 The radical. Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right everybody, welcome to the Iran Brook Show on this Tuesday, December 27th. And today we will do another show, another round of news roundup. Although I have to say this period between Christmas and New Year is pretty slow on the news. I mean, if you look at the headlines and you look at the stories, it's like everybody wants to talk about the storm. Not much I have to contribute to that discussion. There's this Republican congressman who lied on his resume and that's making big headlines. So there's a lot of discussion of that. A politician who lies. There's a massive breakthrough. And the newsworthy breakthrough. But no, I mean, this guy really lied on pretty much everything. And he's admitting it now. And I guess he doesn't care. He doesn't care. And so we'll see what happens. I don't think there were Republican leadership wants to stir things up because of the upcoming election to who's going to be House Speaker. So they're probably going to let him let him become a House member before they make any kind of deal out of it. So, you know, what do you make of that? I guess the quality of congressmen maybe is declining. I don't think we need a scandal to figure that one out. Yes, he claimed he was Jewish, but he wasn't Jewish. He was Jewish. Whatever the hell that means. Thank you, anonymous user. Thank you, Catherine, getting us going on the super chat. And but let's let's jump in. So given given it's a little kind of quiet out there in the world of news and, you know, I follow all the other sub stacks and blogs and everything. And there's just not that much excitement going on. I want to focus on focus on today. Today, maybe talk a little bit about a couple of stories I read that are kind of looking at employment in the United States. I think it's interesting, although not as obviously not as sexy and intriguing as some of the stuff out there. So there is this phenomenon of labor participation rates in the United States coming down significantly. And labor participation in the United States is basically the percentage of people, men and women of work age who are part of the workforce. And it's an interesting. So unemployment is kind of a weird statistic because unemployment captures when they say unemployment is 4%. All that's capturing really is the number of people looking for work who are not finding it at any particular given point in time. But there are lots of people not looking for work. So lots of people who are just unemployed but not being captured by the unemployment rate unemployment rate again is only the people looking for work who are not employed. And the participation rate on the other hand just looks generally at the entire population of adults, I think 18 or over or 22 and over. I'm not sure where they start. Wait a minute. I can tell you. So it measures the number of people who are actively job hunting as well as those who are currently employed. It immense institutionalized people in prison, nursing homes and mental health facilities and members of the military. And includes all other people age 16 and older and compares the proportion of those who are working or seeking work outside the home to those who are either working not seeking work outside the home. Right. So this is it's never going to be 100 because some people in school if it includes 16 and over some people might be in high school. They might be in college and they might be retired. So but includes everybody basically over 16 who's not in prison, nursing homes, mental health facilities and military. It takes those people up but basically everybody else is included. It's kind of an interesting statistic to look historically because it's capturing a lot of different things, certain cultural changes, but it also captures demographics. So for example, in the 1950s, you know, the Haiti of I'm going to do a show on the Cold War and why both left and right long for the Cold War and want a new Cold War. And you know, they might have it, but they really want it. And we'll talk about that. It's a show idea I had this weekend. So we'll do that next week sometime. But it is interesting because both left and right both want a cold war with China and not for the reasons that I think might be an inevitable cold war in China. But I think they actually actively wanted because they believe it does something good to America having a cold war. But anyway, use participation rates in the 50s and 60s until I'd say the mid 60s Harvard around 58 to 60%. They kind of went up to 60% during some periods, but they hovered around there. They never really significantly went over 60%. Starting I'd say around 1969, 70, they started going up significantly up as a percentage of the population working age population number of people actually employed. And the primary reason for this or one of the main reasons for this is the fact that women entered the workforce. So, you know, so if you look at women participation in the workforce in 1948 after after the war. So this is after all the women who had worked during the war were laid off as the men came back 32% of women were in the workforce 32% of women. And I think you all know what I mean by women 32% of women were in