO ruled that the United States steel and aluminum tariffs clearly violate various rules regarding tariffs and discrimination and that the U.S. invocation of national security is bogus and the Biden administration has basically said right we don't care to quote the Biden administration we strongly the administration strongly rejects the flawed interpretation of conclusions the Biden administration has held the clear and unequivocal position for over 70 years that issues of national security cannot be reviewed in WTO disputes WTO has no authority and the second guest ability of the WTO members to respond to a wide range of threats of security this is completely false U.S. will not to cede decision making over its essential security WTO Pinehouse sounds like Trump no it's Biden the United States does not intend to remove section 232 of the disputes in other words Trump doctrine alive and well guiding America there's no difference between these two U.S. presidents and indeed if this continues we are likely to see the WTO frameworks starting to collapse and the consequence of this is going to be disproportionately bad for the United States because the reality is that most almost all of the rest of the world just like pretty much every economist even the leftist ones recognize the value of trade the rest of the world is going to continue trading with one another there are regional treaties that are that are only growing right now in the world and the rest of the world might even you continue to use the WTO but ignore the United States globalization as I said on a show last week the kind of show that Ben Shapiro would never do globalization is not going away globalization is here to stay the benefits of it the value to human life is too great for it to disappear and I think particularly the poor countries in the world but also most of the rich countries in the world realize that understand that know that so you now have a variety of different free trade agreements around the Pacific and different formulations of it happening all the time you have free trade agreement obviously within Europe a massive free trade agreement which is the EU you have free trade agreement now a free trade agreement among what is it 46 something like that African countries representing both the western coast and eastern coast of Africa and southern coast of Africa that is only going to grow and it's only going to intensify and these trade routes are just going to go on for years what the United States is losing here is it's leadership with regard to free trade what the United States is losing here it's the more high ground with regard to free trade and what the United States is risking is to be cut out from the trade the rest of the world is engaged in and isolate itself and I think that will have devastating consequences it's safe, the standard of living to ability to create wealth and ultimately to ability to export to other countries that are not going to sit quietly as we discriminate against their goods I mean mercantilism has consequences mercantilism results in poverty it is no guarantee that the United States stay the richest country in the world it is no guarantee that the United States is the most powerful economy in the world and it depends on policy that depends on choices and the issue of trade is crucial to those policies and choices if the United States wants to maintain its quality of life and standard of living if the United States wants to maintain its leadership then what the US needs is more trade not less what it needs is fewer tariffs not more what it leads is less excuses than it has today I mean there used to be made for the banning of exporting sophisticated chips and chip technology to China on national security grounds there is zero reason to raise tariffs on lumber from Canada on milk from Canada dairy products from Canada on steel and aluminum from everywhere food from anywhere and of course you'd get the same thing you know you could say the same thing about the rest of the world what the rest of the world needs to do is embrace more trade now trade as I mentioned last time guided by a moral sense regarding who you want to trade with as individuals who we want to trade with do we want to trade with Russia do we want to trade with China do we want to trade with authoritarian regimes do we want to trade with our enemies but the move that America has made against trade the last time it made that move the last time we had an administration like Trump like Biden who was anti-trade was the Hoover administration in 1930s followed by the FDR administration those were the last anti-trade administrations in the United States that have and those were the two administrations that governed over a great depression it's not an accident a war on trade is a war against prosperity in the United States so I don't know who's going to come after Biden but one really important question to ask him one really important measure to evaluate them in terms of their suitability to be president is their attitude towards trade alright that is my spiel on the WTO on trade hopefully some of you at least found that interesting I have nothing in terms of superchat today so I guess you guys decided to go on vacation with regard to superchat that's fine plenty of opportunity to ask questions on the board so we'll have plenty of time to answer them and if you want of course you can like Daniel, thank you Daniel you can also just use the superchat feature just to support the show if everybody on superchat right now donated I don't know six seven dollars we would reach our goal like that how many of you can't afford to trade with me value for value six seven dollars tonight alright that was topic number one let's go to topic number two so I found this video on Wired Wired is I guess a magazine I've known of Wired since the 1990s it specializes I think in tech it has covered the tech industry I find a lot of interesting stories particularly on technology and what's going on in technology and Wired magazine it's generally oops let me just kill the porn that just showed up on the feed here hide user on this channel there we go no really the porn so I think a lot of people read Wired a lot of you probably read Wired anyway a YouTube channel and I found this