 principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show. It's kind of loud. What everybody having is great time. Great weekend. Saturday night as you know, some of you know anyway, I am in London. So welcome from my hotel room in London. Wow, quiet in the chat. What's going on? Almost nobody's quiet. Maybe some of the regulars are not here because of the strange time that is caused by the time zone difference. All right, so we've got a few people. Maybe we've got the Brits on the chat. They can actually watch it live because it's a reasonable hour here in the UK. It's only 10 p.m. It's not like the usual 1 a.m. that we broadcast. So hopefully we get a bunch of Brits. Hopefully, maybe we get a few Europeans, although it's pretty late. It's already 11 p.m. in Europe next week. I'll be in Mainline Europe. So it'll probably be doing shows that are earlier in the U.S. and earlier in the UK so that reasonable hours in Europe itself. Yeah, so when did we last speak? We last spoke on Wednesday. I lasted a show on Wednesday and that was when I landed and arrived in the UK since then. I took a three-hour train ride up to Durham and gave a talk there. We should have video and audio of that. It was professionally recorded. It was recorded well. So I'm hoping to put that up soon up on the Iran Book Show channel on YouTube. The talk was on capitalism and war. And I think this was the best capitalism and war talk I've given so far. And since the others weren't recorded, this would be great because this would be the first one. I think this is the first one we'll actually put up so you'll get a sense of my talking capitalism and war and hopefully we'll be doing, I'll be doing more talks like that. Luca from Switzerland. Hey Luca, are you coming to Lugano? It's a little far for you. I know, but Lugano should be a lot of fun. All right. Thank you. Do you guys purposefully choose handles that are impossible to pronounce? Probably. Thank you. $50. That is very, very generous. Really, really appreciate that. Thanks a lot. So yes, I gave a talk of Durham. Durham is this university in the north of England. One of these days I need to spend a little bit more time, you know, not more than a few hours in Durham. It seems like a beautiful town. It's a university town. It's right on a really gorgeous river. It's way in the north. It's green. It's hilly. It's got this magnificent cathedral as many towns in the UK have. And it just seems like a charming place that I should spend a few hours in. I always seemed to rush in and rush out. This time I took the train, got there, three hour train ride, got there, had dinner with the students, events, ran to the train station, almost missed my train, three hour train ride back to back to London Hotel, you know, and that was it. I think got the hotel around after midnight or so. So that was that was when was that Thursday? Yesterday, Friday was, you know, how I love giving the talks at the high schools. So I was out at a high school girls high school Jags, James Allen girls school. You know, in in Durham, we had about 70 people, maybe 80 students in the audience was great because most of them were not familiar with England. And so as I as I call these audiences virgin audiences, it's, it's, it's, you know, they're the best audiences. This is new to them, the discovering something new, although a number of them listen to the podcast. So that's always cool. Then on Friday, I said I was at Jags. That was great. Another, you know, 50 high school girls, really sharp, really engaged, really passionate. So this is what this is the story about UK high schools. Ein Rand is taught in UK high school. She's taught in the A1 what's called the A1 politics class. She is considered a conservative thinker, which is a bit of a ridiculous idea, but she's considered a conservative thinker. And they they teach Ein Rand and so the kids have a lot of questions about Ein Rand. And of course, the teachers are not necessarily always best equipped to answer those questions. So having me come in and I give basically gave a talk on Ein Rand's political philosophy because that's and I linked it to reason and to egoism, because that's what they're studying. They're studying Rand's political philosophy. And it was great. The questions were terrific. The first question I got was, should it be legal to discriminate? So go right for the jugular, go for the hard stuff first. But that was a lot of fun and a lot of really, really good questions. And again, everybody is a first time and they're not really exposed to Rand. They don't know much about man. A Friday night. We do Friday night. There was definitely a Oh yeah, we had a an event Friday night about 40 people at this event. I did it with Don Watkins and Nikos. Nikos that goes by only one name. And that was an event called a titled Effective Egoism. Effective Egoism. And that's the name, I think, of a upcoming book by Don Watkins. So without me as a co author, went to often wrote a book by himself. And and that was that we did on Friday. And that's also been taped, I think, was live streams on the ARC website. Then today, I was at the Battle of Ideas. And and really, that's what we're going to be talking about today is is is my my kind of the sessions at the Battle of Ideas. Battle of Ideas. I participate in a session about the coming midterm elections, but it really turned it into a session about how would you say it really turned into a session about, you know, the nature of the fragmented political politics in the United States, the tribalism, and what I done, what is uniquely American. So it turned into a session about America, which was terrific. And I really enjoyed that. I think the audience enjoyed it as well. There were some good responses to it. And then I sat in on a session about the European Union and Europe's future. And where Europe is today, given everything that's going on war, right wing parties being successful in Sweden and in Italy, and what all that bodes for for the, you know, for the for Europe and for the future of Europe. So I thought what we do tonight is talk about some of the stuff that we talked about in the sessions. That is, I thought we talk about the, we talk about the idea, the midterm elections in the US and what's going on in the US and what's going on kind of big picture politically in the US and maybe my prediction for the midterms. Also, I want to tell you a little bit about kind of kind of questions we got and kind of comments we got, which were interesting. I found I found it interesting. And, and then we can talk about Europe. And of course, while I'm in the UK, the Prime Minister fired her Treasury Secretary hired a new Treasury Secretary backed out of the whole economic plan that she had presented. And it caused financial markets to kind of melt melt down. And what I thought we talked about the UK as well. So Euro, well, no, half US, half Euro focused. But that is that is what we're going to be discussing. All right, so just a couple of reminders before we jump in and talk about the midterms. Just a reminder that we do have super chat going so you can help determine what we're going to talk about by asking questions. You can do that by using the super chat feature down below. We usually have a goal of $650 to raise as part of the super chat, given that my American audience is not here as strongly as they usually are because of the strange time zone, time, time frame. You know, we'll see you Europeans are going to have to pitch in and get us to where we need to go. He me namias, something like that. Got us off to a rolling start with this $50. So thank you for that. And hopefully, hopefully, we can, we can keep up that pace. That'd be terrific. That's the super chat. Of course, you can support the show on kind of a monthly basis on a kind of on a monthly basis by using Patreon or subscribe star or your on bookshow.com slash support. And, you know, Patreon is very easy for you. So it's PayPal. That's through my website. So we will do that as what currency is that what currency is that whatever it is. 2000 of it is worth. Oh, it's Argentinian pesos. So 2000 Argentinian pesos is worth $13 and 19 cents. And really, it's worth half of that because on the black market, the dollar is a lot stronger than it is in the official markets. It's actually worth about $6 or $7. And that's it. But that's, that's great. All right. Who's controlling Liz Tuss? Well, you should make that a super chat question. And I promise to answer it. Super chat. That's a good super. That would be a really good super chat question. Is the media controlling Liz Tuss? Or is the C maybe it's the voters who voted boss Johnson in with the with a major majority? All right, let's talk about the midterms. Let's talk about the American political scene. Maybe I should just. Yeah, so the American political scene, we Democrats Republicans. No, this is not vodka. This is I promise you water. Kings down water. I don't drink vodka. So we'll talk about a little bit about the American political scene coming up to the the midterms, the midterms in about a month, I guess less than a month, it's November, November 8th or something like that. So, so less than a month. And you know, what's going to happen? And what do we kind of want to happen? And what is what is the status of politics in in the United States? And the case I made during the session at the at the battle of ideas that was really that what has happened in America is that both political parties basically are very difficult to differentiate