 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rocks. This is The Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Tuesday, September 12th, I hope we're just having a fantastic week. I have a little low energy today, not feeling too well, so it might lack a little bit on the excitement scale, but we'll be okay in spite of that. Alright, I've got a bunch of stories to talk about today. And of course, free feed is the super chat to ask questions, lots of issues out there, lots of stuff happening in the news, feel free to ask about that, or about anything else that you want to. News related or not. So yeah, there's a lot of talk, constantly a lot of talk about the dollars collapsing. We talked about this before, and then bricks, they're going to establish their own currency and they're going to replace the dollar, and countries are trading between each other with their own currencies, not with dollars, and that's the weave of the future. And once in a while, a deal is announced, China is going to pay Saudi Arabia and Yuan for some of the oil that they get, and everybody freaks out and everybody's convinced yes, the end of the dollar is nigh. And it's not that I think the dollar is that great, it's a fiat currency, it's controlled, manipulated, inflated by central planners. The challenge is of course, that every currency in the world is exactly the same, and most of them are controlled, manipulated, and inflated by people even less reliable than the people running the Federal Reserve in the United States. So it's a matter of the least worse currency, not a matter of a good currency. But anyway, there was an example of this in the news yesterday. It's a story that's been covered, being really hot over the last few months in the financial world. And that is that Russia is selling a lot of oil to India. India is basically taking advantage of the situation. It demands a discount from the Russians on the oil that Russia sells them. So they get an oil cheap on the cheap. And they're willing to buy all the oil that Russia is selling. Indeed, India used to import very little Russian oil. And now I think it's like 75% of all the oil imported into India comes from Russia. And it's basically because they're getting a big discount. And because of sanctions, nobody else will buy the oil from Russia. So Russia has to sell it at discount. And it sells a vast, you know, a huge quantity to India. Anyway, when the sell happens, they can't use dollars. Traditionally, the transaction would happen in your dollars and the money would be transferred from India to the United States in dollars over the different networks of money transfer that exists in the world. But given the sanctions that Russia is under, they cannot use dollars to transfer the money from India to Russia. So how do they get the money, right? So India pays Russia, let's say, with rupees. Russia would like to get rubles, but how is India going to get rubles? India doesn't print rubles. India doesn't have rubles. And the Russians don't buy anything from India, really. Not much, anyway. Small amounts. So India doesn't get an inflow of rubles. So they can't pay for the oil and rubles. Just don't have the rubles. So, and they don't want to hold rubles because, God, rubles are so volatile. While they're holding rubles, they could go into the market and buy a bunch of rubles and hold them because the rubles are super volatile. So basically, India is paying Russia for the oil in rupees. Rupees is the Indian currency. But then what? The Russia doesn't have a need for rupees. What's it going to do with the rupees? It can buy a few things in India, but generally, India doesn't export much to Russia. So the rubies are kind of stuck in the bank. Billions and billions and billions and billions of rubies. Rupees stuck in the bank because they can't be taken back to Russia in the form that's usable, which is the dollar. They can't be turned into rubles, which is the Russian currency. They're stuck in rubies and you can use the rubies to buy Indian government bonds. But who the hell wants to own Indian government bonds? What Russia needs is the currency so it can buy stuff. You know, now the next story we'll talk about is North Korea. So it can pay North Korea in dollars to give it weapons. And North Korea can use the dollars to buy stuff that it needs to, you know, maybe feed its people and maybe build weapon systems in black markets because North Korea is completely isolated or could buy them from the Chinese. Ultimately, it'll end up in China. But so the situation right now is that they're stuck. And yes, you know, Russia could theoretically use the rubies to buy gold and then ship the gold to Russia and then sell the gold to the Chinese and then take the yuan and use that to buy stuff. God, that is so cumbersome. And that's why the world uses the dollar as a global currency. It just makes everything so much smoother, so easier. Anybody will take a dollar. You can go anywhere in the world now and they'll exchange the local currency for dollar. Not true of a ruble, not true of a yuan, not true of an Israeli Shekel, maybe somewhat true