 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to The Iran Brook Show on this March 28th. It's Thursday. Week is almost over. Next week, we go to Latin America. Should be a fun trip. I hope you are having a good week. Even before the show got started, John had already done $175 worth of super chats. And I mean, that's amazing, John. Thank you. And he finishes it off. He puts it at the end. He says, I forgot to mention that this money is specifically for you to spend at restaurants. So I have now spending money for restaurants in Latin America. So thank you, John. And I appreciate that final comment. It's great. And then Remo added to that. So we're almost at our target, and we haven't even started the show. So thank you, guys. You guys are fantastic and great. We do have a new sponsor for the show. I'll talk about him later before we get to the super chats. We'll talk about that, about the new sponsor. It's in the description below. So you can find him down there. And yeah, let's jump into the news. We've talked about this before, but there's a big story out about this equity in math in California. So you remember, there were certain school districts in California that for a few years now, particularly in San Francisco, were not teaching anybody algebra at eighth grade. That is, they had banned algebra from eighth grade from middle school. And algebra was only offered in high school, even for kids who were ready for algebra, even for kids who knew algebra, all in the name of, we don't want to treat the smart kids, the able kids, the kids who know math better than the kids who don't. So all in the name of, quote, pseudo equity. And then there was also this attitude in California that we shouldn't segregate classes by ability. So I mean, when I went to high school, you had three levels of math. You had very advanced. You had intermediate. And you had beginners. And you picked which one of those. And you were tested and graded based on the level of math. So people who want to go into sciences and engineering picked advanced math and so on. I did advanced math, but you had that option. You had that option. But in California, they have embraced this idea that, no, we need to have everybody in the same class and teach to the lowest common denominator, again, in the name of equity. So that the kids who are not that good at math don't feel bad because they're in a different class. They're in a less advanced class. We need to treat them all the same in the name of equity. And of course, study after study after study is shown that not only is this hood the able, hood those kids that are good at math, we all know that. That's obvious. And I don't think anybody who supports these kind of things cares, but also shows that it doesn't help the other kids. So it's lose, lose, lose, lose, lose proposition. Anyway, all of this is being encoded in a set of curriculum recommendations. They don't have to adopt it. It's a set of curriculum recommendations that's being adopted by the state of California called California Math Framework that basically has been distributed around the state. Some school districts are paying attention to it. Some others are not. But this idea of no algebra in middle school, classes with all students teaching lowest common denominator, all of that is part of this California Math Framework. Now it turns out that a lot of this, and I think we mentioned this before, a lot of this is based on the work of one Stanford academic, not even work based on the advocacy of one Stanford academic, a woman by the name of Joe Bola, who is a professor of mathematics education. Well, last week, I guess, there was published 100 page complaint by an anonymous source, so unauthored, but anonymous source, that claims that Joe Bola in her research, the research on which and in her citations, all of which this California Math Framework is based on, are fraudulent. That is, they've been misrepresented, her research has been misrepresented. Even her title, she often presents herself as a PhD in mathematics. No, she has a PhD in education of mathematics, not in mathematics itself. She's not a mathematician. But the 100 page document, which is well sourced and published, as I said, anonymously, is basically claims that these citations that she uses are misrepresented. And all of these misrepresentations have made it into the California Math Framework. So what you have here is that it is, I mean, this shouldn't be shocking to anybody, what you have is major math recommendations for the state of California, how to teach in the public schools and the government schools in California, based on flawed work, based on distorted, perverted work that has no basis in reality, and that basically misrepresent what is going on at the expense of students, particularly students of ability, but really at the expense of all students. Now, I say particularly students of ability, that is what should be particularly shocking. It used to be that we cherish students of ability. We invested in students of ability. We realized that students of ability, people were particularly smart and particularly able or particularly motivated, contributed an enormous amount to all of us, that we all have a selfish incentive to support them and to see them flourish and to see them succeed and innovate and grow and discover new knowledge these people change the world. Most of us, 99% of us, who are average within one standard deviation or whatever, are not going to dramatically change science, change the business world, change the world. It's a certain percentage, or 1% probably, of the population that has an overwhelming majority of all the impact, positive impact, through science, technology, and business and medicine and things like that on the world out there. And yet, we rely on geniuses. We stand on the shoulders of geniuses. And yet, the state of California, as I think many states are, trying their best to subvert that, to undermine that, to repress those people. I mean, this is part of kind of a whole philosophy, I guess, of stagnation, all in the name of it's not fair that some people are smart and some people are not. And of course, once egalitarianism is your standard, that is equality of outcome is your standard, then all there is is the destruction of ability and destruction of talents and destruction of genius. Again, for anybody who hasn't heard my spiel on the Khmer Rouge, check out my talks on inequality. I mean, the fact that we are different is a fact