 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 Saturday afternoon. I hope everybody has having a fantastic weekend and you're all ready for another episode of The Iran Book Show. Great. So today we're going to talk about crime, gangs, murder. Specifically, we're going to talk about what's going on in El Salvador because there is an interesting experiment going on over there. So we will talk about that. That's creating a lot of conflict and disagreement and upset. We'll talk about that somewhat, but we can also extrapolate that and talk about violence elsewhere. And we'll see where this takes us. There certainly isn't an area that I am an expert in, but we will talk about murder rates in the US. We'll talk about murder rates around the world and look at the differences, I guess, the dramatic differences, I think, between countries when it comes to violent crime. But I want to frame this all in the context of El Salvador because El Salvador is, as I said, super interesting what's going on there and, again, a lot of conflict. So if we go back a few years, really to the mid-20s, I'd say all the way until 2019, but certainly 2015, 16, 17, El Salvador was the murder capital of the world. There were more murders in El Salvador's per capita per 100,000, which is the way they measure these things, than any place in the world by far. I mean, it had a huge lead. I mean, we're talking about more people being killed by violence in El Salvador than in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, which have terrorists or more than in Mexico or Brazil that have gangs and have warfare. And there were, again, a wide variety, large numbers, large number of places that are very violent in El Salvador stood out as extraordinary. In 2015, El Salvador motorway peaked at 103 per 100,000. That is almost double. I think today, if you look at today's list, the U.S. Virgin Island actually has the highest motorway, Jamaica. Let's take Jamaica as the highest motorway in the world as of 2020. Yeah, the U.S. Virgin Islands numbers are very old. But as of 2020, Jamaica has the highest motorway per 100,000, and it's 44.7. So that is half, less than half, of what El Salvador was in 2015. There was a slow decline in motors from 2015 to 2016, 17, 18, 19. Actually pretty dramatic when it comes to motorways. It went from 103 in 2015 to really 36 in 2019. And a lot of that, yeah, we'll talk about what caused that. But since then, since then, the rate of change has been, and particularly over the last year, the rate of change has just been phenomenal. That is, in 2019 it was 36, then dropped in 2020 to basically 19.7. But in 2022, motors in El Salvador, the homicide rate in El Salvador, per 100,000, dropped to 7.8. Now, 7.8 makes El Salvador very close to the United States in terms of safety. It's a little bit more violent than the U.S. as a whole, but less violent than Pennsylvania, less violent than North Carolina, less violent than Georgia or Maryland or Illinois or Tennessee or Alabama or South Carolina or Arkansas, but as violent as Indiana and Michigan. So you're seeing this dramatic decline in homicide in El Salvador from being double the highest rate in the world to being pretty much close to an average state in the United States. Not quite as low as European countries were significant lower than the U.S. or even lower countries like Japan. Anybody know what Japan's homicide rate is per 100,000? So El Salvador was 100, it's now 7.8. U.S. in 2020, so it spiked up to 6.6. It's probably a little higher today because it's been on an upswing. What do you think Japan is? Jennifer says 1. Anybody else want to take a bet? Apollo says 0.1. All right. So 1 and 0.1. Anybody else under 1? All right. So everybody's kind of in the ballpark, but the person is actually the closest is Apollo. It's 0.2, 0.2. So a quarter of what you're predicting Gale. So Gale says 0.8. So 0.2. South Korea was 0.6, but I think most recently it's also 0.2. So Singapore is also around 0.2. You know, pretty amazing. These are the safest places in the world. You know, put aside in a place like Monaco that are just tiny, but Singapore, Luxembourg, Senegal is way down there as one of the, one of the safest Oman, Macau. Japan is 0.2. Hong Kong is 0.3. So interesting. Anyway, so let's go back to, let's go back to El Salvador. So something happened between 2015 and 2019, and there's something seems to happen between 2019 and 2021. In 2021, the rate was 17.6. But then from 2021 to 2022 and to today, something even more dramatic has happened. And that is what is interesting. So first, let's try to talk a little bit about 2015 to 2019. 2015 to 2019, I would argue. So let's first talk about why there's so much murder in El Salvador. There's so much murder in El Salvador because El Salvador is basically be dominated by two gangs. You probably all heard about one of the most brutal gangs and all of maybe the most brutal gang in all of the Americas, and that is MS-13. MS-13 is based in El Salvador, and it dominates crime in El Salvador, but it does have a competitor. Barros, something like that. Also with a number. So basically two gangs dominate in El Salvador. They run everything. You know, some of it is drugs. El Salvador is on the corridor that brings particularly cocaine from Colombia up to America. But so are a lot of countries, and they haven't been quite as filled with violence as El Salvador has. El Salvador has these two gangs, and basically what has happened, these gangs were established in the 1990s, and since the 1990s through the 2000s, what has happened is these gangs are basically being able to carve out themselves as, you know, their own tax collectors, enforcers, in a sense, their own competing governments to the main government that's out there. They make most of their money not from drugs, but from protection money. They basically collect money from local businesses. It's a very poor country, they can't collect a lot, and of course because it's a very poor country, there's competition for everybody you can collect from, so they constantly fight over this. And they are constantly slaughtering each other and everybody else, and they fill in a vacuum where the state does not exist. The state does collect taxes as well from businesses and individuals. The state has provided in the past nominal policing, but only nominal, and basically have left the gangs to rule, particularly the poor areas of town, the police have focused on the wealthier areas of town, are protecting the rich and connected, and politically connected, and basically left the people to fend for themselves. What you have here is real anarchy, alternative private police forces, alternative governance mechanisms, and they fight it out. And this fighting, you know, and of course as part of the fight, innocent civilians get killed all the time. And indeed, I would argue that any place in which the state basically retreats from, and you know, nominally there are laws, and nominally there's a police force, and nominally there are taxes and enforcement, but basically we retreat from certain neighborhoods, we retreat from certain areas, we retreat from certain places. What you get in those places is a massive increase in crime and violence and gang warfare. And what you get is the creation of gangs. Basically gangs are entities that use force, that exert force. They are entities that are trying to establish over their little geographic area a monopoly over the use of force. And given that the monopoly over the use of force that's supposed to be there, the legitimate monopoly over the use of force, which is government, has stepped out, they fill in the vacuum with alternative, alternatives for a monopoly over the use of force. And of course it's competition, right? It's markets. It's not markets, but I'm using the anarchist term for it. They're markets, so you get a rise in alternatives who are trying to each provide a means of a monopoly over the use of force and collecting protection money, protection, which is what government collects, right? It collects taxes which are supposed to provide you with protection. So what you get, in a sense, I should have put anarchism in the title and then I would have got, I think, more