 All right, everybody, welcome to your own book show on this Tuesday, January 6th, still in Austin, Texas, here for a couple of seminars and I figured I missed you guys so much that I would come on and do a show. It's 9 p.m. here, 10 p.m. on the east coast. I appreciate all of you guys who are out there on the on the east coast still listening to this. That's amazing. Jeffrey, I am here. I am in Austin. Well, not here because you're not in Austin, let's see. Yeah, so it's going to be a news roundup, but it's kind of evening and stuff, so it's kind of somewhere in between. Happy to take questions. So Super Chat is on. You can use that to ask questions. You know, I've got a couple of four topics, but we'll see how long it takes because they're kind of all big topics. I think I might cover them quickly. I'm kind of tired, so I might cover them quickly. The next two days in Austin is going to be a seminar on philosophy and economics. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. The last two days have been philosophy and statistics, probability theory. Interesting, a little over my head sometimes, but interesting. And suddenly, yeah, valuable, yeah, statistics is hard. I mean, probability theory is hard and doing statistics right is hard. Oh, yeah, in that context, I do want to mention, I'll say more about this in a future show because somebody paid me money to review this, but I can't figure out who it was. So somebody has asked me to answer a couple of questions and send me money. And by the way, a number of you have asked me to do some stuff and sent me some money associated with it. I flagged all of that, and as soon as I get back home, I'll do it. For example, I can't comment on videos with the setup I have for the road. For some reason, the sound and video doesn't feed back, or the sound at least doesn't feed back into the system. Anyway, so my screen is just too small to show videos. But anyway, so I'll do that when I get home. So please be patient. I know you paid money, but please be patient. Anyway, I keep, yeah, somebody, sorry, Rob notices that it's, you know, we've got a very color of budget setting here. We've got the light over here. Yeah, drama, black, solid black, light. Yeah, you're getting good at this. Rob, this is good. Let's see, what was I gonna say? Yeah, I mean, people keep sending me stuff about COVID vaccines. You know, it is literally impossible to debunk every single arbitrary, crazy theory that people come up with. And once you watch somebody and they make a claim and you check the claim and the claim turns out to be completely bogus, there's no point in keeping going back to the same guy and having to debunk every single arbitrary, ridiculous, nutty claim that he makes. But that's what's going on with COVID. There are a few people who are making a lot of money, who I think are mostly dishonest, who are making a lot of money off of the COVID vaccine hysteria and scaring the bejesus out of all of you guys. They're lying or they're ignorant. In some cases, they might be both, but they're ignorant. They're ignorant. And it's easy to be ignorant because, as I said a minute ago, statistics is hard. Being a good doctor does not mean you're a good statistician. Being a good doctor does not mean you know how to read a medical journal article. Right? And it's just unbelievable to, you know, how many of these am I going to have to debunk before you get the patent? And I've already done it. I've done shows. I've debunked. So another one. So, you know, excess death in the US. Okay, I solved that one. Now we've got excess death in England. So I have to debunk the one in England. So, you know, on and on and on it goes. So it's just, it's just, yeah, it's upsetting. Jennifer says have Amish on. I will. We're going to go, we're trying to figure out a date that works for everybody. Amish is here at the seminar. What an injustice so many objectivists have done to Amish. It's, it really is despicable the way he was treated during COVID and since COVID and with all these nonsensical conspiracy theories, like amectin, hydrochloride, whatever, and the vaccines. It's just really, really sad and not, not a good, not, not the objectivist movement at its best. One other issue I found interesting. So I did this and then I'll get to the topics in the list. I did a show the other day about, oh no, I tweeted about, you know, the drag shows. So, so a court in Tennessee ruled that the legislation that banned certain drag shows was unconstitutional. And I said, absolutely good. And then God, what I got back. The government needs to protect kids, but the government also needs to protect adults who might accidentally be exposed to sexualized drag show. I mean, that's interesting, right? So that means that everybody, everybody, everybody claims this, thinks that the government should, by law, have movie ratings and that, you know, it shouldn't be parents responsibility to decide what movies children can go to or not. It should be the government. And the government should have movie ratings. And those movie ratings should have the force of law. And cinema owners who, I don't know, who, who allow kids into an all rated movie, or God forbid, into, in C17 movies should be prosecuted for that. I mean, when I talk about pornography, we're talking, I mean, and how do you define pornography? But children should mostly be guided by parents. And then that would apply to the theater too. So I wonder what kind of rating the government would give a show like, I don't know, what was that show about the Mormons that the South Park guys put on the play? I mean, it was God. It was, it was horrific in terms of the sexual innuendos and what they said and how disrespectful it was to Mormon church. I wonder if the government should rate plays. I mean, the government already mandates that music have ratings. The Book of Mormon, thank you, Jeremy. And maybe the government, you know, there was a big fight over ratings of music and songs and what's appropriate and what's inappropriate. But not just ratings, the government should enforce those ratings, that is, parents who allow their kids to listen to certain rap songs should go to jail for a long, long, long time, right? But I have a feeling that all these people don't advocate for doing that for movies and plays and music and stuff. That really this isn't about sex. And by the way, I find, for kids, I find violence in movies far more upsetting and far more disgusting and far more something I want to protect my kids from than sex. Sex is pretty natural. There's nothing wrong with sex. Sex is actually pretty beautiful. So that's what we should be protecting them. But it's not, it's actually not that. It's that they find the trends, the drag shows, even though drag shows are one of the amazing things. We talked about Mash. Shazbot got me to watch an old episode of Mash. And in Mash, if I remember right, on many episodes, the soldiers, they were doing drag shows. I mean, generally in war movies that you go back and you watch war movies, war, war, two war movies, Vietnam war movies, you'll find that as part of entertaining the troops, they did drag shows. Now, okay, we got to protect adults from them. They might see something they don't like. Now, I get it. You know, if it's pornography, absolutely, keep it behind closed doors clearly. And kids should never be allowed in. Some of the displays of pride events are pretty disgusting and stupid and ridiculous. But don't go, right? Just don't go to pride events. It's not that hard to shield children from it. Just, you know, these events are well advertised. Everybody knows about them. The people who do the disgusting stuff, it's disgusting. I think they're horrible people, but it's, you know, like enacting sexual acts and SNM. But it's easy. Just don't take your kids to those shows. But how we got to a place in America where now drag shows should be illegal or drag shows, you know, and not all drag shows are secularized. Anyway, just beyond me, that children should never be exposed to a man dressed up as a woman. And parents should be penalized if they take their kids. Since when is the state responsible? Oh, I guess they've always been, because we have government schools. So, sorry, I screwed up. Of course, the state is responsible for educating our kids. How did I get that? Well, anyway, there we go. So, I don't know. The whole issue of LGBTQ, whatever you want to call it, it's just gone off the rails. Just gone off the rails. And people are willing to give up liberty, give up freedom because they're offended. That sounds like they're left. That sounds like woke. That sounds like, like, what do we call it? You know, we need to have special rooms for these people so they deal with the fact that they're being offended. Right? Microaggressions. It turns out that conservatives can suffer from microaggressions as well. And it can suffer trauma for things they might see or hear or discover. I don't know. Men dressed as women. It's so offensive. Whoa. All right. Ukraine. A lot of news out of Ukraine. And we don't know a lot. So, here's the thing. It seems pretty obvious that Ukraine has started its offensive campaign. I don't think it's the peak. I don't think it's the main offensive campaign. I don't still think we know what the Ukrainian strategy is going to be overall. But it does seem clear that the Ukrainians have gone from the defense to the offense in the last few days and are attacking Russian positions along the front. Primarily in places that I think most military experts didn't expect them to attack, although I told you so. I have to say I was right again. One of the shows that I did about Bakhmut and the so-called counter offensive that Ukrainians would launch, I said, one of the possibilities is that drawing them into Bakhmut and then their Ukrainians, once they fatigue the Russians and the Russians all in there, that Ukraine's just massive force and just drives through Bakhmut and kick them out. And it does look like that's part of the strategy at least, maybe not driving right through Bakhmut, but it looks like they're trying to go at the edges, at the sides, and make real progress in that part of Donetsk, which is not what people expected. People expected them to go south into this province's name I can't pronounce. That's between Donetsk and Gelsan. The Ukrainians are attacking in Bakhmut. They're attacking south of Bakhmut. They're attacking along the Donetsk, southern Morboda. They're also attacking to the south, but far more west than people expected. Hard to tell how those attacks are going. Russians already come out and said they've destroyed 1,500 men and so many tanks and so many this, but I don't believe any of it. We'll wait and see. I think indications of the Grodas that Ukrainians are making progress pretty much on every front where they've attacked. How much progress is really hard to tell at this point. We're in the fog of war and the Ukrainians have no interest right now in sharing with us whether they are progressing or not progressing, what weapons they're using, and so on. It's pretty clear though that Ukraine is not yet deployed. It's five new begrades that are using Western weapons systems, so it's pretty clear that the Leopard 2 German tanks have not been deployed yet, that some of the Western trained forces have not been deployed yet, and that the bulk of their Ukrainian forces are still being held back. I think probably because currently the attacks are more probing or distracting and attempt to distract the Russians, and then once they find a weak spot or they see the Russians moving forces from a place that creates a weak spot to both of these forces, that's when I think you'll see a significant attack with regard to from the Ukrainians. I wouldn't be surprised, don't tell the Russians this, but I wouldn't be surprised if ultimately the attack doesn't come in the south, but it comes in the north. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ukrainians set out as one of their goals early on is to take Luhansk province in the north and to take that northern segment. That would also cut off a lot of the supply routes to the Donetsk segment and maybe take the north and then move to the south. We'll get to one complication about the south in a minute, but that seems likely I think. I wouldn't be surprised, put it that way. I don't know if it's likely that they will do that. Also, if you follow the news, you will notice that there is this unit of Russians who have anti-Putin Russians who have been in Ukraine during the war and who have been and who are armed and have significant weapons have been attacking across the border into Russia in the Kharkiv area. That is distracting the Russians because they have to send forces there. It's been humiliating for the Russians because they just crossed the border with almost no resistance. That is an interesting kind of diversionary tactic that is being used. How much of that is being guided by the Ukrainian military command? Probably, I find it hard to believe that the Russians are doing this without these opposition Russians. I'm sure they're getting Ukrainian support and Ukrainian guidance and certainly Ukrainian intelligence, probably Western intelligence too. The next, I think the next few days, hours, the next few days, the next few weeks, in what's going on, Ukraine going to be crucial. We could see a Ukraine progressing very, very fast on a number of different fronts. We could see a dragged out, slow advance. I think you'll probably see both. In some fronts, the Ukrainian will advance very fast. In some fronts, you'll see where I think the Russians will capitulate. In other fronts, I think you'll see a much slower, much bloodier, much slower progress. I generally think, and I think this is absolutely true, that Ukrainians are going to cause real damage to the Russians. Whether they manage in this offensive to occupy all the land taken from them, probably not, but they will regain significant land back from the Russians. I look forward to that. That's what I hope, but it's also what I anticipate based on what I know about both armies, based on what I know about the tools that they use, i.e. the weapons that they have, and the training that they have, and the quality of the soldiers. The Russian military is worse than pathetic. Basically, it's demoralized. It is not motivated. It doesn't know what it's doing there. It doesn't know why it went there. It doesn't have the weapon systems. It has primitive weapon systems, old weapon systems, broken down weapon system. Whereas the Ukrainians are motivated. They're incentivized. They know exactly what they're fighting for. They're fighting for their own freedom. They're fighting an invader, and they have some of the best weapon systems the West has, and they've been trained on them. From everything that I've heard about that training, they were eager and quick students. They learned some of these weapons systems much faster than the West expected. So I expect we'll get some good news in the Ukrainian front in the next few weeks. Again, fog of war. Don't believe what you hear early on. Wait for verification. I'll be updating you here on the show based on what I know. The big news today out of Ukraine, and one thing we do know because it's been confirmed by satellite, by video locally everywhere, is that a major dam in the south of Ukraine in Gerson province has been blown up. That the dam has basically ruptured, that water is flowing through and flooding much of Gerson, thousands of Ukrainians under Russian occupation. Because remember, this dam is in the south of Ukraine in territory that is controlled by the Russians. So the dam is Russian controlled. The area that's going to be flooded is mostly, not exclusively, but mostly Russian controlled land. Although Gerson, the city, I think is going to be flooded as well. And that's in the Ukrainian current. The damage is vast. The triding to recover from this one day in the future is going to take years. Rebuilding that dam, you know, making all that land habitable again. Not going to be an easy process at all. There are conflicting reports on what happened to the dam. Of course, the Russians are blaming the Ukrainians for blowing it up. But the Ukrainians have no, instead of no motivation to blow up indeed, the flooding is going to cause it, because it's going to make it very difficult, almost impossible for the Ukrainians to actually move south into that region. Because now they have this massive kind of a lake into this region and mud and everything else. You know, some Russian positions are going to be taken out and the Russians are going to have to move further south because they're on wet territory, instead of becoming no man's land. But it's certainly going to make it very difficult for the Ukrainians to get further south in Gerson. They'll have to come from the east in order to get there. And that is, of course, also the route to Crimea. So it just doesn't make any sense for Ukraine to have blown up this dam. While the dam, this is a dam that was built in 1956 by the Soviet Union. It has been part of Ukraine and under Ukrainian control and Ukrainian sovereignty since 1991. The other theory I've read is that it was an accident, that the dam has been weakened, that the Russians have neglected it, that it could have been an accident. A lot of different theories that suggest that it might have been accidental. Possible, but very unlikely, given that it happens exactly on the day or the day after the Ukrainians launch an offensive against the Russians. So my view is, again, I don't know. I don't have any more evidence than anybody else out there. But just logically what makes sense to me, we'll find out in the weeks and months to come if this is right or not. But what makes sense to me is that this was done by the Russians on purpose. This is an act of panic, an act of desperation. Again, I think the Russian forces are desperate, confused, scared, and this is one way to prevent the Ukrainians from coming south directly into Gilson province. They weren't going to come south because they would have had to cross the river anyway. And from everything I've read, the Ukrainians don't have the equipment to cross the river. So they were not training, they did not buy equipment from the west or get equipment from the west to cross the river and fight in the south. So this does not seem like it was strategic and thought out. It seems like it was panicked and an absolutely act of real desperation, real panic, which doesn't surprise me. I think that is the state of the Russian military right now. Think about how the head of the Wagner group, the Wagner group is constantly berating the Russian military and how pathetic and weak it is. There's been some fighting between the Russian military and the Wagner group itself. They captured this colonel the other day and they filmed him where he said that the Russians were actually sabotaging the Wagner group and actually shooting at them. I mean, there's complete disarray within the Russian military, complete disarray. So it wouldn't be surprised whether they came an order from the top or somebody local did it. But somebody panicked, somebody didn't think strategically, and somebody blew up this dam. And one of the consequences of blowing up this dam is the dam, the reservoir behind the dam, was the number one source of water to Crimea. We're entering summer, less rain, you just blew up the dam that provided water to Crimea. How are you going to get water to Crimea? This is not well thought out. It's just going to infuriate the Ukrainians more, it's going to give them even more motivation to fight. I think a mistake and a strategic error, not surprisingly, by the Russians and they will pay for it. I think they will pay for it dearly. Interestingly, today was us at the debut of Tucker Carlson's new Twitter show. So he put out a 10 and a half minute video on Twitter. And what is the first topic Tucker Carlson chose to talk about? Well, basically, the show is dedicated to the idea that Ukraine blew up the dam, that they are responsible for it. Tucker Carlson calls the dam effectively Russian, I guess because the Soviets built it, I don't know, but the dam is Russian and this is Russia's own infrastructure and that's why they wouldn't have blown it up themselves. I mean, Tucker Carlson has become a joke. He's been a joke for a few years now, but he's become a complete Russian mouthpiece. All he does is recite Russian propaganda. I really hope you don't watch him on Twitter. I really hope you don't follow him on Twitter. This guy should lose whatever support he has. His Twitter show should flop. This is a joke and I mean, it's an evil joke because he's doing real damage. He's moving the weight and he's influencing the weight in a horrible direction, a direction that could really cost America. It's turning the Republican Party into a party that's, I think, un-electable. If it sides with Putin, which is clearly Tucker now unashamedly, unembarrassingly exciting with Putin. Yeah, I mean, it's not quite treasonous, but it's, you know, this is deeply troubling and deeply problematic. Elon Musk of course retweeted Tucker Carlson's show and then said something about we want people from all political to be on Twitter and, you know, I'm fine with it being on Twitter. I'm not too happy with Elon Musk retweeting it. Elon Musk himself is taking up some very strange political positions and having very strange bedfellows, but so be it. It really is disturbing that the Tucker takes up. I mean, at best you could say, and I think I said it right at the beginning, I don't know who blew it up. I