of existence. It's not fair or unfair, it just is. And the fact that they are among us, great geniuses, makes us all better. Many of California wants to end that, destroy that in the name of equality of outcome, in the name of the most nihilistic, anti-life, anti-human being, anti-man philosophy ever. The philosophy that should all be have the same outcome and destroy those who have ability who might be better than us in some capacity. So, yeah, super horrific. I'm glad that Joe Boller is being shown for what she is. She's both a liar and a, what are you calling it, an ideological egalitarian who will do anything to subvert ability and destroy ability. I don't know what drives her. I don't know what the motivation is. But I can tell you this, she's not subverting herself. So, for example, she sends her kids to a private school that costs $48,000 a year. And to help make money for that, she charges school districts, including some of the poorest school districts in California, $5,000 an hour for consulting. So, we're talking about somebody who has above and beyond just the evil ideology and the willingness to lie in order to get that evil ideology hearing. She also has the audacity, which is, I guess, consistent of making as much money as she can for herself at the same time. Anyway, another despicable human being. Another despicable human being. And I hope, I really, really, really hope that this kind of starts building a momentum against the whole new egalitarian approach to mathematics that I'm sure other states are looking at, too, particularly other states dominated by the left. But we need to crush this in California, and we need to crush it everywhere it appears. I mean, these people really hate. That's what drives them, right? So I hope the California mathematics framework, which has been approved and now circulating, I hope it is ignored. And I hope that ultimately nobody else adopts it and the California drops it and that we get more reason in mathematics. All right, we talked the other day about squatters, right? It's pretty stunning, this squatting phenomena. And I have to make a correction. I was wrong. It happens. It's rare. It's very unusual. But once in a while, it happens and you guys catch me on it, which is great. So I love it when you guys correct me. I said something about I don't know if this happens in Europe, and people said, whoa. This phenomena started in Europe. And it makes sense because intellectually, the whole idea of squatter rights comes from the negation of private property. And that, of course, is such a European idea, leftist European idea. So Spain has a massive squatter problem, has had it for a long time. There's a period in which Germany had a big squatting problem. Italy has a squatting problem. I think Portugal does too. I think primarily southern Italy, but generally Europe has. Any place where communist parties have had some kind of success in the past or radical leftists have had some kind of success in the past, those areas, those areas are places where they have very, very strong protections for squatters. So it's not a uniquely American phenomena. It's recently come to America. A bunch of states have these squatting laws that really protect squatters and make it very, very difficult for landlords to get rid of squatters. And it's just horrible. It's just in the land of property rights, this is such a negation of property rights, it is disgusting and horrible. Anyway, anyway, yeah, I mean, Clark has something to say about this. Let me just quickly take this question from Clark or Comet. If you had a squatter in your home and the police refused to remove them and going through a housing court would take years and cost a fortune, what would you do? I'd hire these people who harass squatters until they leave. So one of the ways, I saw this article I mentioned at the other day, there is this guy who will basically go squat in the squatter's house. He's got a license to carry. He'll take a gun. He'll wait until they leave the house. And he'll break in and he'll go in and he'll declare himself the new squatter. And he'll basically say, I'm sharing the house with you. But he'll harass them to such an extent that they just leave. And then you pay him and you hand the house back to you. Of course, you could do it yourself. You could just harass the squatters until they leave. Although some people who've tried to do that have been arrested. So it's best to hire a professional squatting harasser. Yeah, something like that. Hire somebody to go squat in the squatter's place. And then give him a lease, right? Give him a lease because that's what the squatters do. They fake. They download a fake lease. They sign it and they show it to the cops. Oh no, we're leasing. He's just trying to evict me even though I've got a lease. And then you have to go to court to try to prove that that's not a legit lease and you never signed it and it takes forever. So I would do stuff like that. You have to, in a sense, take the initiative and just go after it. Anyway, the state of Florida is coming to your rescue. State of Florida has just passed a law basically dramatically weakening their squatters rights laws. They had laws like other places. They had hearings recently in which people who've had their homes taken by squatters testified. And the Santas has just signed a law basically dealing with this and making it possible to get rid of the squatters quickly and effectively and protecting property rights in the process. I expect other states will follow suit. Some states don't have squatters laws. So some states are already better. And then it'll be interesting to see the pressure building up in some of the left-leaning states to get rid of squatters as homeowners threaten the legislature. We'll see how much noise this will make. But yes, California, Governor DeSantis, have indeed, as far as I know, the first to pass a law removing so-called squatter rights and streamlining the process of being able to get rid of the squatters. I think this is the right approach. The approach should be always to err on the side of the property owner. And if the property owner has done something wrong by evicting somebody, if they violated a contract by evicting somebody, then let that somebody sue in court for violation of contract. All right. Yeah, I mean, I've seen a bunch of these stories now about AI talent. So there's a massive push to try to hire people who understand AI, who know how to program AI, who know