video on the YouTube channel and it was surprising I guess surprising you can't see it because I hit it but you know I don't know sexchat 69.site if you're really interested in going to to figure out what it is but that was the porn site advertising a minute ago on my chat it does they do that a couple of shows we get that so this is a video about billionaires by Wired magazine Wired magazine just so you know I haven't taken some fringe publication on YouTube they have 9.9 million subscribers 9.9 million subscribers to the Wired chat this video came out I think less than a day ago and it already has 45,000 views so my expectation is this will have several hundreds of thousands of views and it is so disgusting and despicable that I thought I need to do commentary now I have a feeling this is going to take like an hour for me to comment on this so I don't know you know get comfortable you know figure out how to use the superchat to compensate me for the next hour so that we make this next hour profitable and worthwhile but we are going to go over this video it is a 7 minute video but you know me that means for every minute I go 10 so that is 70 minutes so it is easily an hour we will see how long how far we get into this Wired goes woke it depends on what you mean by woke if you mean by woke as Wired gone left as Wired gone anti-billionaire yes yes alright the video is actually called how billionaires are damaging the economy great title and as I said it has been 9.91 million subscribers and the video itself has been watched 46,000 times over the last day alright I need headphones you guys ready and let's listen some of this is motivated by the fact that the Patagonia owner billionaire has left Patagonia to a kind of created a non-profit that will receive all the profits from Patagonia and distribute it to non-profits will distribute it equally and a lot of people on the left are really unhappy with this they are really unhappy with this and we will see why whoops you can't hear anything that's because I've got this muted let me unmute it come on recently the CEO of Patagonia got widespread media attention for donating his company to charity that doesn't sound right that's going through the wrong place let me do this okay we'll try this again recently the CEO of Patagonia got widespread media attention for donating his company to charity as an outset he'll give away most of his fortune close to 120 billion we have this idea that rich people are wealth creators you know because they invest the money 60% of Americans polled think billionaires like Elon Musk are good for the economy wow that's pretty cool that 60% of Americans think that that's more than I would have expected and a good sign that maybe there's still a little bit left of the American spirit I would have expected that to be a much higher number 20 years ago I'll take 60% it's better than the number I would have guessed but the economic data reveals something very different notice that they're saying the economic data reveals something very different and let's now see what economic data they actually present what that even means and whether these experts that they present are actually going to reveal data data that's objective rational based on economic science we'll see these people become a black hole for wealth and they start billionaires become a black hole for wealth they suck it in it's not a great image a black hole that's data that's a really important data they become a black hole for wealth to suck the wealth out of the economy they suck the wealth out of the economy where does wealth come from in the economy how is wealth created in the economy how does it show up in the economy somebody starts a business an idea sell books online and a few people think it's a good idea if they give him money but they probably is going to fail they don't give him too much money and this business grows why does it grow it grows because people use it because people find value why do they find value in it because in some marginal small way certainly in the beginning it improves their lives suddenly people realize instead of having to get in my car and drive to blockbuster and buy the book there I can just order it online from amazon and it will arrive in my home isn't that amazing and slowly people keep buying more and more stuff from amazon now the reason they're buying more and more stuff from amazon is because their lives is getting better and better and improving all the time because they're buying stuff from amazon and that's the real wealth creation the real wealth creation is the improvement in the lives of the people that are buying from amazon and it's reflected by the fact that they're paying amazon to do all this now amazon of course is using the money that the people are paying the stuff they're using for markets now they can convince that this is a profitable business so it can be one day a profitable business because people are actually using it and they hire people and these people now have jobs and these people now have wealth that is possible because somebody started this company provided a value to people kept this company running kept this company as a value and thus they have jobs customers have an improved quality and standard of living and yes Jeff Bezos becomes a billionaire but where is his billions ooh his billions it's a sucking it in a black hole all Jeff Bezos most of Jeff Bezos is billions in the stock of amazon it's the fact that we all value amazon so much that amazon is so profitable is so successful as a business that is that results in the fact that people that the stock is higher which means all the shareholders of amazon including your pension plan including your 401k have made money because increased their wealth because amazon stock has gone up it's gone up for Jeff Bezos as well so where has he sucked wealth out of the economy hasn't he made wealth creation possible in the economy isn't wealth creation only possible because of entrepreneurs some of whom if they're successful a billion is become billion is is all this wealth actually going? where is this wealth going it's in the stock indeed if amazon and by the way Elon musk is experiencing this right now if tesla stock goes down 50% guess what happens to elon musk's wealth it