 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday, June 27, just three days before O'Conn. Jeff, there's conferences in Miami this year. It's going to be a blast. I hope some of you, I know some of you are joining us and hopefully we have others joining as well. All right, today we've got our news briefing. We'll jump into that in a second just to remind you that tonight we've got a show at 8 p.m. East Coast time. And the topic is, what is the topic? It's a seven deadly sins. This should be fun. We'll be talking about sinning. So please join us, seven deadly sins. We'll do a critique of it compared to kind of objectivism's view of the different sins and how sinful they really are. So anyway, it should be a lot of fun. So hopefully you join us tonight, 8 p.m. Same place, same place as this on YouTube. All right, and also remind everybody, we do have, we do, you can ask questions, you use Super Chat. We do use Super Chat to raise money for the show to keep it running, particularly the morning shows. You know, the limit is, or the goal is $250 in the next hour to fund the Iran book show. So thanks everybody for participating. All right, let's jump in. Supreme Court this week is going to be busy. There's going to be a very busy Supreme Court week. A lot of rulings coming down kind of before I think the end of this term, which is at the end of this week. So in the next couple of days, we're going to get some big, big decisions. Today, today we got the decision on about the state legislature elections. So the power of the state legislature in terms of elections, the argument has been made that, you know, the state legislature based on the constitution have all the rights in the world. They cannot really be overturned by state courts. They cannot be overturned by other elements within the government. And that the legislature is the end all be all. At least that's the most radical, most consistent, most out there interpretation. I don't even know what I think about this particularly. But the ruling that came down today, 63 against that view. It emanates from a court case in North Carolina that has to do with the court overruling the legislature's redistricting proposal. And the North Carolina Supreme Court overruling that and whether the court has the authority to overrule the legislature, you know, was what was really being decided in the context of elections, in the context only of elections. And the Supreme Court by 63 majority ruled that it does. And the two, well, the three conservatives that voted with the majority were, because three conservatives voted against Alito, Alito Gorsuch and and Clarence Thomas all voted against the three conservatives voted for this. I really have no view on this necessarily. It seems like the right decision. It seems like there should be some oversight at the state level over what legislatures do. But this I think also takes takes out kind of the arguments that some have that the legislatures can override voters and can just send whatever legislators they want to, you know, to vote for president. I think this basically puts a cushion that anyway, the big Kate course, Kate course, God court case. The big court case coming up and the one that will be decided, maybe tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then then Thursday is the affirmative action case. Everybody's kind of holding their breath on this one. Although I think there's there's a pretty, I think the majority of experts I've seen online agree on on what the outcome is going to be. But this is a case of the primarily is known because of Harvard University is a case brought against Harvard for basically discriminating against Asians. And the idea that they are that they are quotas are being applied against Asians. And it's a case that suggests that there should be no racial kind of biases, no racial decisions with regard to admissions to universities. This would basically overturn a long line of precedents that would also overturn kind of two executive orders by Kennedy and Johnson over affirmative action. Affirmative action was actually instituted through executive order, not through the not through legislation but through executive order, both originally by Kennedy, but then the main one by Johnson. And as a consequence, now remember when these were passed in 1960s and when they were applied for universities in the 1960s, they were basically the perception was they're basically two races or the two skin colors. I hate the term race, but two skin colors. And the idea was to compensate blacks for discrimination to compensate blacks for Jim Crow for slavery for for for clearly brutal discrimination against them. There would be a period in which, you know, blacks will be favored in admissions to universities. Blacks were clearly a minority, whites were clearly a majority. The difference was pretty big to get to get more balance and admission to universities didn't involve a lot. You know, again, just two groups, and just balancing those two groups wasn't that complicated. Yes, you know, whites were discriminated against the logic at the time, flawed as it is, the logic at a time was, okay, but in a sense, these are the presses were in a sense penalizing the presses