views, we would have got all the anarchists coming. But what you get is, what you get is competition, which is basically competition with guns and you get is violence. And the violence sometimes peaks, it accelerates the massive levels as it did in 2015, but at the end of the day, violence is, you know, out of control, violence is not in the interest of the gangs. It's constant warfare, people feel threatened. So they once in a while reign in the violence and you get a moderate reduction of violence in 2016, 2017, 2018. Still in 2018 El Salvador has the highest motor rate in the world at 51 per hundred thousand, but it is half of what it was at its peak. But that's because gangs are reining it in, it's costly for business to have too much murder and it rains in. But it's still, in spite of that, costing you a business in, business in quotes, it's still true that violence is out of control, highest in the world. Then a new president gets elected in El Salvador in 2019. A guy named, a guy named Naib Bukele, I think it's Bukele, I think that's how you pronounced it. Naib Bukele is from a family of Palestinian immigrants to El Salvador. And he is now the president of El Salvador and is, we'll talk about his popularity in a minute, but he is the president of El Salvador. He gets elected in 2019, and it's part of the first things he did is he gets the gang members together and basically negotiates a truce. And he divides the world up, basically, right? This is, again, anarchy, right? So they sit down and they say, look, violence is not good for business, not good for the government, not good for you guys. You know, I want to get re-elected, I want a reduction in violence, so this is what we'll do. We'll divide up the territory between us, in a sense. We'll divide up the violence and you guys agree to lower the violence between you, lower the number of homicides and we'll basically leave you alone. You know, and also, by the way, I'm sure this is part of the agreement, although I don't have, there's no evidence, nobody recorded this agreement. Leave the neighborhoods, leave the specific neighborhoods, you know, that are ours, leave them. The rich, the powerful, leave them. It's a small percentage of the El Salvador population. You can have the rest, but just don't fight. Just don't fight. If you fight, we're going to be pissed off. That's not good. Just don't fight. And that reduced violence in El Salvador quite a bit to levels of 17.6 per 100,000 by 2021. That lowered it dramatically. It was no longer the most violent country in the world, but in 2021, there were a number of cases where violence, in spite of the fact of being low historically, it's still 17.6 would make it more violent than I think any U.S. state. You know, the most violent U.S. state is, well, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, the most violent, but let's say of 50 states, Louisiana, with 15.8, it would make it more violent than Louisiana. And there were a number of cases where there was, like a gang walked onto a bus and just shot up everybody on the bus. They just killed everybody. Just horror stories like that. And Bukela, you know, wanted to, he wants to, he's a populist president. He wants to be successful. He wants to win. And in 2021, he basically, or was it in, sorry, yes, in 2021, he basically declared, or early 2022, I think it was March 2022, he basically declared a war on the gangs. And this is what has brought notoriety right now to El Salvador. What Bukela did was he brought out the military. And the military basically went around and rounded up everybody who was perceived to be accused to be a gang member. Now, one of the things that El Salvador gangs do is they, the members of the gang, tattoo their membership on their bodies. If you see these guys from the gangs, their whole bodies are tattooed and their tattoos identify them, membership in particular gangs, which once the law enforcement gets, you know, decides to do something about the gang, this is a dead giveaway. So El Salvador, basically, the military started rounding up all people associated with the gangs, people who are gang members, people who are helping gangs, people who were accused of being gang members. Over the last year, they have rounded up 60,000 people. That is more than 1% of the population of El Salvador. They have built the largest prison in the Americas. This is a massive prison that holds 40,000 inmates. And they have just recently, I think this year, started moving the inmates into this prison. If you've seen photos of the inmates, they're all shaven heads with no shirts, and you can see just to see people with these tattoos, they basically rounded up everybody. And they don't have enough resources to try them all individually. They don't have enough resources to give them all attorneys. And they're trying them in big groups, and they're locking them up for years. Many of them are getting 30, 40-year sentences. 60,000 El Salvador already had a 40,000 prison population, something around 2% of all El Salvador's adults are now in jail. The murder rate has dropped from 17 or from 100 to 7.8. 60,000 men in these prisons, again this prison of 40,000, it is assumed that anyway from 1% to 10% of the people arrested are innocent, are not part of gangs, the police are not particularly diligent about making sure that they are. And of course this is creating a big human rights, civil rights, individual rights outcry against what has happened. So that is going to be, so that is the big accusation against them. The change in El Salvador, of life in El Salvador, is unbelievably dramatic. Think about what a country looks when it's, and all you have to do is go to somewhere like Detroit, in Detroit a few years ago, or somewhere like, what are the, what is the most violent cities today in the United States? I mean, I don't have anything today, but 2021, Memphis, Detroit, Milwaukee, downtowns, wow, even Atlanta is up there. Memphis has a 48.7 per 100,000, Detroit 47.9. I mean, this is a devastated downtowns. Baltimore, Baltimore, where's Baltimore? Baltimore is not in the top 10 most violent cities. At least not for 2021, it's interesting. I'm looking for Baltimore, it's not in the list. I must be missing something because I also think it's one of the, wait a minute, the following major cities do not report data. Okay, Baltimore didn't report data for 2021, so we don't know. If you want the most violent cities in 2021, among those who reported the data, it's Memphis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Kansas City, Louisiana, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Columbus, Ohio, Minneapolis, did I say Minneapolis? Albuquerque, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Tulsa, Denver, Denver, that's surprising, but Denver's 14.1. Right now, it's double the rate of El Salvador, double the rate of El Salvador. D.C. would have the highest, but I don't think D.C. reported for that year. No, D.C., let me see, because D.C. is listed in the States one. Yeah, D.C. is 28.2, so it's nowhere near as bad as some of these others. All right, I mean, we're getting distracted. Let's go back to the story of El Salvador. So you can just imagine what neighborhoods looked like. People were afraid to go out of their homes. 