goes down by close to 50% because so much of his wealth so much of his wealth is tied up in tesla indeed tesla went down quite a bit because it was announced that elon musk sold 3.8 billion dollars worth of stock in tesla why to diversify himself because so much of his wealth maybe to pump it into twitter that's certainly possibility that elon musk is holding twitter up now and the money he's selling from tesla is going into keeping twitter afloat but in any case almost all that wealth is in the stock and where is the rest of the wealth going to a former trader and an economist from princeton to debunk the top myths about the ultra rich I'm not sure which one of these two is an economist from princeton and which one is a former trader but I have to say first of all I have never heard of either one of these people and second you have to be really talented and look really far and wide to find two more ignorant people about economics than these two it truly is stunning no conception of the wealth zero sum zero sum mentality fixed pie view and just an ignorance ignorance of economics I'm not a moralist here I'm an economist no he's not he's a moralist he's a moralist who's pretending to be an economist he has really as you'll see in a minute no clue about economics I just want to look at the economy we currently exist in a situation where the super rich are getting massively richer very very quickly massive wealth often start off humbly didn't Microsoft and Amazon start out in a garage aren't billionaires self made this is Wyatt magazine this is a magazine that has covered the billionaires who are self made this is the magazine that's covered those garages this is the magazine that should know that that's exactly the case to become a billionaire you need to make a million dollars every single day for three years but that's silly that's silly right now the market could go up I don't know 5% and Jeff Bezos could make hundreds of millions I don't know the exact number but it's not about a million dollars a year over three years that's a silly kind of way to think about it the reality is that the value of these companies is determined by a marketplace that determines what expectations are regarding the future profitability and that can change dramatically look at how much wealth Jeff Bezos Elon Musk all the billionaires particularly in technology have lost over the last year over the last 12 months billions and billions and billions and billions why because we've got inflation because we're heading into recession because the companies are probably not going to be as profitable as people expected not that long ago there are some self made billionaires but if you look at the statistics increasingly more and more of them inherited their money data how many of the billionaire the people who are defined as billionaires in the world today particularly in the United States today are self made versus how many of them inherited their money that would be a good data point to have but it's a majority of self made yes you'll find the Walton family because Sam Walton made so many billions and actually left it to his children I don't think he was riddled with a sense of guilt that demanded that he give it all away they're like five Waltons on the list of billionaires right five and I don't know you probably got a few other families that's certainly the case for the Waltons the Mars yes you got the Mars the Mars old family money's been around for a long time and there's what three Mars on the billionaire list by the way he ranked 185th richest person in the world or in the United States not that high on the list so every generation the amount gets smaller because it's divvied up through more people Sam Walton is one of the great Americans Mars created one of the great food empires in the world so good for them I mean they did phenomenally they gave it to the kids what's wrong with that and what do these kids do with it well it's in stocks and what do they do with the rest of the money we'll see in a minute Trump's not even a billionaire I mean well maybe he is a billionaire we don't even know if he's a billionaire his father wasn't a billionaire they were rich yes but most rich people in America today because their parents were rich I don't think so I don't consider myself rich but whatever I have I have because I haven't inherited anything I mean this is and where's the data I want the data the data you remember they promised us data how many rich people today are because of of of of inheritance and I want I want to see how and indeed even if they are because of inheritance the people who made the money get to choose who to give it to how many it is very few if you have to go as low as Trump you're kind of desperate the Mars family was 185 Trump is like 272 I don't know where he is on those way down there you're really struggling to get families to get billionaires that inherited their wealth according to Forbes most of the ultra rich grew up in wealthy families how do you define wealthy families or notice this notice this God this is such most of the ultra rich grew up in wealthy families or in the upper middle class or in the middle class so in other words most of the wealthy people today most of the billionaires grew up in families middle class or wealthier so it's there's no question that if you grew up in a poor family it's harder to make it but do we know that the upper middle class parents actually gave money to their kids and isn't it a massive achievement to go from middle class to be a billionaire I mean this is absurd this is truly ridiculous or in the upper middle or middle class upper middle or middle class wealthy upper middle that is just right there is a sign of incredible dishonesty that you're lumping those two together when clearly the point you're trying to make is rich kids of rich parents it's becoming more important how wealthy your parents there's Donald Trump again I mean what relevance is Donald Trump here for this zero nothing how many of them are immigrants if you want to be successful and you're seeing this all over the world because you are competing with the very rich for the ownership of assets and these guys have a passive income of billions of dollars every year how are you earning $50,000 a year ever