of a euro, but that's about it. The euro, the dollar, that's it. So it's a great story just to illustrate just the extent to which the world economy is dependent on the dollar, the world economy, you know, all this trade that goes on is dependent on having a unit of account, one standard unit of account that people can use then as a means of exchange. And that today in the world we have today as a dollar now would be great if it was a dollar backed by gold. It would be great if it was some other private currency that was backed by something, but it's not, so we have an inferior system of money which is basically backed by the dollar. And that's not going to go away tomorrow. I mean, the problem of the rupee and the rubles and the imbalances of trade, not imbalances, just the lack of balance of trade all over the world is just a reality and it's never going to change. It's not like there will be a world in which Russia buys as much from India as India buys from Russia. You know, not very efficient if you force that to happen. So that Russia can then use all the rupees it gets to buy stuff from India. So, you know, there you have it. It's Russia now. I think the last time I saw it, last time I saw it was $38 billion. Russia, which desperately needs the money because its economy is struggling, $38 billion of oil that it has sold to is stuck. And this is part of supposedly $147 billion of, you know, Russian money stuck in foreign banks, in foreign currencies that they can't find a way to get back to Russia so that they can use for what they need, which reminds me. So I got this really funny, let me see if I can find it, really funny comment on one of the videos that I read this morning. And I thought this was really, let's see where I can find this. And it relates to this. It was basically somebody saying, look, you know, I've learned a lot from Iran. He inspired me to go read Iran. I've read all of Iran's books because of him. But there's one thing. I just, I mean, here it is. Iran book was a huge inspiration to me to read all of Iran's fiction and nonfiction in my youth. I still agree with most of the stuff he says and has opinions on. But his relentless pursuit of optimism in the face of an obvious rise of an authoritarian tyrannical government is getting unbearable. Anyway, so I'm too optimistic. I'm too optimistic about the dollar. I'm too optimistic about the economy. I'm too optimistic about ability to survive. And I'm not recognizing how Biden is now a tyrant and how we clearly have an authoritarian state. And any minute now, the government is going to shut down my YouTube channel. I'm just too positive about the world. I'm not willing to be all doom and gloom and people upset about that. People upset about that. And I'm losing subscribers. I'm losing followers. So if you're an optimist like me, good. And if you like my optimism, then please support the show so that I can keep it going. And I don't have to worry about losing some of these pessimists over there. I just find it entertaining. I have context. I have perspective. I've been around for a while. I was pessimistic in the 80s. I was even pessimistic in the 90s. I've waited for the world to end over and over again. Although I was never really a pessimist. All right, let's see. So yes, we were commenting on my optimism when YouTube decided it was too much. Actually, when I think my internet provider in Puerto Rico decided it was too much and shut down my internet, it's the gods of pessimism out to get me. All right, North Korean summit. So the brutal dictator of North Korea is on a rare expedition outside of his country. He is taking the train to Russia, into Eastern Russia, where he will be meeting Vladimir Putin. The last time the brutal dictator of North Korea, whose name I try not to pronounce because he's not worthy of it, the last time he met a significant world leader, maybe he's met Xi since, but it was, of course, Donald Trump when Donald Trump was groveling before him and calling him his best friend and sending love letters across the Pacific. But he is now meeting Putin. I think he's met his match. I think he's met somebody he can actually deal with. Trump was too weak to actually deal with. And luckily, Trump was surrounded by people who actually understood the nature of the brutal dictator of North Korea and prevented anything too bad from happening. But Putin is there. And Putin has one specific reason that he wants to meet with the brutal dictator of North Korea, and that is weirdly, strangely, nobody ever would have predicted this would ever happen. But he needs his weapons. He needs his weapon factories. He needs shells. He needs rockets. He is running out of ammo. And his factories in Russia can only produce so much. And they're constrained. They're constrained by the fact that many of the components, the machinery, many of the things that they need in order to produce those weapons, they tend to import from the West. And that is not as easy as it used to be. So it's difficult for them to do the importation. So Putin is about to engage in light-scale purchases from North Korea of weapons. And a