when it comes to economic policy, that at least at the level of legislation at the big picture level, both political parties now believe that the government has a big role to play in the economy. Both political parties now believe that industrial policy is legit. We saw a significant number of Republicans voting for the chip bill, the bill that tries to pick winners and losers in the chip industry and tries to subsidize American producers of chip technology. We're seeing ever growing voices both on the left and the right for more government intervention, for more government industrial policy, for more government control of trade. And really, when it comes to economic liberties, there is no longer any political party that is supportive of economic liberty, even the pretense of economic liberty, because you could argue that the Republican party will never for economic liberty, but at least they gave it lip service. That's gone. They no longer do that. And that has a lot to do with the fact that the voters who vote for the Republican party now are not interested in economic liberty. And by the way, this is the same, the exact same situation I would argue is in the UK. And this relates to the whole distrust fiasco and maybe I'll combine things here. But the reality is that the people who elected Boris Johnson to a to a, you know, historic victory and into a majority in the House of Commons was a two, two and a half years ago or three years ago. The voters who voted him in were not voting in somebody and they didn't, the intention was not to vote in somebody who was pro free markets. Their intention was to vote somebody who would regulate control, who would, who would centrally plan, but who they associated with their kind of cultural policies anti immigration, anti Europe, and generally a kind of conservative social agenda buffering. I don't see the buffering. Yeah, I don't I mean, I am on hotel wifi. So it is a challenge. And I noticed the speed today is lower than the speed was on Wednesday. So it could be, it could be that the hotel is fuller and the more people using the internet right now and that's causing some buffering. I hope not. I hope it doesn't disrupt the show too much. Let's see, where were we? Yes. So the constituent vote in Boris Johnson is not exactly a free market constituency. And I got a real sense of that on, you know, you always if you want to know what's going on in England, if you really want to know how people are feeling in England and what they think, probably your best bet is to start a conversation with your taxi driver in one of your black cabs. One of the reasons I don't take Uber, or I take, I don't always take Uber, I usually take Uber, but I also take taxis is because taxis are all driven by Brits opinionated Brits. Uber are all driven by immigrants now have nothing against immigrants as you know, and I actually like chatting with the immigrants. But if you really want to know what's going on among the electorate in the UK, the people to talk to are the taxi drivers like I knew that Brexit was going to pass because every single taxi driver I talked to was pro-Brexit. They were going to vote for Brexit. They were passionate about Brexit. They were advocating for it. They were arguing for it. They were active in the movement to begin about. So I was in a taxi the other day and here in London and I was talking to the guy and he asked me what I do and I said I give talks about capitalism. He said I'm not for free markets. I said why? He says because I hate Uber. He said Uber is irresponsible. They pay the drivers too little. They exploit their drivers. These people barely make a living at Uber. And I said what's the alternative? If they don't do Uber, don't they make even a worse living? He didn't have an answer to that. But he was like I believe in regulations. I'm very pro-regulations. I like Boris Johnson's government because they weren't going to deregulate and List Trust is going to deregulate. That's really, really bad. And I don't want taxes cut on the rich and so on. So very much kind of economic populism. Very much left of Senate economics. And yet on almost every social issue, very anti-immigration, very pro-Brexit, very pro-British culture and what it means to be British and probably on all the other issues that are whether it's trans or whether it's woke or whether it's whatever, very conservative. And that I think is the Republican Party or the base of the Republican Party and that I think is the base of the of the conservative party. So when when List Trust backs off of tax cuts, when List Trust back off is going to back off of deregulation, when List Trust probably will back off of advocating for fracking in the UK, she's doing it. We'll talk about markets in a minute, but she's doing it to a large extent to appease her voters. Her voters don't want this stuff. Her voters don't want markets. Don't want, you know, individual liberty when it applies to markets. They want regulation. They want to stay involved. They want controls. And they don't want fracking. Now, you know, we'll get I guess we'll get to List Trust on the response of the markets and why the markets responded the way they do. I think I think Rob has a question about that in the super chat. And I think the same thing is true in the United States. Today, the Republican base is not a base that believes in free markets. I mean, I already start sensing this in the tea party days when they would say keep your hands, you know, we want limited government, we want to shrink government, we want to make government smaller, but keep your hands off my Medicare. Keep your hands off of the social programs that I like. Give your hands off of redistribution of wealth that I like. Of course, they don't think of it as redistribution of wealth, which is getting our money back. We paid into Medicare. Yeah, but you're taking out four times what you put in. And what you put in was already spent, which are taking out is what other people are being taxed on. But it's so what you get in the United States, like I think in the UK, is a distrust of free markets. And what defines the Republican Party, or again, the base, the voters, the passionate voters, the excited voters, the voters who vote in the primaries, what defines them much more are the social issues. What defines them much more is the anti-left. What defines them much more is the anti-woke, anti-cancer culture, anti-CRT. What defines them much more is anti, at least with the men, anti-abortion. Although I think many female Republicans actually pro-abortion, even if they won't state it, which might play havoc for the Republicans in the midterms, we'll see. We'll see how big of an issue it becomes. But basically, the point I made at the Battle of Ideas was there is no voice today, no voice in America today. And I think there's two of the UK. There is no voice in politics. There's no public voice, if you include public intellectuals. There's no voice today public or among the intellectuals or in politics. There is an advocate of individualism. That's an advocate of individual rights. That's an advocate of the original American vision. There's no advocate for the Declaration of Independence. There are many advocates for all kinds of, you know, their interpretation of all kinds of ideas of what America stands for, but the actual original idea of America, the idea of individual rights, the idea of freedom, liberty, the idea of being left alone, the idea of, ultimately, the idea of free markets. That's what the ideas in America resulted in. There are no defenders of that. Now, look, you can find a particular congressman here. You can find maybe one or two senators. Maybe you can find maybe somebody in the House of Commons who believe in this. As I said, I'm a big fan of Kemi Bradenok. I think that's how you pronounce it. I think she's good. She's in the government. She's a minister in the government. But as a movement, as a phenomena, there are just no voices for these things. And even the voices that exist are muted. They're not aggressive and they can't defend themselves. And one of the big problems Liz Truss had when she presented a budget that involves massive tax cuts, eliminating the tax cuts under very wealthy. No spending cuts, unfortunately, but a lot of tax cuts. Corporate taxes were going to be lower to 19 percent. I mean, good stuff. Anytime you lower corporate taxes, that's good stuff. That was one of the few good things that Donald Trump did was lower the corporate tax. She couldn't defend it. And nobody in her party stepped up forward to defend it. Chancellor Schekker couldn't defend it, even though I think he believes in it, believed in it. He's gone now. He couldn't defend it. He could not articulate the case for it. Because even if they harken back to an era of thatcher and love of thatcher and believe that thatcher's ideas are the right ideas, they don't really understand the basis for them, the foundations for them. And they can't articulate it to a public left and right who doesn't want to hear it, who is not interested in liberty, not interested in economic liberty, not interested in liberty at all. So I think we've got a system in the United States today where both political parties are anti-liberty, both political parties are anti-economic liberty, and they're fighting over control of our minds, control of our spirits. Each of them wants to control their educational institutions so that they can impose their dogma on us. If you read the National Conservatives, you know