going to compete with that why are you trying to compete with the billionaires what are you competing with them on what do I compete with a lung musk for I mean he's providing with this enormous benefit I'm paying for the stuff I buy from his company are we competing for what for a yacht I don't compete with a yacht I don't need a yacht I don't want a yacht what am I competing with a lung musk on what am I competing with Jeff Bezos on what are these people even talking about the share of income going to the top 1% of households I mean this is dubious these whole graphs are dubious but yeah the top 1% is done very well because of skill because of globalization whatever skill you have you can now manifest it by creating values not just for Americans not just for 300 million people but now for 8 billion people now to make you richer just ask LeBron James the reason LeBron James is so much richer than Michael Jordan is the market for basketball is so much bigger than it was for Michael Jordan because of globalization so yeah the top 1% got richer bottom 90% got richer by a smaller percentage because their productivity grew smaller why is this a problem and indeed the way they measure these things is wrong so I won't even get to the fact that the whole way in which they measure is wrong and distorted and the bottom 90% have done much better than the way what they're projecting here but at least they're projecting that the bottom 90% didn't do worse they're doing better so look the pie is growing everybody's better off and I would argue that whatever increases the bottom 90% has it's to a large extent because of that top 1% that top 1% is where the jobs were created that top 1% is what makes American businesses competitive with the rest of the world that top 1% other entrepreneurs the top 1% are the high end programmers that make everything else work but yeah nobody's gonna ignore this completely that share has almost doubled since the early 80s but although the world's richest are earning twice as much money as before it doesn't mean they're investing twice as much they're not investing twice when you go and look at the data real investment has actually gone down since inequality has started to rise up that's just not true none of that is true the data is just not there yes you can find a paper I don't think it's an unpublished paper and it's what does it even mean a saving glut according to research done by professor Mian and his colleagues real investment by the ultra rich is down by 2 to 3% over the past few decades so even though billionaires have been earning a lot more compared to everyone else they haven't been reinvesting that cash by the way they're showing houses and stuff that's where the cash is going I'd love to see the data on that I'd love to see how they draw those conclusions what they count as investments in fact the top 1% saves an average of 50 cents for every dollar of disposable income they receive and that's not good for the economy wait a minute they just told us they don't invest and then they tell us they save 50% of every dollar they bring in what does saving mean 50 cents on every dollar what does saving mean does it mean putting it all into a vault it doesn't mean having cash does it mean buying gold and stuffing it in the ground what does saving mean doesn't saving mean investing isn't that what it is you put it in the bank the bank lends it out you buy stocks that's a form of investment how are they defining investment if they are not equating it with saving and the fact that the wealthy are saving 50% of the income that means that it's bad for the economy why is it bad for the economy well because they are not consuming an important part of the economy is not consuming that money is not going into investment so wouldn't it be great if the billion is just bought more yachts that's it they need to consume more buy more suits buy more yachts buy more airplanes buy more cars then the economy would be better off I mean this is blindly stupid consumption does not drive the economy this is so basic now I know the problem with this point is that almost everybody thinks the consumption drives the economy but how can that be whenever the act of consumption requires somebody to produce so that you have the money to consume so there's an act of production that has to precede the act of consumption one production that has to occur somebody has to produce the good that you consume so for every dollar you consume you had to produce it production and somebody had to produce the good that you're spending the dollar on production there are two acts of production for every act of consumption now there are many many more acts of production if you take into account the entire supply chain but I'm just talking in the most simple sense it just makes I mean if you run that idea in a Robertson Caruso type economy with very few players you see the absurdity of it and of course it's going into investment by the way I love that yacht I want one of those hmm maybe I should have gone into finance after all because I'm certainly not going to get one of those yachts from the super chat not today maybe last super chat but not this super chat no yacht for me I mean this is what I do because the knowledge of economics of people is so mind-bogglingly is that a word? Stupid that will ultimately lead to a shrinking or a smaller economy than before what leads to a smaller economy than before is lack of investment that's absolutely right but when you take money from the rich and you give it to the poor they don't invest what do the poor people do with the money what do they do with the money they're consumer they don't invest it the only people who invest their money the only people who invest their money are the rich and saving those equal investment Mark says it's encouraging to see you enraged by these absurd takes in economics I've been doing this for since I you know for 12 years I've been enraged by this nothing I don't know why it's suddenly encouraging rich people invest they don't necessarily have to create new resources they don't need to necessarily just build new factories they can use that money to buy the existing houses what they don't build the factories true they invest in people who do but the idea that the