lot of it is going to be inventory that the North Koreans have. North Koreans have amassed massive quantities of shells for artillery, rockets for launching into South Korea. They have a massive army relative to the size of the country, lots and lots of old Soviet-like artillery guns. And that's exactly so the Russians are going to get shells for old guns. They're going to get shells for old tanks. Maybe they'll even get some old tanks. Maybe they'll get some T-55s, 54s, maybe 65s. If they're really lucky, they'll get a 65. And I don't think the North Koreans are going to accept rupees in exchange. They're going to want something they can then use to go shopping in China or go shopping somewhere else. So they're going to want real hard currencies. So to be interesting, the Russians have plenty of euros because the European Union still buys huge amounts of stuff from Russia, including uranium. Even the United States buys stuff from Russia, like uranium, refined uranium. So they have dollars, and they have some dollars, and they can use those to buy these North Korean weapons. But this is all old. Some of them won't work. But this is just a sign, an indication. Again, this is my optimism speaking of Putin's desperation. And it's also a sign, an indication that maybe the Chinese are not really helping the Russians nowhere near as much as the Russians would like because Russia could supply them with modern weapons systems. It could supply them with fresh shells. It could supply them with an industrial base that could actually compete with the Wests, not in terms of how advanced they are, but in terms of how quantities. No, Russia cannot rely on its ally, the Chinese, because the Chinese I don't think want to get to a position where they're enmeshed in the conflict in Ukraine. So he turns to his good friend, another brutal dictator in North Korea, in order to make this happen. This is really a sign of humiliation. Any world leader meeting with the brutal dictator of North Korea is humiliating themselves. Trump humiliated himself in America by going and meeting with him and by treating him the way he did. And Putin is humiliating himself. But what's he got to lose? He is completely desperate. So that's happening any day now. I'm sure the North Koreans will be happy to provide as much weapons as the Russians want. Last month, I think it was last month. Last month, maybe it was a month before that. Oops, what's going on here? All right, there we go. Last month, China dropped off from being the number one importer, country from which the United States imports. So the United States had traditionally, China comprised about 20% of all imports into the United States with Chinese companies. Over 20%, 22%, 23%. I mean, significant numbers, almost a quarter of all the goods and stuff that the United States imports, it imported from China. As of July, not August, July, China constituted 14.6%. So it's a massive decline with billions and billions of dollars. And this has started in 2018. And it's really accelerated since 2021. And we're down to 14.6%. And what has happened is that the number one nation whose businesses are exporting to the United States is now Mexico, which makes a lot of sense. Mexico is right here. It's close. So it's Mexico now, then China, and then Canada, all very close to one another in terms of the percentage that the United States imports from them. Mexico now is about 15%. China is about 14.6%. Canada, it looks like it's about 13%, something percent. So you've got a real shift happening in terms of trade, in terms of where the United States is importing the stuff that we consume. And what is happening is as buyers in the United States shift away from China, try to diversify supply chains, try to protect themselves from the potential for a war with Taiwan, a potential for, I don't know, some kind of economic crisis between the United States and China sanctions, things like that. More and more companies are not moving production to the United States. What they're doing is they're moving production to places like Mexico, to some extent Canada, but primarily to Mexico. You're seeing a massive increase in the building of industrial parks, warehouses, all over Mexico, particularly in the north, in Baja, but also in Nuevo Leon, which is borders with basically Texas. But also in Chujar, I can't pronounce these places. Anyway, in the north of Mexico, also in the central, around Mexico City and in the state of Mexico, as compared to the country, and in other parts of western and southern Mexico, basically across Mexico, there is a significant increase in economic activity, in building. Mexico generally is doing shockingly, I mean, really surprisingly, doing really, really well, in spite of having a corrupt socialist leader as president of Mexico. Mexico has seen a surge of exports, primarily to the United States. It also has really the strongest currency in the world this year, stronger than the dollar, which is very unusual. So it has performed better than the dollar. The dollar is weakened as compared to the Mexican currency. There is a huge amount of foreign direct