the workforce. By 1998 60% of women were in the workforce. So the later participation rate during that period was driven up from around from under 60 to around 67%. It actually peaked labor participation rate peaked in the United States in April of 2000 at 67.3 67.3. So a lot of that was driven by by women. I think it was also driven that rise was driven by the baby boom entering the work for workforce. And by the fact that as a proportion of the population, the number of total population, the number of retirees and the number of the number of retirees really because those are the only ones accounted was relatively low. And that so we peaked in April of 2000. Now it's interesting that we peaked in April of 2000 because we picked. Yeah, in April 2000 because April 2000 is also the beginning really March of 2000 is the beginning of the dot com crash. The NASDAQ declining significantly. The United States economy teetering. We then have 9 11 a little bit after that. And then of course we have the financial crisis in 2007. So while you get post dot com bubble and post 9 11 you get a significant reduction in labor participation rate to 60 to around 66%. It spikes up a little bit in in 2006 2007. And then from there during the financial crisis, it's just a steady decline, a steady decline. And then it starts inching up and that's because I think of a lack of economic activity lack of good jobs and also another interesting phenomena as that is a decrease in participation in the workforce by women. So participation in the workforce by women peaks in. When do we say in 1998 1999 at 60% and then goes down to today at 56.5. And then it goes down throughout the period during the Trump years it kind of stabilizes and maybe goes up a little bit it starts doing going up it starts stabilizes. During Obama in 2013 14 and then goes up a little bit in 2019. So just before COVID it's a 63.4 but notice how big of a drop it is from the peak in 1999. Because I mean I've told you this before is on the peak in 2000. I think the 90s, if you had to pick the error for in modern times of the best economic growth, I think the 90s are it. And then in it doesn't include illegal immigrants. No, I don't think it does just by the way it measures it wouldn't include illegal immigrants. So February 2020, but illegal immigration drops starts dropping with the financial crisis so starting in 2007 illegal immigration collapses. And it actually goes negative for a few years. So more illegal immigrants leave the United States and come in and it only starts recovering. You know sometime before COVID and and now and the nature of illegal immigration has also changed from people coming here for a variety of economic reasons to asylum seekers and the whole asylum fiasco, which I talked about in a show. The participation rates collapse almost to 60% during COVID particularly among women it collapses and have recovered since then in a now at about 62% 62.2 something like that. But notice 62% versus right 67%. That is a huge drop huge drop at the same time. We have over 10 million jobs that are unfilled. We have labor wages going up because they're just not enough people interested in working. So there's a fascinating dynamic right now. Fewer Americans as a percentage are working than at any time since probably the mid 1970s. And yet there are more jobs available more vacancies in terms of jobs than maybe ever. And wages are going up at the fastest rates in a long, long time. And that combination is interesting and it's caused so you know one has to ask why what's causing that and a number of things. I think one that dominates the others but there's a number of things one is immigration. So during COVID immigration was restricted significantly legal immigration was restricted significantly legal immigration continues to be restricted. The bureaucracy and trying to catch up with the with the pipeline, you know with the with the other COVID restrictions and stuff. It's starting to pick up so 2022 will see a slight return to normal. But you know we will we will see right we'll see whether it ever gets back to completely normal. But it's starting it's starting to it's starting to come back slowly. But the real issue is now the baby boomers. Baby boomers were planning on working a lot longer. And it turns out that during COVID they they last day jobs or they were sent home and they liked it. And because of all the stimulus money and because of all the help and all the and because the stock market while the stock went down early in 2020. It recovered very very quickly. They feel pretty flush. And baby boomers who thought they would not have enough money to retire who thought that they would have to work much later are just not going back into the labor market. They are just they're retiring they're figuring out how to manage with what they have they you know this is even with the stock market going down this year. They're still up as compared to pre COVID in many in you know if they if they've got a nice diversified portfolio and the big challenge the United States has and it's going to have over the next 10 over the next decade or so is what do you do. What do you do. With. What do you do with all this. With all these jobs that are unfilled