that they do not like school choice, they do not like the idea of privatizing education, they want to control education, they want to get rid of woke, but what do they want to institute instead of woke? Well, Christianity, Christian virtues, Christian values, a Christian interpretation of history. So what I left and right today are battling over is control of our minds, control of our spirits. Both have come to the conclusion, both have come to the conclusion that that's where the battle is, and indeed both have come to the conclusion that in order to fully control our spirits, because Republicans always wanted to control this to some extent, they also need to control our wallets, and so they all need to also be economically for central planning. Now, you know, as an interesting panel, we had a kid from a student from UCLA on the panel who was kind of a centrist who voted for Donald Trump once and didn't vote for him the second time. We had a British academic who studies American political system. We had a journalist who has children in the U.S. and runs a media company, I guess. And what was kind of funny was that everybody in the panel was ultimately anti-Trump. Now, almost all the panel is anti-Trump because of what he did during the election, that post-election, that is his refusal to accept the fact that he lost. I was the only one who was actually anti-Trump because of everything else. They were actually kind of, particularly the woman media company person and the student, were actually pro-Trump as president, just anti-Trump as ex-president. That was the only one who was anti-Trump throughout. And I think the British scholar was probably somewhat of a leftist. What was interesting is how many people in the audience were pro-Trump. How much pushback we got from the audience on the fact that we were anti-Trump and how much they tried to defend Trump and try to defend Trump's legacy. So that was just interesting. Here are the Brits trying to defend Trump on this panel, in front of this panel. Let's see a few more points I wanted to make with regard to the actual midterm election. I think the expectation of as a midterm election, in the first term of president, at least in recent history, has been overwhelming victory by the opposition. And indeed, given inflation at 8.70 percent, core inflation at 6.5 percent, interest rates going up, recession on the horizon, and becoming realer and realer, I think, to people as the months go by, the expectation should be of a massive red wave and a really huge Republican victory. And it is still possible that that will happen. I don't think we can rule it out. The media has basically ruled it out. Most pundits have ruled it out. But the fact is that the media and the pundits and the pollsters almost always underestimate the populist right. They almost always underestimate the attractiveness of a kind of Republican right wing in other countries. Candidates, we saw that recently with Bolsonaro in Brazil, who got a lot more votes, a much higher percentage of the vote, even though he didn't win in the first round, he got a lot more votes than any poll predicted that he would get. So the left usually does worse than what the polls project and the right usually does better than what the polls project. So now some of the pollsters have adjusted their polls to reflect this bias in the polls. But overall, I think the bias holds and it still is. It is possible that there will be a huge sweep by Republicans. I think it's unlikely, though. I do think that a couple of things are hurting Republicans. I'd say first is abortion. I think the issue of abortion is a big issue. I think it hurts Republicans in a lot of different places. And it's not that it just hurts Republicans because it motivates Democrats to come to the polls more. It does, I think it because particularly Democratic women, young women, women who would probably not vote at all in the midterm election might vote this time because they view it as a vote on abortion. So I think there is more likelihood that younger people will vote, women will vote. And of course, Republican women who actually tend to be pro-abortion are more likely to vote Democratic as, again, protest vote against the abortion rulings. How big that is? I don't think anybody knows. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. And there's a sense in which that the abortion issue is offset by other cultural issues. Again, I don't think there's much difference between the parties when it comes to economics. But what there is a difference is when it comes to these cultural issues. For example, the more the Democrats talk about CRT, the more that is in the headlines, the more that is the cancer culture and woke and critical race theory, the more that helps Republicans. I mean, the average person, the middle of the road person who's not particularly committed to the Democrats or the Republicans hates CRT, hates woke, and the more Republicans can associate the Democratic party with woke culture, the more Republicans are likely to win. So I don't think there's enough of that to offset the abortion issue, but it's this is so that's going to someone mitigate the Republican success. But I do think Republicans will win the House. They could win the House quite solidly. The Senate is a different story. See, the Senate, Republicans should win the Senate easily, right? They should be able to hold Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. You know, I think Donald Trump lost Pennsylvania by a very small margin. A good candidate who could rally Trump voters plus voters who wouldn't vote for Trump, but generally Republican easily, Pennsylvania should have been a Republican state. It might not be Dr. Oz, that great Republican candidate, is lagging and is does not necessarily look like he's going to win. Let's see. So that's a flip. That's a Republican Senate seat that goes Democratic. In Wisconsin, while I think ultimately the Republicans will win the Senate seat in Wisconsin, it's going to be tight and they could be holding on by very slim margins. In Georgia, Georgia is a Democratic seat. It's a Democratic Senate seat, which is hard to believe the Georgia's Democratic. And I'm not sure the Republicans could retake it. Maybe they can, but it's not clear at all that Republicans can take Georgia given the candidate that they have. So, you know, that still is, if the Democrats hold Georgia, that's still a plus one for the Democrats. And then you've got Arizona. Again, Arizona should be Republican. Should be able to win one of the two Arizona seats should be Republican. Maybe one Democratic, one Republican reflects a 50-50 kind of split in Arizona and maybe some other states, but both senators are going to be Democratic unless Blake Masters pulls off a real comeback in the next few weeks, which is possible, I guess. So now we have a, again, Democrats are still plus one. The only seat that it looks like the Republicans in a position to flip from the Democrats is Nevada. Nevada is a Democratic senator. The Republican looks strong in Nevada. Hispanics look like they're more likely to vote Republican. Hispanic vote, I've said for a long, long time on almost all issues, particularly cultural issues, is a Republican vote to lose. It was always a Republican vote to lose. Republicans, unfortunately, significantly alienated, significantly alienated their, this constituency for many years over the issues of immigration, but are now starting to regain them and bring them into the Republican fold. So Nevada, because of the Hispanic vote shifting to Republicans or more of it, shifting to Republicans could be a Republican Senate. And then we've got 50-50. We've got a stalemate in the Senate, which means the Democrats own it because they have the Vice President. Now, I don't mind that that much because Republicans will have the House. You need both houses to get anything done. So it will basically be a stalemate to the Senate, to the Democrats, and that's all I really want. What I want is divided government. I want is nothing to get done. As I've said many times, the worst government is when they get together and they actually get stuff done. The stuff they get done is never friendly to individual rights. It's never friendly to liberty. It's never friendly to us. So I love divided government. So I think we're going to get divided government out of this election. So I hope you vote. I'm not going to tell you how to vote in the Senate. It depends on what state you are and vote whatever you think is right. But in the House, I generally would encourage you, particularly if it's not a Trumpian candidate, to vote Republican because I'd like to see the Republicans at least win one of the houses. It's also always fun to watch the Democrats lose. But yeah, it would be good for the Republicans to win the House. Senate, you know, I think a big part of the Senate is not so much the abortion issue. It's not the challenge of getting the voters and the right voters and women voting against the Republican and so on. I think the main challenge is the quality of the candidates. Republicans should have been able to nominate somebody better than Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania. I think they could have nominated somebody better than Blake Masters in Arizona. They could have nominated somebody better than Walker in Georgia. I think all of those three states should be Republican states. They should be leading in the polls. I think with better candidates, they would be leading in the