rich just buy more houses yeah some rich people have a lot of houses but it's a fraction of their wealth is held in houses their real wealth is all invested buying stocks in the stock market is an investment holding stocks of Amazon is an investment that leads to Amazon having the capital ultimately to build factories to build warehouses to grow its business where do these companies get that money from from people who invest who invests the rich because they're the only ones who have the money to invest that middle class and up they don't invest they consume it's waste actually we should if we cared about economic growth we would do massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich it's wasted in the poor money because they just consume it what we really want is investment that produces really economic growth you can use that money to drive you and your government into debt and that doesn't lead to investment what it does he's an economist remember they promised us data how does the rich how do the rich drive the government into debt I think the government drives the government into debt and redistribution of wealth drives the government into debt and that's what slows the economy as well rich people cause you to default on your home rich people do that what we do is the impoverishment of the middle class but how can you say that the reality is the middle class if you look at statistics the middle class is shrinking because of a significant proportion of the middle class has become rich there's the middle class is smaller today not because a bunch of middle class people became poor some did a little bit but mostly because middle class people became rich the number of people who are considered rich by income I don't know making more than 250,000 a year I don't know how you want to measure that has grown dramatically in real terms when high profile billionaires are behind some of the largest employers in the country don't billionaires create new jobs that is when they aren't laying off workers like Amazon, Twitter and Facebook just this is wired magazine right how does the fact that they're laying off people now contradict the fact that they created the jobs how is that logically one follow from the other I mean this is logic 101 these people who ever wrote the script really doesn't have a clue the billionaires they own the corporations they own the land so of course they get to control who works or not the very rich while they are saving a lot those savings are not going into new business creation notice that now they're saying for some reason now he said that the saving along what is the saving going into that saving is not creating new jobs there has been this slow down in business creation yeah because of regulation because of massive increases in regulation that slows down new business down in sort of more competition in the economy that's slow down in competition from smaller businesses where is the saving going to he still hasn't explained that but it's not going into new businesses where is it going to doesn't necessarily mean that larger companies like Walmart or Amazon will increase their workforces as they become more dominant doesn't it have you actually read the numbers and how many people Amazon employees and here's the here they go to the all trade fallacy increasingly a big part of the thing they own is technology and increasingly because of what's amazing they don't even need that many workers isn't it interesting that unemployment in the United States is at the lowest it's ever been in history even under Biden isn't that amazing and yet we keep adding robots and unemployment keeps going down the Luddites you know it's incredible that Luddites are giving credibility by why it they don't need human workers because they're replacing them with robots he thinks he's so smart too automation is on track to eliminate close to 20 million jobs worldwide in manufacturing by 2030 is that a bad thing how many jobs did automation eliminate in farming over the last 200 years more than 20 million I'm sure but isn't that a good thing aren't billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg making up for it making away tons of wealth making up for it they did this horrible stuff value is created value can be transferred but value is created out of thin air the value I get from an iPhone is created out of thin air value is not there's not a zero sum I paid a thousand dollars for this this is worth immeasurably more than a thousand dollars to me I could not do before that that's real value creation through charity so they have to compensate for all the bad stuff they did in creating values through charity but even here they don't get a break they report on their tax returns so based on all of that data we know that even after they give for philanthropy they are saving a lot more he should obviously acknowledge so they're saving a lot more I was a trader he says you think he'd be a little smart that is a little bit about tax laws I mean if you give if you give a hundred dollars to charity you don't save a hundred dollars of taxes you say depending on your tax marginal tax rate you save at the margin thirty seven dollars at the federal level maybe a little on the state level but what are they talking about and notice he was cut in the middle he's implying that everything they give to charity is reduced from their taxes which is just a blatant lie just bold face lie has nothing to do with reality and again this isn't I don't know some Marxist magazine this isn't some left wing thing this is technology magazine acknowledge anyone who gives money for philanthropic reasons but it's not large enough to actually negate the negative effects of extreme inequality which you haven't explained what those negative effects are and yeah it's not large enough to even come close to the huge huge benefit that these billionaires have on mankind through their profit seeking activity I'm looking seriously into how they give to charity and I think in many cases these guys give to charities which they own in the case of Patagonia what does that mean the three billion dollar company was transferred to a specially designed trust overseen by the Shinard family moves like this could be seen as a tactic to perpetuate wealth and