and even if we go back to normal immigration levels. We're still not going to have enough people to fill these jobs. And you know this is only going to enhance jobs being quote outsourced move to. Mexico or China of Vietnam or somewhere else. And because more and more baby boomers are going to be retiring. We've still got you know most baby boomers now across the 65 year threshold but many of them again plan to to work a lot later. But it looks like it's. It looks like it ain't happening. And they are going into retirement they're going to retirement even in the in the early 60s. So that is one aspect of the shrinking workforce. Another aspect which we'll cover quickly is the fact that. Welfare and I talked about this in a previous show today we've got to the point where in some states welfare programs welfare benefits. Particularly if you include unemployment insurance are so lucrative. That a lot of people choose not to go to work. A lot of people have just staying out of the workforce and living off of the state. I gave you the example I think of a show I did a while back of the fact that. You know if you if you take into account. After tax income. A lot of people in welfare make about as much as. People in what you would consider the low middle class. It doesn't make sense for a lot of people to go to work because they actually. Will reduce their income. So we've created a system in many states which disincentivizes. Searching for work. And I came across this paper is a paper called paying Americans not to work. Which was written by Casey Mulligan who's a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and others. And they look at unemployment insurance in particular. And what they find is in that three states. If you take into account benefits and unemployment insurance in those states three three states Washington Massachusetts and New Jersey actually. People can you know the family of four. Has benefits that exceed a hundred thousand dollars. Which means that you can go on the unemployment benefits for as long as they last different states that last differently. And you can live pretty well. And a lot of these states some of these states I think the six states that don't tax these benefits at the state level. I think a lot of states most states. You don't pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on this money. So if you take all that into account. These are pretty amazing benefits that the median median secondary school teacher makes eighty one thousand. Median construction and building inspector makes eighty thousand and median electrician makes seventy eight thousand. This is nationwide median firefighter sixty six thousand. The median heavy haul trucker makes sixty three thousand. And yet you can actually get one hundred twenty two thousand dollars in Washington state. And one of the things that they looked at interestingly just to show the relationship between unemployment insurance and unemployment is when the when during covid states gave six hundred. The federal government gave additional six hundred dollars on state unemployment insurance. They added six hundred dollars to that. What happened. What happened was jobs went unfilled. Massive numbers of jobs went up for as soon as that expired. Somehow those jobs filled up again. The same happened when under Biden. That was under Trump. They were under Biden. They increased unemployment insurance by three hundred. And their different states eliminated the three hundred additional different points in time. And you could see the recollection in the study between when that additional insurance was paid was eliminated and how quickly jobs were filled. Job vacancy was filled. So there's a direct correlation between how much you pay people not to work and between how many people work. I know they're shocking. I know it's surprising. But sometimes you have to write an economic paper in order to show this. So this is a paper. I don't think it's been published yet. It's a pre publication paper. But it's stunning how much and the extent to which these benefits make it. It just doesn't pay for some people to try to look for a job. And as a consequence of that there is a vast number of people who don't look for jobs. And as a consequence of that the you know what do we say the labor participation rate today is still lower than it was before COVID hit. In spite of all the in spite of the fact that the economy seems to have recovered. There are plenty of jobs. Unemployment rate is very very low. But there were a lot of people who lost their jobs during COVID who will never come back. Some of them will never come back because they were tired. Some of them will never won't come back at least for a while because of the variety of different benefits the state is providing them. Not to work to encourage them. Literally not to work stay home. All right. Let's see a couple of other topics. So and I was just asking did you see the news on Taiwan today? Which news on Taiwan today? Is it the fact that the China sent a bunch of aircraft across the border and ships across the border to kind of object to make clear to the world that it objects to the Biden defense budget. Well, not the Biden defense budget. It was bipartisan. The