polls. And again, it's not a question of the actual policies that they advocate for. It's a question of their character and their personalities. And it's a question of also the fact of how committed they are to Donald Trump and how committed they are to the lie of the elections being stolen. It's the mindlessness that they project rather than kind of an independence of thought. Now, they won because of Donald Trump. They won the primary because of Donald Trump. But they might lose the general election because of Donald Trump. And this is the thing. Donald Trump, if he ran today for president, would win the Republican primary. But I think, and I've said this for two years now, I think he's the only Republican who would lose to Joe Biden. I think in this economic environment, any Republican would beat Joe Biden. But I'm not sure Donald Trump could beat Joe Biden because of Donald Trump's negatives, because a lot of the voters that Republicans need in order to win a presidential election, suburban voters, women, middle class voters won't vote for Trump. They're voting for a different Republican, but they won't vote for Trump. I think the scientist has a good chance of beating Biden. And I think Nikki Haley has a good chance. I saw a tweet from Nikki Haley, somebody sent me a tweet from Nikki Haley, which was excellent. She's still my lead candidate. But I never get my wishes in terms of candidate. Yeah, MH08 says Clinton was the only Democrat who could lose to Trump. I think that's probably right. I think that's probably right. God. All right, before we get to kind of the future of Europe, let's see. Let's see if there are any questions relating to this. Rob says, why would pro market policy scam markets? Are they that addicted to government controls? I mean, yes. But it's not that they're addicted to government controls. It's you know, who is the markets? The markets are us. The markets are people who buy stocks and bonds. The markets are pension plans. The markets are financial institutions. The markets are people. And people don't believe in free markets. And people don't believe in pro market policies. People, pretty much everybody, including the market has bought into the Keynesian myth that what you need to get out of recession is more government spending, for example, and not cutting government spending. They bought into the idea that cutting taxes increases government deficits, decreases government revenue, whereas if you follow the Laffer curve, you know that you can reduce taxes quite a bit and revenue actually goes up, not down. It's called the Laffer curve that shows that. But markets don't believe in the Laffer curve because who are markets? They're the graduates of our economics department, our finance departments, our universities, they've all been taught standard economics. So markets are not pro market. It's not like the markets pro capitalism. They want Laffer. No, of course, many of them also benefit from the regulations from the controls because the regulations, to some extent, they are to protect them, the economic power. And they like the Federal Reserve, for example, printing money because that money flows to them and provides liquidity, it provides it all going up. So, yeah, so markets are no fan of pro market policies. Now, give them MHAO, it says I'm opposed to using Laffer curve. I agree. I'm not for using the Laffer curve. I'm not for using as an argument. But from the collectivist perspective, the Laffer curve is true. They want to maximize government revenue, but they're so and they respond to that. Now, the one thing I think that the market responded to, which is good by trashing Liz Truss's budget, was the fact that the budget did not cut spending. Cutting spending is what's important. Cutting spending is what's essential. And Liz Truss did not cut spending. And therefore, and again, the markets ignored the Laffer curve. And therefore, they assumed deficits were going to go up and that was bad. And I agree, that is bad. That is bad. They should have offered a package of spending cuts, including subsidies. Instead, they increase spending by 200 billion dollars, 200 billion pounds, I think, for energy subsidies for individuals, for people, which is ridiculous, ridiculous economic policy and ridiculous energy policy for a variety of reasons that I've already talked about. So you've got to cut spending, guys. You've got to cut spending. You've got to shrink government. And you've got to follow through on your promise. Liz, you promised to eliminate all the regulations that were imposed on you and the European Union. So eliminate them. That should have been the lead. The lead should have been we're going to make our economy more efficient, more productive. And we're going to do that by cutting regulations, by eliminating regulations. So Toby asks, how big of a disaster is Liz Truss pivoting on tax policy? It's a huge disaster because it basically makes her new Treasury Secretary, a new Treasury Secretary, basically is a middle of the road guy, a standard Keynesian who is not going to support pro-growth policies, who's going to be super conservative in terms of any kind of economic changes. She has now become beholden completely to him. She has lost her energy, excitement, her passion to follow, to follow, if you will, to follow what's her name, Margaret Thatcher's lead. And she is now going to become a standard middle of the world conservative Prime Minister. And look, cutting taxes, forget the lafikov cutting taxes was was great because it's pro-growth, particularly cutting the 45% marginal tax rate, the most important one, because that would increase the increased investment. Cutting the the the corporate tax from to 19% would have would have been fantastic. It would have raised wages. It would have lowered costs. It would have it would have been it would have been inflation, a mechanism to fight inflation. Now in terms of price inflation, inflation of rising prices of consumer goods. So it's super tragic, because I think that what she proposed was far from perfect because it didn't include spending cuts, which is essential. But it was in the right direction. It was pro-growth and it would have actually resulted in positive outcomes. Not as good positive outcomes as if she was leading with deregulation and then reducing spending, but still positive outcomes. And that would have changed the whole reflection of the debate in the UK. Now she is beholden to the same pressure groups that Boris Johnson was, she is going to become just a leftist conservative Prime Minister. So it's huge that she backtracked. It's not trivial. It's huge. And it's tragic. And it's it's over. Her government is over. It's finished. All I can say now is I can't wait for for the next leadership contest among conservatives so that we can all back we can all back Kemi, because I think Kemi is the real free market pro-liberty candidates in in the in the UK. Let's see. I'm just looking for questions that are related to this. That's property rights. That's something that's war. This is it does every school. Blackboard. Let's go to Tobias. Tobias where is this Tobias as a question? Where is that? How will the people either oppose the free market mechanisms or in doubt about their efficacy perceive this spineless backpelling by trust? And how do we free marketers defend markets when free market is back down? Yeah, I mean, again, free markets are finished. That is, there is no defense of free markets in in the UK. It's done because List Trust will never have will never have the credibility to to propose free market ideas again. She has lost it. And it makes it more difficult for us. Look, I mean, I'd say even more than trust backing down, it's the market response which makes it difficult for us, right? If the market, the bond market, the stock market response so badly to pro market policies, then I agree, it makes it very difficult for us, the free market advocates to argue for it when seemingly the beneficiaries of free markets, people put the spitting in marketplace against it. So the whole thing is depressing. But it's very, very consistent with my view of the world. My view of the world is that there is nobody, no political force today that's pro markets, that's pro freedom. And the reason there's no political force, because I say this often, maybe not often enough, so I should say it again, we get the politicians we deserve. So it's not that the politicians are not free market enough, and it's not that trust is not free market enough. It's that the people who voted for the Conservative Party are not free market enough. It's the Republican base that's not free market enough so that the politicians are reflecting what they base wants. The taxi driver in London doesn't want taxes cut. He doesn't want deregulation. And he's the one who voted in Boris Johnson. So him and the working class in the North that flipped from Labour to Conservative, but they didn't change the economic policies. They're still basically statists when it comes to economics. So she can't buck the train. She can't go against her own voters. And the same in America. I mean, even if some free marketer managed to get elected president, he couldn't actually pass anything because the voters don't want it. You can't cram it down their throat. And this is why I keep saying over and over and over and over again, that the battle that we face is not a political battle. It's an educational battle. And we have to change the electorate, not our politicians. Speaking of politicians, there's