mean, there's an outside possibility. Is Ukraine, maybe they have some strategic goal in mind, maybe they have some reason to do it. Maybe it was an error, maybe it was a mistake. I'm just saying it's very unlikely and it's much more likely, but Tucker Carlson didn't say that. He didn't say we don't know. He said this was the Ukrainian sabotage. The Ukrainians did it to Russian infrastructure. And that's just disgusting. It's the best way, I think, the best word to actually describe them. All right. So, you know, I'll be, you know, I have a real interest in the Ukraine war. My talk this year at O-Conn will be on the Ukraine war and what we can learn about the right from the response to the Ukraine war. So I'll be, you know, those of you who listen to the show regularly, I don't think we'll find much in my talk at O-Conn new, but it will be an integration, condensed version, and hopefully you'll find it valuable. So let's switch topics. Sequoia. Sequoia capital is one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent venture capital funds in the United States. It is one of, if not the most successful venture capital. They have done phenomenally well. They have funded pretty much every, been involved in the funding of pretty much every successful tech company that I can think of. Doesn't mean all of them, but I can think of one of the, you know, they starting out with companies even before Apple, but including Apple and Cisco, many of the early Silicon Valley, but all the way to today. Sequoia did lose a lot of money on FTX. But one of the things that Sequoia did about 20 years ago, maybe more, is they opened up Sequoia China. Some of their partners in the U.S. were of Chinese origin. They moved to China. They headed it up. They hired local talent. And Sequoia China was the large extent responsible for much of the profitability and amazing returns that Sequoia generated over the last 20 or so years. So maybe more, but at least 20 years. So Sequoia China was a big part of the Sequoia capital success. Again, Sequoia capital, you know, pretty much every company that you could think of as a significant, you know, they've had significant positions in Amazon. What was that shoe company where you could, you bought the shoes, a bunch of shoes, you tried them all on, you kept the ones you liked. You sent back the ones you didn't like. Zappos, Zappos. They were investors in Zappos, which was bought by Amazon. Anyway, they were, they were, they were investors in Amazon. They pretty much every one of these companies, they were part of the initial investors in them. And I got to know one of the founders of Sequoia capital, a really amazing, amazing human being. Anyway, over the years, Sequoia has officers in Israel, it has officers in Europe, in the UK, it has officers in India, there's a real presence in India. And of course it has a presence in China. Today, Sequoia announced they were splitting up. And I found this really interesting. They were, they were creating two, they were basically spinning out their China operations and creating a new venture capital fund with a new name, same venture capital fund with a new name in China that would be completely legally and in terms of partnership separate. So it would be owned by the partners in China, completely separate than the American venture capital fund. And then they were creating a third entity that would take India and Southern Asia. There would be response budgets for Asia other than China. And then the U.S. would keep the traditional Sequoia, would stay in Silicon Valley and continue to be called Sequoia capital. I found this interesting on a number of different fronts. I think this represents one further example of the West kind of leaving China, Western businesses cutting ties with China. Some of this is by China's inspiration. I was also reading some articles about the fact that China, the Chinese security forces have been raiding Western companies and Western consulting companies, accounting companies and basically doing what they can to discourage them from operating in China. The exact opposite of what it was even 10 years ago when they were encouraging Western companies to come to China. I think this is very bad. I think the more this happens, the more we move towards a condition of a cold war and ultimately potential of a hot war. It's not something we should celebrate. But I found Sequoia was six, seven years ago. Last time I talked to this founder who passed away, Sequoia capital was absolutely unequivocally committed to China. China was a big source of its returns. The idea that Sequoia would leave China huge, huge in terms of this delinking and the fact that it is happening. It is happening. And the fear, I think, that American investors have in putting their investments in China. It's going to take a year for Sequoia to unwind because they have to separate the investors who's in China, who's here, the partners are going to have to kind of separate legally. It's probably, I can't imagine the legal bills, millions and millions of dollars to figure this all out and to settle this. Also, the India play is interesting, but it does make sense. My guess is that partners from the U.S. who flew to China, also went to India, also went to other places in Asia, they do a trip. Once you're giving up on China, you might as well just spin off the rest of Asia as well. Sequoia will keep. The U.S. Sequoia will keep its satellites, if you will, in Europe and in Israel. The primary thing here is the spinning off China. I think that's big news and I think that it's, again, an indication of more of this delinking between American business and China generally. Okay. Over the last two days, we have seen the SEC take decisive and pretty crippling actions against two of the biggest players in the crypto space. Yesterday, they went after Binance. Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world, significantly larger than FTX. You remember FTX that went bust and accused of fraud. Binance has accused of similar things to FTX. They've been accused of using customers' accounts inappropriately, acting as an exchange illegally, all kinds of stuff. I'm not going to get into the details maybe another time, but the SEC is filing against them and against the CEO. This is devastating for the crypto market. Binance was the entity, particularly FTX. Everything went through Binance. I think crypto has an answer. Decentralized exchanges where the exchange happened not in a particular place, not under a particular umbrella, but that has its own risks and its own challenges and its own costs. But the reality is that Binance was the place, the place of choice. It hasn't shut down yet, but you're going to see a significant outflow, a bank run, if you win, on Binance. Nobody's going to want to get stuck just in case they go bankrupt. It's going to make the running of Binance very, very difficult now that the SEC has gone after them. And then this morning, in an act that was surprising, not surprising really, because I've told you forever since crypto became a thing, that ultimately the U.S. government would try and do everything in its power, and the SEC would try to do everything in its power to destroy crypto, to destroy Bitcoin, to destroy that they have no interest in competition on money. They have no interest in innovations. They have no interest in innovations that happen outside of their control. And basically what we're seeing is they went up to Coinbase. Coinbase is a major player in the crypto space in the United States. It's publicly traded. It went public. It is a well regarded firm. It has a publication that is well regarded about the crypto space. It's an exchange. It does a lot of different things. It's an information provider. And the SEC, again, has gone after them, basically declaring that crypto is a security. And that Coinbase and Binance, by trading them, by providing a market, they're trading in securities, and they don't have a license to trade in securities, and they don't have permission to trade in securities. And the SEC hasn't granted them to them. Look, I'm not a huge fan of crypto in this context. And as you know, I'm skeptical about Bitcoin and others and the ability to be successful. But let the market play out. Let it play out. Let's see what happens. People will lose a lot of money, yes, but they're taking risks. They know, they know, they don't know what they're doing. It's not my business. It's certainly not the government's business. No individual rights are being violated here. Unless there's fraud, FTX probably committed fraud, but I don't think Coinbase, certainly I don't think they committed fraud. Binance, I'm not sure, but Coinbase is not. But the SEC does not want to lose control. It doesn't want to lose control on companies raising capital. It doesn't want to lose control in security exchanges. And the feds, primarily the Federal Reserve and the government more broadly, do not want to lose control over money. They do not want an alternative money. They do not want anything competing against the dollar. And they will do everything in order to destroy them. And it's, God, it's disgusting and despicable and sad. And, you know, it's going to, I think, put a real restraints in terms of what is possible on the crypto space. We're never going to know what could have happened with crypto, what crypto could have become, what crypto can do. We won't see the kill applications that might have come from this. And this is, this is only suggestive of what the government could do to AI, what the government could do to biotech, when and if they decide to go after them, when and if they, you know, yeah, Coinbase is suit for fraud, but not the fraud we would recognize, but fraud of selling securities without defining them as securities. But of course, one of the things Coinbase is saying is, look, guys, you guys, you guys have had plenty of opportunity to define what crypto is, to tell us whether it's security, whether it's money, whether it's something else, and to give us guidelines on how to trade it. And we've been, and Coinbase can say this because it's true and so can FTX. We've been asking you for clear cut, you know, regulation, if you will, to let us know if we're doing something illegal, we'll stop it, we'll do something else. But you're not telling us it's illegal until you accuse us of fraud. So yeah, I mean, it's just what you're seeing here, and you're not going to get this perspective anymore, what you're seeing here is the arbitrary use of government power, what you're seeing here is government using its power just to destroy something it doesn't like. It's not based on law, it's not based on the facts of reality, it's not based on protecting individual rights, it's not based on fraud as I think we understand it or anybody reasonable understands it. It's simply