 Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. Fundamental principles. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Friday, middle of September, September 15th. Hope everybody's had a fantastic week and looking forward to the weekend. I am flying to New York on Sunday. So it's kind of exciting. Going with my wife. We're going to have a couple of days in New York, which will be a lot of fun. I love New York. It's a great city. Looking forward to hanging out, going to good restaurants, and enjoying the city. Monday evening, for those of you in the New York area, I think there's still a few tickets left for the debate with Brian Kaplan on anarcho-capitalism. So that'll be interesting and hopefully fun. It'll definitely be interesting and it should be a lively crowd. And Brian's a smart guy, so hopefully we'll have a good debate. So yeah, join us. If you're in the area, I think you'll really enjoy it. So please come and enjoy. All right, let's see. After that, I fly on Wednesday to Madrid. And on Thursday, I am debating. I thought I was debating Joram Chazoni, but it turns out he bailed on the debate, so he will not be there. And I'm debating somebody else from his organization from the Edmund Book Society. This guy's a professor at, I think, Cambridge University. And the chairman of the Book Society of the UK. So I'm sure, you know, significant firepower there, so it should be fun and interesting. That one's going to be a lot easier of a debate. I find anarcho-capitalism debate a bit of a pain, I have to say. So anyway, these other debates are a lot easier and a lot more straightforward in terms of the argument and the counter-arguments. All right, lastly, I want to remind you, those are listening, that there is a show tonight, not lastly, one before last. There's a show tonight at 8 p.m., so at 8 p.m. there will be a show. So don't forget to join me for that. I don't have a theme yet, but there will be a show tonight. And then tomorrow we've got the interview with Fleming Rose at 1 p.m. East Coast time, so hopefully we'll get a good turnout for that. I definitely think you'll enjoy listening to Fleming, and it'll be great to get your questions on everything to do with free speech. I don't know that Fleming and I agree about everything with a lot of free speech, but it'll be great for you to have an opportunity to hear kind of a liberal, classical liberal approach to free speech and ask questions. And primarily about the state of Europe, because that's what Fleming is really an expert in. And then finally, reminder, October 18th, I'm doing a public speaking workshop seminar. It's probably going to cost about $750 for the day. I know a few of you have sent emails and I need to respond. I will try to respond today. I'm so behind. And yes, so thank you for those of you who responded. But if you're still interested, we do have space. October 18th, it'll be very, a lot of personal attention because it'll be a small group under 10, and you'll get a chance to really do a presentation and I will give you feedback and we'll go from there. We'll see how it works. Hopefully more of you will join and we'll see you in London for that. I think that's it. Wow, a lot of announcements. Wow, burned up five minutes. Okay, let's jump in. I mean, this is an interesting story, right? So cold medicine. Who would have thought we'd be talking about cold medicine? But it turned out that yesterday, the FDA announced that the most common form of cold medicine available over the counter, at least in the United States. I do not know the status of this in Europe and elsewhere. But in the United States, there's a bunch of cold medicines. They come out at all kinds of names. But at the end of the day, they use a compound called, oh my God, phenylephrine, phenylephrine, phenylephrine. And which is a compound that the FDA approved back in the 1970s as both safe and effective decongestion. Again, congestion of the sinuses if you have a cold or the flu or something like that. In 2007, an advisory panel told the FDA that the evidence that all the kind of stuff that you take, right, phenylephrine actually worked, was to use a very technical term, the evidence was milky and not definitive. And it recommended further study. Now that's 1970s. It was deemed as working and then there were studies done and maybe it was milky and not definitive. It's 2007. That's still, what, 15, 16 years ago? Only yesterday did the government come out, the FDA come out and say, it doesn't work. It's no good. It's useless. It's the equivalent of using a, you know, a sugar pill, a placebo. Now how did it take them 50 years to figure out that this drug is not effective? Now, one of the things that happened that made it very difficult for the government to take, and I think still makes it very difficult for the government to say, it doesn't work and we're taking it off the shelves, is the lack of alternatives or the lack of obvious alternative. Because there is one alternative that we actually know from scientific evidence actually works. But in 2005, a law that went into effect in 2006 called the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005, passed by Congress in 2005 when it effected 2006, basically designated the one effective decongestant, C-sado-sidofedrin, something like that. It basically said, look, the problem with this is that meth labs use this very effective decongestant, not to fight the cold, but to actually cook it and convert it into methamphetamine. So, you know, the bad guys would go into a CPS and buy up tons of contact and other decongestants that has pseudo-fedrin and they would go and they would turn it into methamphetamine. So, the Drug Enforcement Administration ordered that all our pseudo-fedrin's be behind the counter. You need to go to the pharmacist and ask for it. You sign your name. They look at your driver's license. You can only buy them one at a time. You can't buy more than one. It goes into computer database to see who among you are accumulating decongestants. So, pharmacists by law must record the personal identification of patients wishing to purchase it. There's a strict limit on the dose number of products that you can buy within a 30-day frame. In Oregon and Mississippi, you need a doctor's prescription to get them. Now, those prescription requirements were ultimately repealed in 2022, but for a long time they had requirements. So, in other words, the effective product was put behind the counter and made very difficult to get. And so, the only thing that stayed on the counter was this alternative. The drug companies needed something on the counter. So, they put together this alternative even though the science was a little milky and the FDA didn't want to pull it and there was no real incentive for them