a frigging waste of time. It gets you nowhere. What you need to do is change the voters. And that's hard. Because if they're old, then they're not going to change their mind. And if they're young, they tend to be leftists. Except in much of Europe, which is interesting, brings us to the topic of Europe. But in much of Europe, young people on the side of the populist right, it's old people who are on the left. So, you know, the Swedish Christian Democrats, who are the populist right wing party in Sweden, again, not free markets, but populist right on cultural and immigration issues, young people voted for them. And generally, the right is the young, but it's not the kind of right. Again, it's not a free market right. It's a populist right. The right in Italy is dominated by young people. Again, not a free market right. That's why I've said, right and left, don't describe the true political spectrum. They describe the reality that the political spectrum that's out there, but not the true political spectrum. Because, for example, we, I don't have a place on that spectrum. I don't belong in that spectrum. The real spectrum is individualism versus collectivism. And collectivism splits into two, right and left. There's no right or left individualism. There's only one individualism. So it's one line that then splits into one goes to the right, one goes to the left, one's collectivism to the right, one's collectivism to the left. So it's like a fork with two kind of prongs. Is that right? A fork with two prongs, something like that. That's what it looks like. That's the spectrum. That's the political spectrum. Apollo, thank you. Khmitchak, Bishchak, thank you. Really appreciate it. Harper asks, will the stock market improve if the Republicans win big in November? Do you think we'll be fully out of this recession by next summer? Given that it's midterm related, I'll answer it. I think the stock market will respond positively to a Republican victory in November. But given that that is what's expected, you would have to say that the stock market has already priced a Republican victory. And it's still going down. So I don't think it's a determining factor. I think what the market wants from Republicans, and this is the question, the question is in the U.S. at least, what does the market want from Republicans? It's not enough for Republicans to win. It's what do they want Republicans to actually do. I think what the markets will respond positively to in terms of Republicans controlling the House and maybe the Senate is a deal with Biden to cap spending. I think if Republicans, and they did this with Obama and they did this with Bill Clinton, so there's hope that they could do this with Biden, if Republicans can cut a deal, you know, they have this thing where they raise the spending limit and there's always this, oh, government is going to shut down and there's frantic negotiations. If during a period like that, the Republicans can actually cut a deal with Biden to cap spending. Again, just as they did in 2011 with Obama, then I think the market will respond very positively. I think what the market will not respond to very positively is spending out of control, spending continuing to be out of control. And bipartisanship, I don't think the market will respond to, particularly if it involves spending. So what the markets want to see is physical control, physical limits. There's limits of government spending. And I think that the Republicans can produce, but for that, they need to deal with Biden. And will their base allow them to even have a deal with Biden? I don't know. Hard to tell. Hard to tell. And partially it depends, you know, on Trump and whether Trump is running or not running. And I think a lot of whether Trump runs or not depends on whether his candidates win or not. So there's a sense in which I hope that Oz Masters and the football player all lose, because I think if they all lose, that reduces the probability that reduces the probability that Trump will run. Significantly. I think Trump will only run if he thinks he's going to win and he only think he's going to win if his senatorial candidates that he promoted are going to win. Okay. Toby just says this is quick. So I'll take it here. I'm leaving Malta after living there for a year. And this time I've been able to capitalize on the lack of regulations and favorable taxes to a mass significantly more wealth than I could in Denmark. Good for you. I'm all for that. That's great. Good for Malta. Good for you. All right. Answer that. Oh, Tobias continues. However, the culture is a very collectivistic Catholic culture. There is a super racist against Indians and Africans. I'm going to Vienna despite higher taxes. How come Malta, UAE and other backward countries have freer markets? Well, they're small countries. They're countries that basically figured out that by becoming tax havens not not even because they respect freedom but just because the tax haven aspect of it would draw capital in and they could benefit from that. So it has nothing to do with freer markets. It has nothing to do with ideology. It has everything to do with a very small country, a very small place trying to be successful, trying to make money and or attract investors or attract people to come and live there because otherwise nobody would go live there in Malta or UAE and they do so through these tax benefits and lack of regulation. Again, not because they believe in it but because they know it attracts people. Okay. Talk a little bit about Europe. So there's a panel about Europe. It was interesting. I disagreed with everybody in the panel pretty much, but there were a couple of Germans. There was an Italian. There was a Brit and a Swede. The Swede was the most interesting and I think the best. But there were all these and I mean, I don't want to go through the whole thing and there'll be lots of other future opportunities to talk about Europe and it is getting late. But I want to emphasize one issue that I think is super important and I think relates to the United States as well and relates very much to the future of Europe. And that issue is the fact that when pushed, none of these panelists and I think this is way goes way beyond just a panelist. This goes to the population itself. I think generally people have no idea what Europe is. It's a collection of countries unified by what? Why is the European Union? What unifies them? What is the vision of this thing? They're a common currency. Everybody complains about the common currency, even though the common currency is the best thing to happen to Europe in a long time. I find it really funny just an aside, but it was funny and it was so typical. An Italian economist was on the panel and the Italian economist just goes on and on and on about how damaging the existence of the Euro is to the Italian economy because if there was no Euro, Italy would have its own currency and they could print money right now and they could spend a lot of money right now. They could get themselves out of the mess that they're in and they could invest and they could build new projects and infrastructure and it was like and everybody was nodding their heads and everybody was like, yeah, this is a great value of national currency. We can control our own fate and I'm sitting in the back thinking, could you imagine if Italy was printing lira right now? Could you imagine the rate of inflation? I mean inflation is bad in Italy now because of the Euro, maybe it's 6%. Could you imagine what inflation was if they were printing lira? Can you imagine how bad it would be? Can you imagine how poor the Italians would be if they controlled their own currency? Coincidence is just paper. It's just paper. What gives us value is what you can buy with it and what is produced in a sense using it through investment. Italy would be poorer today, significantly poorer if they went off the Euro. Nobody would lend them money in lira. Why would anybody lend money to the Italians in lira when they know the Italians? I mean does anybody study history? Does anybody know anything about history about what Italy was like before the Euro? It just mind boggles, it boggles the mind, mind boggles. It boggles the mind that economists, he's an economist, that economists just don't have a clue about economics or about anything else for that matter. But no, the Euro is an unbelievably stabilizing force in Europe. The Euro maybe you could argue is difficult for Germany but it is a blessing for Spain and for Italy and for Greece and for all these other countries. It keeps them sane. It keeps them from allowing their own politicians, their own central bankers, from expropriating the currency and nobody cares. Again, in economics nobody disagrees in economics. Everybody, straight party line. And the funny thing about this Italian, he was kind of anti-European Union. He was obviously quite anti-Euro. He was not anti-Putin. Didn't quite take a strong position on Putin. Very anti-American. Was he left or was he right? Was he of the Italian left or was he of the Italian right? And the answer is I don't know. I listened to him for an hour. I mean, he wasn't an hour and a half. He wasn't the only speaker but I listened to him an hour and a half. I don't know if he's a leftist or a rightist because they're not, you can differentiate between the two today. The populist left and the populist right. I mean, he didn't say anything woke so I guess he's not, maybe he's not left. He didn't talk about CRT but if you talk about economic