a decision made I think in December of this year, of last year, in December of last year by the up and ups in the regulatory agencies to crush crypto and they did it to the banks and don't think this is now related to what happened to banks in March and May, it is, it certainly signature bank was closed because of its crypto association, but everything, I mean, Silvergate was forced into closure, who knows what we'll find in terms of even Silicon Valley Bank, if things that evolve differently with regard to crypto and banking, if they had all the charters that weren't granted for banking entities and everything else, the government just made an arbitrary decision to shut down an entire industry and they're just going after it and they're doing it systematically and nobody is going to be safe. And what's surprising to me is that the market in crypto and the market for Bitcoin is not reflecting that at all, not reflective at all. All right, so that is the attack on crypto truly, not good. All right, oh, finally something good. All right, so, god, you've heard over and over and over again, you've probably seen it on Twitter, you've seen it every way on television and every way, you've seen these just the stereo, the stereo emanating from the industry to a large extent, but from all kinds of pundits and politicians and industry experts and so on, the stereo about AI and AI is going to kill us all and it's devastating, it's a, what do you call it, an extinction level event potentially. And there have been very few voices defending AI and so I was super happy today, and not surprised but super happy to find this long Twitter thread. It really is an essay by Mark Andreessen defending AI and it's just a beautiful piece and I encourage you all to read it, I'll read you a little bit of it. I encourage you all to read it because he's taking the exact right approach. This is how it begins. The era of artificial intelligence is here and boy are people freaking out. Fortunately, I'm here to bring the good news. AI will not destroy the world and in fact, AI will save it. And then he goes on, right? He goes on, let's see, he gives a description of AI and he says, AI can make everything we care about better, everything we care about better. And he says, the most validated core conclusion of, and again, I would face things definitely, but listen, this is pretty good. The most validated core conclusion of social sciences across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better. Smarter people have better outcomes in almost every domain of activity. Further, human intelligence is the lever that we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today, science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, art, everything he lists here. Without the application of intelligence on all these domains, we would all still be living in mud huts scratching out a mega existence of subsistence farming. Instead, we have used our intelligence, replace that with reason, to raise our standard of living in the order of 10,000 X over the last 4,000 years. What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence, to make all these outcomes of intelligence and many others from the creation of new medicines to ways to solve climate change, the technologies to reach the stars, much, much better from here. AI augmentation of human intelligence has already started. And he says AI is already around us in the forms of computer control systems of many kinds. It's now rapidly escalating with AI large language models like Chai GBT and will accelerate very quickly from here if we let it. So I think that's great. And then he goes on to talk about every child would have an AI tutor and get a customized education. Every person will have a personal assistant, AI personal assistant, every scientist will have an AI assistant, collaborate a partner, every leader, everything will have it. He says in short, everything that people do with their natural intelligence today can be done much better with AI. And we will be able to take on new challenges that have been impossible to tackle without AI from curing all diseases to achieving interstellar travel. And this isn't just about intelligence. Perhaps the most underestimated quality of AI is how humanizing it can be. So he actually makes the argument that we'll all become nicer, you know, all of this. It's just, I mean, he says we should be living in a much better world with AI and now we can. And then he goes into why the panic and he analyzes it. And I think he does a good job of analyzing it. So I'll do a whole show on this, because there's a lot of content here about why the panic, what's the panic about, why people support it and everything else. And he goes, he takes all the objections, will AI ruin our society? And he has all the essay on that. Will AI take all our jobs? He has an all essay on that. Will AI lead to crippling inequality? He has an essay on that. Will AI lead to bad people doing bad things? He has an essay on that. And then he talks about what I think is the most important one. And that is the risk of not pursuing AI with maximum force and speed. That is the real risk. So I'll do a show just on this, because there's a massive amount of content here that is incredible, valuable, and we should go over AI in great detail. And I'll try to explain what it is. I'm reading up about that. I'm talking to people about it, what it is, and attack every one of the so-called accusations. Again, I've got the guy on Twitter who's constantly telling me that the world is going to end and humanity is all dead within 10 years. He sounds like Greta, an AI Greta. They've just replaced climate change with AI, but it's the same kind of principle. So we will do a whole show on AI. But if you're on Twitter or if you could just google Andreessen, Mark Andreessen on artificial intelligence, it's probably on his website. Definitely, definitely, definitely worth a read. But as I said, I will devote a show to that and really analyze it in greater depth. All right. Two other topics I want to quickly cover, and then I'll go to your questions. And I did set the $650 goal, because I do think this will be a longer show. So I hope you guys can make it there. We're about halfway there, so that's pretty good. But hopefully we can get more of it. But we can get up to $650. We can get closer to target. Two quick ones, and then I'll take your questions and call it a night. And both, at least one of these, I'll be returning to in future shows. The first one is also technology related. I've seen, as you know, probably Apple yesterday introduced Apple Vision Pro. It looks super exciting. It looks super cool. I'm not exactly what its application is yet, but it looks super cool. It's expensive, so not something I'm likely to be buying anytime soon. But it looks super cool. And it looks like it has that, you know, you put it on, you can actually move things around in 3D, in space, and you know, some motion sensors that can activate different functions. So I'm looking forward to the opportunity to play around with it at some point, and maybe one day, actually be a user. But technology is so wonderful. It's so amazing. And one can only imagine what technology is going to be like in the future, particularly with AI assisting that technological development. And one can only even, it's hard indeed to imagine what will happen when, if we ever get free, if you ever have a free market, what will happen technologically and what will be available to us. It's mind-boggling, mind-boggling that possibility. So yeah. All right, the last topic was we've got some additional political candidates in the Republican side. Mike Pence announced that he is going to run for president. I don't know why. I don't know why. Who's this constituency? Who the hell cares about Mike Pence? Nobody. Nobody. He can't attract any Trumpists. They hate his guts. He can't attract the never Trump because he's like super conservative, super religious. And he was Trump's vice president. So no never Trump is going to go with who is this constituency? Nobody. I think his only hope is to be the last man standing. But there are plenty of others who will stand long before he does. I'm not sure what his play here. He's not trying to be vice president. He's not trying to increase his name recognition. He's not trying to get a book deal as far as I know. I don't understand why Mike Pence is running for president. His chances are literally of all the candidates. I literally think his are the lowest. I think Nikki Haley has a better chance than Mike Pence. Vivek Ramaswamy has a better chance than Mike Pence. The second announcement I think is much more interesting. And that is Chris Christie. Chris Christie has announced that he's going to run. And Chris Christie I think has one goal in running for president. And that is to attack Trump. Chris Christie is a New Jersey native. He is a rough and tumble. No holds bar. You know what am I looking for? I'm looking for something. Anyway he's that way. He will go after Trump. I mean I hope he does anyway. But he has the potential. He has the potential to actually go out and trash Trump. I mean Trump is so vulnerable to somebody who has who can take the gloves off and be like him. Who somebody is willing to call him the moron that he really is. I mean I think I've mentioned this in the show but my view is what all these candidates need to do is they need and they should all do it. They should adopt a new nickname for Trump. You know how Trump gives all the candidates nicknames and he has you know sanctimonious or whatever. They should all adopt the same nickname for Trump. And I have the perfect name tag. I think he is Donald the loser Trump. And they should all use it. They should use it constantly. They should get under his skin. They should make it furious. They should make it mad. Donald the loser Trump. Or just the loser Trump or just the loser and everybody knows it's Trump. And I think that's the best way to let him get angry. Let him get red in the face. Let him get mad. Let him get he loses it when that happens. And let him lose it. Let him lose it on live TV. Let him lose it on press call. Let him lose it. And I think that's the only way to defeat him. The only way to defeat him is make him so mad that he can't control himself. And I hope I hope and I'd even contribute to the campaign if I thought this would help. I hope that Chris Christie's whole mission in life right now is to get under Donald Trump's skin. It's to attack, attack, attack, attack. He doesn't have to do anything else. Basically he's there not to win. He's there to destroy Trump and create an opening for somebody else to win. So that is just me. You know what I think about Trump. And you know this is, I think, whoops, what did I do? I closed the window. One second. It's