to pull it until, I guess, for some reason yesterday. So, for example, Sudafed, which is very effective but is behind the counter because it contains the compound that you can make methamphetamines from, also put out something called Sudafed PE, which uses the non-effective decontestant. Now, why we kept buying these things when they're not effective is interesting. Partially, it's probably just the placebo effect, which is real and people have identified it in studies as being real. Partially because maybe on some of us, I don't know, it has an effect. I mean, again, a lot of this is milky and non-definitive. It could be that some people do react to these drugs and other people's don't, it's not. But the reality is that the FDA yesterday basically said that Sudafed PE and all the other medications that use Penilephrine are not effective as decongestants. They don't actually work. So, you're gonna have to go and ask for the counter. I mean, just one more example of how the war on drugs distorts and perverts our lives. It just makes our lives just a little bit more complicated, a little bit more obnoxious, a little bit, everything is just a little bit more difficult. And, yeah, sad, sad. I mean, the war on drugs would make even getting cold medication easier. Who would have thunk? Who would have thunk, right? The war on drugs is making you suffer from congestion for absolutely no good reason. Just because you might be cooking meth in your basement. All right. The news out of Detroit, I guess, is that the UAW, the auto workers are going on strike. They are striking, they picked a number of different plants from each one of the auto companies, each three auto companies, I think it's two plants from each. And they have, they went on strike, or they will go on strike, I think at 12 o'clock, a central time, so in about 50 minutes they will go on strike, close down those plants. It seems like what they'll do is they rotate it so that, you know, employees, the union members will not all have to suffer from lower wages all at the same time. They will rotate and every week or two different plants will close. They will also create more havoc, or create havoc among the auto manufacturers, not knowing exactly what's going to hit them next. And this is, again, as we talked about yesterday in great detail, real headache for the Biden administration, real headache for the auto companies. And I think at the beginning, maybe this will go down in a sense, the beginning of the continue, the beginning of the end, or the beginning of the final chapter of the end of the American auto industry. Arguably the auto American auto industry has been somewhat at least of a zombie since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration bailed out Chrysler. They've arguably been somewhat of a zombie since then. Personally, the Obama bailouts of the, what is it, 2010, 2011, 2012, were horrible and disastrous. But the three big American auto companies, Chrysler, Ford, and GM, will suffer strikes. Tesla, of course, will not, neither will the auto plants of Mercedes and BMW and Toyota and Nissan. And did the Koreans have manufacturing plants in the U.S.? My guess is the answer is yes, but I don't know that for a fact. But all the fun auto companies that produce gazillions of cars in the United States, their factories are fine. Their workers make less than the unions, and yet they're not going on strike. And of course, the unions were at 46% pay increase, which would make them, American cars, a lot less competitive with Japanese cars, made in America. So American cars all bite, but the company name. So, yes, the American auto industry's been in decline for a long time, and I think that decline, this strike I think will represent a key point in its continued decline and maybe in its final decline. It'll take a long time and bailouts and government will step in. And it's 150,000 union workers and then a bunch of a lot of other people who are non-union, who also work at these companies, engineers and management and everything. It's a lot of people and politicians do not want to see those companies go out of business. So they will bail them out and they'll keep bailing them out over time. But at some point, reality will set in. And they'll either have to dramatically restructure or we'll just have to accept Tesla is the only American auto company. We will see. We will see. Tesla today, I think today there was a story, a sort of story today, about the Tesla might have a new manufacturing process for building electric cars that has the potential to dramatically decrease the cost of making every Tesla. Elon Musk has famously said that his goal was to reduce the cost of building a car by 50%, a Tesla car by 50%. It might be that they were soon going to hear an announcement from Tesla that they have that process in hand. We will see. We will see. All right. A lot of stuff going on in China in the military. I think I told you about replacement of the China in the China space division of its military of the entire senior leadership over there a few months ago. But the continues to be significant shakeup among military higher ups in the Chinese military. The reason the stated reason for this is corruption or the put it this way. I don't think that's what the stated reason is, but the assumption is that it is corruption, that there's a lot of corruption among the higher ups in the Chinese military, siphoning up a lot of the money for themselves, giving relatives special favors and so on. And that has been going on for a while. It could be that it's not about corruption. It could very well be about Xi making sure that the people at the top of the military are 100% loyal to him. It could be at this time of economic struggles and other issues relating to China clamp down on whatever freedoms existed in China that has happened to Xi that some in the military were voicing opposition. And this is his way of getting rid of him. From the beginning when Xi came in in 2012-13, I think it was, he has used campaigns against corruption as a means by which to get rid of his opposition and to secure his position. So anybody who challenged him was deemed corrupt, faced a trial, went to jail, or kicked out of the party, or kicked out of any kind of official position in the party. The latest victim of this is, let's see, is the Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu. Li Shangfu has not been seen in public for quite a few weeks. There were a lot of whispers and rumors around this. In China, first people disappear, then they're accused of something, then they're fired and then they go on trial. So that's typically what happens. People disappearing usually means something's going on. Anyway, he disappeared. And then today it seems like China has