avoid taxes but the Shinard family doesn't have access to that money they can't live off of that money they can't buy homes of that money the money is dedicated to the foundations in which organizations get it but god this is the point it doesn't matter what you do they will hate you doesn't matter what you do they will hate you often only a small percentage of certain charities operating budget is actually given directly away for land to be charities fantastic well done if you do it it is not going to prevent this economy from going on the edge of the cliff that is absolutely right these billionaires should stop giving to charity and actually invest in this economy maybe then it won't go off the cliff anything that can do that is serious reformation of the tax system if we raise taxes to 60, 70, 80% that's how we'll fix this economy but some billionaires like Elon Musk famously complained that the government already takes too much in taxes it's actually not true that the very rich pay a lot as a fraction of their income in taxes they pay a huge amount they double taxed on their capital gains they pay on their dividends they pay on their income to the extent that they take income they are hugely taxed and it's cheating because people don't count the capital the corporate tax so when Juan Buffett says I don't pay a lot of taxes it doesn't include what Bookshed Hathaway pays but that's his money he owns Bookshed Hathaway that's part of his tax rate it is remarkable how flat a tax system the U.S. has the United States has the most progressive tax system in the world certainly when it comes to income not the most one of the most progressive tax systems in the world alright I've had enough of these guys hopefully you guys have too but that gives you a sense of and this is the problem I've noted this in the past the problem is that they say stuff like this and a lot of people just go yeah, that makes sense and it becomes part of the cultural norm it's just because it's part of the culture yeah, we know this that's true, billionaires do this, billionaires do that tax system is unfair, tax system does this and nobody challenges it nobody challenges this nobody questions it nobody presents the alternative and therefore this becomes just part of reality part of the world it's what I told you about the history of the last 40 years these people wrote the history of the last 40 years economic history of the last 40 years it's not the free market guys it's some people who actually understand economics and finance and the way the world works, no it's these I don't know ignorant leftists who have written the history and it's basically become the way people understand the world the way people understand reality, inequality is bad how do people know inequality is bad how many people can explain why inequality is bad but it's something nobody questions I'm like the only guy, even on the free market side people succumb to these things but I'm the only guy who says no no no, there's nothing wrong with inequality inequality is not a problem zero issue economically with inequality it's like nobody said literally nobody out there makes a deal out of the fact that inequality is not a problem the fact that inequality is a problem is just accepted truth in the world which goes unchallenged and one of the reasons you guys should support the Iran book show is because here we don't accept it inequality is actually a virtue as I say, inequality is a feature of freedom not a bug I did write a book on it, yes called equal is unfair, if you haven't read equal is unfair you should, you should go to Amazon and buy equal is unfair they still have a few copies it's on this topic alright let's jump over to the questions to the super chats again, way behind on the super chat thank you Linda, really appreciate the support we're like, I don't know 500 bucks to go or something it's ridiculous so please, if you can afford and you can find it in your see value in the show 5 bucks from each person watching right now would get us over the hump and get us to our target so please consider doing something, even if it's small alright William says the majority may peers now in their 60th university are very positive towards public education is it due to a lack of ambitious career goals the most successful colleagues of mine were privately trained no, I don't think so I mean, who the hell challenges the idea of public education everybody is positive towards public education it's like I don't know, being positive towards gravity for most people I mean, what option is how will the poor get educated of course the government has to run education who else could do it, a private you can't have private, I mean yes, us rich people we care about education so we can do private education but most parents don't care about the education of the kids I mean, if you had private education most kids wouldn't be educated so it's not it's nothing unique there, I'd also say this among your peers that I don't think it's anything new about this world or this generation I think forever, you know for the last 100 years public education has been considered a hallmark of America a building block of American civilization I mean, this is nobody questions of all the issues out there, nobody questions public education so I don't think it reflects in any way other than your friends or your peers not your friends, your peers are just conventional they're like everybody else they don't think they don't think out of the box, they don't challenge themselves they don't see the problems in public education because they haven't experienced them because they're rich, they might have been wealthy and gone to private schools or middle class and gone to decent government schools but they haven't seen what the poor have to suffer and they don't see the upside of what is possible when you unleash innovation and competition in the educational field and what is possible to achieve when you do so thank you William, appreciate it Andrew says what would be your response to people who say that a life of pure objectivity is dry some mysticism is required to make life exciting really I mean mysticism doesn't make life exciting, it makes life petrifying mysticism is the belief in magic that just stuff can happen, that