not good. Should have canceled anything. Yeah, everything's good. So I think that that is the strategy and I hope that strategy plays out. All right, almost an hour. I'm tired. Okay, let's do some of these super chats. Let's start with $50 from Richard. Wow, Richard, thank you. A couple of $50 questions. So Richard starts, I'm studying for the bar exam. I'm looking for some benevolent, light-hearted entertainment to watch in my downtime. Ideally not too surrebo because I'm studying for 10, 12 hours a day. What are some Iran recommendations? Well, you know, certainly if you want something modern that's available right now that's on, I like Ted Lasso. I think Ted Lasso is a lot of fun. I don't know if you've seen it, Richard, but Ted Lasso on Apple TV. It's fun. It's entertaining. It's light. It's not too serious, but it's super benevolent. And it's no cynicism, no kind of skepticism, cynicism. It's just straight. The American is the good guy. American is the good guy. It never makes fun of the American. He's kind of light-hearted, but it never makes fun of him. It blew me away when I first saw it on how benevolent it was and how unsynical it was, particularly given that it's contrasting your British culture with American culture. So I definitely would recommend Ted Lasso. We just ended season three. So there are plenty of episodes to watch. And season three, I think is the last season we'll see, but you could watch the whole thing. Ben, you watched the whole thing. The other program that I love that is also in the final season and is wrapped up, but don't tell me how it ends because I haven't seen the last few episodes, is Marvelous Miss Maisel. It's on Prime. So it's on Amazon. It's on Prime TV. It's just fabulous. It is fun, entertaining, funny, really funny, super benevolent. Yeah, I just find it sharp-witted, very fast dialogue, like some of the movies in the 30s and 40s, you know, fast dialogue and just super entertaining. So those are two shows that don't require much. I mean, somebody mentions It's a One Class, which I do highly recommend. It's excellent. And I should talk about It's a One Class in a separate show because it's uniquely excellent. It's special. But that requires more investment. You have to read subtitles. It's more serious. These two shows are light, comic, and unbelievably benevolent. And I think if that's what you're looking for, those two shows. Now, of course, beyond that, I would say look for comedies from the 30s, 40s, 50s. And, you know, what do you call it? I just spent the trading, spent the tracing, Audrey Hepburn. For some reason, I just saw a commercial popped up for Adam's Rib, which is funny, but it's one of a series of movies they did together, Spencer Tracy and Catherine Hepburn, not Audrey Hepburn, Catherine Hepburn. Light, funny, benevolent, smart, beautifully done, but there's so many good His Go Friday, which is even older than that, and just one of the smartest, fastest, funniest movies you'll ever see. So there's a lot, old movies, old black and white movies, old comedies from back then. Yeah, hopefully that'll give you a little bit of, a little bit to occupy your mind while you're studying for the bar exam, and good luck, by the way, on the bar exam. Okay, Richard, also, what do you think of the future of Asian financial markets? Will be if the coupling continues, India seems reluctant to implement much needed economic reforms, and no other country has China's population. Will Latin America be the next high growth market? I don't know, Latin America is a basket case with socialist presidents and socialist policies, and if India is not willing to do the reforms needed for economic, the kind of economic reforms needed, certainly Latin America is not willing to do those economic reforms. So it's very, very, the world isn't a very, very bad place, I think, as this decoupling happens. I think much of the economic growth over the last three, four, five decades have been a consequence of the opening up of Asia and the consequence of opening up of China. China has had a massive positive impact on the United States. As China shuts down or closes up, and I don't think, I think this will happen slowly and it'll take time, that has profound negative implications for the US economy. This notion that if the jobs come back, we're better off. No, if the jobs come back, we're worse off, and by the way, we don't have the employees to fill those jobs. We're running unemployment right now at 3.7%. That's basically zero. We've cut off immigration. Who's going to work in these chip plants? Where is the labor? Where's the high quality labor? And given immigration restrictionists and everything else, Mexico has the potential to replace China. India has the potential, but as you say, India lacks two things. One, economic reforms that will open it up to the world. It remains a managed economy with a managed trade and it lacks the infrastructure to be able to move goods around within India to the ports on the ships to get it out. They don't have the ports that the Chinese have. They don't have the trains. They don't have the highways and the trucks. It just doesn't have it. Now, you could see that move to Latin America, but Latin America would have to change. Mexico, current president is a socialist. They're likely that the next one will be a socialist as well. Maybe it'll be a more pragmatic socialist who's willing to open up and do these in the name of making money and wealth, but I don't know. So I think the world economy is troubled. The division of labor is important and a comparative advantage is important, and losing a big player in trade means that everybody who traded with that big player is worse off. And I think America in particular will be worse off than not having China. It might be necessary. There might not be any choice but to be linked from China, but let's be realistic about the cost, the cost of substantial. We have managed in the United States to run up huge debts to make massive macroeconomic errors and mistakes and just evil policies and get away with it to a large extent because of the productivity increases in China and the ability to have this division of labor with them. And if that goes away, I don't see anybody replacing it. I'd love to think it was Africa. I'd love to think it was Latin America. It would be great if it was Vietnam and India. None of those have exactly what it takes in order to replace China. China's a unique, created a unique combination. If that goes away, look out, look out. Okay, we're only $268 short of our goal. It's within reach, guys. It really is. We need somebody to come in with some significant dollars for questions, but we can do it. All right, Jeremy. I have a question, but I haven't figured out how to frame it exactly. Okay, how does one who can become pregnant or can impregnate someone or has those as children live in a state like Texas right now? Oh, God. I don't know. I mean, it's a, you know, I don't know. I don't know if you're young and you're in that kind of circumstances and this ban on abortion, particularly if you don't have money to fly to California and get that abortion. I don't know. It's not just Texas, of course. It's the entire South. It's North Carolina. It's South Carolina. It's Florida. How does one live in Florida? It really is horrible. And, you know, the other benefits to living in Texas, and somebody wants me to do a show analyzing a video that praises Texas to the Hilton. There's a lot to praise and a lot of good things in Texas, but there are also a lot of bad things in Texas. And one of the worst things about Texas right now is the power of religious conservatives as manifesting abortion laws and in other laws as well and how one exactly lives in Texas right now. I just don't know. It's obviously very hard, very challenging. And yeah, if you're young, I don't know what you do. Be super careful and have that plain ticket ready to go to New York or California or somewhere like that. A dowsey llama on the topic of abortion, pro-life conservatives often fall back on to the argument, well, you shouldn't be having sex if you aren't ready for kids. What is the proper response to this? Can one even respond rationally to this? It's very hard to respond rationally to that. I mean, it's very hard to contain oneself. For me to contain myself, I value sex too much to contain myself. One of the great innovations of the 20th century was birth control. And what that innovation did among other things, but mainly, is it made possible, in a sense, low risk recreational sex, but not recreational in the sense of in a sense of having sex with strangers, recreational in the sense of finding a partner who you value, who you love, who you share some values with and having great sex with without thinking about having children. What birth control has done is delinked sex from childbirth, which is one of the great innovations in all of human history because of how magnificent, wonderful, phenomenal, amazing sex is. And if you don't think it is, then you haven't experienced good sex. So I don't know what the rational response is, but I think that answer is the core of their opposition to abortion because what they're really opposed to, in a sense, much more than their opposition to abortion, what they're really opposed to is sex, pleasure. And Ayn Rand talks about this when she talks about abortion. She got it way back in the 70s. What they really oppose to, what they really value is not the life of the fetus, what they really value, or what they really disvalue is sex. And if they could, they would get rid of contraception, birth control, many of them would. But sex is too amazing, too wonderful, too pleasurable, too enjoyable to postpone, delay, put aside, reject because of fear of having kids. And because the responsibility of having kids is so great, I believe we should give parents as many outs as possible, basically until the fetus, the child is born. And I think abortion is part of that. I think obviously people should use birth control, but you know, birth control is not for proof. So yes, you have to emphasize the wonder and pro-life and pro-values and pro-pleasure and pro-enjoyment and pro-life, capital L life, that sex represents. Stephen Hopper, thank you, Wes, thank you, $50, really appreciate that. So only $200 short, so $10, $20 questions gets us there. Only $450 questions get us there. $450 questions and we're there. Easy. Easy peasy. All right. Joseph says, explain philosophical objective versus, oh God, don't do this. No, that's one of the hardest things in art. There is no, in art you want me to do it. Explain philosophical objective is socially objective economic value in art. Example, an incomprehensible Picasso fetches a higher price than a da Vinci that is proverbly objectively better for man. I mean, this is a whole