said that Li is under investigation for corruption and people close to these affairs assume that he will be relieved from his duties, will be fired very, very soon. This is just, you know, within a month or two from the disappearance, then firing over corruption charges of the Chinese foreign secretary. So she is cleaning house of some pretty senior people. I mean, Li Shangfu was the Chinese defense minister and sat on the small committee of the Chinese government that basically is in charge of the entire military and Li was one of the people in charge of that. And now he has been fired. So Edward says he's draining the swamp. Yeah, he's draining something, but he's getting rid of anybody who might pose any kind of opposition to him. And maybe this also has something to do with his opposition to Xi and maybe it has something to do with corruption, who knows. It's impossible to tell in China when corruption is real or when it's an excuse, when it's just a power grab. All right. We've been talking a lot about this free speech case against the Biden administration for putting influence on, more than influence, threats, intimidation, coercion on social media companies around COVID and around a variety of other issues going back and including the Hunter Biden laptop. But a bunch of different issues. And we saw a lower court rule that the Biden administration probably violated the First Amendment and therefore put an injunction limiting any cooperation and any meetings between the Biden administration and the social media companies. This is an injunction. It's not a final ruling. The trial hasn't happened yet. And then a district court just last week out of New Orleans, the fifth U.S. district court, basically affirmed that decision, changed it a little bit, loosened up some of the restrictions on some of the agencies, but basically affirmed this idea that the Biden administration was limited in its capacity to talk to social media companies. Anyway, yesterday, the Supreme Court, basically a leader, just as a leader, who reviewed this, basically the Biden administration appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for more time before it could fully appeal to the Supreme Court and asking the Supreme Court to basically stop the injunction from going into effect and giving the Justice Department enough time to appeal the Fifth Circuit Court's ruling in front of the Supreme Court. Anyway, a leader, yesterday, granted that appeal to the Biden administration basically the limitations on the Biden administration, as far as I can understand from what I've read, being eliminated until September 22nd, which is in a week. By September 22nd, the Biden administration has to make an argument before the Supreme Court has to file, basically, an appeal and why this is an emergency and why it's national security and why all of this to the Supreme Court for the Court to make a decision. I think the people suing, which the Attorney General of a couple of states, a few states that are suing the Biden administration, they will also be considering this. Let's say the Justice Department, as asked the Supreme Court to stay the order until October 13th, he has stayed the order of the lower courts until September 22nd, waiting for the Justice Department to make the argument for why it should be moved all the way to October 13th, but anyway, Alito is basically given the Biden administration a little bit of breathing room here, unfortunately, but we will see, this is not an actual ruling, this is just kind of okay, I'm giving you time to appeal, I'm giving you time to, it's going to be interesting. In this case, both the injunction and the final case, I'm sure we'll go to the Supreme Court, it's going to be a landmark, I think, free speech decision, it's one to watch, it's why I keep updating you on, because I think it's so crucial, it is going to be really, really, really important that the Supreme Court, or all the courts with the Supreme Court ultimately makes it clear and objective that the government, run by Democrats, Republicans, or whatever, that the government cannot interfere with content produced and posted by social media or by regular media companies. The government can't pressure, can't threaten, can't use any form of suggested or real coercion, and that any suggestion, any such coercion is a violation of free speech, is a violation of the First Amendment. It's not a violation of First Amendment again by the social media company, it is a violation of the First Amendment by the government restricting the free speech of social media, social media can decide what to post and what not to post. That's its First Amendment right. The government telling it it cannot make those kind of decisions is a violation of their rights. That's going to be crucial and key, you know, to the evolution of social media and to a better understanding of what free speech actually means in this country, and hopefully silence all the people who want to increase regulation on social media as a way to address these issues rather than recognizing their private property rights and their own free speech rights. Now, there are of course cases which are super rare and super unusual and you would have to really make a case that they justify whether it's national security or it's what do you call it, incitement for violence where the government does have a role, but those are super rare, super unusual, super rare and super unusual. All right, let's look at, oh, this is a, you know, this is a funny, sad, depressing story. And it comes to us as often funny, sad, depressing stories do. It comes to us from Canada, from a northern neighbor. So Canada is very concerned about equity. It's very concerned about the books in their libraries as many in the left in the United States are actually many on the right too, but for different reasons, right? Many people are concerned about what books are in the libraries. And there's a mandate in Canada that books in the libraries be, you know, be concerned with issues of equity, issues of discrimination, issues of, you know, that they're not be misleading or, you know, unpleasant. Here's the, you know, this is from the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting. You know, librarians to go through each book and consider the widely used musty acronym adopted from the Canadian school libraries. The letters stand for the criteria librarians supposed to consider and they include. So these the criteria is supposed to consider when deciding what books they have in your library, school library and which not. Misleading, which means information may be factually incorrect or obsolete. Obsolete is interesting. Unpleasant refers to the physical condition of the book may require replacement. Okay, so the book is