there's no rules that the bizarre reality is so fascinating the world is so interesting real reality causality is so wondrous to figure it out there's so much in the world to enjoy to embrace to relish I don't, why would you need magic, why would you need the random why would you need the arbitrary why would you need the impossible it does the exact opposite it kind of goes anything, you know this is weird I don't know how to deal with magic oops Kayfax says follow up on fusion, the energy input was less than the output yes that only counts the energy from the laser beam as input the laser device itself would still have to be a hundred times more efficient for net gain still impressive I didn't realize that what that means is as I said there's probably decades more work to make this something that actually generates net positive power and actually is usable to generate energy which is still probably two to three decades away at least MP Creates writes, I gotta give a quick $20 for Yoran's fantastic grant, only two sentences into the video he laughs out loud and you're on fire great message, yeah you know these kind of videos this kind of stupidity really gets me going send me more videos like that and I'll review because it gets me excited and people like watching me get excited I guess William asks, what's up had two billion users with 55 employees Twitter had 7500 with no improvements in 10 years most web developers are poorly trained and don't actually know how to program would an efficient economy fire most of them well I mean it's not clear that it would fire them that is it depends if you could replace them with efficient ones right, it might be the case that it's better to have an inefficient engineer than no engineer at all an efficient economy would privatize education so that we get better engineers we get more better engineers but it's not about firing it's about how do we have a greater number of efficient engineers so that companies can be generally more efficient you can only deal with what you have you can only manage the talent that's available to you to manage I mean what you would get and I think you actually have is a wide divergence of salary between very very good engineers in mediocre or less engineers while there are a lot of engineers and they still make a decent amount of money because they're just not enough of them they make a lot less than a really good engineer that is the inequality between poor engineers and great engineers is massive alright Jupiter Menace asked, like inequality they wrote the narrative of on on INRAND and now is accepted knowledge it's maddening the vast amount of deprogramming needed yes because it's deprogramming about history about economics about INRAND about morality god, the amount of reprogramming and this is why it's so hard when we go out and speak in the public their reference their reference point is so removed from reality so removed from what we're talking about that it's a challenge just to bring them close in and make ourselves intelligible to them and that's why you only get a very few people in every any talk, any program anything you don't get the vast majority because they don't even speak the same language in terms of the knowledge that they have in terms of the context of that knowledge Richard says, comic relief I thought the whole video was comic relief comic relief, have you seen Monty Python soccer match between ancient Greece and 19th century German philosophers yes it's fantastic Monty Python did some amazing stuff this is one of them they did a lot of other stuff it was fantastic funny and smart in identifying what the German philosophers really were and the way in which the Greeks and the Germans play soccer so yes I've seen it more than once and it's a blast, thank you Richard I appreciate it you guys should go see Monty Python soccer match between ancient philosophers and German philosophers okay that is all the $20 questions you have for me this morning and I hate to do this bug you all the time about money but it works I raised more money this morning during the highlights news round up show than I am tonight that was like 45 minutes and this is we're going on an hour and a half there has to be more value than what we've raised so far in an hour and a half show so I hope you guys will consider doing more $20 or more in order to get us to the $650 I hope that those of you who are not listening live will consider doing a monthly contribution of Patreon, Subscribestar, Locals or urunbrookshow.com okay Rob says there are 8 million billion people in the world even if a minuscule fraction is interested that could be a lot, yes just a minuscule fraction could be a lot God, that would be cool Grant, thank you for the support, really appreciate it Daniel says do people hate billionaires because they lack understanding of how they got there lack of understanding of economics I think that's partially but it's more of Asian than lack of understanding and I think most of the hatred of billionaires is driven by envy and some of it is driven by the billionaire's own kind of lack of pride lack of self defense lack of standing up for their own values but there's no question particularly in the world in which we live there's just a lack of understanding of what it means to be a billionaire what it takes to become a billionaire how you become a billionaire people have particularly people who are not thinkers which is the majority of people unfortunately they they have a perceptual level mentality at a perceptual level mentality can't understand wealth creation they can't understand value creation they can't understand the ever that the world is not a zero sum game a perceptual level mentality an anti-conceptual mentality and mentality has now risen to the level of real abstractions and thinking abstractions billionaires and what they do does not make sense it's just it's just bewildering Paul thank you really appreciate the support he says just because you're doing a great job I appreciate that Daniel do people hate billionaires oh we just did that Alan C says I'm no billionaire so here's my meager contribution thank you Alan I appreciate the meager contribution I appreciate every meager contribution but it would be cool wouldn't it be cool to have a