how to improve AI, work on improving AI, and so on. The paid packages for anybody who really has an expertise in AI in the millions, signing bonuses. Literally, Mark Zuckerberg is sending personalized letters, which he is signing. So letters from him to AI experts at his competitors trying to lure them away from other companies and come to work at Facebook. But all the big tech companies, every single one of them has an AI program going, and they're searching for talent. And then you've got probably dozens of startups that are in the space, also searching for talent. Indeed, just at the same time as in Silicon Valley, they have been, and I think it's even ongoing, layoffs at large tech companies for, I think, regular programming jobs. The demand for these AI jobs is spiking. And it's, you know, if you're in the field, it must be so exciting time to be around. People are out there to try to hire you. They're competing to hire you. The jobs, I think, are exciting. There's a lot of energy. There's a lot of new companies. There's a lot of startups, which is always exciting and thrilling and a lot of competition. A lot of them will fail, but that's part of the way Silicon Valley works. And yeah, some of the companies are trying to pull whole teams out, just hire a whole team and just move them from one company to another. I guess it's a super exciting time to be in the industry. Median salaries for AI, this is a median for engineers. In non-AI is about 180. That's the median. And for AI, it's closer to 300,000. Again, the superstars are getting seven figures. So yeah, and again, there's all kinds of AI. What we made familiar to all of us are the chat boxes, right? These natural language chat boxes. They're almost like search engines that are chat boxes that understand ordinary language. But that's just one piece of the AI puzzle. There's a massive application of AI to pharmaceuticals, application to AI to engineering, application of AI to call centers, this application of AI, to a million different, to every single realm of human endeavors that can be transferred to a computer, which is a lot, to an AI kind of algorithm. All of those companies applying AI to all these different things, they're all looking for talent. So if you're looking for something to go to school or something to specialize in, there's a huge future here, because this is not going to go away. Not going to go away. All right, let's see. All right, let's do a few things from out of the United States. OK, Russia. I mean, it's interesting what's going on in Russia right now. So you have this terrorist attack. The terrorist attack is committed by ISIS and they recruited for Tajikistanis. Tajikistanis from Tajikistan. Tajikistan has a border with Russia. It also has a border with Afghanistan. And Afghanistan is, of course, where ISIS is based. So it is a Muslim country. It is on the, what is it, East Asia, so out there on the east side. And it has a population of about 10 million. It's a pretty poor country. It's a pretty poor country. And it's, let me just see something. Let's see if we can do this. What's that? Here we go. So, you know, Tajikistan is, let's see, where its borders. It doesn't actually, well, it does border with a piece of Russia. It borders with Afghanistan. It borders with China. It almost borders with Pakistan. You know, it's got a very narrow piece of land that's Afghanistan between it and Pakistan. And it borders with Kyrgyzstan. Anyway, 10 million people, poor country. And there's been a lot of migration out of Tajikistan to Russia, so at least a million to a million and a half. So over 10% of the Tajikistani population actually lives in Russia. And they are temporary workers. And Russia is very dependent on immigrants from Central Asia. People like Tajikistanis, Kyrgyzstanis, and others to do a lot of the work, Turkmenistan and these other countries to do a lot of the works that is Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and you can go on with all the stands. But a lot of the work that Russia needs done is done by these foreign laborers. Just like many countries, actually, scrap what I said. Tajikistan does not have a border with Russia. It has a border with Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is this massive country in Central Asia, which basically is empty. And Kazakhstan has the big border with Russia, so they would have to go through Kazakhstan to Russia. Anyway, Russia is importing. And Russia wants them. It's not like here where there's a border crisis. In Russia, it's not a crisis. It's actually something they want. They want, right? And these are workers that are coming into Russia and working in a variety of businesses. And as a consequence, they are helping the Russian economy at a time where Russia needs them. Because not only has Russia sent a lot of its people to the front, but Russia's birth rates are very, very low. Russia is one of the fastest-growing, fastest-shrinking countries in the world. So Russia needs workers, just like Europe, just like the United States. But we don't pretend otherwise. They don't pretend otherwise. They just allow them in. Anyway, so Russia needs the Central Asian workers who are Muslim. Russia also has a vast Muslim population. It has certain regions in Russia, predominantly Muslim. This is a heritage of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire used to occupy Crimea. It used to occupy all of the Caucasus. It used to occupy a lot of the area around the Black Sea and around the Caspian Sea. And a lot of those people are all Muslim. And they now are part of Russia. So Russia has to be very, very careful to emphasize that it is what they call a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-ethnic country. And they are making a big deal out of this. Putin mentions this in many of his speeches. Putin emphasized right after a terrorist attack that this will not hurt and not damage the fact that Russia is a multi-ethnic that he barely mentioned. He didn't mention ISIS in his first speech. And he de-emphasized the fact that the terrorist was Muslims because he does not want to spark an ethnic warfare within Russia. On the other hand, Russian nationalists, bloggers, telegram bloggers, are emphasizing the fact that these are Muslims, are highlighting the risk of having a large Muslim population within Russia, are declaring Russia to be a white Christian national estate, and trying to ferment issues with the Muslims and the other kind of ethnicities all