60% of El Salvador population live in what you would consider slums, where the gangs dominated, where the gangs controlled everything. Couldn't go out of your home. People were being shot up regularly in the streets. People didn't hang out outside. They didn't go visit friends. Children coming home from school, rushed home, stayed home, not playing outside. I guess the most dramatic example of this that I ever saw in fiction was, I think, season three of The Wire, which depicts gang violence in Baltimore. And the neighborhoods are just dead. They're just dead. Anybody who can leaves, but of course in El Salvador there's nowhere to leave to. In Baltimore there is. You can leave to a bunch of different places around the country, around the state. But in El Salvador, where do you leave to? I mean, the brave ones, the courageous ones, they really value their lives. Where do they leave to? They leave to the U.S. They leave to the U.S. And they're those evil illegal immigrants that we try to force back down there. But most of the people are stuck. And the neighborhoods are just dead. And what's interesting, and this is what The Wire showed so beautifully in that, I think it's season three, then the gang violence declined significantly. And in the show for a variety of reasons, gang violence for a few months I think declined significantly. Suddenly, the residents of the neighborhoods are going outside. They're planting flowers in their front yards. They're sitting on their front porches. They're hanging out with friends. They're playing in the streets. Suddenly, life comes back. And it's not just life. People have more money. They're not paying protection. Their income immediately goes up because they don't have to pay the gangs. And immediately, investment, money comes into the neighborhood from outside. It doesn't go into the neighborhood and the neighborhood is just dominated by violence. But once you eliminate the violence, capital flows in, businesses are built, employment is created, wealth is created, standard of livings go up. I mean, the elimination of violence is the number one. In many respects, the number one, the most important, the fundamental function of government. And why is that? Because it's only once you eliminate violence among human beings that then we can interact, start using our minds, start being entrepreneurs, start creating, start building, start improving our lives, pursuing our happiness. Eliminating violence is the core, the fundamental, the... I'm tempted to say only, but it's not only, but it's close to the only function of government. And it's there so that we can live our lives, so that we can utilize what it is to be human, our minds, to live the best lives that we can, so we can use our mind to choose our values as individuals. Flowers are no flowers, what kind of life you want to lead, not what kind of dodging bullets, but a life. So the fundamental is a government is there to protect us from violence. And when a government like in El Salvador neglects that forever and lets anybody use violence, they don't care, then what you get is massive spikes in violence, massive spikes in poverty, massive declines in quality of life, declines in standard of living, and people escaping, the better people, the good people escaping, because there's nothing worse. And this is why I hate Anarchy so much. There is nothing worse than living under the constant threat of violence. There is nothing worse than living under the constant threat of violence in the hands of some non-objective, you know, physical monster that will inflict violence on anybody at any time because that is the only way that they can gain anything because once violence becomes the means by which we interact, well, it's all about power then, we can commit more violence. It's all about who is the stronger gang, the bigger gang, the gang with the bigger weapons who is less reluctant to kill more people. And that's what you get, that's what Anarchy is. So that's what you got in El Salvador. And that to some extent now has been eliminated. Now here's the ugly part of it, right? That in eliminating the violence in El Salvador, that's what the government has done. It has basically put everybody in the gangs in jail, violence has collapsed, it'll probably continue to collapse as they root out more and more of the leaders and more and more of the people underground and some are probably left and gone overseas and if they maintain kind of control, the violence will have... But then the question is what? Is Bukele really interested in a violent free society is he interested in the rule of law, is he interested in El Salvadorians being able to live in peace and him as the representative government basically protecting them from violent crime and leaving them free otherwise? Or is this just an opportunity for somebody like Bukele to grab the reins of power and basically become the dominant gang and make the other gangs subservient to him? Is this an opportunity for the state to have a monopoly over the use of force as it should, but will that monopoly over the use of force be reigned in by the rule of law? Be reigned in by any concept of individual rights? Or will that monopoly over the use of force just be an excuse now for Bukele to become an authoritarian, to become a dictator, and to inflict the force of the state on everybody underneath him? Right now, the Salvadorian people are super happy with what's going on. His popularity rate is something like 87 percent because they went from a situation where they couldn't leave their homes, they couldn't go out the door where they were about as safe as most states in the United States, most places in the United States. That's massive, a massive difference and it could get safer. But because of the way it was done, one has to wonder what Bukele has in mind. Now, this is all under an emergency statute, an emergency state of emergency that has done away with certain rights in prosecuting these criminals or many of which are criminals and in putting them in jail. And of course, once you do away with rights, it's very easy to do away with rights. And once a politician is as popular as Bukele is right now, what prevents him from just not running for elections anymore, just staying in power? Right now, he is heading towards re-election, I think next year, and he will win by a landslide. What happens then? So it is going to be interesting. I think that sometimes in situations where the motor rate is as high as it was in San Salvador, in El Salvador, sorry, when the motor rate is so high and when the violence is inflicted by organized gangs, I think it makes sense sometimes to, on occasion, declare an emergency, round up everybody up, recognizing that you're running up some innocence as well, stop the violence, get some kind of equilibrium, go back and try to figure out who the innocent people are and let them free. And as soon as you can, restore individual rights, the protection of individual rights, restore a proper, limited government. But you have to get there. That is the state of 100 people being killed, per 100,000 is the state of barbarism. And you have to get past the state of barbarism in a sense there's a war between the government and the gangs. And there's going to be collateral damage in a war like that. But that's why the war needs to be quick, devastating, and needs to achieve peace quickly. And then you got to get out of the way and you got to let civil society, you got to let voluntary society just take its path, with the government, the state, maintaining the monopoly over the use of force. You got to increase the police force, you got to invest in police, you got to put them in the streets, you got to put them in the slums so as to protect the people once you've eliminated the gang threat. So while I find this mechanism rounding up tens of thousands of people and putting them in jail without proper legal system and all of that, I find that pretty horrific in terms of violation of individual rights. I think when you're in a state of anarchy, when you're in a state of barbarity, there is no option. And that needs to be step one. Once that is established, once you've taken violence off the streets, once you've made the place semi-civilized, then the government needs to go back, and this is the big test that El Salvador is going to have, the government needs to go back to, okay, we're here to protect individual rights, we're establishing the rule of law. By the way, we're heavily investing in police force now. We are going to sustain this, you know, our constant repression of the gangs. We're going to get rid of these gangs. But we're going to establish a rule of law, real rule of law with attorneys, with the criminal justice system, with the whole thing, trial, everything. Including looking backwards the people we already arrested. Now, let me just remind you, it's not just murder, we're looking at murder rates, but MS-13 is particularly known for the brutality of murders, the violence, the rape, the gang rapes, just the horror of killing women and children and just the complete barbarity of how they treat people. And that is