bipartisan defense budget that provides a lot more weapons of Taiwan and a lot more support to Taiwan. Yeah, I saw that. I think that, you know, they're rattling the cages. But what I want to talk about with Taiwan's response, which I think is sad. But Taiwan's response to that was, I mean, not to that, I think to the broader Chinese threat was I think as of yesterday, Taiwan has increased its extended its conscription to one year. So it used to be up until I think now. I think all Taiwan all males in Taiwan were conscripted into the army for four months. Now, I don't know what the values of a four month conscription. Maybe they teach you how to use a weapon so that you can form a guerrilla army if the Chinese invade. I don't know. It seems silly to me, both from an efficiency perspective and because I'm opposed to all conscription. But they've just extended that to one year. Where under one year their idea is that they will troops will receive significantly more training. Taiwan has already a professional army of 165,000 soldiers. They estimate that by extending from four months to one year, they will extend that army by 60 to 70,000. You know, one thing that Taiwanese could do instead of conscripting all the males is they cut off on more money to people and maybe they'd increase the size of the army. You know, supply and demand, money usually works, just pay them all. Now, I am against conscription just for every country, including Taiwan, including countries under threat, including Israel. I believe that if you cannot have, if you cannot raise a professional army to defend your country, then your country doesn't deserve to exist. South Korea has a two year conscription. I don't believe it should have any. I believe that instead of that, these countries that are under threat like Taiwan and like South Korea and like Israel should increase pay. They should, what they should do is they should drive to have professional armies, much better trained, much more selective. Better trained and selective. Not private armies. I'm 100% against private armies. I'm 100% against even the use of American, in the American army of private armies. But I think conscription is always evil. It is always the initiation of force. And I'm against it even in a time of emergency. I'm against it in World War II, certainly against it in World War I. It is giving the state power that it should never have to impose its will on the people. I think if there's an emergency, you raise the money and you start paying soldiers and you ask for volunteers. And if you don't have enough volunteers to fight for your country, then you don't deserve to have a country. It's nothing metaphysical that says that a country, a particular political system has to exist. A particular political entity has to exist. So what you want is professional armies that grow in times of emergencies. They grow based on supply and demand. They grow based on volunteers when there is an emergency because they have an incentive to volunteer both to defend their own life and their own rights and because they're getting paid well. So Taiwan is not going to have a one-year conscription. I wouldn't be surprised if that was increased to two years. Freedom is expensive and freedom is rare. And it's very easy, particularly in the name of emergencies and the name of whatever, to dump freedom. One other quick story about the Taiwan Straits and about Taiwan has to do with a new weapon system. So this is an interesting story. I mean, an interesting story about the threat that China poses not only to Taiwan but primarily to the United States. One of the real, one of the things that have made the United States Navy and military more broadly superior in the world over the last, since World War II, has been the extent to which the United States has had a superior Navy and has commanded the seas. And a lot of that has to do with American ability to project power all over the world. And that has to do with the existence of aircraft carriers. The United States has that overwhelming dominance in aircraft carriers. And it has more aircraft carriers, better aircraft carriers than basically all other countries combined. China, I think, has one aircraft carrier. Britain has two. I can't remember the number of the United States has, but we have a significantly more than any of these countries, again, combined. And the United States recently has deployed its latest generation of aircraft carrier. The latest aircraft carrier is called the Ford. The Ford is a unbelievably sophisticated aircraft carrier weapon system, how you want to call it. It costs $13.3 billion. It's the largest and most expensive warship ever to sail. It has a five-acre flight deck, five acres. It has new technologies everywhere that allows much faster takeoffs, much faster re-arming, much faster takeoff and landings. It can accommodate as many as 90 aircraft. Usually it has 60. That includes four squadrons of fighters on board and a bevy of support and tactical aircraft. So, you know, the Ford has more aircraft than 60 nations have. Just as one aircraft carrier has more aircraft than 60 nations have in total in the entire Air Force, Navy, whatever. It weighs 97,000 tons. That's 32,000 tons heavier than the largest