falling apart maybe or stinks or is dirty or whatever. Superceded. The book's being overtaken by a new addition or more current resource. All right, reasonable. Trivial. Of no discernible literary or scientific merit poorly written or presented. All right, I'm not sure, you know, what the standards are for deciding that, but okay, irrelevant. Doesn't meet the needs and interests of the libraries community. Elsewhere, the book or the material in it may be better obtained from other sources. But all of this, of course, framed around issues of equity around issues of not of anti racism. Inclusivity, you know, and cultural responsiveness, whatever the hell that means. So those all have to color everything that is done. Anyway, you know, that's a lot of work. It's a lot of work to go in and pull out, you know, because it's a very difficult process. You have to go every book and decide. So some libraries in, I guess, Toronto, some libraries in some school districts have decided on an easier method. They basically decided to look. We know that in the past, authors were hyper, like culturally insensitive. They were likely to discriminate. They were likely to say offensive things. They were likely just to be not sensitive, right? Because they're in the past, you know, this new woke, this new ability to really be sensitized to what is going on in the world is new. It didn't exist in the past. So why don't we take, I don't know, let's say 2008 and just say, let's take all the books written before 2008 off the bookshelves. All the books are at least published before 2008 off the bookshelves. And there's some pictures in this article in the CBC of the library shelves that are empty, empty, because they basically taken out all books published prior to 2008. And now supposedly it's, they're only taking off books that are damaged, inaccurate or do not have strong curriculum data. Sorry, circulation data on not being checked out by students or removed. But the easiest thing is just to remove them all because then you don't have to actually choose and you don't have to actually select. Pretty amazing, pretty amazing. A lot of books have been abandoned by the library or some examples were magnificent women in music. You'd think that that would be, that would actually be a book that they would want. Anna Frank, old book. We don't want old books. Remember the hungry, the very hungry caterpillar? I remember that book. I think my kids had that book, the very hungry caterpillar. Anyway, why bother with actually looking and testing every book and reading it and figuring out what's appropriate and what's not, which every librarian has to do because there's only a limited number of books that you can have in any library. And look, some books are not appropriate for school libraries. And there's a big debate going on in the United States right now about some books that are clearly explicit, sexual books that are not appropriate for school libraries. But it requires real work. It requires real thoughtfulness. It requires real analysis. It requires, and look, some of this is going to be biased because different librarians are going to make different choices based on what they consider as good literature, bad literature, what they consider as acceptable, what they consider not acceptable, good condition of a book, bad condition of a book. You know, the weaning out is going to happen in different levels by different librarians and you're going to have biases built into that. And that's just life. But this Canadian system is what I call the stupid method. No evaluation required. If it's 2008 or earlier, just take it out because it's easier. And now, of course, not all school libraries are doing this. I think this is the lazy method. And a lot of this is just coming from this so much confusion about what these new equity based standards and processes mean that I think a lot of librarians just don't know and they're just looking for easy way out. And the reality is there is no right answer because by definition, these equity based processes and standards are non objective, irrational and complete nonsense. By 2008, your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea. No idea. All right. Finally, a story out of California. For those of you concerned about homelessness in San Francisco, and I know many of you are because like me, you love the city so much. I'm being cynical there because most of you hate San Francisco. Well, at least, you know, that's the kind of feedback I get in my comments whenever I say something nice about San Francisco. People just pile up on it. Anyway, San Francisco's elected officials, you know, the city council, the mayor, have finally decided to do something about homeless people. And they want to sweep homeless in campus and take them apart and get rid of them. Particularly on sidewalks, they want to get, they want to open up sidewalks for surprise, shockingly, pedestrians. And they started the process of actually doing that in San Francisco, you know, cleaning up the sidewalks, getting rid of homeless people, pulling down the tents and restricting their ability to just camp anywhere they want. Anyway, a bunch of non-profit groups that are supposedly protecting the homeless people filed with the courts, with the California courts, basically convinced, they've convinced the courts to ban this practice of cleaning up the homelessness until basically San Francisco can offer free, you know, at least beds but ultimately free housing to every homeless person who happens to arrive in San Francisco with a tent. Now we've already talked about this over and over again that all that does is incentivizes, dramatically incentivizes people to move to San Francisco or homeless in order to wait in line to get a free home. You hand out free stuff. There is almost infinite demand for that free stuff. And so there is a battle right now in the court system around, you know, the governments, the non-for-profits and the courts saying you have to actually put them in the house. I guess there's an implicit right to housing in San Francisco in California. And actual elected officials in California who are all to the left of, I don't know what, advocating for no, we need to clear the sidewalks, we need to get rid of these homeless people. Guess where Gavin Newsom falls on that spectrum? For maintaining the homeless in campments and getting them into homes or kicking them all out. He's on the kicking them all outside. The Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday the state will intervene in an ongoing federal court case that's barred San Francisco from cleaning up homeless in campments until more shelter beds or housing, saying the judge has gone too far and is preventing the state from solving a critical problem. Gavin