issues, if you talk about political issues relating to Europe, what is the difference between the left and the right? I'm curious if you guys know what the difference is because I don't know. So what I found fascinating, do I remember his name? I do not remember his name but I, you know, I have the program. I can tell you his name because I have the program. Let me tell you his name. Even though Luca, you really should be asking questions on the super chair. I'm giving you a free pass here because you've paid for some nice dinners for me in Switzerland. Okay, which panel was it? It was this panel. It was, I'm looking for an Italian name, Thomas Fazzi. Does that sound familiar? Thomas Fazzi, F-A-Z-I. Is that Italian? I think that's Italian. It's more Italian than any of the other names on here. Fazzi, Thomas Fazzi. I think that's who that's who the Italian was. Let's see. I'll add, Tobias says, what excuse in Tobias is right, right? You know, what excuse will the Italian economist have in five years when the GDP per capita is higher in former USSR Republic of Estonia than in Italy, despite having 45 year head start? Well, he'll say it's, you know, somehow Estonia benefited from the Euro and Italy couldn't, but if Italy had been able to control its own fate, then everything would have been fine. You might even say something about those Southern Italians not being very productive, and maybe they're the cause of Italy's problems, right? There's always an excuse. Let's see. Yeah, so I wanted to talk about you, this aspect of you. I'm curious, Luca, if you know this guy, Fazzi, and if you can find out if he's from the left or from the right, that would be interesting. So the thing is they have no idea what unites them. What makes them, in a sense, European beyond geography? They remind me of Tucker Carlson, who can't define what America is beyond geography, beyond the beauty of the countryside. But what makes Europe Europe? What is there a uniting ideology? Could there be? Has there been? You know, we talk about Western civilization. What is Western civilization? Is Western civilization what unites Europe? It certainly should be. But do they even know what it is? No. The closest they came was, the closest they came, was a kind of loose, mild, moderate freedom of speech. Yeah, Luca says Fazzi is a socialist. So there you go. I couldn't tell. I mean, I assumed he was a socialist and certain things he said just sounded a little Marxist to me. And somebody criticized Marx and you could see he was like uncomfortable. So he sounded left, but he could have been somebody from the new right-wing political party and you couldn't have differentiated. So what makes Europe Europe is Western civilization is ideals and ideas of Western civilization. And yes, freedom of speech is a significant and important part of that. So kind of a tolerance for speech. Although, again, all these countries have hate speech laws. So it's limited. But they don't know their history. So some attempts were made to say maybe it's Christianity, but then the secularists on the panel said no, no, it can't be Christianity because we're not Christian. And Poland is Christian, but we're not Christian. But what even when it comes to the polls and to the Germans and to the Swedes and to the Italians, the Spanish and what what in their history unites them and whether they know it or not. And they don't know it. And they probably have never known it. What unites them is the Enlightenment, even if they are betraying that Enlightenment. What unites them is that in Europe, pretty much in every country in Europe, starting in the 17th century, there was and to some extent still is a respect for reason, a respect for science, a respect for debate and argumentation as a means for resolving disputes rather than war. It's why there's such horror in Europe over the war that we see today. It's why Nazism and Communism are anti-European, anti-Western civilization, they're not part of Western civilization, they're anti-Western civilization. It's a respect for the individual. Every one of these countries as tribal and collectivist as they might be have an element of respect for the individual. They wouldn't be they wouldn't be as free as they are and they still are relatively free. If they didn't have a respect for the individual, freedom is individual freedom, and it comes from that respect for the individual that the Enlightenment instilled in us. So it really is a respect for reason, individualism and a respect therefore for freedom. That's what unites Europeans. And yes, they don't have any of those perfect. So the Poles might be Catholic, but still have some respect for these ideas. And the Italians in whatever might in different countries might dabble in socialism, but they still have this respect for these ideas and they keep bouncing back from the socialism or the fascism or whatever because of this respect for these ideas. But they can't articulate that, they can't define it, they can't talk about it, they can't speak about it. And because of that, they can't fight for it. The solution for Europe, the only thing that could unify Europe is liberty and freedom. That needs to be the governing ideology of Europe. It needs to be the governing ideology of any kind of united Europe, every kind of European Union. It's liberty, it's freedom, it's not massive regulations, massive taxation, massive government intervention, massive, it's not language, it's not culture. Well, it is culture in the sense that it's a culture of liberty. And until that becomes the governing ideology, what continues to be in the mess that we are in? European Union could unravel, it could stay put, it's moving, some countries are moving more Christian, some countries are moving more secular, some countries are moving to the right, some countries are moving to the left. But what still holds it all together is the semblance, just a little bit, a little bit here of respect for the individual and respect for reason and respect for political freedom. And unless they're willing to define it, they can't resurrect it, they can't become better. It's only by identifying this and fighting for it and making it explicit can they become better. The future of Europe is a mess. Ukraine is probably going to win the war against Russia, but Putin is not going away, or the Russians are not going away, whoever leads Russia, they're going to be a hostile country on the border of Europe for a long, long time. Importing gas from Russia will continue to be an unbelievably divisive proposition, by the way, on the panel. One party suggested maybe the United States sabotage the pipeline, but then others on the panel suggested maybe the people who really have an incentive to do this are the Poles, and maybe it's the Swedes. And is it interesting, by the way, that Sweden is running the investigation into who sabotaged the pipeline, but won't let anybody participate, won't let anybody see the results? Because the Swedes have motivation to weaken Germany, and Sweden is fine from the perspective of energy, because they get much of the energy from Norway, they also have nuclear. Finland has nuclear, the country that really really really depends on Russia, it's Germany. Poland has coal, and is not embarrassed about using coal. So maybe coal ended, and now I suspect none of those are true, because I don't think Sweden or Poland have the capacity, submarine-wise, to do what was done, but who knows? That was this panel speculation, not mine, the Swedes and the others were speculating about this, not me. All right, let's see. I think that's what I wanted to say about Europe. I think that'll be it. Tobias says the Ukrainian victory would be a victory for Western values, and therefore boost their self-esteem. Yeah, but if they can't identify what those values are, if they don't know what those values are, to what extent will it actually boost self-esteem? How quickly will the West revert to sucking up to Putin or to whoever is running Russia at the time to try to get their natural gas again? How quickly will they revert to criticizing Ukraine for a million different things, for not being woke enough or whatever? You know, how sustainable is this if they don't even know what Western values are? All right, so it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting. All right, let's, all right, we passed a halfway mark. That's pretty good for these European shows, but we are $300 short of our goal of $650. If any of you out there who have other means and who get value from the show and are open to doing this want to put in $300 and get us to our goal, that'd be great. But you can continue asking questions. But what I prefer at this point, I take another sip of my water slash vodka, what I prefer is $20 questions. So let's stop with the five $10 questions and shift to only $20 questions because we've got a lot of questions here and limited time. It is late here. It's already 11.15 and I do need to get some sleep today. Okay, all of my $20 questions on completely different topics. So let me quickly look and see if there are questions that are related to this. What is this? No. Okay, so Toby says Swedish women are the best. That is very much an issue of taste and they're not my favorite. I don't go for the blonde, thin blonde type. Toby is asking a lot of questions today. Toby says Latin and Greek civilization, regardless of the bedrock of most European countries, be Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Slavs also claim being is of Rome. Yes, but