over Russia. So Russia has to tread this fine balance. And one of the reasons it's easy to blame Ukraine is that that really solves a lot of the problem. Because it's better to blame Ukraine where they're really at war with than to blame Tajikistan, whose workers they need. They're also afraid that they'll stop being racism against the Tajiki workers. They'll start that people start harassing them. And then they'll all leave and go home. And Russia needs them. It's also interesting to note that much many of the troops at the Ukrainian front are not, quote, ethnic Russians, but are Chechens, the Gadestans, all the stands, and many of them are Muslim. And Russia finds that the Russian government finds it easier to go into these places, offer them money, and try to recruit them sometimes by force than to do the same in Moscow or St. Petersburg, because the backlash would be greater. So again, Russia is a completely thoroughly corrupt, horrible country, one of the worst in the world. But it's trying to, and Putin has to have this balancing act of, well, Muslims attacked me, but I don't want to blame it on them because I have a large Muslim population inside Russia. I don't want my Russian nationalists going after them because they are the troops they use in Ukraine. And I don't want a civil war while I'm fighting in Ukraine. And I don't want to turn any of these additional Muslims that live in Russia, who are Russian citizens, into terrorists. So he's got a lot juggling a lot on his plate as he deals with the catastrophe that's, to a large extent, self-made because of the way in Ukraine. Otherwise, it would be a lot easier to deal with all this. All right, I thought that was interesting. And then finally, there's a lot of news out of Israel and a real crisis in the Israeli government. So here's the story. I'll do it quickly. We can spend a lot of time on this, but I'll do it quickly. In Israel, the ultra-orthodox, those people that wear black and wear these big hats and live in their own neighborhoods and don't associate with anybody, you've got them in L.A., you've got them in New York, you've got them in Toronto, you've got them in Europe, in London, and they constitute 14% of the population in Israel. Anyway, when the Israel was founded, there were very few of them. And they demanded in order to support the creation of the state of Israel, in order to support the Israeli government, they demanded that their young people be excluded from military service and that their young people, instead, go and study at their shiva. In other words, they go pray and study the Bible and the Talmud and religious stuff. Also, they demanded, and have demanded more and more and more over the years, a subsidy for these young men to go study because they're not working. And many of them don't work into their 40s, or well into their 30s at least. And they need to be subsidized. And so the state of Israel has subsidized these people. One of the great horrors and injustices in Israeli society. I mean, originally, this is a tiny little population. And Ben Goyon, in order to create a coalition, in order to create a new state, said, fine, OK, I'll do it. But they have gone to 14% of the population partially because they have, on average, 7.1 children, where secular Israelis have 2.2. The ultra-orthodox have 7.1. So they are growing fast. At the same time, a lot of ultra-orthodox who reach early adulthood leave the ultra-orthodox because it is a horrible, pathetic life. Anyway, so today, 14% of the Israeli population is not drafted. Now, look, I'm against the draft. I believe Israel should have a volunteer army. But if you're going to draft, then you should draft everybody, you shouldn't exclude people based on religion. Already Muslims are excluded, and Christians are excluded, Arabs are excluded. They can volunteer, but they don't have to serve. Jews have to serve. And ultra-orthodox should probably serve together with all the other Jews that have to serve, given equal treatment by the law. Anyway, post-October 7th, this is really hit a boiling point. I mean, most Israelis have now sent their fathers, their husbands, their children to war. They're in uniform, and they're in combat, and they're putting their life at risk in order to defend Israel. And yet, there is this population in Israel, 14%, that not only is now represented among those fighting, but also receives massive huge, particularly Netanyahu has given them massive huge subsidies to do nothing, not even to be productive workers. That is, Israel's facing a huge labor shortage because all the young men are in Gaza. So there's a huge labor shortage, and these young men are not working because they're studying at the Eshiva. Nothing's changed for them. Anyway, there's a huge outcry. And there is a demand to pass a law that requires them to serve. And indeed, the Supreme Court of Israel has stepped in and basically said, look, if they have to serve, unless you pass a law that clearly articulates that they don't, against the previous law, that allowed them not to serve expires, like on Monday. And the Supreme Court has asked the Israeli government to provide them with an explanation or pass a new law or do something, but the old law is expiring. And therefore, it could very well be that come Monday, if the Netanyahu government has not passed a new law, because it knows that if it passes a new law, it basically is history with regard to the voters. And parts of its coalition said they would resign. The ultra-orthodox, or members of the coalition right now, very, very active politically, have said they will leave the coalition if no law is passed. Netanyahu is between a rock and a hard place. And there is the stalemate. But in the meantime, the Supreme Court says, look, if this is not resolved by Monday, you have to go and start drafting, conscripting all these young religious men. So Israel is very tense right now in terms of whether this will happen or not. Netanyahu has asked for a 30-day extension to resolve the issue. Not clear if the Supreme Court would give it to him. But in any case, even if he does, it's not clear how he is going to resolve this, given the ultra-orthodox insisting on extending the law and everybody else saying, uh-uh, we don't accept it. But this has always been one of the many issues at the heart of Israeli society that had the potential of imploding that society, this real, real philosophical difference between the secular nature of the state of Israel, the liberal