Newsom says, I hope this goes to the Supreme Court. And that's a hell of a statement coming from a progressive Democrat, given how conservative the Supreme Court is. So even the left in San Francisco has come to the realization that just allowing squatters, just allowing people to squat anywhere on the sidewalks to defecate anywhere on the sidewalks and streets of San Francisco is unacceptable. And that the city needs to clean it up as part of its responsibility to the individual rights of its citizens. And even the so-called progressive governor of the state of California is siting with the city of New York. And this is the thing about the left, at least some on the left, that the left is constantly slapped by reality, or to use a term Irving Crystal used many decades ago, the left is constantly mugged by reality. I mean, the true believers, the mystics within the left, ignore reality, ignore the mugging, keep to their beliefs. But some of them, at least on some issues, on some things, move away from the crazy positions. And when it comes to actually governing a city, engage in activities that will actually get us back to reality, gets us back to sanity. And this is why some of these things, I'm not as pessimistic as so many others are, because I do think there is a mugging of reality, and there's still enough people that can only evade so much, can only evade so far that when they face this, there are political consequences, because maybe the political leaders can evade, but the voters won't evade because it affects their actual day-to-day quality and standard of living, that they demand action and the politicians give them that action. So things can and often do get better. It's not just a spiral. What is it? A doom loop downwards. There's also a positive, and the positivity comes shockingly from reality. Reality is setting in and people accepting that reality is set in and demanding changes, and usually that comes from the electorate. Now, over time, things are worse, but they're worse at a much smaller margin than what it appears. The things get worse much, much slower on a global standard over the long run than in any given moment it appears. It appears things are getting really, really, really bad, and everything is going to collapse them on. That's true in economics, and that's true in things like homelessness, and it's true in other things. Now, it had to get really bad for reality to kick in in San Francisco. The mugging had to be pretty intense, but ultimately even the residents of San Francisco have woken up to the insanity of the way they're conducting their own city. Alright, let us see. Lots of questions. Thank you. This is great. Lots of questions. So let's start with Brian. FreedomFest has some good speakers like Mike Rowe, but the big ones are presidential candidates like RFK Jr. Would you be a speaker at FreedomFest if they invited you? So I have spoken to FreedomFest several times. I won't say many times, but several times. Three, four, five times. I don't know. I can't remember anymore. I've spoken the main stage. I've done breakout sessions. The last time I was at FreedomFest was I think in 2020 when they did it in South Dakota. Weird place to FreedomFest, but they did it in South Dakota, and I did a number of events, including a debate with John Mackie on profit motive and corporations. I'm not crazy about FreedomFest. The audience is kind of not my audience. It skews older. It skews conservative, not freedom oriented. It skews Trumpist. And the libertarians in the audience skews Paleo libertarians, the worst kind of anarchists among the libertarians. So it's not particularly appealing to me. So I would speak, but somebody would have to make it with my word. And the reality is that FreedomFest refuses to pay me, and I think it even refuses to pay for like my travel expenses. So there's no way I'm going to FreedomFest under those conditions. So yeah, if they paid me and they paid my way and they paid me to speak, I would go. But I'm not interested in providing my services for free where I don't see, I mean, I'm willing to do it in certain circumstances. But in circumstances where the audience is, what am I, who am I convincing? I'm not going to convince anybody of what, which direction am I moving them? And it was a conference of young people, maybe, but then I could probably get somebody to pay for me to go like the Institute. But no, so I don't imagine speaking at FreedomFest anytime in the future unless their policies change or unless somebody steps up, maybe one of you, and says, you're on, I'll give you $5,000 or $10,000 to go speak at FreedomFest. And then I'll go. I mean, if I want to speak at FreedomFest, I think this is true. Mark Scousen, who runs FreedomFest, you know, could contradict me on this. But I think it's true that if I wanted to speak at FreedomFest, I have an open invitation to speak at FreedomFest. So it's just a question of if somebody pays me to go, I'll go. Shazbot, does one need to buy tickets in advance for the Soho Forum debate? Yes, you can go to the Soho Forum website to get the tickets. Or can we get them at the door? The worry about getting at the door is that they might be sold out. As it is, I don't think there are a lot of tickets left. And will the debate start at 6.30 sharp or closer to 7 when the audience is settled down? Oh my God. I think it's 6.30, because I think people expected to arrive earlier and settle down by 6.30. So I can't remember the exact format of these debates. This is my third FreedomFest debate. I did one at the height of COVID, but we did it in Florida because you couldn't do it in New York. We did it in Florida with spacing, with everybody spaced out, with distancing. But we did do it in a public event in Florida. Unfortunately, John Mackey or his debating couldn't fly out, so he was on Zoom and I was there in person. This is Soho Forum, not FreedomFest, Soho Forum. So you can go to Soho Forum website and get the information. I did two debates with Mackey. One at Soho Forum, one at FreedomFest. I suspect it's 6.30, but why don't you check the website? If the website says it starts at 6.30, it probably starts at 6.30. And I know Brian Kaplan needs to leave at 8. And I think the whole thing is an hour and a half. I can't remember. I've got an email somewhere with the whole program. Let me see if I can dig it up while I'm answering questions and give you a more complete answer in a minute. Do you know how broad the strike is? Is it just cost assembly? Or is it also those who make parts for cost assemblies? I think it's just cost assembly. I think it's just, in other words, I think it is just at the companies. I don't think it's at the parts. I don't think the striking vis-a-vis the car manufacturers. And as I