for the sake of the ones who were pressed. You can kind of understand the logic of it. Again, it's still a racist policy. It's still discriminating against individuals and as individuals, they're not oppressors, necessarily. And it's still a bad policy, evil policy. But you can kind of understand it back then. All right, we're 60 years later, almost 60 years later. And we are, we're still using affirmative action. Affirmative action today is two generations removed from Jim Crow. You know, the people being oppressed and the people who are the oppressors, that whole institutional oppression is gone. But it's even more complicated than that. A lot of the people being discriminated against today are not the historical oppressors. They're not white. Indeed, you know, there are very few white students at universities in California and Stanford, only 22% of the students at Stanford are white, defined as white, because again, I don't even know what white means. Today, much of the people being denied admission into colleges in order to fix, you know, discrimination that happened a long, long time ago are Asians. This is clearly happening throughout the United States. It certainly happened at Harvard. Harvard admissions of Asians have kind of stayed pat at 17%, in spite of the fact that the Asian population in the U.S. doubled during the period, but the number of Asians is not increased. Very similar to what was done before World War II with regard to Jews in Ivy League universities. There was basically an unstated quota. They accepted some, but not many, and Jews clearly qualified by test scores, by exams, by every other standard. They qualified, but they were capped. Now the cap is on Asians, all in the name of helping oppress groups that they had no relationship to oppressing them. These are relatively new immigrants. Of course today, a lot of affirmative action relates to Latinos, Hispanics, however you want to call them, who again, but not exactly, you can't use the logic of oppression in the same way as you can towards blacks. So why are they benefiting? So the whole story of this has changed. Maybe you could have defined a period of time to fix the errors of the past in the immediate aftermath of that past, but that's all gone. That's all gone. It was 60 years later. And the really ridiculous thing is, because affirmative action is an executive order, it could have been overturned by any Republican president who wanted to overturn it. All it is, is a signature, on a pen, with a pen, on a document, overturning affirmative action. I mean, Nixon could have done it, didn't do it. Reagan could have done it, didn't do it. Bush could have done it. Two Bushes could have done it, didn't do it. Donald Trump, the radical, didn't do it. I mean, to me, the whole issue of affirmative action at the end of the day boils down to Republican cowardice. They could have reversed it by issuing an executive order, eliminating the Kennedy and Johnson executive orders. But now it appears that the Supreme Court is going to do their job for them. I think there's a strong likelihood that they will rule racial-based standards in educational institutions as unconstitutional. They will rule that this violates, I don't know, the equality before the law, basically. And we will see what happens. It's going to be heavily talked about. We'll talk about here once the ruling comes down. Again, probably tomorrow, maybe Thursday or Friday. It's a problem because I don't know that I'll have shows on Thursday Friday, but hopefully it'll come down tomorrow early in the morning and we'll be able to talk about it during the show. I just wanted to give you a heads up. But it'd be interesting to see what they rule and how they rule about it. And yes, again, all it was as executive order wasn't a law. You didn't need a majority in Congress to overturn it. You didn't need the courts to overturn it. Any president, Democrat or Republican could have overturned it. Democrats, of course, support affirmative actions, so they're not going to do it. Republicans oppose it, but the cowards that they are, they never actually do anything about it. Maybe the court is going to bail them out on that one. All right. Let's see. Yeah. So for years, years, at least 10 years. And if I've been hearing this story coming out of people attacking China and trade deficit and all this stuff, Chinese currency manipulation, you hear it constantly. They're manipulating their currency. They make their goods cheap so they can sell it. So they can sell it. They can sell it for cheap in the United States. Because if your currency is cheap, these are the dollar. If the dollar is strong and your currency is weak, then what happens? Then more dollar than than fewer dollars buy more goods. So imports will increase the stronger the dollar relative to the yuan, the Chinese currency, the more we import and everybody blames the loss of manufacturing jobs and and and the trade deficit and why we import so much from China. Everybody blames it constantly on Chinese currency manipulation. That is that's been the problem. That is always the problem. And, you know, I've argued forever the bogusness of that and the fact that even if that's true, that's a good thing