investment. It's a 40% in 2023 versus last year, and that's a consequence, again, of people diversifying supply chains, moving supply chains closer to the United States, becoming less dependent on China. And Mexico is a massive beneficiary of this. One could only imagine how well Mexico would be doing economically right now if it didn't have a socialist president, if it had even semi-free market policies as part of its economic policies. Tesla is building a proposed $5 billion factory in Mexico. So not since NAFTA has the country attracted so many investors, so much investment into Mexico. And we'll see Mexico often blows these opportunities. This is a real opportunity for Mexico, whether it blows it because of horrible economic policies or whether the drug war goes out of control or something else, people resist making those investments. This could be unique. This is a unique opportunity for the Mexican economy. And the real challenge is, will they take advantage of it? Or will the corruption and the socialism of the authorities in Mexico undermine? Now, it appears that in the election, which I think is happening early next year, the two candidates, the candidate of the ruling party, the more socialist party, is I think the former, the mayor of Mexico City. And the opposition party is both women. So you're going to have a woman president for the first time in Mexican history next year. Clearly, the opposition candidate seems better than the ruling party candidate. But if this economic boom is a reality and continues, that might be an issue. The current president, Andrey Manuel Lopez Obrado, has repeatedly clashed with business interests, repeatedly clashed. And because he's a socialist after all, and constantly is trying to regulate and control and break up. And if Mexico is going to take advantage of this massive amount of investment flowing into the country, it's going to need better business practices. Hopefully, the opposition can win. And hopefully, that victory will lead to a better, more prosperous Mexico. A more prosperous Mexico is great for America. More trade with Mexico is great for America. More building, more creation in Mexico. Fantastic for America. Among many, many things, it reduces the pressure on the border. We haven't really had positive net Mexican migration into the United States since the great financial crisis in 2008. Mexicans left America and went back to Mexico during the financial crisis. And very few have come back. So I don't think that's particularly good for the US, but it's good for the, I don't know, for all the craziness at the border not to have illegal immigrants from Mexico. The reality is, for Mexico these days is that plenty of opportunities in Mexico, they don't have to travel north. But they might be, if Mexico can actually embrace policies that lead to an economic boom then Guatemalans and Venezuelans and others might decide to settle in Mexico because they're job opportunities there. Now, you've also got a law and order problem in Mexico that they're gonna have to deal with at some point. This administration in Mexico has no interest in dealing and they basically cut deals with the cartels. I don't know if a future administration can do will and can do any better. All right, Mexico is an investment opportunity. All right, let's see. Yeah, I mean, another shameful actions by the Biden administration. We talked about this a few weeks ago, but it's actually happening as we speak. The United States has kind of deal with the Iranian regime for the release of five American citizens who are held in prison in Iran. As you remember, a few weeks ago, those prisoners will release the house arrest as part of this deal. And it appears that they will be heading to the United States released from Iran any day now, or maybe any moment now, but any day now. The release of those prisoners will trigger the United States releasing five Iranians who are held prisoner in the United States. All of those Iranians were held in the United States for violating Iranian sanctions in one way or another, selling them materials, equipment, lab, stuff, that in other words, being Iranian spies, four of them of the five U.S. citizens, the dual citizens, the fifth is an Iranian citizen, and they will be sent back to Iran. But in addition, $6 billion of Iranian funds which had been frozen by sanctions and sitting in a South Korean bank have been already released as of this morning, have been released to a bank in Qatar, and the bank in Qatar will be releasing them to the Iranians once the prisoners are released. So Iran will get five prisoners, five of their own people, they'll get $6 billion. Granted, it's no money that's been frozen instead of that money going to victims of the Iranian regime, which is where it should go. It will go back to the regime to fund the variety of hostile programs. And in exchange, the United States will get five American citizens back. We know what incentives this creates, it creates an incentive to kidnap American citizens. You know, there are a lot of Americans of Iranian descent who go back to Iran. I wouldn't go back, but they do go back