said, it's going to rotate. They're going to close some factories at a time. And it only affects UAW workers. So I think they're involved just in the assembly side of it. Let's see. So the program will begin. Okay, so here's the official line. It's at the Sheen Center, 18 Bleaker Street. In New York, the program will begin promptly at 6.30. So I need to be at 5.30. And let's see. And then there's 15 minutes each side, 5 minute rebuttals, 30 minutes to ask questions from the moderator, and then 5 minutes of summary from each side. So it's a solid hour and a half, I think. So that is what it looks like. Half an hour, 40 minutes. Yeah, it's going to get to close to an hour and 30 minutes. All right, let's see. Where are we? Alex, for August, failed PayPal contribution now changed to Patreon from October. Thank you, Alex. So generally, I've noticed a lot of failures on PayPal over the last month, month and a half, maybe two months at all levels. Just for some reason not going through, maybe credit card expired me. PayPal is a bug. I don't know. So I'm asking those of you who are on monthly and thank you, Alex, for doing this, check and either fix it on PayPal or like Alex did, convert to Patreon. In some ways, I think Patreon is a more robust system. But I know some people had problems with Patreon. They went to subscribe stuff. So whatever system works for you, just make sure it's working, because if you want to support me and I'm not getting the support, then you're not supporting me. Anyway. So I appreciate if you just check, make sure that what you want to happen is happening. If you don't want to support me, that's fine. But then just cancel the subscription rather than just letting the credit card lag or something, because then it's ambiguous and PayPal doesn't know what to do with it. Shay says it's vitally important that the US government be able to threaten Social Security companies over the next week. That is the argument that Judge Alito has accepted. Yes. I guess the restriction was not just on threatening because the lower court said, well, I mean, we're not yet in a position to find what threatening is. So we're basically restricting all communication between the Biden administration and the social media companies. So what the Supreme Court ultimately is going to have to decide, I think is what constitutes threatening, and then be able to differentiate where it's appropriate for the government to have some say in what or some communication with social media. I would, you know, my preference would be zero, none, unless clearly a crime is being committed. But what is the level of restriction, how it works? The Supreme Court is going to have to tackle that and it's not going to be easy for them because I don't think they're going to have such a clear cut description as I have stated. And then, of course, the social media companies can then decide for themselves what kind of restrictions they want to place. But the government should only intervene, should only communicate, never mind intervening, should only communicate with social media companies when there is a crime being committed on the social media platforms or even it is going to be committed immediately. The only purpose would be to stop a crime. Okay, Mike says, I know many people who are both Yellow Dog Democrats and devout Christians. So why do both parties promote Democrats as the party of science and Republicans as the party of superstition? Because many Democrats who consider themselves Christians don't let it, or seemingly, seemingly, don't let it interfere with the way they evaluate policy and the way they evaluate, you know, the world of government or particular laws. So Christianity, the Republicans is the party of superstition because the Republican Party is the party that has taken those superstitions and turned them into legislation. I.e., it's the Republican Party that is anti-abortion for religious reasons. It is the Republican Party that, you know, wants to erode the separation state and church. It's the Republican Party where the presidential candidates will not say they think evolution is true. Whereas the Democrats, as a party, at least, even if many of them are religious, all support evolution, all claim to be pro-science and, supposedly, don't allow religion to interfere in their legislating. Now, it does, through altruism anyway, but, again, a lot of this is about the appearance and it's about, well, it's true, right? You know, the Democrats don't ban stem cell research on the basis of religion. They don't ban life extension research on the basis of religion. And Republicans do. That's why Republicans are the party of superstition because they actually use those superstitions in legislation. Democrats don't, for the most part. Now, you could argue they have their own superstitions. True, but they don't use religious superstition. James, I understand you wanted to live in New York City for a while, I said. Not for too long. You mentioned Iowa is boring. I'm visiting rural USA. I find people in cities the same as rural. Plenty to do based on an open mind and people you spend time with daily. I'm sure that's true, but there is an energy to a place. You walk the streets, you go into restaurants, you go into different public places and there is an energy to a place. And Silicon Valley has, or at least had when I lived there, a certain energy, a certain excitement and positivism and optimism and a hard work ethic and an entrepreneurial just attitude. And it was there. It was there when you drove late at night and you saw all the lights on in, you know, a small-rise, not high-rise, office buildings where cars parked outside and you knew people were working into the night on their startups and things like that. There's just something about the place and just on the other hand also a very casual atmosphere. New York has an energy in the streets. You walk the streets and there's an excitement and energy and it manifests partially in the skyscrapers and the attitude of skyscrapers but it also manifests in the attitude of people. You know, what do you want? You know, get out of my way. It's a bit of a hostile energy but it's a dynamic energy. It's a energy about people in a hurry, people wanting to do stuff. So every part of the country, I think, to some extent has a certain sense of life that is communicated in its cities. And they're all different. I mean Orange County, where I lived in California, super laid-back, super relaxed, super, you know, leave each other, leave people to their own thing. And Austin, Texas had a different energy and you know, there's a certain sense about the place that's hard to always completely articulate. And you know, there's just parts of the country that I'm not interested based on visiting there. I