for America, because we get to buy cheap stuff and the trade deficits don't matter and everything. Nobody listens. I even argued this in Neil Kivuto show a couple of times. The reality is, the reality is that if the Chinese government allowed the yuan to float, that is its price to be determined by market forces during that entire time where people complaining, it's almost certain that the one would actually have been cheaper relative to the dollar than it was. For most of the period, the Chinese government has been propping up the yuan so that they can import stuff in the United States and other places at a reasonable price and for other macroeconomic reasons. So just one second. Oops. No, I can't do that. No, no, no, no. One second. Sorry. And, you know, I made that argument in the Kivuto show and the other thing I also mentioned is like the United States doesn't manipulate its currency, like the United States Federal Reserve doesn't increase interest rates or decrease interest rates or immunize, go out there and buy and sell dollars to manipulate the currency. Of course we do. Every central bank, part of its job, every central bank's job partially is to manipulate its own currency. So these accusations against the Chinese have always been wrong and distorted and just a way to play on people's ignorance to make the Chinese look nasty, America look good and to explain away the trade deficit in ways that I guess people don't understand and blame the Chinese for it. And again, to build up this notion, the trade deficits are bad. Well, so when this morning I saw a headline in Bloomberg saying, China tightens grip on markets after sell-off and currency. Central banks set daily fix far stronger than estimates. Whoa. Somebody's actually admitting that the Chinese government actually does the opposite of what they've been accused of doing forever. They're actually trying to make the Yuan stronger. The Yuan is actually collapsing in world markets. And the Chinese government, the Chinese central bank, as central banks do, is doing what it can to try to bolster its value. Now, the Chinese currency doesn't float. So it isn't just what markets are determined to be. It is the logic stand determined by the Chinese central government. But the Chinese central government, what this headline manifests is that, let's say, if the market was allowed to play out, the Yuan would collapse partially because China is lowering interest rates, flooding the market with money, trying to stimulate its economy because its economy is not doing well. And the consequence of that is, as you issue more currency, as you lower interest rates, typically what happens is the value of your currency declines. But the Chinese don't want the value of their currency to decline. So they are trying to prop it up forcefully. Now, this is just one other example of the challenges facing the Chinese economy. As I've told you over and over again, as I probably keep telling you, Chinese economy is not doing well. It hasn't been doing well. It has flooded with debt. There are many, many parts of the Chinese economy that are basically bankrupt. And the Chinese central bank and the Chinese central authorities are trying to centrally plan and manipulate and trying to get it all right so that the things don't go bankrupt on one hand. And on the other hand, they can still get the economy to grow. I mean, one way to resolve the Chinese economy's problems, which nobody likes to hear, but this is actually the healthy market way to solve the problems, is to stop manipulating, to go into a deep recession, clear out all the junk through bankruptcy and start over. And that is, well short term and long term, well maybe not short term, medium term and long term, by far the best way to do this. Just clear out, let's far for bankruptcy, let's get it over with, let's let everything fail, let's let the yuan collapse, let's do whatever the market determines is necessary. Clear out the junk and start over. But of course that's not politically doable, not in China, not in the US, not in Europe. We manipulate economies constantly to avoid any sign of a session. We'll see what happens as interest rates increase in the United States and we might get a recession. We bail people out, we spend money, we print money, we do whatever we need to do, not to have a deep recession. China is the same way. Chinese stocks are way down. I don't give stock advice here, but stocks are way down. You know, if you think they have to go up, they might still have a way to go down. So in other words, more examples of China in trouble, but manipulating the currency, roll your eyes. At least say, I know at least somebody who knows a little bit about finance and economics who doesn't think that's true. Alright, IOL. IOL is a social media company. You probably haven't heard of it, but it was an up and coming social media company at its peak. It was worth almost $1.2 billion. It raised money at that valuation, raised more than $200 million. It was touted at having 20 million subscribers. It was going to, for Gen Xs and young people, replace Facebook as a lot of people were leaving Facebook, particularly to organize events and to do things. It was based in San Francisco. It