and any one of them could be a target for basically imprisonment in the future as to use as a bargaining chip to release more frozen funds, to release more arrested Iranians or whatever. You don't negotiate with evil. You don't compromise with evil. You don't cut deals with evil. If evil is a threat to you, it must be destroyed. Other than that, leave it alone. But you don't cut deals. If Iranian Americans want to go to Iran, they're taking on a risk. They're taking on a risk. It's their risk. And there's not much that can be done, but to undermine American interests by giving the Iranian regime the money to potentially build a nuke, to potentially build more weapon systems to send to the Russians or build more weapon systems to attack American troops in Syria and Iraq. Nothing good can come of this, but this is exactly the kind of pragmatic deal-making that all American administrations have been guilty of for decades now and the Biden administration is just as bad if not worse than any of them. Just horrific and sad and also suggests that we're probably getting closer to a deal between Iran and the U.S. over its nuclear program, which is again a sham. It would be ridiculous. And it would do nothing, ultimately, other than enrich the people in power in Iran. It will be nothing to actually reduce the risk of Iranian nuclear proliferation. Okay, finally, I just found this an interesting story. It turns out that over the last, I don't know, six, seven years, there's been a significant increase, a steady and significant increase of attacks against the electric grid infrastructure. Many of these attacks are just people going out there to a substation and just shooting it up that happened in North Carolina a while ago and electricity was out for several tens of thousands of people for four days. You know, many of these are committed by, as far as we know, by white supremacist groups and by neo-Nazis. If you go to their chats and their websites, there are instructions on how to bring down the grid, how to attack the infrastructure, what to shoot at if you're shooting at something in order to do damage and they are actively encouraging people to attack the grid. But there's been a significant market attack up. Now, there's very little, the data's not super reliable. Whatever data we have is, you know, is partial at best. But last year, there were 200 attacks. This year in the first quarter, I think, just in the first quarter, three months, there were 62. Just to give you a sense, in 2018, there were eight in the first quarter and maybe 60 in the whole year. So in 2023, we've had in the one quarter more attacks than we had in all of 2018. And almost all experts believe that this is significantly under-reported. Some of the most sophisticated attacks or attempted attacks are done cyber attacks. Some of them are from outside the United States, but most of them are internally in the US. It's just weird that this is, in a sense, allowed to happen, that the authorities don't understand this phenomenon better and they're not out there doing more to stop it. This is more of a sign of cultural deterioration when we have internal groups trying to inflict significant damage on the infrastructure. What's the goal? What's the purpose? I mean, one attack that was thwarted was they were trying to bring down the electric grid in Baltimore with the idea that Baltimore being a city dominated by a black population, you know, maybe they expect riots. Maybe the riots will lead to their, you know, their dreamed of race war. What is the purpose? Or is it just to terrorize, just to fear? Or is it just nihilism? Again, hard to tell, it could very well be that some of these attacks are from environmental groups, left-wing groups, but the ones where they've actually found the people, they've so far been from these far-right groups, and it's also true that the far-right groups are the ones that are recommending this to their members and giving guidance on how to do it. So I just found this bizarre and sad and another indication of the craziness that is inflicting our country. I don't know what, you know, and this is me being pessimistic, I guess, but I don't know what the path out of this is. I don't know. As I've said, often over the last few years, the far-right, the far-left, the crazy-right, the crazy-left are truly crazy. And how you bring the country together, given the gravitational pull of the far-left and the far-right, I just don't know. And it's a real challenge. It's a challenge our politicians are not up to. It's a challenge our politicians have not embraced, don't seem interested in embracing. There's nobody on the political map today who could pull it off. There's nobody on the political map today that could bring the country together. And I'm not talking about everybody thinking alike because one danger is we bring it together under the banner of authoritarianism, which is probably how it all ends. But how do we bring the country together around some shared vision of progress, a shared vision of individual rights, a shared vision of what it means to be an American, even with the disagreements