barbarism, and barbarism can only be dealt with as force. And you have to go in there, you have to use the force, you have to achieve something, and then, and by the way, this is a precondition for a country to get rich. You cannot get rich when people are wielding force against one another in large quantities. There's no, I mean, people say, is violence connected to poverty? Well, what comes first? Violence is connected to poverty. And it's a, to some extent, you could argue, it's a reinforcing mechanism. But one of the preconditions for getting rid of poverty, one of the preconditions for getting rid of poverty is the elimination of violence. Now, you need more than that, it's not enough, because you need freedom, you need liberty. But for example, you know, the side-side of Chicago is very violent, extraordinarily violent, and it's poor. Well, it's going to stay poor as long as it's violent. There's no way out of it. And because it's so poor and because it's violent and because it seems to be a reward to that violence, short-term, young poor kids are going to get involved in gangs because there's no other way out. The education system sucks. But it's all, in a sense, it all starts with the fact that there's violence. If you want to make the side-side of Chicago, if you want to make it richer, if you want to provide more opportunities, if you want to give them opportunities to rise up and get better, the first thing the government needs to do, the first responsibility of the government is to make it safe. And the only way Chicago is going to make the south-side of Chicago safe is by massively increasing police presence and by consciously, aggressively going after gangs. Now, in the U.S. and in Mexico and in Colombia, part of that has to be a legalization of drugs. And that's particularly true in the United States, which is the primary consumer of those drugs, less so in El Salvador, which was less involved in the drug trade. But most drugs, sorry, gangs in the world are funded by drugs. So if you want to reduce crime in Chicago, if you want to reduce crime in Mexico, it has to be a two-pronged strategy. One, legalize the drugs. Two, put police out in the streets and aggressively, aggressively go after the gangs, arrest them, prosecute them, put them in jail. In many respects, we are going the other way in the United States. We are getting tougher on drugs in many states, and indeed many Republicans now are running a campaign on the idea of we need to get even tougher on fentanyl and we need to, by the way, fentanyl is a drug that hurts the constituency of covered Republicans, white middle class, working class and lower middle class. So they're very concerned about fentanyl. We're going to increase the war quote on fentanyl and clamp down on gangs at the same time. Gangs have huge quantities of money. That's only going to increase the cost of the fentanyl. It's going to increase the willingness to take risk around the fentanyl. It's going to increase violence. You want to really get rid of gangs? Eliminate the war on drugs, zero it out, and then go after the gangs. Then go after them, then shut them down, shut all the violence. And imagine what would happen in South-South Chicago, which, by the way, surrounds the University of Chicago, one of the premier institutions in the entire world, surrounded by some of the most violent, one of the most violent places in the U.S. Imagine what would happen if you got rid of that violence. I mean, you'd actually start seeing investment in those areas in South-South Chicago. Hopefully you would pair it with some educational form and you would start seeing. Today, if you said, you know, we're going to give vouchers to parents on the South-South of Chicago, who's, who in his right mind is going to open a private school in the South-South of Chicago? It's dangerous. But imagine if you would use crime dramatically and you gave the parents vouchers. Now you would see real competition of flourishing and real educational options and the neighborhood becoming in comparison wealthy. So the elimination of violence is a precondition for civilization. It is a precondition for economic growth. It is a precondition for success, for education, for all the good things that we think in life, for the pursuit of happiness. And there's no accident as Stephen Pinker demonstrates that civilization goes hand in hand with reduction in violence. Starting with the Enlightenment, there is a dramatic reduction in violence in the West and in every place that is civilized. And those places become richer, they become flourishing, they become more successful. And by the way, that is the wall of government. The wall of government is to see that reduction of violence. The wall of government is to eliminate that violence in our society. So again, government is not necessarily evil, it is a necessary good because this is the prerequisite for flourishing markets is the elimination of violence. A market in violence is a contradiction in terms. Can't have a market until you eliminate violence. In one way or the other, the gangs can do it or the government can do it. A government restrained by a constitution limited by the rule of law, a rule of law designed to protect individual rights is a necessary government. Is a absolute good and necessary for human flourishing. Alright, let's see, what else do we want to say about... I know you've got a bunch of questions, we'll do that. What else do we want to say about violence? So this was good because we covered anarchy, we covered the wall of government, we covered what's going on in El Salvador as kind of an emergency. Let's just see if they exit the emergency, if there's an off-ramp, or whether this is just a massive grab of power by government. Remember, government can be a real evil. Alright, so let's go to the Super Chat. If you want to ask me a question, I see there are lots of question marks in the chat. Use the Super Chat feature. We've done really well so far in the Super Chat, but we're still about $278 short, so please consider using the Super Chat to ask questions. It's the best way to ask questions. I answer all the questions in the Super Chat. I don't skimp on any of them usually. So feel free to jump into the Super Chat. You can also just support the show. We've got about 85 people watching live, so five bucks from each one of those people easily get us to our target. So consider just supporting the show by using a sticker. This is all value for value, but you can also ask a question on the Super Chat. It's a way to get even more value from me. You can ask for $2, we've got a bunch of fives, 10s, then we've got 50s, and we've even got 100s. So I'm going to start with 100. Oh, yeah, this is the point I wanted to make. One more point I'll make, and then we'll go to the Super Chat. What is going on in America today, and what I think partially explains the rising crime and creates a real potential for a massive increase in rising crime in the United States, is the breakdown of the rule of law. And this means a breakdown in not just the fact that the kind of laws, I'm really not talking about the kind of laws, the laws, there are too many laws and they're terrible, and the drug wars is a great example of that, but it's more the laws that are on the books are not being enforced, even the laws regarding real crimes. So when you have a district attorney like in New York City that said, I'm not going to prosecute muggers, I think he reversed himself ultimately, but what message does that say, send to the gangs out there? Or when you've got in mass sections of the United States, not just in San Francisco and California, but really all over the U.S., basically the police is not prosecuting shoplifters. Not prosecuting shoplifters. What message are you sending people? If we've got crimes on the books, but then we're selective in whether we prosecute or not, or we choose not to prosecute whole categories of crimes, what message are we sending the criminals? What message are we sending the gangs? I think I just saw a statistic like in Washington D.C., maybe the reason Washington D.C. leads the country in violent crime, is there are lots of arrests, but only as of this year, only