nature of the state of Israel, and a small minority, well, not so small, a minority, a 14% minority that is growing that could reach 30% by 2050, or 2060, that basically says, no, we don't want, we don't want people driving on Sabbath. We certainly don't want buses driving. We don't want our men going to army. And we want basically a religious Jewish state. We don't believe in a separation of state from religion. This is a conflict that's only going to get worse in Israel. It's only going to intensify. It is horrible. I, of course, stand with the secular separation of state from church. Some of the ultra-orthodox have threatened that if they are going to be required to serve in the military, they will leave Israel. And to that, I say good riddance. I hope they all leave Israel. I don't know where I want them to go, but I don't want them in Israel. So good riddance to them if they leave Israel. Are we streaming? Whoops. Do you guys see anything? Is there anything? When did it freeze? I'm not sure what's going on. That's not a problem. All right. Anybody there? Hello, hello. One, two, three. All right, I'm back. Can you guys see me? Hear me? Everything OK? I know what happened. It's happening again. All right. Yes, you can see me. Oh, all right. Cool. I apologize. I apologize for that. Let me just fix something. Basically, my web browser Chrome just completely froze. Everything, depending on Chrome, including the Super Chat Tracker and everything else, my YouTube feed and everything else, froze completely. So I apologize. Let me just, I need to fix something. And then we'll get going to, all right. So you heard of all of that. Everything I said about Israel, that is good. So yeah, so let's go to the Super Chat at this point. You guys saw it all. It was just bizarre. Everything here froze. Everything, Chrome froze. Everything else was fine. So I wonder if Chrome needs an update. Well, I've updated it. So I'm not sure what is going on. But hopefully it doesn't happen again. It's never happened to me before. So that Chrome just freezes like that. But I will look into it. Maybe it's time to move to a different browser. But I can't imagine Safari is better. All right. Let's go to the Super Chats. And before we do that, quickly, I want to remind you all that we basically have three sponsors, one new one. The new sponsor is Alex Epstein. So Energy Talking Points, which now features Alex AI. Alex AI is really cool. You ask Alex AI a question. And it answers as if it's Alex. So you ask it any question about energy. And it will answer based on it's being trained on Alex. It's not being trained on anything else. So you get Alex's responses to it. So the Energy Talking Points gives you concise, powerful, and well-referenced arguments on every imaginable energy environmental and climate issue. Alex AI, which is part of the premium service, is a cutting edge chat box based on Alex's energy knowledge and thinking methods. Alex AI users, which include many CEOs and members of Congress, use Alex AI to answer their energy questions, help them write speeches and social media posts, and respond to anti-fossil fuel propaganda. The teenagers might pick up in school. So this is good for parents as well. You can get all of that at aleksepstein.substack.com. aleksepstein.substack.com. Go do it now. Sign up, and if anybody asks you, you came to Alex from the Iran Book Show. Of course, the NRN Institute is still a sponsor, and the NRN Institute right now is encouraging you to sign up for the OCCON, for the conference in Anaheim in June, particularly if you're a student and you would like a scholarship. Now is the time to apply for a scholarship. The scholarship application end date is April 15. You can apply from anywhere in the world. You get basically, I think, most of your expenses covered. So you should all apply. So go to start, sorry, einrad.org slash start here. And of course, finally, ExpressVPN is a sponsor of the show. If you go sign up for ExpressVPN, you get three extra months free. So please consider doing that. ExpressVPN is probably the most useful and most used VPN out there. I use it once in a while when I have to go into my financial institutions while I'm traveling and do stuff like that where I want a little bit more security or if I want to catch Netflix while I'm traveling. And locally, there's no Netflix. I can use a VPN to get to the US Netflix and watch my shows. So ExpressVPN, it's great. Go ExpressVPN.com slash Iranbrook. And you can get the extra discount. All right, let's jump in. All right, so John asked this question before the show even started. It's a long question. I'll read it all. It's like $175. So thank you, John. It's amazing and we really, really appreciate it. So let's see. John says, when you say you don't believe in world building, do you mean a country not throwing their own resources into a country that we just destroyed? Is it because that sort of thing is for them to earn back themselves? Not coming into this ideological chain of, what is it? And then you've got, oh, it goes into, I'll say, you're on, I've heard you say you don't believe in world building after a war on a podcast where you were being interviewed. I was hoping you could expand on that and for those who might have misunderstood. So earn back themselves. And then it's much like you wouldn't give someone who's hit hard rock bottom gifts like a con of the things that would only succeed in robbing them of those achievements and their own self-esteem. Not committing to this idea, and then the way I currently understand it, you believe that sticking around to ensure there's a real change on the conceptual level is an absolute necessity. Not committing to this ideological change is disastrous, like Israel's multiple existential victories over Islam in the past. And then afterwards, they are unwillingness to re-educate and drive the self-destructive ideas out of the minds of the enemies, only leading to, yes, perpetual warfare as the old elites and ideas reassert themselves. I heard on Inland, UK, that the US stayed heavily involved in Japan's rebuilding for the culture for seven years before leaving them to their own. Thank you so much. All right, so that is that. That is that. And John answered by saying, I forgot to mention this money is specifically for you to spend at restaurants. Thank you, John. All right, so let's dive into this. So there are a few reasons why I don't believe the victorious country should spend a huge amount of money