do they know what Rome represents? They know what Rome means. Do they think in terms of, when they think that they are the heirs of Rome or the heirs of Latin, of Greece, what does that represent in their mind? What does that capture? Does it capture the idea of the recitalian ideas of individualism or moral individualism and respect for logic and reason? Or is it just some vague, oh, there were great civilizations and we want to be like them? I think it's the latter. But yes, I think Europe very much is Greek. It's roots and origins in Athens, not in Jerusalem. Themaster, thank you for the 30 pounds, although pounds, not worth as much as they were just a few months ago. Great to be in the UK using dollars. Applejack, thank you for the $20. We really appreciate that. Thanks for the support, guys. Those were without any questions associated with it. We'll look at that in a minute. Oh, Tobias continues. Not saying this is substantial to build on, but we think of ourselves as heirs of Rome, regardless of how far the different cultures are to that of Rome. Yeah, although I think a lot of Europeans think of themselves still as the heirs of Christianity, and I think Christianity still has the most influence on Europe. I mean, it's constantly battling with the enlightenment for dominance over Europe. But certainly in Eastern Europe, it's Christianity rather than Rome. Tobias then says Denmark did first recon after the pipeline sabotage since two leaks were close to Bornholm. Yes, but now Sweden has taken over the investigation and it's dominated the investigation. So that's kind of that's kind of funny. Let's see. Apple hidden them in and paid $50 at the beginning and forgot to include my question. So I've really paid $55 even though my question is attached to a $5 chat. Okay, let me take the $5 chat since we're going beyond the scope. We'll go broader. Anyway, to what extent is regulation of your own stem cells driven by their desire to prevent some people from affording better medical care than others? Interesting question. I think that's part of it. I think that definitely plays a part of it. If you think about it, it's also to protect healthy people from benefiting from the fact that they're healthy because their stem cells might be healthy. It's to protect those unhealthy people from having a disadvantage relative to healthy people. It's to protect young people have better stem cells than old people. So we don't want to make old people feel bad because the stem cell treatment is only available for young people. It's definitely a factor in regulating stem cells is egalitarianism is you can apply this to everybody. It's not universal, right? It's your stem cells are going to be used for you and you might have good stem cells and they can be used and they might have bad stem cells and they can be used and things like that. So that's a big part of it. The second part of it is the FDA, the authorities, they love to run big studies and they love to be able to document everything that they approve in a particular way which they consider the scientific method and the only scientific method. And I don't think that you can do that with to that extent with stem cells with this kind of stem cells because it's personal. It's my stem cells are different than your stem cells. It's not one universal solution. So it's very hard to run studies. It's very hard to figure out. So they want to prove it even though there's no nobody suggests that there's any harm done here. Nobody suggests that there's any problem here. But they haven't checked the boxes. They haven't dotted the eyes and crossed the T's and they're bureaucrats. And by the way, it's hard to fend them. How much this is holding us back in terms of longevity, in terms of just life improvement, in terms of allowing us to repair our knees and our backs and so much, so many of the ailments that ails so many of us could be repaired with stem cells. Now, stem cells also associated. Now, this is your own stem cells. So yes, there's other issues with stem cells and periodic stem cells, which Republicans against other stem cells that the Democrats against. But a lot of it, you're absolutely right. A lot of it is driven by egalitarianism. And that's also related to the trials, right? The universality of the cure. Thank you for the $55. Luca, thank you for the 10 Swiss banks. I know what's happening to the Swiss bank is I haven't been watching the Swiss bank. Is the dollar getting stronger vis-a-vis the Swiss bank as well as the Swiss bank holding up and remaining strong? I'm kind of curious. Now I'm going to have to check. I'm going to be in Switzerland, so that'll be easy. But I'm going to have to check to see how that's holding up. I want a few minutes. I don't think Liz Truss caved to the media pressure. I think she caved to the markets. I think she actually caved to the financial markets. Just like many, many, many politicians in the past, including Bill Clinton, famously constantly caved to financial markets. Wow, 149 yen to the dollar. God, that's amazing. That's amazing. It would be interesting to see how this all is going to play out in the next few months. Oh, Tobias, wow, another $58. Thank you. Yeah, I'm also curious about the Danish Kroner. How's that held up to the dollar in relative terms? How other currencies, other than you and the pound, held up? And the yen, those three I know. All right, Tobias says, good old George Bush wouldn't allow research into life extension because he feared divorce rates would go up and to think he isn't the worst president of my lifetime. He was bad. He was bad. I'm not sure he's worse than Trump, but he was bad. Obama or Biden, they're all so bad. It's hard to rank them. Oh, the Danish Kroner is pecked to the euro. I didn't know that. Norwegian crown is doing bad. Okay, it's good to know. So my dollar's worth a lot of no way. Cool. What do I buy in Norway though? Nothing to buy in Norway. Okay, let's now do our $20 questions just on all topics. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Amen. Just came in with 500 bucks. Thank you, Amen. Wow. And for a phenomenal reason. So you made my day, Amen, not just because of the money, but because of the reason you're giving to because I'm so upset by the fact that all the stuff I've done on Iran, so he says thank you for covering the Iranian demonstrations in your previous shows. All the shows I've done on Iran and covering the Iranian demonstrations and covering what's going on there, I'm not getting the kind of viewership that just any other show that I do will get. And in so many ways, it's the most important topic right now. So many lives at stake. So much of the futures at stake, even the American future in the sense that if Iran had as a revolution and the Mullahs are out, that is such a boost to America. So and think of the girls, right? I say this, I've said this often, think of those girls. So I really appreciate that some of you appreciate the importance of what's going on in Iran. And if you listen to the shows I've done on it, and I wish I wish we could get, we get more people to listen to them because I mean, it's so it's so sad what's going on there and inspiring at the same time. And people are not paying attention to it. People don't care. And the people who seem to care the least are Republicans and libertarians. Crazy. All right, so thank you. I mean, really appreciate it. Okay, Shahzabat are Vulcans from Star Trek Stoics on steroids? No, because Vulcans have no choice. Vulcans in a sense, a stoic in the sense that they are emotionless, not from choice, which is what the stoics are. But in the DNA, they just don't have an option. This is just how they are. Stoicism is a philosophy in the sense that they are, they choose to be that way, they choose to repress their emotions. That's that's very different, I think, than it hardwired into you. It's coded into you. Okay, Follab Busines, I don't know, something like that asks, hi, Iran, what gives someone private, what gives someone property rights over land and water? How can people have the right to sell by land or water when he, she did not create, produce it? Should water and land be publicly owned? No, indeed quite the opposite. I think all land and water should be privately owned. But what should make them private is, is work in one way or the other, right? And the two forms in which work can make land private. One is the telling of the soil, the actual use of the land, the building on it, the use of it, the turning in agricultural land, a forest or whatever it is, that actually becomes a productive use. That makes that land yours. That is at the core of the American Homestead Act from the, from the mid 19th century, which I think is one of the greatest things ever, which allowed people to own land if they went there, fenced it off and cultivated for a certain number of years. So that's one way in which land becomes yours. It's because you worked it. You changed it. But the reality is that what is money? Money is work. Money represents work. When I buy land, I am exchanging land for the work that I've done. So I haven't worked this particular land, but it is this land now represents my work. And indeed, if I abandon the land and I do anything with it, just leave it there, not fence it off, not, not improve it, not do anything to it, then there are in, in the law, in the law protecting property rights, there are provisions for that land to be considered abandoned. And therefore, anybody who can use it can take it. So property