like 30% of arrests are actually charged. If you don't charge people, they don't actually get penalized for their actions. What message are you sending violent criminals? So, two aspects that I think create violence. One is really bad laws, drug laws for example, create violence, in this case, any prohibition, like prohibition when alcohol was illegal, what did we get? We got the mafia. The mafia was a creation of prohibition. The gangs in Mexico, the gangs in Colombia, the gangs all over the place are to a large extent products of prohibition, prohibition on drugs. So, if you want to get rid of alcohol, legalized alcohol, legalized prostitution, legalized gambling, if you want to get rid of the current list of gangsters, get rid of the drug wall. Get rid of the idea of drugs being illegal. And until that is the standard, until we do that it's going to be very difficult. Then second, you've got to prosecute the laws that exist, particularly the laws that are objective, that are justifiable, like property laws. If you don't have any respect for property laws, then what you're basically doing is encouraging violence. And the left today with its defund the police, and violence is not the people's fault, and violence is a product of civilization. This is the whistle attitude of, in the state of nature, we're not violent, which is a bizarre fantasy. The left today is basically destroying the rule of law. It's destroying the capacity to reduce violence. It's taking away the one function of government, the legitimate function of government. And by doing that, they're basically signaling go-ford gangs, go-ford. And on the other hand, we get, as we've talked about many times, you get police that are badly trained, that are not trained, and then when they try to open a training center, hopefully to train them better in Atlanta, which is one of the most violent cities in America, the left protests that and wants to shut that down. So what we need in America is much greater presence of police in neighborhoods, much tougher on violence and property crimes, and ideally legalization of drugs, or at least decriminalization of drugs. Okay, let's do the super chat. We will start with about 250 short of the goal, so very doable. We've got 90 people watching, so very doable in terms of getting to our goal. Hopefully some of you will pitch in here with some $20 questions so we can get there. All right, Clark has the first question. Many conservatives are blaming the rise and crime on bail reform, but I think there is a just case for removing cash bail. It is legitimate for a judge to keep you on pretrial detention if you're a flight risk or a threat to the community, not because you happen to be poor. Well, I think that's right, but part of the issue with bail is, and so there has to be, I think, some kind of balance here, is there certain people that maybe, you know, the good reason to believe that there's not a lot of, they're not particularly violent, they're not a risk to the community if you let them go, but they are flight risk. And the way to prevent flight, while at the same time releasing them so they don't have to stay in jail because they're not violent to their fellow citizens, not likely to be violent to their fellow citizens, is by using bail. So bail is a mechanism by which you reduce the flight risk while at the same time allowing people to not be in jail. My fear is that if you completely eliminate bail as some jurisdictions seem to have done, what happens is that, you know, some people who, some people who could be out free if they could post a bail are not going to be allowed out free because of the flight risk even though they're not violent. So I'm not an expert on this and you'd have to really think it through and you'd have to look at the data and see what the reality is out there in terms of bail and how it works and everything. So violent criminals, if you're charged with a violent crime, there should be no bail and you should not be let out. If you're a nonviolent crime, then there is an issue of flight risk and bail should be the mechanism by which we control that flight risk. And the bail should be very high if you're wealthy and very low if you're poor. It should be enough to make you not want to leave because the money is significant, right? And if you lose the money, it'll be significant to your life. How exactly you do that? What kind of crimes? What circumstances? All of that, you know, somebody didn't need, again, not an expert, so somebody would have to do the work. But I do think, again, not an expert, but it seems to me that some of these laws and some of these cities or states have gone too far and it's not surprising because the left again has this mentality that we will support the criminal, you know, on top of everybody else almost. And I'm not saying all leftists are like this, but there's certain element within the left, again, that we saw an element of we are peaceful when we are, you know, back to nature, when we are detached from civilization. That idea, that we saw an idea that dominates parts of the far left, that I think leads to some bail reform that is probably is partially responsible for the rising crime. It lets violent criminals back in the streets. All right, Gayle, thank you. Travis, thank you. I'm looking for people who gave Volta. Thank you, Wes. Thank you, 50 bucks. Yeah, okay. So that's as far as my list can go. Travis, thank you for the 40. That's fantastic. So, you know, that's how I would position it. Clark. All right, let's see. Ryan, $50. Hello, Ioana. I have not been able to attend shows lately. Your show and Mr. Beast was exceptional. Thank you. Your lectures in Europe were some of the best yet. I keep getting better, I guess. Practice, practice, practice. Thanks for inspiring us with your message. Don't move to France and retire. I'm not moving to France. I don't think they'd give me a pension anyway, but I'm not moving to France. But if I do move to France, I'm not retiring. But I have no intention. France is not on my list of places I would move to. Thank you, Ryan. Really, really appreciate it. All right, Liam with $50. Objectivist often praise the American sense of life. But that sense of life is still a hundred times weaker than the objective sense of life. Perhaps the American sense of life is strong enough to keep the gulags away, but not strong enough to bring the flying cars. Yeah, I mean, I think we have to be careful in praising the American sense of life. Ayn Rand praised the American sense of life in the 70s and early 80s, and even then she was saying the sense of life is depleted and without a real fundamental change philosophically, the sense of life will erode over time. It's inevitable. Leonard Peekoff in 2003 or 2004 at the Fort Hall Forum Talk on America vs. Americans talked about the dramatic erosion in the American sense of life that's happened from the 70s to the post-911 America. And I think that sense of life is eroded even further over the last 20 years. So the American sense of life might still be there, but it is weak. It is significantly weaker than when Ayn Rand was alive. I hope it's still strong enough to keep the gulags away. I hope it's still strong enough to keep the authoritarians away, the totalitarians away. I'm less convinced of that than ever that it is. But it's all we got at this point because the philosophy hasn't changed. And if it has changed, it changed for the worse, not for the better. So whether the sense of life can keep the gulags away, whether it can keep the totalitarians away, I do not know. I certainly hope so. I believe so. Hope is kind of futile emotion, but I believe so. And we are working hard to reinforce it, to bolster it. That's what Objectivism does. It's trying to bolster and reinforce and support the existing sense of life. Christian, Christian, thank you. Appreciate the support. We have 100 people watching. $200 left to give each our goal. So that's $2 per person. This should be easy, a breeze. All right, value for value. You're listening. You must get some value out of this. Please consider supporting the show while you're listening, or if you don't want to support it while you're listening, you can also do it by