warships of World War II. And it's still fast. And it has massive nuclear power plants that drive it, 300 megawatts of electrical power in all. This thing is, you know, what is it, nine-story high? I mean, it's just a massive thing, a massive projection of power. It has aircraft. Now, the aircraft have a range of about 700 miles. So this thing can go into 500 miles of a particular country and it can dominate the airspace. It has aircraft that are better aircraft than anybody else has in the world. I think the F-35 is part of, sits on the Ford. It can attack anybody, but the aircraft carrier has to get relatively close to shore. And the challenge is here. The challenge is new weapon systems that primarily have, that the Chinese have. And the challenge here is weapon systems that can attack a ship with great accuracy at greater than the 700 mile distance from shore. So keep, in a sense, keep these ships, keep these aircraft carriers away so that they can't use their air force. So the airplanes can't attack because they're too far away out to sea. And they don't approach because they're going to be destroyed by weapon systems from the shore, from the Chinese coast. So, you know, the United States, like the Ford and other aircraft carriers have a bevy of anti-aircraft, anti-missile technologies. Their borders were protected as anything can be for the most part. So they've always felt confident that they can defend themselves, navigate into positions and destroy the Chinese capabilities, let's say, on shore by deploying aircraft from the aircraft carrier to the mainland China to destroy whatever missiles they're sending towards the U.S. The problem is the latest generation of weapon systems coming out of China and Russia. And those are these hypersonic weapons. In China's case, hypersonic weapons can reach Mach 10, 10 times the speed of sound. These are unbelievably fast weapons and incredibly maneuverable. And the reality is that the United States today does not have the capacity to down them effectively and consistently given their speed and maneuverability. We're not, I don't think anybody's particularly concerned about Russian hypersonic weapons. Russia's weapons, as we've talked about many times on the show, weapons westerns are not sophisticated, they're not particularly accurate. While they have hypersonic technology, it's doubtful whether it would actually hit its target. So it's doubtful that they could actually deploy this technology. It's also true that Russia is not concerned really, hypersonic is problematic, but it's not about knocking out ships in the middle of the ocean because Russia is not really an issue with regard to oceans. We're not going to see a big battles, ocean battles between Russia and the United States. You might see big ocean battles between China and the United States because the only way for the United States to attack China is by getting very close to it. Unless we're using, you know, if we're trying to defend Taiwan. So Taiwan is going to be a naval battle and therefore China becomes a real issue. Can we get close enough to defend Taiwan? So the United States military today has this real conflict, what to do about hypersonic. And the beauty of this country still is its ability to innovate and the ability of, you know, the freedom to innovate, the new ideas and the willingness to invest in new innovations. So while it's true that the Russians and the Chinese, particularly Chinese, have significant advantage over us in supersonic weapons, the US Navy is now developing a weapon to knock down hypersonic missiles. And what's interesting about this weapon is the weapon is a laser. Lasers are usually very impractical. They require massive amounts of energy in order to produce. But the beauty of an aircraft carrier is that it has a nuclear power plant on board. It can produce that kind of unbelievable quantity of energy that will down these hypersonic missiles. Lasers, they are working on building lasers that are accurate enough and that can actually protect these ships. And the idea is to put these super powerful lasers on the next generation of aircraft carriers in order to protect them against the kind of missile technology that the Chinese have today. So it's pretty amazing. Let me see. While China's missiles have the capability of inflicting catastrophic damage on our ships, some of these weapons are massive. Some of these missiles weigh 32,000 pounds and so on. They stand for story high and they have an amazing, amazing range. They are hypersonic missiles, can attack more than 1,500 miles away. All these missiles now are potentially susceptible to these lasers. They cannot come out of the sky. So, you know, this is exciting technology. It's brand new. I don't think it's been deployed yet, not systematically, but the idea is that ultimately these blasters, these laser blasters will be deployed in aircraft carrier and in the ships associated with the carrier to defend naval power against long-range Chinese missiles. So, it's amazing what you can do with these kind of, when you free people up to think outside of the box. So, you remember the Star Wars, Ronald Reagan Star Wars, there was a lot of talk of lasers up in space. And I think a lot of the problem with