had hired a ton of people. It was rowing ahead. And then suddenly they discovered that of the 20 million subscribers it had, 19 million were bots. So there were 1 million subscribers, 19 million bots. As a consequence, the network is now filing for bankruptcy, laying off of its employees and shutting down. This is another one that SoftBank, the Japanese large venture capital investor, invested in the same people who invested in WeWorks. They're having a string of unbelievable big large-scale failures where it seems like they don't do their due diligence. It seems like they're not even running spreadsheets to figure out and going on hype and going on kind of a founder enthusiasm. But IRL, social media has gone from basically $1.2 billion to zero. Maybe in record time, this is one of those unicorns that have become, I don't know, I'm trying to make a joke and it's not coming out right. Alright, let me just remind everybody to use the super chat. We do have a target for these shows, $250 a show. That is to keep these daily shows going. Please consider doing that. We have 120 people watching live right now. We had over that a little bit ago. Two bucks from each person using a sticker or something would get us to the target. But of course, it's also an opportunity to ask a question or to make a comment or to challenge me or to call me names or whatever you want. But you can use that to support the show and get us going. I don't know what happened to that big spike in viewership suddenly. Maybe somebody linked to us or tweeted us. Alright, so come on over and talk about it. So IRL, social media is the theory on. Thevenos, sorry, Thevenos of social medias. It turned out to be nothing. 20 million to one. That's pretty steep and one really asked a question. SoftBank, one of the legendary investors in technology for many, many years now seems to have gone to nothing. Alright, quick story about the Pentagon. For those of you who remember the days where there were stories about the Pentagon buying hammers for $1,000. Well, it turns out that the Pentagon is actually now buying trash cans for $52,000. You know, this is just a quick example of what happens when people don't use other people's money. And when a military spends money that it doesn't feel responsible for and when nobody's watching or nobody cares. And also when there's very little competition in terms of military procurement because we have almost no, we have very, very few military contractors out there. And indeed, there is a big push now to allow startups to bid for some of these military contracts. We'll see hopefully that'll move forward. So let me give you some examples because I think this is just, you know, this is just I'm sure the tip of an iceberg. But for example, in 2010, Boeing was charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E3 Century as surveillance radar plane based on the 707 civilian plane, 707's old Boeing airplanes. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a commercial item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels. So in 2020, the Pentagon paid Boeing, this is the $300 trash can over $200,000 for four trash cans, translating to roughly $51,606 per unit. In a 2021 contract, the company charged $36,640 each for 11 trash containers, resulting in a total cost of more than $400,000. I mean, these must be really, really AI driven, you know, super duper unbelievable trash cans to be able to justify a price like that. Another example is Lockheed Martin, high price of an electric conduit for the P3 plane as much as 14 fold, costing the Pentagon an additional $133,000 between 08 and 15. These are little things, but they just add up, right? Radio filters that had cost $350, then suddenly went up to $49,000, $49,000 from $350. And you could go on and on and on and on. Stinger missiles have gone up in price from $25,000 to $400,000 a unit, right? These are anti-stinger anti-tank, is that right? I think so. And again, you could go on and on. And, you know, there's no question, you could get huge quantities from the defense budget by just doing this. Never mind by actually having a military strategy and actually figuring out what troops we actually need and where we need them and what they should be doing and who the bad guys are. And actually figuring out that kind of stuff and doing the work that was necessary. Stinger's anti-aircraft, their shoulder, I think their shoulder anti-aircraft missiles, thanks. And of course, they're good for helicopters, particularly Russian ones. So, yeah, I mean, just imagine, we're not even talking about the cost overruns of the stealth jet fighters or the latest class of aircraft carriers or the latest craft of submarines and so on. So, yeah, it's pretty unbelievable. And these are just kind of the low-hanging fruit. These are the obvious ones. You could, again, only imagine what's actually going on. Okay, finally, let's do a quick update on Russia. It does appear that, oh God, I can't pronounce the guy's name. It does appear that the leader of the Wagner group has indeed appeared in Belarus and is in Belarus. They're building a camp there for his, I guess, the Wagner troops that hopefully they're supposed to can hold 8,000 people. And