monthly support on Patreon, on Subscribestar, on your onbookshow.com slash support. So that's PayPal. You can send me a Venmo. There are a million different ways to support the show in a way that is, you know, for value for value. All right. Thank you, Liam. All right, Vadim says, under free society, are the prisoners entitled to healthcare attack spares expense? Thank you. Oh, God. I mean, that's a good question. What are prisoners entitled to as a prisoner? Obviously, you know, more than bread and water would be my guess, but how much more, how much food, what kind of food, healthcare, and so on. I mean, this is not, I don't know the exact parameters of that. You would have to really think it through. Do you want the prisoners to work? So I used to think that prisoners should work, and through their work, they would pay back for the upkeeping. The more they work, the better their conditions could be. And they would have to buy their healthcare, in a sense. And there's a part of me that really thinks that's good. The challenge there is, who are they working for exactly? It's kind of cheap. You know, it seems like the labor is, it's not very competitive. You know, you're going to take out some private businesses out of the equation because you've got prison laborers doing the work instead of a private business. If they build furniture, is the local furniture business going to go out of business? So again, one of these things you would really have to think through. My sense of justice says they should work for whatever they get. And they get some minimal amount of food, keep them alive, minimal amount of healthcare, keep them alive. But beyond that, they would have to work for anything. But I do realize that prisoners' work can create certain issues, economic issues, which can be problematic. Bradley asks, why do men form gangs? Is there something positive in this tendency if directed productively? Most powerful companies are also male-dominated. Is there a connection? Morality aside, thank you. So, you know, I think there are a number of issues that you're bringing up here. You know you're bringing them all up, but you're bringing up a number of issues. So let me try to unpackage this and try to explain it. So what are gangs? Gangs by definition are violent organizations, violent groups that use violence in order to attain their means, in order to attain the ends that they seek. So that is what gangs are. Gangs are essentially violence, violent enterprises. I mean, even a tribe is not a gang. A gang is a particular type of tribal entity, a tribal entity focused on violence. Why do we have gangs? We have gangs because in a vacuum somebody is going to monopolize the use of, or try to monopolize the use of force in a particular geographic area. And when it doesn't do it, then somebody else will do it. And that, that is what gangs do. Is there anything positive about that? No, absolutely not. It is a negative, but it might be, it is a negative, it is gangs are parasitic, they are exploitative, they are destructive, they create mayhem. Just look at all the anarchist societies in the world today. Somalia, Libya, I guess, El Salvador a decade ago, and it is just an unmitigated, horrific disaster because gangs replace illegitimate, or even gangs are worse in that sense than even an illegitimate government. An illegitimate government is better than a gang because there is some semblance of law, there is some semblance of peace, there is some semblance of freedom from violence. Now, again, there are some illegitimate governments that are so murderous that maybe they are worse, but it is harder to be more murderous than when gangs start fighting each other. Now I guess part of the question is why do men form gangs? Because I think part of his question is around why do men form gangs versus women. Well, because men are more tuned to violence than women. Men are more predisposed to violence. It has to do with the fact that men are physically stronger. It has to do with testosterone, which is a hormone that when, you know, when not under the control of reason leads people or, you know, what do you call it, orients people towards more violent action. It is, so men form gangs because they have testosterone and because generally they are stronger. Now, there are exceptions to that. There have been women who have run gangs, who have been gang leaders. It's rare, but it happens. There are women who have been generals in history. It's rare, but it happens partially because even running a gang requires some cognitive skills which women have equally with men and they can be as brutal even if they're not as strong. There have been warrior tribes of women. I mean, the ancient stories in Greek mythology of the Amazons, but they have, you know, you can find African tribes where the women were warriors. So they have been examples of that, but they are clearly the exception because men are physically stronger and more powerful, faster, you know, and more coordinated around violence. And, of course, part of that again is testosterone. So that's why men join gangs because, you know, men are more likely to get engaged in violent activity than women. It's not just gangs. If you look at violence in society, almost all of it is by men. Women are violent, can be violent, but it's a small minority relative to men. So, again, if you take away reason, if you take away thinking, then, you know, then what men are left with is violence and women can compete and women have to, you know, have to have a different role in society and men lead through violence. So you want to compare this to companies. I want to compare it a second to politicians. I think much more similar to gangs is politics than corporations. And men dominate politics because politics are far more violence-oriented. They're far more about physical power. They're far more about the gun. They're far more about muscle, particularly ancient politics. Very few political leaders in history were reluctant to have a queen versus a king because of the violent nature of what it meant to rule. So I think the reason political leaders tend to be men is because you get running in particularly pre-civilization, you're running a gang. Putin is a gang, you know, as a mobster. And it's hard to imagine a woman being quite as effective as being a mobster, or a monster for that matter. So that's part of it. Now, most powerful companies also male-dominated. Is there a connection? I think yes and no. I think you could argue that... And I don't know if this is true. You could argue that 100 years from now that probably won't be the case. That 100 years from now women will be running just as many successful companies as men. Because fundamentally running a business is not about physical force. It's not about muscle. And it's not about violence. It's predominantly about the use of the mind. And particularly that is true as we move into a knowledge economy. And therefore women are just as capable in running businesses as a man is when the business is primarily focused on the mind, on knowledge, on thinking. I don't know, though, because it's also true that women have children. And having children is a major role and a major job. And women... Most women have children. And that takes them away from the job market and therefore diverts them. It's very difficult to run a major business and have kids at the same time if you're the primary caretaker of the kids. And I think women are going to be. Mostly, in the future, continue to be mostly the primary caregiver of the kids. Again, there are differences between men and women. Hormonal differences. Women give birth. Men do not. That connects them to children in a way that it doesn't connect to men in quite the same way. You always know who the mother is. You're not always sure who the father is. Right? But you know who the mother is. So there's a connection in the motherhood that is not quite as powerful and not quite as strong as men. But again, the more cerebral we are, the more reason is guiding us, the more there will be men who decide to stay home and take care of the kids and really focus on that. And there'd be nothing wrong with that. There'd be nothing wrong with that. But