lasers up in space was how much power could they get enough power. Here, because again, they're on a ship, nuclear power, almost unlimited amount of power. These are now viable weapon systems to, you know, really primarily act in defense. All right, I thought that was interesting. Hopefully you did too. One quick other China-related news item, and that is that China has eliminated basically all COVID restrictions. So, you now don't have to quarantine if you fly into China. You don't have to show, as far as I could tell, a vaccine passport. Anything like that, basically they've opened it up completely. So, COVID, while about, they say over 200 million people right now in China are affected by COVID, have COVID, and many hospitals and emergency rooms are having a hard time. The reality is that COVID restrictions have, mandatory COVID restrictions have been eliminated. A lot of people staying home because they choose to, because they'd rather do that than get infected. But it is pretty amazing how quickly China went from zero COVID to let it rip. And right now we're experiencing let it rip. And I have a feeling we will never quite know what the let it rip policy actually resulted in in terms of COVID, people suffering from COVID, people dying from COVID, because I don't think the Chinese have any incentive to keep data on that or to make data on that accessible, accessible to people. All right. Yes, I mean, the Ford carrier has two reactors, two reactors. So there's really an unbelievable amount of electricity on these things. All right. You can now book your flights to China if you want to go. People are doing it for the first time since COVID hit, since before COVID hit, before COVID hit the United States from like January, from January 2020 for the first time. You can supposedly, we'll see if this is true, you can fly in and out of China. With very little restrictions, if any, I guess you still need a visa for China. I wonder if my 10-year visa still works. Maybe I'll test it out. We'll see. Anybody want to invite me to come and give a talk? It's China. All right. Jason asked, by the way, Super Chat is 250 is the goal. We're at 90. So we still got about 50 bucks, 50 bucks to get to a goal. Well, no, sorry, $150, $160 to get our goal. $160 to get our goal. So we're way behind. All right. Jason asks, if you do a series on capitalism, I propose government as a moral good. My idea 365 proper basic moral things government should do for a coffee table picture book with calendar offering $1 each looking for matches. Okay, let me see. What am I doing? So 365 proper basic moral things government should do. 365, God, that's going to require me to be quite creative to come up with 365. So government is a moral good with 365 moral things government should do. All right, I'll think about that one. I think the moral good one is good. I'm not so about the 365. You have to think about how you, what level of concrete are you breaking this down to? All right. Let's see, friend Harper. So we're, let's see. So if everybody now put in a buck 20, we would make our goal. So I think everybody can do a buck 20 to support the show. So maybe, maybe the, because we got 120 basically live listeners right now should be able to reach. All right. Friend Harper says, thanks for taking, talking about chip wars. It's fascinating. Help me think about global trade. And it showcases Russia's importance, which is always fun to hear about Russia's impotence. Not importance. God, I can't read Russia's impotence. Yes, I agree. It is Russia's completely impotent. I mean, China is invested in chip technology. It's struggling even there, but it's invested in it. Russia's done nothing and has no chip industry, basically. The future is faster than you think. It's very complimentary to it. The future is faster than you think. Okay. So I need a, yes, I need to get that book. Thank you. All right. Thanks, friend Harper. Wes, it looks like another Russian tycoon fell out of a window. I missed that in India this time. Rich Russians should stop going above first floor in any building. I agree. I agree. But you know, some Russian tycoons who fall out of windows, it turns out that they kind of were, you know, stomping and breaking things as they were walking up the stairs and getting to the higher window from which they fell. So there was a lot of struggling to get to the higher floor. But one wonders why they did that, you know, the struggle all the way up just to fall out of the window on the way down. So, you know, it's like the one Russian who stabbed himself before he jumped out of the window. All right. It's, if it wasn't, I guess, tragic. I mean, I don't have to feel sorry for these guys. But it is pretty funny that this phenomenon of the Russians falling out of windows is happening and there's almost no coverage of this at all. Marilyn, thank you. Kenny, thank you. Noel, thank you. It's just reported, matter of fact, another oligarch fell out of window. Nobody makes any deal. Gale, thank you. Mel, thank you for my yacht club. I didn't know I had a yacht fund. I didn't know I had a yacht fund. Kewell says, my favorite movie is Aliens. Part of the reasons is that my mother watched it all the time and I loved it even as a small