Shchenko, the dictator of Belarus, appeared today on television announcing that, yes, the deal was real and, yes, I can't pronounce it. But the head of Pigozin. Pigozin, I was pronouncing it all fine for days now that Pigozin was moving indeed to Belarus and was going to be stationed there with the Wagner troops. And they were going to train a Belarusian troops. They were going to have training responsibilities. Very curious to have them suddenly in Belarus and why he would trust them not to overthrow his own regime. I mean, they have something on Pigozin. There's no question they have something on him. They have some leverage on him. First of all, they turned him around in second. They now think he can just be in Belarus and he won't threaten Lukashenko. He won't threaten Putin. He won't threaten anybody. He's not being pacified by the fact that he's in Belarus. I mean, it just doesn't make any real sense. Something is going on here that we don't know. We don't have an explanation for. So it's going to be continued to monitor and continue to see. In addition, you know, yesterday I told you that they were still going to prosecute Pigozin, that the Russians said, oh no, no, we're still going to prosecute him for treason. Well, today they reversed themselves and now Pigozin is scot-free. That is, Pigozin will not be prosecuted by the Russians for for treason. So Pigozin has something on Putin. Putin, Lukashenko or Lukashenko and Lukashenko have something on Pigozin. It's a very fragile truce. It's a very weird relationship and it can't survive. So these are all thugs. These are all gangsters and they're all playing games with one another and who has leverage on whom and what they can extract from each other. And, yeah, I mean, it's bizarre and, you know, the situation in Russia continues to be strange and bizarre. We will continue to see how it all evolves. One day Putin is saying, Pigozin is a devil, is treasonous, he has to be punished. You know, all the traitors will be punished. And the next day, you know, they are basically all the claims against them are withdrawn and they are basically free to do what they want and the Russian government is not going to do anything. What is going on in Moscow? What is going on with Putin? Who is calling the shots? It seems like it's not Putin anymore. But if it's not Putin, who could it even be? So a lot of upheaval, put it that way, a lot of upheaval going on and hard to tell what all lands and what all happens. In the meantime, on the front, Ukrainians, as I've said, continue to say slow progress. They keep making progress. They keep making progress. Again, you know, I haven't seen any indications of a breakthrough, any indications of a big push, but I will keep you posted because things change almost on an hourly basis, never mind on a daily basis. I mean, if I was Lukashenko, I would be really afraid of having Pigozin just around the corner from me. I mean, Lukashenko is weak anyway. The Belarusians don't like him. They don't want him. Maybe he hired Pigozin just to protect him, but who's going to protect him from Pigozin? So either they have something on each other, all of these people. I'm sure they do. They have files in each other, but this powerful. And then what is actually going to happen to all the Wagner troops? Are they going to join the military, sign contracts with the military defense? Are they going to go home? Are they going to be allowed to go home? Are they going to join Pigozin in Belarus? Are they going to be sent to Africa? One aspect of Wagner Group's presence in Africa is they are in Africa representing the Russian government. They're in Africa doing the Russian government's bidding. I don't know if you know, but basically they basically prop up illegitimate and authoritarian regimes in Africa. They run slave camps for the extraction of gold and diamonds and other minerals from African countries. Every time they tell you, oh, look what capitalism is doing to Africa. It's not capitalism. It's the Wagner Group using force. They are stirring up problems and fermenting civil war in the Sudan. They are basically guns for hire for any thug and for any authoritarian thug in Africa, the Wagner Group is there to facilitate and to help and to kill and to slaughter and do whatever is necessary. And they fund themselves by stealing the natural resources and by enslaving the local people to help them do so. Now that's all happened under the auspices of the Russian government. Will the Russian government continue to give it to auspices? Can Pigozin continue to extract the funds out of Africa that he has in the past? Has made him a billionaire? Is he still a billionaire? I mean, I assume most of his money is outside Russia. Cyprus or Switzerland or something like that or Panama, who knows? But Cayman Islands. But is it? Are the channels still open? A lot of questions and how just logistically all this new arrangement is going to work. We will see. We will see. Oh, of course, Pigozin might just fall out of a window. But of course, it's not clear that he's the one to fall out of a window. Maybe Lukashenko is going to fall out of a window. Maybe Putin will fall out of a window. Maybe the Ministry of Defense or some of the