mean really nice parts that I'm sure are nice and I'm sure you guys are just not interesting to me. And if I was going to spend, I don't know, a couple of years in my 40s and my 50s and I had some money, I would love to spend it in a kind of energetic, exciting place where there was lots to do and where people were busy about really important stuff, doing stuff, being productive. And you know, it's not an insult too but I'm not that interested in, you know, Seattle's an amazing place but Seattle, you know, and it has some of the best views and the best scenery in the world. It's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But Seattle's rain, I can't deal with the rain. I can't deal with 10 months of rain, which is what Seattle is. It's too much. I would love to live in Seattle in the summers. Very relaxing. I like living in places that are basically secular. I know all of you think religion makes a place safer but it doesn't. There's no correlation between the religiosity of people and crime. I want to live in a place that's fairly secular. I want to live in a place where the people you generally interact with and are Bible thumpers and are not deeply religious people. I find it bizarre and weird that you suddenly discover the person you're talking to is really, really deeply religious. It's just something that strikes me as strange. It's why I would find it very, very hard to live in much of the U.S. And it was bizarre even in Orange County because Orange County is so religious. So I love many parts of this country. I'm just talking about my preferences to live. New York, California, Austin, you know, Blue City in a red state, you know, because of... In New York, I would forgive the weather because of how exciting it is. I'm hyperbolic. How is that? Hydrophobic. I don't know what hydrophobic is. So that's my story. But if you don't, if you can't recognize the difference between Iowa City and New York, you haven't spent enough time in either place. I mean, I think Miami is a city still becoming. I don't know what the, you know, identity is. There's some stuff I like about Miami. It's got a vibrant kind of Latin energy and excitement and culture. But it's also hot and humid and particularly summer is a pretty brutal in Miami. But yeah, Miami's... And it's also big. Miami's big and flat. And it extends forever because that whole coast is really one big city all the way up at least to West Palm Beach and further even northern that. So I'm not particularly crazy. I like Hilly. Again, New York, I'm forgiving of a lot of things. And I like a particular... I like nice views. I like an interesting geography. And I like good weather. What can I say? That is me. All right. And if it's going to be different than that, then there has to be compensation in Puerto Rico. It's the tax regime in New York. It's the New York. It's the energy. Andrew says, was listening to a random photo forum and was stopped by a great line paraphrasing. This is paraphrasing I ran. That the economy in the 70s was like a great crumbling road surrounded by the quicksand of a mixed economy. That is a great line. And what's amazing about it, but again, the amazing thing is that that is very much true of the 1970s. And it today has a very similar sense to it. And what's amazing is how the U.S. economy were covered in the 80s and 90s. That's what's amazing about it all that in spite of how awful it was in the 70s. And it was bad. How that recovery happened and how successful it was in many respects and how our lives as individuals got better and our standard of living quality of life and wealth all got better from the late 70s well into the 2000s, maybe until the great financial crisis. And why and how that happened in spite of what happened in the 70s. Meribens, please don't do the Thursday shows at 1 p.m. That's when I'm on ARC UK and I want everyone to join me live. Yup, shameless self-promotion. So Meribens is on ARC UK. You should all go listen to her, although she's competing with me so I don't know. We will see. I might be changing the time of the show to 12 o'clock. After all, you guys all voted for 12 o'clock because 12 o'clock is the ideal time for a show rather than 1 o'clock. You prefer 12 o'clock. So I might be moving the show to 12 o'clock starting in October. I'm going to be traveling so much in October but there are not going to be that many shows in any standard time. So probably in November, December when I get back to a regular schedule so hopefully we can get to a point Meribens where they can listen to both of our shows. I have not forgotten about your novella. My plan is on this trip next week to catch up on all the TV, all the music albums and all the novellas that I am supposed to be reading and supposed to be reviewing and get back to you as soon as I get back. So the week, not this next week, the week after that, will I be reviewing all of those hopefully. Garrett, what are your thoughts on Peter Zien's commentary on China vis-a-vis this is the last decade, agreed, disagree, thoughts? I've spoken about Peter Zien in the past. I mean, I think generally he's right in a sense of China's decline. I think he exaggerates the speed of the decline. I think that's pretty much standard and it makes better headlines, right? If you say, yeah, it's the beginning of a slow, long-term decline that nobody's interested but to say, no, China's finished in this decade, that'll get people's attention. So I think generally he's right, the demographics are collapsing. Again, he probably is exaggerating the speed of the collapse but it is collapsing. But much, much more important, as authoritarianism rises, economic success declines and we're already seeing that right now. She's 10, 12 years at the, well, really 11 years at the head of the Chinese government is resulting in significant economic decline. That's not surprising. It's what happened with all authoritarian regimes. It's happening with China. Unfortunately, Peter Zien doesn't really attribute it to that. He attributes it to all kinds of other stuff, primarily demographics. I think it has much more to do with ideas, much more to do with the political regime than it has to do with demographics and I think demographics are a symptom of the disease of authoritarianism rather than a cause of decline. So authoritarianism at the end of the day is why China's going to decline, nothing else. So I agree and disagree with them but generally, yes, China's already starting to decline economically and will continue to do so. And that will result in declines militarily in every other aspect of Chinese society. James, USA cause appear to be non-competitive to found cause unreliability to Yorahonda. What common effect should you think will change the industry besides Tesla? Did Tesla get