one would expect in the world in which we live? It's hard to tell where we're heading, but as you see more and more of these data points, it does not look like we're heading in a positive direction. All right, and that's in spite of my optimism. People upset that I don't sit here day in, day out. Wiling against the Biden administration. That's what they want to hear. They want me to be just like Ben Shapiro and Biden economy, Biden's economy. Look how awful Biden's economy is. And look at this law and look at that law. They're fundamentally different. This is the most authoritarian regime in American history. It's just not true. It's incrementally worse as every administration is incrementally worse. And it's not, I believe, as bad as Trump. All right, Savanos says, hey, Iran, here's to catching life. Thank you. That's $50. Really, really appreciate that. Rand, also $50. Putin groveling before an animated jelly roll for weapons. I remain optimistic. I'm with you, Iran. Thank you, Rand. Yes, it's pretty pathetic. And it says a lot about the impotency of evil, how impotent they really are. And all those who support Russia and all those who back Putin. This shows how pathetic and ridiculous they really are. But of course, a lot of those people were chewing when Trump met with the jelly roll. So much of our politics and so much of political views today are just a consequence of unthinking. Consequence of which tribe you happen to belong to. Daniel, Daniel, this is his first super chat. Thank you, Daniel. And it's a $50 one. So thank you. Really, really appreciate the support. Daniel says, Canadian government slapped a 300% tariff on sofas produced in China a couple of years ago. That's a national security issue. Can't have those Chinese importing sofas into Canada. They might use them to, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Something bad for Canada. This was even applied on containers that were already en route to Canada. Cronies complained about supply dumping. Yes. So the sofas were too cheap. And Canadian sofa manufacturers or Canadian importers of sofas from Europe or something were economically challenged by the cheap sofas from Canada. So 300% tariff, 300% tariff, 4X of prices. It's just unbelievable, unbelievable. But that's what cronyism will get you. That's what this idea that protecting your local industries as a value is so horrific. I mean, there should just be a constitutional ban on tariffs. It's just tariffs are one of the, if not the worst of the ways in which governments try to manipulate. And one of the reasons they're so bad is because it's so easy to do and so open to cronyism, so open to manipulation. Doesn't surprise me that Canadian government is doing this. The American government does it all the time. And of course, the American government and the Canadian government collude which industries we protect in America, which industries we protect in Canada, where we have completely free trade. And there's a complete set of, in NAFTA, of what is Canadian, what is American, and what we can move around. That's why it's not a free trade agreement, even though it does reduce the barriers to trade. It's not a free trade agreement. Both countries would be so much richer if it was a free trade agreement. All right, Remo, thoughts on Austrian theory of business cycle? Wow, I mean, that's a big topic that would require a much lengthier discussion. But my short answer to that is I'm basically in agreement with it, with a caveat that it continues to need refinement. It continues to need a finance, an understanding of finance, which I don't think many of the Austrians felt that they needed. I think it's basically true, but needs constant refinement based on the new crazy ways in which money can be used, money can be created, what is even money, what constitutes money keeps changing. And how that money is filtered through the system changes as well. It becomes more and more sophisticated as we go on and new financial instruments, new financial ways. So I think that the basic insight is right and the Austrian theory of business cycle is true, but it's challenged by the complexity of the modern world to be able to have real predictive power. And there's a lot of work that I think is being done and needs to be done in order to constantly update it. Again, frame or correct details need updating. All right, we'll do some of these quickly, only $20 to reach our goal. Do you think the Republican base is too unintellectual to abolish, to absorb brand? Yes. Cultural change will come when the center left begins realizing she was right. I mean, the reality is that cultural change will happen when we have a dominant number of intellectuals and that people start listening to those intellectuals and start following those intellectuals because those intellectuals are making predictions that come true, they're insightful, they're entertaining, they're interesting, and some of the center left center right will be convinced, some people will just follow because they follow. But you need the intellectual firepower, you need both in terms of quality and also in terms of