like we did in the Marshall Plan and like we did to some extent in Japan, the equivalent of a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country. I think one of the reasons is what you said. They just don't deserve it. They initiated a war. They have suffered the consequence of it. Now they need to create a mentality of rebuilding, a system of rebuilding. What the occupying power should basically enforce is contract law and property rights and free markets and let the locals determine their own values and what they want to build first and how they want to build it. And they should work up to that. Now there's no harm in or there's a lot of good in companies maybe coming into that area, hiring people, building factories, doing things from the victorious side. But there shouldn't be any just charity by governments because that's not the role of government. So charity organizations could come in in terms of private charity could come in. But again, nothing on the scale of the Marshall Plan which basically brought central planning to Europe. It was centrally planned. How would we be allocated? Where would we put? How would we be spent? What factories would be built? And it indeed denied markets for a long time. The American military occupying Germany had price controls. And it took the Germans to a bell against the Americans to eliminate the price controls and let their economy grow and let their economy gain the flexibility it needs. So what you need is freedom, right? What you need is to get out of the way. You need to impose peace. You need to make sure there's no violence and let the market flourish. I mean, if we believe that markets do better than central planning, then this is a good opportunity for that. The second reason not to do it is, of course, the fact that it's not the job of my government, the American government, let's say, to take my tax money and use it to build Germany. That's absurd. Let Germans build Germany or let the Germans ask me as an individual to help them build Germany and I might contribute to a fund. But tax money and government's government money that is taken from taxes should only be used for the protection of individual rights in the country that is being served by this particular government. It's not their job to build up and to sacrifice. Look, America, let's say after World War II, a lot of Americans died. A lot of Americans were injured. A lot of families destroyed. A lot of people placed in a poverty because of the war. And then billions and billions of dollars go from the United States to Europe in order to beef them up. I mean, how is that rational or logical? So what should have been done is massive tax cuts, deregulation in the United States until the Germans will abide by the rule of law and will protect property rights and contracts and go build yourself a country. And that should have been done in Japan as well. So Japan, we did stay for seven years. I can't remember how many years we stayed in Germany, but also for, I think, something similar to seven years into the 1950s. And in Japan, as I mentioned the other day, we actually, MacArthur, wrote the Constitution for the Japanese. He wrote it with his assistant in their office and crammed it down the Japanese throats, forced them to accept it. And that's the Constitution they still have to this day. And that's what needs to be done. The Victor, hopefully, are the good guys and they should determine how things are managed moving into the future. And assuming that the Victor are on the side of freedom, freedom is what should win. Yeah, economy wasn't booming. I mean, this is an economic fallacy that during World War II, the economy in the United States was booming. It was not. GDP was up, but the economy wasn't booming. The economy was struggling, because if you measure the economy in terms of the quality of life and the standard of living of the population, it was struggling. It was struggling. The problem is, the problem with the perception that the economy was booming was, yes, GDP was up, because GDP measures government spending. So when government spends money on tanks and on bombs and on things that explode and are sending troops overseas where 300,000 die, that's a big number, right? Then that is considered good for GDP, but it's bad for the economy. And it did not get better vis-a-vis the Great Depression. It got worse vis-a-vis the Great Depression. It just was paid for with massive quantities of debt and massive quantities of printing money and a dramatic reduction in the quality of life. The U.S. only recovered from the Great Depression. It only actually recovered from the Great Depression in terms of real standard of living while being improvements, which are what matter if you will, disposable income, which was what matters in an economy after World War II, starting in 1945, when all the regulations and controls that were imposed during the war were lifted and when all the troops came home, went back to work, went back to work not building tanks but building things that people use, things that are productive. So this is part of the problem of using GDP. We don't have a great alternative measure, but because GDP will always show an increase during wartime even though that makes no sense, makes no sense because the government is spending more and GDP captures government spending as a big portion of what it is. All right, let's run through these rest of the questions. Remo, thoughts on the CEO also having the function of chairman of the board? I think in most companies it's fine. It is the CEO is the one who knows most about what's going on in the company. Being chairman allows them to navigate the board and to be able to make sure that the board is dealing with the things most important. But there are situations, particularly when a CEO is particularly powerful or situations where maybe there is some worry about the CEO manipulating the board on his own behalf where it makes sense to separate the CEO from the chairman. And they have been, if I remember right, I haven't looked at the research in a long time but they used to be research that showed, right? When you separate the CEO from the chairman it benefits shareholders. That is it good for shareholders. Companies do better when the two are separated. So, I would generally recommend, suggest separating the CEO job from the chairman so that you have a chairman who is independent and who can actually help the board and guide the board to basically oversee