rights are contingent on use or contingent on keeping them up. If you own a house, but you abandon it and don't use it and don't do anything with it and it falls into disrepair and it's just sitting there on land somewhere in the middle of nowhere ever. And then, yeah, squatters can enter it and claim property rights over it. And that is legitimate. So the right to property comes from the purchase, which is the exchange of my work, my sweat, my intellectual effort in exchange for the land. And for my, in maintaining that land, you know, you have to keep the land, you have to do something and that is be continuously involved in some way in maintaining it, whether it could be just constantly improving the fencing around it, it could be in actually cultivating it, it could be developing it, it could be something about it, but it has, there has to be something about it. It has to be something about tending to that land. Thank you. Good question. Okay, more and why, more and why, more and why, more and why, more and D, more and D, I think. Okay. In one of the essays, you talked about how it's morally just a humiliator torture, POWs as necessary. If it helps to save lives of your own troops, can the statement be used as a litmus test to see whether someone fully concretizes and understands the morality of objectives? No, there are no litmus tests. God, no litmus test, please. Objectivism is not easy to apply. It's certainly not easy to apply to the question of torture, or prisoners of war, or difficult, complicated and complicated moral question of war time, not self-evident. And indeed, there's a lot of disagreement among objectivists about this. I take a certain view, but not all objectivist takes this view. So, no, I think this is something that suddenly new people knew to objectivism would find this idea of torture, certain ridiculous and immoral, and I would be surprised at all if they felt that way, and I wouldn't then denounce them as a consequence. I disagree with them and try to convince them I was right, but there's no litmus test. There's no litmus test. I mean, you could say a litmus test is that you don't believe in God. A litmus test is you respect reason, but there can be a litmus test on concrete issues. We disagree on a bunch of different things. This one is particularly complex. Now, this is one that I haven't agreed with. I think Lenin Picoff agrees with me. I don't, I may never mention this one, but there are others who disagree with me. So, I think it's right. I think there's no question. I think there's a sense in which this is a test of how committed you are to really the egoism as applied to foreign policy, but it isn't the only test and it isn't a litmus test. It isn't yes or no. I generally try to avoid litmus tests. Lots of words. All right. All right. Let's go over these quickly. I am tired. It's 11.30 here and I'm tired. So, I'm going to do these quick. Not all of them are quick questions, but I will give quick answers. Michael asked, is America still a good country or have we devolved into quasi-fascistic mediocrity? I think we're a good country that is devolving into quasi-fascistic mediocrity. I think that's a direction we haven't quite reached there completely. There's still pockets of real goodness in this country. There's still real virtues that if they're associated with, but it's, but we're heading in the wrong direction. No question about it. Are we good right now? I think we're still on the side of good, particularly relative to the alternatives, global alternatives. Liam says, you're on. You do a great job of capturing all the nuance and making what's really going on understandable. Thank you. Many intellectuals are either too simplistic or too wordy and convoluted. You get it just right. I really appreciate that, Liam. I mean, I do think that is my strength that I both talk in a grounded, simple English, grounded to reality. I'm not roundabout. I go right to the point, right to the heart of it, and I try to make these things as simple as they can, even when they're complex. I'm a teacher at heart. That's what I try to do is to simplify complex issues and complex and bring you the essentials. I hope I do that well. Thank you, Liam, for the, for the compliment. James writes, does every squiggle of mathematics on a blackboard have to correspond to reality? I don't know. I mean, ultimately, does the squiggle itself probably not? I mean, there are, there are, there's a square root of a negative number. What's it called? I forget what it's called in mathematics, right? That is very useful in mathematics. What exactly does it respond to in reality? I don't know. I couldn't tell you, but it's useful in mathematics. And you could probably draw a line from it to reality, not directly maybe, but through other concepts. So ultimately, everything in mathematics has to go back to imaginary number or complex number, use it in electricity. Yes. Yeah, the square root of a negative number, negative one. If I remember my math right, and I did do pretty advanced math in my engineering degree. So, but everything in mathematics ultimately has to come down to reality, but not, it's not like I want to one correspondent through a deeper understanding of the mathematics and the way it is used. It's an imaginary number. That's right. It's a bad used and it's used for electricity in electricity, among other things. And it's important. And it's, you can't solve a lot of equations. You can't understand a lot of phenomena without using it. And it has to have a correspondence in reality. I just don't know what it is. And again, it might not be a one-to-one. It might be a complex correspondence. Michael says the courts have, should have waited until after November to do this abortion primitivism. Now the GOP has grasped defeat from the Joseph victory. But that's good, right? I mean, it's good that it happened before the election. Let people actually vote on this. It gives the opportunity for the electorate to see what the Republicans are really about. And what they court, this great court that Trump voted in is really all about. Nathan Smith's, do you know why Elon Musk changed his mind and agreed to the original terms to buy Twitter? Yes. It basically was clear that he was going to lose the lawsuit. That is that he made an offer to buy the company. He signed a contract to buy the company. And then he went ahead and done the contract and Twitter sued him. And he tried to argue that, I don't know, they misrepresented this, they misrepresented that. But I think at the end of the day, he came to the realization. Probably his lawyers made him come to the realization that he was going to lose the case that all these excuses he was making were not, did not correspond to reality. And that the fact was that the court was going to force him to buy Twitter. So he decided to preempt the court and do it himself. So he had signed a contract and he was reneging on a contract. Daniel says, I just watched America versus Americans with Leonard Peacock, along with a young Iran. Yeah. Still relevant today. You're awesome. You're on keep up to fight. Thank you, Daniel. And yes, it's very relevant today. More today than back then. It's only gotten more so. The American people have only lost more and become less American with time. Frank says, when you discuss the midterms, it seems you have accepted the tribalism of the Democrats and Republicans. It's sad that we can't vote for individuals. No, it's not tribalism to accept the fact the reality. It's not tribalism, me to accept the reality that Republicans vote as Republicans and Democrats, those are Democrats. So what matters is how many Democrats and how many Republicans they are in the House of the Senate. That's the reality. There's very little people crossing party lines about these issues. That's why I don't bother with the specifics of a particular candidate. So though in the Senate, obviously, it's more significant. So you talk about specific candidates. But the fact is, Republicans, Democrats, they're the ones running. Republicans and Democrats will win the House will win the Senate. That's not tribalism. That's just the way the system works and the reality of the system today. I wish there's an alternative. I wish we had another political party that was better than those two, and we could talk about a three-way split. That would be cool. All right, everybody, I am exhausted. I am heading to sleep. Hopefully, I'll sleep tonight. I haven't been sleeping the last few nights. It's been rough. Thank you. Thank you for the superchatters. We did really well today. So I appreciate that. I'll post the amounts on this chat. So I really appreciate that. In particular, thank you to Tobias, who pitched in a lot of Danish Krona. Thank you to Armin, who pitched in 500 US dollars. And thank you to God. The guy with the handle I couldn't pronounce, who started this off with 50 bucks and then added five dollars afterwards. So thank you to the three of you. You kind of led the way in terms of contributions. But thanks to everybody who participated. Thank you for supporting the show. Those of you who cannot, who are not on live, who would like to, in spite of that, like to support the Iran Book Show, you can do it on Patreon. You can do it on Subscribestar. You can do it on locals. And you can do it on IranBookShow.com, so I support through PayPal. I'll see you all probably tomorrow. There'll be a show tomorrow. Don't know what time exactly, but there will be a show tomorrow. Talk to you then. Bye, everybody.