quantity to be producing and communicating on scale. Michael says, the more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilization bit by bit. Yeah, but that's because you're only studying the history of current intellectuals, but the reality is that it was intellectuals that built civilization bit by bit. So they were the original builders, you can't have Western civilization without the intellectuals of the Renaissance and the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, all built by intellectuals. So don't only credit them with the destruction, credit them with the building as well. Michael says, he who loves his neighbor as himself hates himself and thus his neighbor. Ultimately, yes, he who loves his neighbor as himself has no self-esteem. Roland says in support of your unbearable optimism. Thank you, Roland. Phil, inalienable constitution or arbitrary subjective and easily deleteable parliamentary acts, bills and why simplistically? What are we talking about? I don't know what we're talking about. I don't know what context this question was asked in, Phil, but what we want, I mean, if you're asking what is the ideal, the ideal isn't a needable constitution, but it has to be a good one. It has to be a good constitution. It has to be a constitution whose purpose is to define a system of government dedicated to the protection of individual rights. That is the framework. Other constitutions fall apart. Europe has a constitution. It's a disaster. It won't protect you from statism. It won't protect you from the subjectivist. It won't protect you from actual parliament because it's empty of content. So just calling something constitution doesn't make it so. What you need is a proper constitution and a proper constitution is one that embraces the notion that the world of government is the protection of individual rights and everything about the structure of the government, its procedures, and the specific ways in which it functions. And scope in which it functions is determined by this idea of the protection of rights. Tajikin, you should check out OSEBX, Norwegian stock market, looking really strong. I'm a technical trader myself, but the fundamentals are looking very good in Norway relative to most other countries. That's good to hear. I mean, Norway, in spite of what many Americans think, is not a socialist country, although it's a well-faced mixed economy. But it has smart people. It has, although again, I think I've mentioned in the past that it has dropping productivity, it has a lot of natural resources and it has a core group of entrepreneurs that are quite creative. So it is interesting. And it has a relatively right-of-center government that is not as quite as dedicated to destruction as the left is. And it has a high level of objectivist influence. There being a lot of Norwegian objectivists on a per capita basis, one of the highest in the world if not the highest, but very high. So there are a lot of objectivist-oriented people or influenced people in Norway, for one reason or another. Apollo Zeus, thank you. All right, let's see, Brie. The Putin fans are in love with decisiveness. Politicians who do something are always popular. This is why we should point out just how stupid incompetent politicians are. Yes, pragmatism has a strong bias towards action rather than ideas because ideas are meaningless, principles are meaningless. So it's all about action. James says, why do we negotiate with terrorists? What do you from an objectivist point of view when another country kidnaps your citizens who are not at war with? Well, it depends. I mean, first of all, maybe you should be at war with them if they're kidnapping your citizens. Maybe if you launch the rescue mission and acted decisively, no holds back, they wouldn't kidnap your citizens. But it is true also that there are some countries where you just have to tell your citizens not to go to because if they kidnap in that country, it's on them. But is somebody can kidnap a plane and fly it into that country? The US government's job then is to act decisively and unequivocally in defense of its own citizens, not only those who are hijacked, but those who will be hijacked in the future if they don't act decisively. So that is, you know, that's what should be done. Make them pay. Make them pay for the violence. And the only way to make them pay for the violence is to inflict greater violence on them. In a way that protects your own people and there are ways to do that. All right. All right, everybody. Thank you. I will see you tonight, I think, unless I feel worse and then I won't, but expect to show at 8 p.m. tonight. Maybe I'll do it a little earlier if I'm feeling up just waiting until 8 p.m. But tonight there will be a show, topic to be determined. I will let you know. Thanks to all the superchatters. We did make our target. So really, really appreciate that. And yeah, have a great rest of your day. And I'll see you tonight. There'll be another year on book show tomorrow. But tomorrow, the new show will be at 3 p.m. So it'll be relatively late. I have just a bunch of stuff in the morning. So 3 p.m. Bye.