generals are going to fall out of windows. Who knows? Suddenly people are going to fall out of windows. There's no question about that. All right, let's see. Okay, we're going to turn to our Super Chat now. Thank you to all the Super Chatters. We're about halfway. But if everybody steps in right now and does a couple of dollars, we'll get it. Remember, value for value. You know, you listen to the show. You must get some value for it. Some of you really value the fact that I do these every day and get you up to speed on the news. Some of you give monthly. Thank you for that. Others watch live and use the Super Chat to give. But if you're listening, if you see a value here and you can and you think it's worth it, then please consider doing a contribution here. It would be good if we got our $250 goal for the show. We've got a few more days in June. We've got a target for June. I might not be able to do the show on Thursday or Friday. So we have to make sure that the day is leading up to that. We make our numbers so we don't have a deficit for the month. All right, Remo. Thank you, Remo. What has been your biggest failure during your career? Oh, God. What did you learn from it? Was it shorting net bank? Well, silly shorting net bank was a failure and I learned a lot of things from that. I learned not a short stuff that was unhinged and during a bubble period. But also that wasn't that devastating overall. Still made money that year in spite of losing a lot on net bank. I've had a lot of failures you could call them in my career. I'd say the biggest failure in my career has been, God, how do I phrase this without giving too much away? I'd say it's being people. It's being overly generous with people both in my time and my effort and my belief, my trust. I've had too many people, well, not that many people, but a few people basically take that trust and take the relationship and the energy and the time and all that and basically stab me in the back and turn the knife. So what have I learned from it? Be cautious. I'm not saying be cautious with people and you have to take risks with people because it's important to do that. You're not going to find great relationships without taking risks. But be aware. Pay attention early to what you find as character faults. Don't let them just slide. Be very, very, so I guess ultimately it's the virtue of justice. Pay very close attention to justice. Play very close attention to people close to you and who you're investing in and don't become dependent, too dependent on any individual people. And judge, judge and be willing to act on that judgment. I was way with a number of people, but certainly especially one. I was way too late to act. I acted way too slowly giving people the benefit of the doubt and the benefit of the doubt and the benefit of the doubt. And it was, I was being too pragmatic and not principled enough. So be principled. Be principled. And yeah. Yeah, now. Okay, so Michael, you notice any political thinker is a movement that is confident, prideful and believes in hierarchies. The left categorizes as fascist. That's why they view Iron Man as a fascist thinker, dangerous and vicious package deal. Yeah, but I don't like the way, I don't like the term hierarchies. What does hierarchy mean in what context? It's a very tricky term. And as is used by people like Jordan Peterson and used by a lot of the weight, it is a bad term. You know, yes, there are certain hierarchies and certain contact in certain places. But the fundamental is the human beings are equal in rights, equal in liberties. And we have no ingrained hierarchies in born hierarchies. And it's in the hierarchy is not determined by stepping on other people. You know, Jordan Peterson's lobster example often comes to mind when talking about hierarchies. One lobster will step on the others to get to the top. That's not human beings, human beings don't step on each other to get to the top. So I don't like the term hierarchies. And I don't believe in that sense in hierarchies. I believe in ability. I believe, you know, in, you know, in hierarchies in the context of particular organizations, but hierarchies that are built. And this is the key feature of objectivism that are built on win-win relationships. So hierarchy is, hierarchies the way it's used in politics is a package deal. It packages hierarchy that is created voluntarily through win-win transactions with dog eat, dog step on the other person kind of and kind of aristocracy. The hierarchy of aristocracy, the hierarchy of lobsters. So beware of how you use hierarchy and don't just throw the word out there because it is, it is not well understood in the world in which we live. Frank says, why is Wagner mutiny not the same as Potemkin mutiny? I don't know. I don't know enough about the Potemkin community to a logic stand because the forces are different. The Potemkin mutiny was, was it during, I think it was during Lenin's time. So it was against the communists or was it communist? I just don't know enough. I'd have to look it up. So don't know, Frank, have to have to go do my research. James just got us very close to our goal. Only $39 not short of the goal. So $220 questions and we're there. Thank you, James. $50. That's great. James says, what is the future of the Chinese economy as more wealthy Chinese moves to Western countries? Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, UAE, especially Dubai. How do you see this contributing to a rolling recession globally? Well, it doesn't have to contribute to a rolling recession because as those Chinese move to Western countries, they don't lose their productivity. Many of them continue to invest and continue to produce wherever they happen to be. I think it hurts. It definitely hurts the local Chinese economy. There's a brain drain. There's a talent drain of people moving out of China. And that's because of its oppressive and its oppressive policies. So many of them are moving to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and UAE and many of them are moving to Western countries. And I think one of the great tragedies, really one of the great tragedies of the time in which we live is that countries like the United States and many European countries are not opening the door wide open to Chinese immigration. I mean, here you've got talented people with money, productive hard working entrepreneurial. You know, many of them, scientists, many, many, scientists, many innovators and entrepreneurs open the door to them. You know, and not only that, we educate them here in the United States and we send them back to China. Give them our visas right stamped into their passports, right? As soon as they graduate from college here in the United States, invite more to come. Incredible, incredible smart and entrepreneurial people over there and they're stuck over there. And if you gave them real opportunity, if you gave them an easy route to come into the United States, they would leave China like that. It's just horrific that we don't just embrace immigration as the solution to a lot of these problems. But what's going to happen is the Chinese economy is going to stagnate. I don't think that necessarily means that the global economy will stagnate, but I think it will for lots of other reasons. But the Chinese economy is going to stagnate and you're going to take an economic engine that was growing at unbelievable rates and you're going to chip away at it and chip away at it and chip away at it until China is going to be in trouble economically. It already is. And it's going to get worse as more talented people leave. Laboratory L, do you think it's possible to be successful in politics without increasing the power of the state? Even when Republicans still use the rhetoric of less statism, they still wound up increasing spending after all. To do that, you have to be really strong, really principled and be willing to stand up against the popular view. You have to be willing to lose elections. You have to be willing to be unpopular. You have to be willing to be honest and state the case and not sugarcoat what needs to happen and what must happen. Unfortunately, I don't think that's possible today because I don't think you get elected and if you could get elected, I don't think there's anybody out there with the balls, the courage, the integrity, the principles to actually see it through. So if you get elected under false pretenses, it's almost impossible then to live up to your real standards. It's just not possible. So I don't know what you do, right? Again, the culture has to change. Maybe the only time where something like this is possible, maybe the only time something like this is possible is if things get really, really bad and people become really, really desperate for solutions and they're willing to entertain something super radical and super scary. That's the hope, but then that means we have to live through horrible times to get there. Jacob says, just a thought, the saying, speak your mind is so profound and powerful in its essence. Have a good one, Iran. Yes, speak your mind, speak, speak, speak, make your voice heard. But speak your mind, not your emotions, not your feelings. Speak your thoughts. Thank you, chicken. Michael says, does the left out back the war on drugs when they're in power? No, not necessarily, not at all. The left is very pro war on drugs, very committed to the war on drugs. They want to control your life, they want to control your behavior just like the right and they don't like it when you do stuff like drugs. They want to be able to tell you what you can and cannot do. What do you think of Lion City in Saudi Arabia? I think it's a stupid project. It doesn't make any sense from the perspective of city planning. It is just a project to make, what's his name, Suleiman, whatever, the son of the king, the crown prince, all men to make him look good. It's his vanity project. Cities are usually built in circles and that makes sense. It makes everything closer to the center. You built it in a line, you know, everything you want to achieve in a line you can do in a circle. So we'll see, but it doesn't make any sense to me. And it looks like a vanity project, hugely centrally planned, everything's zoned, everything's predetermined. You know, maybe he'll fill it up, maybe there'll be a big white elephant. Michael says, what's the difference between xenophobia and racism? Good question. I think racism is overtly