book show who contributed his meager support that would be really really cool why at 516 stirring it up again if Biddle should have made clear the difference between Prager to avoid confusion should Alex Epstein have done the same with Jordan Peterson no I mean the difference is I mean it's God Biddle went on to Dennis Prager to talk about objectivism Dennis Prager you know hugged Biddle and said we're all fighting for liberty we're all fighting together for freedom while allies in the fight for freedom and you know Dennis basically made the claim you can't fight for freedom without fighting for religion and religion is really crucial for morality there's no morality without religion so the whole topic of the conversation was about things they disagree about the whole topic of the conversation was the things they disagree about so you've got to make those disagreements clear you've got to make that issue Alex and Jordan Peterson were talking about the one thing one thing that they agree about and when they disagree towards the end of the show Alex did push back against Jordan so no I mean if Jordan had invited Alex to talk about objectivism or to talk about epistemology or to talk about morality then Alex should have made should have emphasized the disagreements he had with Jordan Peterson but that wasn't what the interview was about and it wasn't what Jordan Peterson asked Alex about and it wasn't a kumbaya we're all fighting the same cause we're all friends, we're all on the same team we're all allies it was Jordan Peterson and Alex about his positions and when Jordan Peterson said something or applied something that Alex disagreed with he went there Alex went there and pushed back but that wasn't the topic of the meetup Matt thank you for debunking Wyatt's Marxist nonsense we need a thousand more voices like you I agree with a thousand voices like mine we would win it would be all over because for my age 34 I'm a top 1% owner at 110,000 I'm not ultra rich this is super dishonest yes super dishonest executives make more now though for a good reason yes because you create more because the world has moved towards more knowledge based professions the world has moved more towards rewarding you know you use their mind versus physical labor and the people who use their mind are dramatically more productive than people who don't use their mind and therefore the gap has increased it's increased because they're more productive yes it's super dishonest Landon says boards have learned that cheap executives don't perform meanwhile there's a shortage of executives because of Gen X population is lower because good CEOs are very very rare and good executives generally senior people are very difficult to find good people and as a consequence yes there's a shortage and when there's a shortage of something guess what happens to price the salaries go way up by the way their tenure is very short particularly at the top job because very CEOs actually do a good job so they get kicked out and they're replaced Landon says how do you have debt without investment yeah I mean debt that debt is raised to do what to corporate level to invest the whole thing is just so dishonest Landon says it hurts me to watch this you're causing me pain sorry Landon alright let me see alright so we are less than half way to 6.50 it's pretty bleak guys for a Thursday night so let's see if maybe the last maybe we got 2 or 3 minutes we don't have more than that some of you can step in and close that gap even a little bit would be nice alright Mr. Amosler says you're on spending 10 years in right wing youtube I never once discovered an object if I hadn't found your channel I'd still be a raging nihilist much love from Australia well thank you I'm happy you found the channel maybe you can go back to right wing youtube and let them know that I exist we need more people from over there to discover me I mean this is why I say you guys determine the extent to which we will grow ultimately it's the extent to which you share the extent to which you go to other places comment and maybe link to my videos you link to my videos on twitter and facebook and I don't know tiktok or whatever things that you are engaged in that's the way we will grow but yes there's very little objectivism out there in the world more than ever before but there's very little and there needs to be a lot more and you are it you are the people who can do this you are the people who can change the world in that respect but to do it you have to go you have to make an effort like the the reality is that the old right and the old left they are good at this they share they take a video they like and they blast it all over the place they find the figures they agree with and they promote them to no end thank you thank you colt says low on funds need to do my christian shopping I hope this helps appreciate it everything helps and everything is appreciated so thank you colt frank says who are these people in history who ran businesses but were called merchants did they practice any capitalism they were shopkeepers they were small operators they weren't capitalists because there was no capitalism I don't know what it means did they practice any capitalism I mean they made it some investments here and there but it was a small scale local and you know not scalable they didn't employ that many people they didn't create that much wealth they didn't help with the economy dramatically it was all very small scale alright thank you everybody thanks for the super chat us today really really appreciate it for those of you who contributed thank you for all the monthly supporters who make everything that I do possible and sustain the Iran book show over the long run please become one if you're not already and I will see you all tomorrow morning we'll do another news roundup and I think the next longer show will be on saturday and on saturday I'm going to try to do all the music reviews that I owe you guys I know a bunch of music reviews I'll try to do those on saturday alright everybody have I hope I didn't offend Shahzab with my review of idiocracy but I don't think he's too surprised alright everybody have a great rest of your week I hope you have a fantastic weekend I will see you tomorrow morning and maybe again on