show, Joseph. I mean, this is, Iron Man's conception of philosophically objective versus socially objective value is one of the hardest ideas and one of the most important ideas, but also one of the hardest ideas she presents. But basically the idea is this. Socially objective is a market price. It's what society, what people within society value as reflected by supply and demand for something. And it is contextual and it's rational or it's, sorry, it's objective to the extent that people are doing it within the scope of their values, their understanding, their context. So, I mean, Iron Man gives the example of a young woman, a stoke clerk, let's say she's simple, she's not very sophisticated, she's not, and what she values is lipstick. That's an important value for her. And to her that lipstick is worth a lot more than, I don't know, Beethoven's listening to Symphony of Beethoven. Even though you can say that philosophically, from the perspective of a really objective, full context understanding of human values and human life and philosophy, the Beethoven Symphony is much more valuable than the lipstick. Not value is always for whom and for what. And to the to the shop girl, it's not. And this will affect, this will affect demand, it'll affect prices. And for example, it'll affect the difference between, you know, a Picasso, now the value of a Picasso, put aside Picasso, let's take Kandinsky or one of these, or Pollock, somebody who splashes paint on the thing that, where I think the value of these things is close to zero. Picasso, you can still argue, is art. You know, in my view, Pollock is not art. Most of the reason people buy a Pollock, I think, is primarily secondhand and it might give them some aesthetic pleasure, but it's not art. And it's certainly not the kind of thing that can objectively give you the kind of value that Da Vinci can. But they don't want to think that Da Vinci gives them. They don't know what to do with it. They have no appreciation for it. And the Picasso gives them certain second handed, a second handed, a good feeling, you know, because they, all their friends know they have a Picasso, it gives them maybe some satisfaction about their own success. Maybe it reflects back to them the kind of fragmented psychopistemology that they indeed have. And so it's a value to them. And it's socially objective in the sense that only, that it's a consequence of supply and demand. Now, when it's so irrational, as in some of these cases of modern art it is, I don't know that we can apply socially objective value to it. It might be right to apply, you know, because the lipstick is still an objective value. It might not be, the hierarchy might not be the same for you and the shop girl, but you can understand the value she sees in it. But here we're talking about something that is completely irrational and therefore completely non-objective. So I would argue that the value of the Pollock and the Kandinsky and maybe the Picasso is not objective. It's not socially objective. It's just not objective, even though it's a product of free exchange, even though it's a product of the market. It's also a reflection in this case of a sick culture of irrational individuals who can be rational one realm of the life where they make the money and irrational completely in another realm of the life where they spend the money. Again, I'd need to spend a lot more time defining some of these terms for you to really make that stick comprehensible. All right, by the way, we were under $100 and we're under $100 remaining to get to the $650 because Richard just plunked $100 down with a question and this is it. Thank you, Richard. Richard's already done 200 bucks here. Thank you, Richard. How do you think the West's retrenchment into protectionism will affect global financial markets? London Future as a financial center seems to be threatened. What implications will this have on my employment prospects as a future capital market attorney? Wow. I mean, look, I think we're in for very uncertain, volatile times. I think London might be in a relative decline. Maybe somewhere like Frankfurt is in a relative rise. New York is probably going to be there. Hong Kong, you'll probably see is in a relative decline, both because China becomes less important and because Hong Kong is now part of China. Singapore might be in a relative rise because it'll replace Hong Kong in many respects. So, first of all, there'll be a shake-up. Finance will still be needed. Maybe not as much, you know, not maybe in certain regions, maybe not as much on the international scale, but certainly within countries there'll still be a lot of finance to be done and indeed maybe even more so because you're going to have to become very innovative in terms of how to restructure the economy in order to deal with the fact that you've just taken this huge loss by decoupling from China. So, in the end of the day, I don't think it hurts your prospects. Well, you might at the margin. That is, I think you're pretty smart and I think you'll do fine. And so for smart, good people, I don't think that'll be a problem. Will there be fewer jobs in capital markets, capital markets attorneys? I don't know. My general sense is that being an attorney you're safe, that there's always jobs for attorneys. You know how much an attorney in the capital markets, in the financial markets, working for big, you know, big well-known legal firm charges in the hour, for work as a in the capital markets. Anybody want to take a guess on what the hourly rate is? Well, I can tell you because I employ such a way. It's between, depending on how senior they are, it's between $1,200 and $1,500 an hour. It's not bad. So, Richard, I think you're going to do fine. And I think there are plenty of lawyers because the more regulations, the more controls, the more we need lawyers. Richard also says, thanks for the recommendations. I'll check out Ted Lasso and Ms. Maisel. I loved Ittawan class. Yeah, I was very good. I'm glad you got around to watching it. I'm also down to watch old movies. The executive is still on my list. Executive Suite, I think is the name of the movie. Executive Suite, not The Executive. If it's the same movie we're talking about, I don't know of a movie The Executive. Okay, one more Richard question and then I'll get back to the list. But he has given like, $250. So he deserves it. Maybe 260. One of the reasons I'm so interested in China is because many of the young Chinese people I've met exemplify the values that built America. Once they ditch Winnie the Pooh and the CCP bandits, they'll grow faster than ever. I agree. I mean, and again, I've spent time in China. I've toured around China. I've talked to a lot of Chinese people. And yeah, entrepreneurial, hardworking, dynamic, selfish in many respects. So yeah, I do really, I really do think that China has unbelievable upside, unbelievable upside if only the politicians got out of the way. All right, Andrew, Rand once said that as an aside that she has to clarify that just because she is against something doesn't mean she was for a law to ban it. Yes. Right. Why do most people jump from there to is a problem, to there ought to be a law? Because, you know, if something's bad, they believe that using force to prevent evil, even if that evil is not right violating, is a virtue. It's a virtue. You're hoping the person is about to commit the sin and is supposed a victim. So they don't see, you know, if something's bad, then somebody should do something about it. Who is the entity that is best positioned to do something about it? And that's the government. So a law is just allowing the government to step in and prevent something bad from happening. How is that bad? From their perspective, right? They view it as a positive. So they don't see forces as unique or different forces, something that needs to be banned for society. They view force as something that needs to be used in order to achieve the good. And the good means getting rid of the problems. Not your average algorithm. You say consciousness is a biological phenomenon, not a digital one, because consciousness isn't electrons running through wires. But much of biological consciousness is electrons running through neurons. Maybe, you know, given given how little we know about biological consciousness and about biology of consciousness and what consciousness, what is required to create consciousness, we don't know what it requires. And if it's just, we have no idea if it's just electrons running through neurons. Unlikely that it's just electrons running through neurons. It's one of the reasons why, I mean, I find it fascinating, they're already talking about a conscious machine, but we can't create life in a lab. We kind of know what the components of life are, but we can't actually put them together and create life. And life is simpler than consciousness. And I think to be conscious, you have to be alive, and yet we can't create life, and we don't know what life is from a biological perspective. We kind of get it, but we can't create it. We can't create consciousness in a lab even with biological entities. We can't take a non-conscious biological entity and turn it into a conscious biological entity. And then we think we can take a computer made of hard metal and wires and electrons and silicon and electric current and it's going to magically become conscious. When it's not alive, it's not even alive. I just don't see it. I don't see how that happens. I think that is a huge leap forward. All we know is that free will, reason is tied to free will, free will is tied to a uniquely human consciousness. Human consciousness is linked to human beings, but even simple consciousness is linked to things that are alive. Certain beings that are alive, not everything that's alive is conscious. We don't know and there's no reason to believe that consciousness can exist separate from life. I don't even know what that would mean. I don't think it can. So let's focus on life and then we can get a consciousness. Ryan says, hi, Iran. Great show with Ankar. Let's keep fighting for rational self-interest. Thank you for all you do. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate it. Jeff says, do you think when the Ukraine war is over that there'll be another expensive Afghanistan style rebuild funded by U.S. taxpayers? First of all, it won't be an Afghanistan style. If the war is won by Ukraine, then and when the war is over, it's not going to be Afghanistan because Afghanistan, part of the problem with Afghanistan and whatever money we put in there, is that we were never going to see any benefit from it. That it was a sinkhole. Anything you invested in Afghanistan was actually going to accrue to the benefit of not even the Afghans, but it was going to accrue to the Taliban, was going to accrue to our enemy, which is, I can't think of anything worse than that. So the Afghanistan experience is a million times worse than anything you could do in Ukraine. I think the example for Ukraine much more likely is something like the Marshall Plan, where the United States put in significant to take a western country and help it reestablish itself. A western country that was an ally of the United States. Now I'm not advocating for that. I'm not saying that that is the right thing to do. I'm just saying that that is a thousand times better than building something that the enemy is going to use, is building something that an ally of yours is going to use. I believe that when the Ukraine war is over, one of the consequences is going to be that the Ukraine is going to join the EU and maybe join NATO and are going to be a partner in a sense of the United States in many respects, in many regards. And I think, I also think by the way, that most of the rebuild funding will come from Europe and not from the United States. Now we'll see, but most of it will come from Europe. And Europe, you could argue, has some interest in doing that. But I certainly wouldn't compare it to Afghanistan. You might say we shouldn't be doing it and I'm fine with that, but I wouldn't compare it to Afghanistan. It's a completely different story and a completely different consequence and a completely different and ultimate cost, right? Because it's not going to go to the enemies at least. I'm wondering your thoughts on modesty and dressing. I find modesty attractive due to the ability to save more of one's body for the significant other, making it more special, but I don't think it's necessary for all. I don't. I don't think it's necessary for all. I mean, I'm not a fan of modesty. I have no problem with nudity. I have no problem with revealing clothing. But I think appropriateness is right. You need to be dressed appropriately for the occasion, for the event, for the context. I don't think you should go to meetings naked or in tiny little clothing. But I also don't think you should. As you know, I don't wear ties anymore. In Puerto Rico, I basically wear shorts and shorts and sandals everywhere, including to my lawyer, to visit my lawyer, to visit my doctor, to everywhere. I think I find revealing clothes in a woman, if I'm attracted to her, not as a wool, but I find it attractive and sexy and stimulating. But I don't think there's any objective standard here. I don't think there's any kind of objective principle. I think it's a reflection of your particular values and your particular aesthetic and your particular view of the human body and a lot of different things. I think for some people, again, it's an aesthetic choice, but for some people, modesty is appropriate because what they've got to show is not very appealing. I do think beauty matters. And I think that this idea of body positivism, that all body types are the same and all body types are good. No, I mean, there's no moral statement in it, but there is an aesthetic statement and there is some human bodies are more beautiful than other human bodies. Some human bodies are not beautiful at all. And young human bodies are nicer than all human bodies and all kinds of stuff. It's just there's aesthetically. So if you're revealing, if you're wearing revealing clothes, you know, I think you should have something to reveal. And therefore, you should be conscious of your own aesthetic of whether people enjoy looking at you or not. Because clearly revealing clothes is asking people to look. It's this idea that women say, wearing these amazingly revealing clothes, but nobody should look at them. I mean, give me a break. So make sure that it's pleasant. I mean, one of the things that I find disturbing is when women or men, doesn't really matter, wear super revealing clothes and they have, they look horrible. They look really, really, really horrible. And it's just, it's an iso. I look away. It's awful. I don't want to see it. And I'm not, again, it's not a more condemnation. Some people have different body types and they have eating disorders or whatever it is, but don't then put it out there for all to see. I think, you know, if you go to a nudist beach, make sure there's something worthwhile to see, to show, not to see, to show. All right. By the way, we're only $40 away from our target. So hopefully we can, we can do that. Thank you, Sandy. Richard again. Well, one of the biggest pet peeves, one of my biggest pet peeves is when economists talk about how low hanging fruit of fast growth is now gone. And that's no longer possible to have fast growth. What explains the evasion required to spot such beers? Well, the main thing that explains it is they don't want what is required. See, there is such a thing as low hanging fruit. That is China can get away with a certain level of authoritarianism when they're very poor and becoming richer, because there's a lot of low hanging fruit and they could grow in spite of bad policies. But at some point, in order to get that kind of economic growth, you need real freedom. Because at some point you do get rid of that low hanging fruit. It's always, it's easier to go from $1 a day to $2 a day than to go from $100 a day to $200 a day. And so what they are evading, what they are ignoring is their requirements for developed economies to grow super fast. And the requirements for that are freedom, free markets, capitalism. They don't want that. So they place, they place what they want above the facts. Maryland, thank you. Let's see who else they need to thank. Alex, I need to thank, and Maryland again. All right, there's only so many. I thank Wes for Edson. Edson Manow, thank you. Yeah, lots of people. Thank you. Really appreciate it. You guys are being generous today. Okay, let's see. We've got a few more super chats. We'll do these quickly. There's a $5, $10 one. Gail says it's simple to me. Like Alex says, it's waiting the benefits versus the side effects. Ooh, I can't remember. Oh, this is AI. Yes. Benefits are massive. And the probability of some of the worst outcomes that they can imagine, the probability of those happening is very, very low. And even though the consequence can be very, very bad, you know, everything you do can have downside. You can't live based on the catastrophic risk. Stephen says, Stephen 13, I'm neutral now. Well, that's good. He used to be pro-Russia. So Stephen used to be pro-Russia. I'm neutral now, anti-woken, anti-eastern powers. I believe in creating a new Roman empire to save Western civilization. Okay, so he's still super irrational, but at least he's not pro-Russia. Let's see. Stephen continues. Jerusalem belongs to Rome. Yeah, right? How did that happen? A new Roman empire will crush both Ukraine and Russia. They are frontier barbarians. I have regained faith in the West. Allow me to laugh, Stephen. You know what can I say? That is absurd and ridiculous. There's not going to be a Roman empire. There is nobody. There is nothing there. And by the way, Western civilization is not the Roman empire. Western civilization is not empire at all. Western civilization has nothing to do with empire. Western civilization has nothing to do with Jerusalem. Western civilization is the enlightenment. Western civilization is reason and individualism. Western civilization is America. Western civilization is Western Europe. And Europe today, Europe today and yeah, I would much rather have God. Don't even get me started on the evil that Western Empire would be a betrayal of everything that is meaningful about the West. All right, Andrew, for $20, wow, we've gone through our goal. Thank you, Andrew and Richard, again. Would you go so far as to equating the religious view of sex with rape? I'm thinking of religious prohibitions on women which imply man's lack of control over sex images. But I don't know that I would equate them with rape, but I do think that religion in its fundamental application basically views man as lacking free will, as an animal, as not being able to control himself, and that is the source of the needing to separate men and women, needing to cover women up, whether it's Judaism or Christianity or primarily Islam. It's this notion that men are animals. And so it's not an equation of sex with rape, it's an equation of sex with animal, with animalistic. You know, it's what Rihann says in his speech to Dagny after they have sex, the morning after. He considers it an act of animalistic barbarism in a sense, devoid of, it's hugely pleasurable but low, low, low, low. And he's shocked by her attitude. Richard, for $50, thanks Richard, have you always traveled a lot? Did you still have difficulty with things like time zones and jet lag when traveling? Do you find it easy to adjust when you're on the road? Do you have tips for newbie travelers? Yeah, I mean, I traveled, yeah, I mean, even when I was a kid, we lived in different places. I've traveled for a long time. I really, you know, I was traveling in the 90s, I really accelerated through traveling in the 2000s and the 20 teens. I mean, yeah, I have tips. I mean, if you're going to Europe or you're going to Asia, try to get on a night flight. When you get on the plane, take a melatonin and try to get as much sleep as you can on the plane. When you get to your destination, let's say Europe, try to take a quick nap and make it very short and continue the day and try to go to sleep in the hour that you want to go to sleep in the future. To facilitate that, take another melatonin on the first night, second night, third night until you feel like, okay, my body now is in rhythm with the sleep cycle that's appropriate for this country. So use melatonin strategically to get your body in rhythm and to get your body to sleep. But I've had on several trips sleepless nights, literally when I don't sleep, I toss and turn the whole night because my body is, and even melatonin doesn't help. I hope you don't have that. It's pretty brutal, but mostly I don't. And today I'm pretty good at it. And I don't have too much problems. I used to have more problems than I do now. But I always felt pretty comfortable with travel. Melatonin make life a lot easier for traveling. So I take 10 milligrams, which is a lot. You can try five to see if that helps. If not, you can go to 10. I use the stuff that dissolves under the tongue. There are some pills, so there are a lot of different variations. Wow, you guys are still going. This is great. Stephen Harper says, the movies of Ernst Lubitsch, especially Trouble in Paradise and his movies with Maurice Chevalier and Jean McDonnell. Yeah, look, I've recommended this in the past. I mean, Ernst Lubitsch is one of the great filmmakers of all time. His comedies, their all comedies are benevolent and wonderful and just a pleasure. Yeah, Trouble in Paradise, the Maurice Chevalier movies, but all of his movies, every