about race, xenophobia is focused on the other and it's focused in the context of nationalism, of discriminating or not wanting the other. And xenophobia is a form of racism. I think it's a form of racism, but it's a way to say that people in a particular country don't want the other coming in. They wouldn't mind people that look like them coming in, but they don't want the other coming in. Although these days, it seems like everybody's the other because we're Americans. And to be an American, it's not even enough to be born in America. You have to have, I guess, several generations born in America to be a true American. And even if you come from Europe, you're not an American in that sense. So I'm not sure they want any immigrants. So it's the idea that you are something special and whether it's because of race or maybe it's because of something else, and you don't want the other to come in. So it might not be based on race, right? And race is a fuzzy, ill-defined concept anyway. So it's the whole idea of, you know, this is our country, we don't want others here. Michael says, Pierre Polyver is called for de-regulation of the Canadian housing market. I think the 2024 elections across the West will see a sweep of conservative wins. Let's make these super-check goals. I hope so. I mean, that would be great. I think the conservatives in Canada tend to be less religious, less nationalist, less, I think, objectionable than some of the conservatives in the U.S. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see if Canada can launch a more conservative movement. But yes, de-regulation is housing. It's how you solve a lot of problems. Alex says, you say it goes in. Thank you. He's spelt it in Hebrew for me so I could get it right. Benny says, should the Russian tactic of bombing civilian targets as a means of weakening the Ukrainians will to fight be considered rational self-interest besides the immoral decision to invade altogether? Well, once, but once your goal is an immoral goal, nothing in the process is rationally self-interested because you're not pursuing self-interest. Now, you could argue that in war to achieve a goal, this is a strategy that makes sense in the context of a particular goal to achieve. Maybe, maybe not because it might also encourage the West to provide even war weapons given the situation to Ukraine. But you can't divorce the morality of something from its aim. The aim and the method are not separated. Objectivism holds that it's not like if the goal is a good you could do whatever or if it doesn't matter what the goal is, it's a process. It's both. And here clearly the goal is evil. So anything they do is evil. And it's something that's hard for people to get, but that's how Objectivism views it. Andrew says the fixation of hierarchies is interesting. It's not wrong to observe differences among people, but what is one using that observation for? If it's a feeling of superiority, it's a problem. Yes, I agree. Or if it's a feeling of or political theory of, well, some people are just better than others. Some people are more important than others. Some people deserve more, you know, deserve more than others. Not in a marketplace, but through some kind of central authority. It's very dangerous. It's very dangerous. I never use that term in a political context. You know, Edward says it's a caste system, right? So castes, different people in different castes. It's like the hierarchy of castes. Very, very bad to talk about hierarchies in a political context. Again, it's a kind of a longing for aristocracy, which I think is really bad. James, will you do a show on the UK economy and the potential crash they are facing? A great CNBC article came out last week about the real estate issues. Yes, I mean, I'll look at it. I'll definitely talk about it soon. I have to dig into that one and see the details. But yes, there's a massive real estate bubble in the UK for a very long time, primarily driven by shortage of supply. But the ridiculous prices were sustained by zero interest rates as interest rates have risen. It's become just unaffordable to anybody. Prices have to come down, but there's still a shortage of supply. Similar problem in some parts of the United States. How that all gets resolved is going to be a real challenge. And of course, the solution to the real estate problem in the UK is the same solution everywhere. And it's the one everybody's ignoring. And that is deregulate, increase supply of housing. That will solve the problem. But that's the one thing they won't do. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you to all the superchatters. We didn't make our target. So thanks. Show tonight on the Seven Deadly Sins. Don't miss it. Should be a lot of fun. That'll be at 8 p.m. East Coast time right here on YouTube. Also tomorrow we'll be doing another one of these news roundups. And then I'm off to Ocon and a very uncertain schedule in terms of shows. So there will be another week where we're just not sure. Upton, thank you. Really appreciate the support. Upton says looking forward to Ocon. Yes, should be a lot of fun. I'm glad you're coming. And all right, guys, I will see you all tonight or tomorrow or at Ocon or all of the three.