it's probably always going to be the case given that women have a dual role in life, productive and child-wearing. Child-wearing is productive in a sense, but not productive because of economic production. They have this dual role and as a consequence, it's always going to be probably the case that there'll be fewer women running powerful companies. But I don't think that it will have much to do with their ability, capability, energy. I don't know, and it's an interesting question. How much testosterone is linked to being able to run a company again? There's a big difference between running a company and running a gang. Big difference. Big difference between violence and strategy and trade. Inran disapproved of a woman president. She certainly didn't disapprove of a woman corporate leader. I mean, think of Dagny. Should Dagny really been vice president? Of course she should have been president of the corporation. And clearly Inran believes that. Inran created this strongest female corporate executive ever. So within Inran's conception of femininity and masculinity, clearly, clearly her greatest female heroine in all of her literature is a woman executive who could run a company, could run pretty much any company, could do as better, but probably a better job than any male out there. There's a big difference between president and running a company. I mean, in Inran's view, whether you agree or I agree is a different question, but he know of you. Now, it could be that this testosterone makes a reason-bound person more risk-taking within the parameters of reason and rationality. That's possible. We do have different orientations towards risk, but I do know women who are very risk-taking, right? Many just as risk-taking. So clearly there are exceptions to one woman. And again, Dagny, I know it's a fictional character, but there are women out there that are like Dagny, think Holly Fiorino or Meg Whitman in the tech industry. And there's also the other reason we have a lot fewer women right now in business is a cultural issue. And the fact is, Richard says, he says, I think, okay, thanks badly. Great question. Richard says, I think women make less money and advance less in business because of low self-esteem and professional context. What do you think? I think that's right. And in that sense, I think there is a cultural bias against women. And I'm not talking about the culture against them. I think in their own minds. That is, there is an imprint in many women who are saying I can't do that. So I definitely think that is part of it. We live in a culture where women are not fully appreciated for their skill and their talent, either by men or by themselves. And while there are clearly differences between men and women, we need to be objective about what they are, objective about what is biology and what is culture and what is choice. Remember, there are three factors. Biology, culture and choice. All right, let's see. Frank says, is Judy the group version of individualistic discipline? No, because I guess I don't understand what that means. It can be a version, right? Individualistic discipline is discipline around what? It's discipline around chosen values. It's discipline around what you think is right, what your values are and you're disciplined around achieving those and doing the work necessary to achieve them. Duty is the opposite of virtue. Duty is I do what I'm told. I do what the group expects of me. Duty is sacrifice. Duty is giving up on your values. Duty is the exact opposite of individualistic discipline in a rational sense, right? So duty is never appropriate. Duty is never appropriate. Duty is not social responsibility. Duty is mindlessly following what somebody else has decided is your responsibility. But if something is your responsibility and you identify it such and are committed to it, then it's just you having integrity and you having discipline around your values. Thanks, Frank. All right, Martin, what's your impression of the relatively dynamic increase in crime in Sweden over the last few decades? To what extent do you attribute it to being related to the character of Sweden's immigration and seemingly failed attempt to integrate? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a huge extent related to immigration and the failed attempt to assimilate the immigrants. It's exactly what I said about El Salvador. What has happened in Sweden is that Sweden has basically brought in these immigrants and separated them from the rest of Sweden's Swedish society, separated them into their own neighborhoods, into their own districts, and abandoned them there with no rule of law and no real policing and no attempt to assimilate them into Swedish society. Indeed, and this is true of Germany as well, but Sweden is, I think, an extreme case. So they get welfare instead of requirement. They're not required to work. They get welfare. They're not required to assimilate educationally. They're not required to assimilate language-wise. They're not required to go and live with the Swedes. They live in their own place, and then more fundamentally, the rule of law is not applied to them. The police don't go into their neighborhoods. The police go into their neighborhoods very timidly. They don't apply the rule of law there. The gang shootings are not dealt with. The rape within these communities is shrugged off. There's just no robust kind of attempt to say, you are now in Sweden. And this is what Europeans need to say to Muslim immigrants. You are now in Sweden. You live by our rules. You don't live by our rules. You're going to be in prison, or we're going to put you on a plane back home. But you're not going to stay here and live by your rules. Your rules are barbaric. Your rules are unacceptable. Your rules are why you left the place where you came from. We're not going to allow Sweden to become the place you came from. So behave, assimilate, integrate, be individuals. We're not going to give you a house. We're not going to give you a car. We're not going to give you a stipend. We'll open up a job market for you. If you want to come and work here, good for you. And then we're going to expect for you to follow the laws. And if you don't, we will treat you as strictly as we treat anybody else. And by the way, the UK doesn't do that with its immigrant population. And most of Europe doesn't. They're so afraid of being offensive, or being insensitive, or being racist, or whatever the left would call them, that they don't actually do it. But if they did it, these problems would go away. Problems would go away. They'd either sweep into these neighborhoods, arrest the gang leaders, and put them in jail based on Swedish law. But they don't. They're too timid. And again, they're afraid of the accusation, oh, you're just going in there because they're Muslims. But the whole point is you come to Sweden to become Swedish, not fast to become Muslims, not fast to deteriorate into your barbarism. And until the West is willing to call them barbarians and say, we are civilized, you need to become like us. Well, of course, these things will happen. Of course, crime will increase. So that's my view. And I know it's not a politically correct view. And I know it's not the same as the view of saying, no, we shouldn't have them in because they are redeemable. I don't believe that. Yes, bring them in as long as they behave, as long as they live by the rule of law. All right, I just want to give you guys an opportunity to get us to our target. We've raised $500, which is fantastic, really, really great. Thank you to everybody who's participated. But we do have a goal of 650, and we do usually make it to 650. We do have 100 people watching right now. So it doesn't take a lot for the people who are watching who haven't participated in the super chat to chime in and to step up and to contribute to the show and to provide a value for value, either through a stick or a super chat. So please consider doing that. We're just $150 short. So again, if just a few of you do $5, we would get there, 30 of you. So third of you do $5, we would get there. All right, Shahzabat says, hope is a distraction. Maybe we should abandon it. That's an avatar, the last airbender. I don't want to hear any good quotes from an avatar. Not acceptable. Thanks, Shahzabat. All right, we've got four questions left. Time is running out if you do want to support the show. Roland says, oh, now you're dissing Anarchy. Time for the Libertarians to unsubscribe. Good riddance, I say. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've been causing lots of unsubscribes because of a variety of different positions I've had over the last few weeks. It's been a rough few weeks for subscriptions. Let's see. I don't know what avatar airbender is. What is avatar airbender? It's a different avatar Chandler says, oh, okay. All right, Shahzabat, you're fine. It's a different avatar, so I was, yeah. Maybe it's a good avatar. All right, James asks, oh, James is going to give me in trouble. If Trump actually gets arrested, will we see January 6th on steroids? This is great for the Santas. I don't think you're going to run for president if you're pending criminal charges. And then, although this is completely corrupt of the Manhattan DA to bump this up to a felony when he's been bumping most other crimes to misdemeanors. So the challenge here is going to be that I think there's reasonable reason to believe that this is just not a good case to bring against Trump, that it's not a felony. It's ugly and awful and horrible behavior. But the DA is reaching here. You know, Bragg, when he first came in and said, we're not going to prosecute Trump, we're going to leave it alone. Indeed, some of his staff resigned at the time because he said that. But now he's following through and he does look like he's going to prosecute Trump. But I hear, I haven't read a lot about this, I think even the New York Times said that this was uncharted waters in terms of prosecuting somebody for this particular as a felony. Probably not a good idea to do uncharted water stuff with a former president and in the current kind of cultural situation. So I'm not, you know, anything to undermine Trump is good. It's hard to tell if this undermines him. It would be, I think, good to undermine him by just some of the facts coming out in terms of what he did. But I'm not sure you need to have a trial for that. I mean, clearly what he did is corrupt. Clearly what he did is despicable, character-wise. But should he be prosecuted as a felony from what I've read? Probably not. So I'll read up more about it and comment on a future show, obviously, given that he says he's going to be indicted on Tuesday. Will this result in riots? I actually don't think so. We'll see. It result in a lot of fury. It result in a lot of pissed off people. It might result in some people going off the deep end and doing crazy stuff. Individuals here and there. But I don't know that it's going to result in actual riots. We will see. It'll be interesting to see. Yeah, what are they defending? What behavior are they defending? I mean, it's one thing that there's an injustice about an election that they think is stolen. You can see that, but all right, I'm going to go on a riot because I think Trump is being framed, even though I know that he probably had sex with this porn star, but he's being framed around this issue of paying her hush money, but his former attorney actually says he did pay her hush money. So what am I getting excited here exactly about defending Trump from what? I mean, it's too complicated to get too excited about, but you know, Trump's followers are so blindly committed that maybe it would cause riots. I don't know. Thanks, James. All right, $126 short. We had a lot of very high level superchats early in the show and then it's peated out since then. Frank says, Kevin O'Leary, the bold capitalist shock tank, was saying the smaller regional banks should fall and die and not be zombie banks, as you write. Well, either not zombie banks. All these banks are profitable. They actually had their, I think, their most profitable year ever was last year, small banks. They are super profitable. They have a business model that works. It's easy to get into crisis because of the way they're regulated and the way they're controlled. There should be a lot fewer banks in the U.S., but the way to get a lot fewer banks is not to create artificially a crisis and let them all fail. The way to get, because that'll have devastating economic consequences, the way to get fewer banks is to allow them to merge and to get rid of all the restrictions and all the regulations and all the bureaucracy that is associated with bank consolidation, which still exists. It's taking right now when a bank's announced a merger. It takes a year for the regulators to approve it. It should take a week, a month, six weeks max. And if you did that, a lot more bank mergers would happen and you'd have fewer and fewer little banks and slowly the banking system would be healthier and healthier. But the other issue, and I'm sure Kevin O'Leary says this, is, yeah, we want a lot of too big to fail banks, but I don't want too big to fail banks. What does it mean to be too big to fail? It means you're a government entity. It means the government runs you. So I want fewer big, I want big banks, but I want them to be free. I don't want the government holding, you know, guaranteeing their deposits. I don't want the government regulating what they can and cannot do. I want them to be free. And this is why I've said all these more banks, less banks, this bank, that bank, bailout, no bailout, all of that is irrelevant. What's really ultimately relevant, if you're asking about how the banking situation should be, then the way the banking system should be is simple, free. Free of control, free of regulation, free of mandates, free of deposit insurance, free of all the government's controls. And if it's free like that, then there'll be some small banks, particularly relative to the big banks, which will be massive. There'll be some small banks, there'll be some medium-sized banks, and there'll be some big banks, but they'll all be healthy and they'll all serve a particular niche, they'll all serve a particular clientele, and it won't be any of the government's business, because the government won't be guaranteeing anything. But if you did away with the deposit insurance tomorrow and you said, you're all on your own, but you didn't deregulate, then yeah, you'd just be killing off banks for no reason, just because what? So you have to understand the origin of the problem, the origin of the problem is government. It's not banks. Banks wouldn't be structured the way they're structured in a free market. Nothing about the current banking system in the United States would be the same if we actually had free markets. Nothing, zero, zilch. Thank you, Frank. I mean, it's amazing how ignorant smart people are about what freedom constitutes, what free markets are about banking, for example. It truly is amazing. You see that with venture capitalists, you see that with pundits, you see that with hedge fund guys all across the board. I mean, talk about free markets as if they know what that is. They have no clue. Okay, Johannes, thank you for the support. Christopher, thank you for the support. We chipped away a little bit but didn't quite make it. Shazbot says that was from a completely different TV show, not the Avatar movie. Well then, let me mention the quote again because it's a good quote. Hope is a distraction. Maybe we should abandon it. Yes, it is a distraction. What you want is to shape your future. What you want is to act to shape your future sitting around and hoping doesn't help you. Doesn't help you. All right, guys. Thank you for all the super chat supporters. Thank you for everybody who tuned in today. Again, you can support the show on youronbookshow.com. You can support it on Patreon or SubscribeStar. You can, yes, and you can even send me a Venmo or what do you call it, PayPal. So thank you for all the monthly supporters out there. We've got hundreds of them already. Hopefully we'll get hundreds more. Thank you for all the super chatters. Thank you for all the watchers. And I'll see you all no show tomorrow. So I'll see you all on Monday morning for a news roundup. I'm sure there'll be plenty of news Monday morning. Bye, everybody.