one of them, including some of the more difficult comedies, but they're still unbelievably funny. So one of my favorite movies of all time is Ninochka, in spite of the fact that it's making fun of communism. Maybe with a distance you could do that. The other great movie that's funny inappropriately, if you will, is To Be or Not To Be. Don't watch the Mel Brooks version. Watch the original Ernst Lubitsch version, which is brilliant. And it's about that. It makes fun of the Nazis. Anyway, I would recommend anything Ernst Lubitsch did in Grand Hotel. I mean, there's a number of them. I think that's great. There's a number of them that are really, really, really... I mean, everything he did was really, really, really good. So I second Stephen Hopper's recommendations absolutely. Ian says you should take less melatonin. Look, all like I'm doing, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist, I'm not expected. I'm telling you my experience. If I take these small quantities of melatonin, it has zero impact on me. I don't sleep on the plane. If I don't sleep on the plane, it screws up everything else. So I take enough to knock me out. And it works amazingly well. That is, I sleep on the plane because I took 10 milligrams and then sleep the first night. Usually the second night is the hardest, but with 10 milligram, it knocks me out. And by the third night, either that's the last night I take melatonin or I don't even need on the third night a melatonin. And mostly I don't take melatonin. I only take it on those first two or three nights. Plane, first night, second night, maybe third night. That's it. So three to four, but I use a quantity that knocks me out. All of us have different sleep patterns. We do it differently. All right, Colt says, let's go Ukraine. Also anti-Korean Republicans, right wingers, I won't vote for them. That means Trump and down ballot. Yep. I mean, unfortunately, the Santas has come out anti-Ukraine, right? Liam, will Putin survive the end of this war? Or will it be like Hitler in the bunker in 1945? I doubt Putin commit suicide, but there might be a civil war in Russia. I think the Wagner group maybe has indicated some of what's going on there is indicative of potential civil war. I don't know if Putin survives. Rumor's eyes are sick. He's kind of been quiet recently. He might just die of natural causes. He might be killed in ways that we don't even know. He might just disappear. It's hard to tell exactly what happens to Putin. I doubt he commit suicide. James, does Houston, Texas not have a homeless problem because they are no zoning regulations on housing development? I think that's a big part of it. Housing is cheap in Houston. It's relatively easy to build cheap housing, to build affordable housing, to house the homeless. And I think that's a big part. Austin is expensive. It's very difficult to build a cheap housing. The cheap housing that used to exist has been gentrified, knocked down, and middle class housing has been built, but other cheap housing has not been built in a place. Demand for a strip supply. And that's why that's places where you get homelessness. Harper Campbell, is the left more altruistic than the right? I think there are some egoistic elements of the right, which don't know how to manifest while the left is altruistic to its core. I think to some extent that's true, but not completely. I think in some things, the left is more egoistic, the sex, pursuing their own passions. I don't know. Many of them devote, it depends what left and what right. But to the extent that the right is religious, it's quite altruistic. I don't know. I think it's very difficult to generalize like that. It's very difficult to generalize that. The fact is that both left and right demand sacrifice, but just in different realms, and depending which left and which right, to different degrees. Clock. I comment criticism, I hear objectivism, how do you reconcile being so absolute and black and white, when there is obviously so much nuance in reality? Well, but even the nuance, the nuance is there because there's black and white, the nuance is to suggest that the black and white is not so obvious that you have to really think about what is black and what is white. And I think that's absolutely right. But you know, there is good and there's evil. It's not always easy to figure that out. There are a lot of mixed cases. There are a lot of people who are both evil and good. There are a lot of things that happen to be both evil and good. But all of that can be teased out. And I do think you have to be nuanced in your thinking. One of my criticisms of so many you know, tribalists out there is that they're not. They just they just got level, you know, non thinkers, I think thinking means to try to really tease out what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false. The fact that it's nuanced doesn't mean there's no good and bad. It doesn't mean there's no black and white. It actually doesn't mean it means there is because that's what you're trying to tease out from the complexity. What is good and what is bad? And it can be nuanced. Michael says your life isn't yours if you always care what someone else thinks. Absolutely. Absolutely right. Michael says libertarians don't typically challenge altruism. Do most still hold on to it or have rejected it only implicitly. I think most still hold on to it. Some have rejected it implicitly. But yes, almost none rejected explicitly. And therefore they don't fight fight against it because they haven't really rejected it intellectually, philosophically, explicitly. Clark says, what's the best site to look for condos in Puerto Rico? Did you use a broker or just shopper on yourself? I used a broker, I used a I used a real estate agent. It really depends on your price range. So you know, you need to give me more information so I can help. But if you're looking for luxury condos, that's kind of you're looking at one place and you're looking at lower end condos, it's it's somebody else. It's a different kind of broker. You can probably find things by yourself. The luxury but let me say this Puerto Rico market is very insider. And without somebody having somebody on the inside a broker or dealer, it's very hard to find what's for sale. And you don't even to negotiate a deal and suddenly to get a mortgage, it's all everything in Puerto Rico is more difficult and more insider and more relies on connections. Don't forget I like the show before you leave. We've had a lot of people watch live just like it please doesn't cost you anything. And it helps algorithms significantly. Something that I find concerning is the amount of young man my age, who are against birth control and ending no fault this involves. Why is why is this I think most of them are bunch of fools that haven't grown up? Yeah, I mean, they are a bunch of fools that haven't grown up. They're very religious, obviously, only religion can lead you to those kind of conclusions. How can you be up against birth control? I just don't understand. That's so anti human and anti life and anti pleasure. It's so sacrificial. You're sacrificing yourself, you're sacrificing your pleasure, you're sacrificing your life. It really is horrible. And the idea that there's still people like them in the 21st century. Yeah, grow up is exactly the right attitude. Grow up and grow a brain, grow a spine, grow an attitude that loves oneself. Thank you, MH08. I appreciate the support. Marilyn says, on the slam, I don't think sex is enjoyable for men or women. How could it be? There is no personal connection. I think that's right in the sense that as we understand sex to have a spiritual element that requires a personal connection. But Islam is relative to the other religious, not anti sex. You know, Muhammad had four wives. He certainly encouraged men to have a lot of sex. It's very men centric. It's not it's very anti women. It's very patriarchal. But the whole idea is, yeah, men should enjoy sex and men should have as much of it as possible. And men should have it whether they have babies or not, because you have four wives and then you can have concubines. Judaism is a little bit like that as well. But because Judaism, particularly in biblical Judaism, men have more than one wife or can have more than one wife. But it's not a very it's not a very inspiring religion for women in any dimension, including the sexual one. Andrew says a follow up. If the deeper issue than religion's attitude towards sex is decided to towards free will, how is religion implicitly or explicitly anti free will? Well, religion has a mixed view of free will right on the one hand. And if you listen to some preachers, God knows everything, including the future. But religion, some religions, some religions will tell you, you have agency and God is judging you and you have choices. So religion is very mixed and and non-committal to a large extent over free will and contradictory when it comes to free will. So, you know, you can override your animalistic instincts, they tell us. But that requires a lot of effort. And men in particular, have a hard time with it. That's kind of what they what they argue. Women are women are much better suited to control the animalistic impulses. Richard, thank you, Richard. Richard's probably contributed half of everything we raised today. Have you noticed the trend of pretty young women posting photos of themselves as social media with middle fingers extended? I find it a bit disturbing and vulgar. What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean, it's just it's it's there's a nihilistic element there. What's the point? Why are you doing this? But then I find I find people posting photos on social media. I don't know, just weird and disturbing in and of itself. Why are you posting them? What's the purpose? What are you trying to do with it? What are you trying to achieve? Middle finger, no middle finger, but the middle fingers just stick it to everybody, stick it to the world, stick it to the reality. It's it really is a kind of a rebellion against the world, a rebellion that's mindless to a large extent. And I agree with you. I find it I find it vulgar and disturbing. It's a very bad culture where that's that's the kind of attitude. It's not I'm smiling. I'm happy. I'm enjoying life, which is a positive message to send in a photo is I hate you. I despise the world. All right, everybody. Thank you. Really, really, really appreciate it. We met our goal. We passed it 640. We exceeded by $90. Thank you, Richard. Thank you to all the other super chatters. I appreciate the support. I will see you all. I'm not sure exactly when. I'll see if I do another show late at night on the next two days, but certainly over the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, but hopefully we'll be able to do a show before that.