government money to start? Tesla certainly benefited from government subsidies at the beginning. There's no question about that. Government subsidies to the state of California. Government subsidies to owners, to tax deductions and government subsidies directly to Tesla. Who's going to change? Well, the Chinese auto companies are going to change the auto industry. So watch out for Chinese cause being exported. Already China is the number one exporter of cause in the world bigger than Japan. I also think that while it will take a little longer, I suspect that the Japanese are going to make really, really, really good and maybe even ultimately revolutionary electric cars. I just think they have the engineering capacity to really change the industry. They're not first movers. They're not first adopters. They're not the ones to do the first. But they make things really, really better from an engineering perspective. So I wouldn't be surprised if Toyota and Honda ultimately came to be major, major players in the electric car space or in some other new technological space. So to be seen. To be seen. Shaz, but maybe Iran should send every Canadian library a copy of Equals unfair. Do you think that's equitable? I don't think it's. I don't think it satisfied the equity standard. But guys with $35 short of reaching our goal, which would be terrific. You know, we reached it yesterday by just $35 should be really, really close. We've got 80 people watching. Maybe somebody can just throw, you know, if we just do a few stickers, you don't have to ask a question. Just a few stickers. $5, $10, $2, whatever, whatever you think is fair given a trader principle. Value for value. They just throw it up there. And I'm sure we can get to, to our target. All right. A lot of James. He says a lot of good restaurants, museums, culture and other things in rural USA. Not at the same level. I'm sorry to tell you. I think opposite of a comment last show on New York City, finding relationships within a place that shares your values, the key. Yes, and I find more in common with New Yorkers than I probably do with much of the rest of America. I know that upsets a lot of you, but that is me, right? So I would rather interact with secular people. It's very difficult to find great restaurants in rural America in, you know, Chicago, you know, Austin, there are a few good restaurants in Dallas, Houston. I mean, really good restaurants. But the bulk of the great restaurants, I mean really great restaurants are in California and in New York and, or the East Coast, Boston, New York, Washington DC and Miami. Miami has some good restaurants. But that's, that's the, that's the reality. I mean, and it makes sense, right? That's where people have the money to spend on really good restaurants, expensive. It's, there's no accident. Michelin stars, Michelin stars are given in California and New York and, and you know, I think, and they just started doing them in Denver. So it's selective because Michelin stars quality restaurants are rare and much of America doesn't have them. Then if you look at museums, look, in America, you can't compete with the Met and it's not just the Met in New York. You also have the Frick. You just, it's just very difficult. Now Cleveland has it and, and, and Cincinnati both have good art museums, very good art museums. Chicago, of course, but outside of that, you know, LA has a decent one, decent museum. But outside of New York, Boston, oh, Boston is a great museum of art. And of course DC does. But outside of that Eastern corridor and, and some Midwestern cities that had great industrial pasts, there's very little good art museums around the country. They just, they aren't. And the same with culture. How many good orchestras are they? It's just a great orchestras. Five, six in the US. And, and you know, the one exception to the big cities would be Cleveland has a great symphony orchestra but Boston, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston, Houston and Dallas maybe. That's it. Houston, opera, Dallas. You know, but it's, that's it. There's just, yeah, the decent orchestras and culture in it otherwise. But it's not great. So it's a question of what you want. And I would love to live for a short period of time in a place that had great restaurant and great culture and great symphony orchestra and great opera. I mean, where are you going to go to see great opera in the United States? If you're not going to go to the Metropolitan Opera and I wish I could live in New York where I could spend and go to the opera the whole season, not just once in a while when I mean you are catching opera because it's a real value to me and it would be unbelievable fun, right? So, you know, again, I'm not saying that needs to be your values. I'm just saying my values. And I find a lot more common with people doing high-level finance in New York than I find with people as ambitious as they might be in Iowa. So I don't know. My values are more tuned to New York partially because I'm Israeli and I like that energy and I like that elbowing and a little bit of rudeness and a little bit of just say what you think. Don't be overly polite. But again, that's very personal. But that's, I am. That's me in the big swaths of this country where I would not want to live and couldn't see myself living. Shazbad, South Park's solution to their homeless problem was to advertise another nearby town as a haven for the homeless. All of the homeless left to live in the other town. Well, but you've got to make it a haven for the homeless. Like off of free housing. I mean, I think the solution for much of the rest of California for homeless problem was San Francisco promising them free homes. So everybody moved to San Francisco. San Francisco is the solution to the homeless problem. It all gets concentrated in one place. Apollozooz, can you do a book review of a certain 100-page novella? Working on it, I promise. Apollozooz will not leave me alone. Guys, you can do stickers. You don't have to ask questions and we can get to the target. $30 away. Thank you, Garrett. $5 more for the pot, saving the rest of my pennies so I can go to Ocon next year. It will be my first time going. Hopefully we'll see you there. That'll be fantastic. Yes, I will definitely be there. So I'm hoping to see you there as well. I also wanted to point out, yeah, Garrett, today was his first Super Chat question. So thank you, Garrett, for participating in the Super Chat. Thank you guys for the support and thank you for all the Super Chatters and for all the listeners. I will see you tonight, 8 p.m. East Coast time. I'll let you know later today. I'll advertise what the topic will be. But yeah, 8 p.m. tonight and then 1 o'clock Eastern time tomorrow for Fleming Rose. Bye, everybody.