the CEO which is a big job of the board of directors is to oversee the actions of the CEO, is to make sure the CEO is acting on behalf of the shareholders, is maximizing the shareholder wealth, is doing his job well. Sign for separating the two out for governance reasons. Remo, thoughts on stock parking. Look, I mean stock parking. Okay, so what is stock parking first? Stock parking is one step back. If you buy stock in a company that's publicly traded and you buy 5% of that stock, according to regulations today, SEC regulations, you have to announce to the world that you have 5% of the stock of the company. If you own 10% of the company, you not only have to announce the world that you have 10% of the company but you have to announce to the world what your intentions are, that is 10% or more. That is why you're accumulating so much of stock in the company. Are you getting ready for a takeover? Are you just an investment? Why are you accumulating the stock? Some people, if they wanna take over a company, would rather the market and the company not know about it until they've accumulated a lot of stock, a lot more than 10%. So they wanna get around the regulatory filing requirement. So what they do is they buy some stock and then they enter into an agreement with the third party and say, look, I will sell you this stock to get it off my books but here's an agreement that I will buy it back in a few weeks when I wanna make the announcement. So they get it off their books, they can buy more and get that off the books and ultimately one day they can buy it all up and they have 30% and they make an announcement then. Now this is of course illegal because it's getting around the filing requirement. So the filing requirement basically is if you own more than 10% you have to file and they're saying, well, I don't own 10% but really they do because they have these agreements to buy back these stocks. Now is this rational? Well, I mean, in a free market there wouldn't be no filing requirements. So it would be moot, there would be no issue. Nobody would use stock parking because nobody would care. Now, exchanges where you list might have different filing requirements and might even have stock parking regulations but then it would be voluntary if you didn't like the regulations of this exchange, you would go to another exchange, there would be competition in terms of the private regulation of the market. But today because you have to file, parking is illegal. Now the whole thing is wrong in moral that the government is telling us how much stock we can own, when we need to file, why we need to tell people what our intentions are. It's none of anybody's business what my intentions are. And if I wanna buy up 51% of a company and show up in the CEO's boardroom and tell him, guess what, you're fired because I own 51% of the company, why is that wrong? That used to be the case but for 1968 when in 1968 we had a security regulations that made all these filing requirements necessary, right? The SCC was created in 34 I think and 68 is when all these filing requirements were made necessary. So yeah, I mean it's complete BS, it makes the market less efficient, it makes takeovers more difficult, it makes everything more expensive and it should be abolished but it should be abolished together with everything else or much else that the SCC does. But 68 is, it's a big securities law, I can't remember the name of it, but it is part of it. And by the way, who lobbied for it? Who do you think lobbied for it? Managers of big companies, publicly traded companies who didn't want strangers buying 51% of their companies and firing them. So this is a policy that was lobbied for by business, that was created for and by business, right? So that's who wanted it. Kim says, more spending money for restaurants in Latin America. Wow, thank you, I'm gonna go to some nice restaurants in Latin America. Michael Sanders, haters, they don't like seeing people being better than them. Ultimately, it's a personality trait that holds them down a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, egalitarianists, I think deep down, are fundamentally haters and it's the most nihilistic philosophy of all philosophies. Hunter Hunter, have you ever read this short story? Harrison Bergstrom, I think some California legislatures stand to read it. Yes, by, it starts with a V, I can't remember the name of the author. I can't pronounce the name of the author, I can kind of see it, but yes, very good story about the evils of egalitarianism. Exactly that, weighing people down who have any, von Gut, von Gut. I used to read all these books when I was a teenager in my 20s, and in my 20s. Von Gut, von Gut. Kurt Von Gut, I think that's right. All right, Liam, $50, thank you, Liam, we really, really appreciate it. Let's see, all right. TK History has a video on YouTube titled from Plato to Hitler, which is phenomenal. He often quotes from Peacock's book, The Cause of Hitler's Germany. He stated, he started reading Rand because of that book. The video has over 150,000 views. Yeah, I mean, it's great. I've seen some TK history. He did one on, can history be objective where he cites on Rand? And he talks about the objective, it's the epistemology. And, you know, he still needs some grounding, but he's getting it. And if anybody knows how to, you know, get in contact with him, I would have him on the show. So, tell him, I'd love to interview him. He might be, I'd love to interview him on the show about his journey to discovering on Rand and what it's done and how it's shaped the way he thinks about, what do you call it? About history. So, if anybody has any, knows how I can contact him, let me know and I will try to get him on the show. Hop a Campbell, I mean, this is the way in which, by the way, you change the world, right? You influence influences, you influence influences and you influence influences by, yeah, by doing exactly what we are doing, by keeping this, keeping it, you know, talking and writing and discussing these ideas and hoping they come across them. All right, Hop a Campbell, do you think the speakable people like Norma Fickerstien or Paul Krugman actually believe their own BS or have they identified a large enough market of useful idiots they can get sizable speaking fees from? Well, I think it's a combination of both. I think they have convinced themselves that they believe in their own BS. But deep down, I think they know it's BS. And yes, a big part of it, a big part of it is the fact that they create these audiences, they become celebrities, they make money, but also they get elevated in their little clique. They are the authorities, they love the power that that gives them and they, you know, they evade the knowledge that they are full of BS and they convinced themselves that no, no, no, this is the way things, the same with anti-vaxxers is the same with a lot of these people who are full of BS but have made a lot of money and a lot of prestige among certain people by taking these ridiculous positions. Okay, Roland, anyone enjoy some Colombian food? I won't be in Colombia. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. So I'm trying to schedule restaurants right now. Ryan reminds everybody, like the show. Don't forget to like the show, press that like button. And before you leave, it helps with the algorithms. It's one of the ways in which you can help elevate the show and get subscriptions up and all the good stuff. Subscriptions are going up, not as fast as I'd like but they're going up. And you can help by liking the show and getting it more visibility. Really, really appreciate that value for value. And this doesn't cost you anything. Just a click of a button. All right, I'm Mirkat, what in the legislators' houses? Yes, also Gaza must be destroyed. Yes, a squatter should squat in the legislatures' houses in the judges' houses and the people who, well, the people who passed a law that give them these so-called rights. It's ridiculous. James, everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. I think that's right. I think understanding why you're irritated by other people helps you know more about yourself. James, does time heal all wounds even if scars last forever? No, I don't think time necessarily heals all wounds. It heals some wounds, doesn't heal all wounds. Closure, really understanding what happened. Coming to grips with it, I think, is what heals the wounds. Harper Campbell says, I hope Biden wins. I don't hope Biden wins, but I hope Trump loses. Mindspan wellness, brave browser is superior to Chrome. They are both built off of a Chronium but brave blocks, trackers and ads, users less RAM, has HTTPs everywhere, activated quicker loading times, and offers Tor integration. I'll look into that. Thank you, Mindspan wellness. I'll look into that. Finally, Spymann 3000. I'm increasingly concerned about the anti-Semitism I see online but it's hard to get real frame of reference for how widespread it actually is. What's your sense of things in that department? Oh, I think it's really bad. I mean, and it's not, I mean, it's bad online but it's really bad out there in the culture. It's bad on the left and it's bad on the right and it's growing. It's not shrinking, it's growing. You can see it with Candace Owen and the people who kind of follow her and the huge following she has. You're seeing with the popularity of somebody like Nick Fuentes who is an explicit anti-Semite and a disgusting, horrible human being. Somebody you actually got to visit Trump. How about that and have dinner with him? You'd think that that would have hurt Trump but it didn't. And you see it in the left. You see it everywhere in the left at universities all over the place. So I absolutely think that anti-Semitism is a very, very troubling phenomena. And I'm looking, Andrew, for your question. I'm not sure how I missed it. Somehow it didn't get captured here. So yes, very, very disturbing and getting worse, not better and much bigger than I think most of us realized, if you will. I, Andrew, I found the question. Andrew says, I respect Jonathan Haidt but his thinking on smartphones seems shallow. He's for parents banning them until high school smartphones expose deep issues like post-self-esteem that demonize tech won't solve thoughts. I basically agree with you. I think it's probably more complex than that. There are all kinds of issues around smartphones not just the issue of teen exposure to social media and issues related to self-esteem. I think it's more than that. But I basically agree with you. So I think there are other issues, the kind of, not addictive, but the habit-forming nature of relying on a phone, the lack of play out in the world, the lack of interaction with other people that smartphones encourage. I mean, I remember when people used to complain about televisions and of course, televisions captured a small part of your day smartphones can capture the whole of your day. I think though also banning them is wrong, I think there has to be some balance and parents just have to develop the spine to limit kids' use of smartphones and of social media and allocate time for the things that parents prioritize higher than that, for example, play or human interaction. I do not think the government should intervene. I think it's horrible, I should say this, they're horrible that in Florida, DeSantis has not banned teens from having social media accounts or anybody under 14 I think having a social media account. I think that's horrible. I think it's stupid. I think it's wrong. I mean, it's more of a paternalistic stage just from the right instead of from the left, but it could have been the left, the left is anti-social media too. And it's despicable. So I think parents need to develop a spine and I think any attempts from above to do this and I think again, like every cell phones are a tool, it can be used for good, it can be used for bad and parents need to manage that tool. They need to take control over that tool and not let their kids rule them, which I think many kids rule their parents. All right, guys, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the support. We blew away the target today. There will be a show tonight, 8 p.m. East Coast time, topic to be determined. Sorry about the glitch in the middle, but I think we survived it. And let's see what else. Don't forget to go to Alex Epstein's link, which I gave you, right, the alexepstein.substack.com. Go for the premium subscription and get that Alex Epstein AI chat. I mean, that is really cool. And yeah, sign up for his talking points and don't forget if you are a student to apply for a scholarship for OConn. Even if you're not a student, if you just don't have the money to go to OConn, apply for a scholarship. If you're a serious student of objectivism, not student as at a university, apply for a scholarship. All right, everybody, I will see you tonight. And tomorrow, have a great rest of your day. Bye, everybody.