child. What? Your mother watched the movie Aliens when you were a small child? I don't know about your mother, Kewell. I mean, I would not let my kids watch that movie until they were teenagers. I mean, that's a violent, horror, scary movie. It's not a movie for kids. I don't know. 15, 14. Aliens, that's really scary. It's like monsters and stuff. All right, we are about $122. We crossed the half way mark, but we're still $122 short. And we now have 128 people watching live. So yes, absolutely jump in with Super Chat and contributions so we could, you know, $1 each gets us over the hump. $1 each will get us there. We don't have a lot of time because Simon, thank you. Okay, anonymous user. Did you see the news from Taiwan today? I don't know which news you're talking about. Couldn't, didn't see it. I live in Washington state. I'm getting depressed. I knew it was bad, but wow, our governor is the worst. Self-righteous pompous ignorant. Yes, very, very left wing and very pompous about it and arrogant about it and condescending about it. And the worst kind. But yes, you know, Washington, Oregon almost flipped to a Republican, but couldn't quite pull it off. Yep. Robert says, likes are free. Let YouTube's algorithm see the, I don't understand any of that. But I think what he said is, please like the show before you leave because it really helps with the algorithm. If I have a lot of likes and the algorithm is king and the algorithm determines how many people see the show and all of that. So please like it. Again, you know, we need about a hundred bucks to get to where we need to be. All right. Matthew, all chemical and biological weapons model. Is the research legitimate for defensive purposes? Yeah, absolutely. Research is legitimate for defensive purposes. I, you know, I don't think that biological and chemical weapons are necessary for victory. I don't think they're the kind of weapons that are moral because they're not necessarily for victory. They're the kind of model that inflict terror and nothing but terror and primarily focused on a civilian population. It's not like the battlefields of World War One where you could spew out gas and it would only affect the battlefield and people would die. You know, now there are no battlefields like World War One. So if you're going to use chemical weapons, you're going to use it indiscriminately. You're going to kill people indiscriminately. And it doesn't serve any purpose to use. If you're going to kill people indiscriminately, you could use a bomb. Why would you use chemical or biological weapons? So I'm all against it. I don't see it's necessary for self-defense in any significant way. Keel says, to be honest, she didn't know I was watching. I peeked through the door. Oh, this is his mother and aliens. Wow. Wow, I'm surprised you didn't have nightmares for many years after. I don't think I could have handled, but I could have handled aliens. I mean, I watched. I used to sneak down and watch through the door. Dr. Who, which is, oh my God, unbelievably tame. I was compared to aliens and I got nightmares for years. I still can't watch Dr. Who. It gives me the creeps because it reminds me of the emotion it gave me when I was a kid. I can't even imagine what aliens would have done to me. Would have completely, completely screwed me over. All right. All right. Let's see. I don't understand that. All right. Richard says, nuclear power plants in subs and aircraft carriers boil seawater to drive turbines in propulsion. Do they desalinate the water? They should. I don't know. Good question. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they did. I mean, you need a lot of water because aircraft carriers are a lot of personnel. So I wouldn't be surprised if they do desalinate the water or used to desalinate. But I mean, one of the amazing things about these nuclear power plants is there be no accident as far as I know in submarines or in these large ships. And they're incredibly safe. And why is there such a sphere of nuclear power when these nuclear power plants and these ships are being used on a regular basis in storms and high, you know, and there's never really been an accident. And they produce unbelievable quantities of electricity and they function amazingly well. And anyway, more proof that we should allow markets to be investing much more heavily in nuclear power than we are today. All right. The 144,000 are back. What is that? What does that mean? It sounds familiar, but I don't know what it is. 333. Sorry, M9. I don't understand what that all refers to. Daniel says, have you seen the show Justified? It's very suspenseful and the villain is some of the best acting I've seen. Yeah, of course I've seen Justified. I used to recommend Justified all the time on the show. It's one of my favorite modern TV shows. I watched all the seasons when, way back when it was being done live. What was it? An FX, I think. And I love Justified. The lead actor in Justified is fantastic. I love his character. It's a modern Western. I thought the early seasons were better than the latest seasons. But yeah, I mean, that's to be expected. But the character of the bad guy is entertaining. The show is just entertaining and it's clearly good guys and it's a lot of fun. So absolutely a show worth watching. All right. We're getting some additional questions here. Friends, whoops, what did I do? Friend Harper. By what standard is someone an historian? I would consider you an expert in various fields, but you ask, but you say you aren't an historian. I ask people by what standard someone in a philosopher for similar reasons. You know, I don't know. I haven't thought about the exact definition of an historian, but it's only somebody who has gained real expertise and deep knowledge of a field, of the field of history in this case. I think the same is true of philosopher. Philosopher is not just somebody who does... Philosopher is either somebody who does deep thinking in the field of philosophy, or somebody who is an expert in the area of philosophy, has deep knowledge of philosophy as a subject matter. And I have neither. And I don't have that for history. I know a little bit about a lot of things and a little bit about a lot of history and a little bit about a lot of philosophy. But I don't consider myself a historian. I don't consider myself a philosopher. And I don't have deep knowledge. The closest you can come from me would be to consider me an economist. But that's the one profession I would be closest to. I like public intellectual. I like that title. But you need deep knowledge of the field, not just of your... You know, I don't have deep knowledge. I have shallow knowledge. You know, maybe in philosophy, I have deep knowledge of some aspects of objectivism. But I don't have deep knowledge of philosophy. I just don't. Schafer-Bot says, with power plants, the boiling water and cooling water are separate. The boiling water is recycled and pure. But the cooling water can be continually drawn from the ocean. Yes. But what about desalinating water for use on the ship? Boiling water is recycled. Oh, that's desalinated because it boils. Boiling water has no... I mean, once it evaporates, it has no salt. And then as it stops evaporating, as it cools, that water is basically without salt. That's the desalinated water, I guess. And maybe you put it through a filtration system. And it could work as a constant supply of water, drinking water on a ship. Maybe. I just don't know. Jason said, I meant a year-long series, not a show. Yeah, I get that, the 365, but I don't know. Yes, I got that. I didn't get the year-long. I didn't get the 365. I was literally one a day. That would be hard to do. But also, I still don't... I still would struggle with how do you break up the... What level of concretization would I actually get 365 things that the government should do? Because I can think of three broad abstractions, and then how would you break those down and would you get the 365, 120-something on each one of them? I need to think it through. I need a piece of paper. All right, we're $27 short of our goal. About how much we were short of our goal last time we did this. Frank says, woke mobs now claim the new Avatar film is racist. It's a good sci-fi film, but I see nothing of cultural appropriation of Pacific Native tribes. Let them claim it. Who cares? Let them claim it's cultural appropriation. Nobody pays attention to them. The people who want to go see the movie are seeing the movie. I will not go to see the movie. I will not sanction an Avatar movie. I think the movie is evil. It presents an evil philosophy. It's fundamentally anti-man. I've explained my reasoning for that. I don't give a damn about appropriation. I don't give a damn about the natives or whatever. I just think it's an essentially anti-man movie and I refuse to watch it. You know, woke mobs, and what do you mean by woke mobs? Are they literally running around the streets and tearing places apart? Are they demonstrating the state of theaters? And some people expressing their opinion that this is cultural appropriation. Who cares? It's not... See, I think we give them way more attention than they deserve. The movie is raking in money. Maybe not enough to justify making it because it costs so much money. But it's raking in money. It hasn't done well. The only place that hasn't done well is in China because of COVID. What difference does it make that a few nobody's are claiming it's cultural appropriation? And they're really nobody's. Alright, last question. And this has gone way longer than expected. Did you ever watch the show Fraser? It's a psychological, insightful, and intelligent show. I did. I like parts of it. You know, I'm not a big fan of sitcoms. I've never really... There haven't been many sitcoms I've really, really gotten into and really, really enjoyed. But I enjoyed Summer Fraser. Alright. Thanks, everybody. We came very close to the Super Chat target. But we're going to call it a day. We've gone 55 minutes, which is way longer than I wanted. I will talk to you all tomorrow and tonight. Tonight. Tonight. Tonight. Thank you, Fred Harbaugh, for getting us very close to the target. Tonight we've got a Ask Me Anything and a Hangout with some of the contributors. So I think I've got a lot of people in the Hangouts. It'll be fun. And we'll just go around and I'll be answering questions. And that'll be at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. 7 p.m. Eastern Time. See you then.