 Fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rise. The Iran Book Show. All right, everyone, welcome to the Iran Book Show on this Sunday night, late here in London. Let's promise to do a show from London, so here we are. All right, I hope everybody's doing fantastic. And so I feel a little delay there. Suddenly realized that, oh, I need to put it on the video. There's the video. Hey, everybody. All right, I am in London. It is, what is it, it's 10 o'clock at night here. And I wanted to make sure we got one show in tonight. I'll be flying home tomorrow, tomorrow morning. At least heading there, put tomorrow morning, flying home, flying home, get home tomorrow night. Let's see, when did we have a show last time? I had thought I would do a show on Friday. I'll tell you in a minute why I didn't do a show on Friday. I thought I'd do a show on Saturday. I was just exhausted yesterday, so I couldn't pull that one off. But Friday, Friday was, Friday was in Sweden, in Uppsala, Sweden. Only reason I know anything about Uppsala is because I've watched the series Vikings. And in the series Vikings, Uppsala is presented as, you know, the religious center of Pagan, Pagan Viking Society, so I knew a little bit of Uppsala. It looks, real Uppsala looks nothing like Uppsala in the Viking TV series. Like in Uppsala, in the Viking TV series, there are mountains and there are waterfalls. And Uppsala, in real life, is just flat, flat. The reason it was such a center was because it was easy to reach and because it was very fertile agricultural land. It was cold, it is after all Sweden. It wasn't cold for Sweden, you know, for Sweden. It was quite temperate. It was, I don't know, it was probably 30 degrees, maybe dropped down to 28. By the time I was done in the middle of the night, but it was, it was cold. For me it was cold. But this whole trip has been cold. I mean, London right now is 39 degrees. I mean, that's not typical of London in March. London is usually in the high 40s, low 50s by this time of year. But the whole trip has been 30s and 40s. I don't think I've seen 50. So yeah, I'm being acclimated to real winters. So yeah, I wanted to tell you about Uppsala because it was quite an experience. So student group in Uppsala is Students for Liberty together with a name of a student group that I can't actually pronounce. Something in obviously in Swedish. And it was, it was quite an event. So, you know, I went, you go into this modern regular kind of building and you go into the basement and I guess the student organization owns or rents or whatever this basement area where they hold events. And the basement area was set up for a talks. It had seating set up for a regular talk. But the first thing I noticed was on the walls, there were two posters, one of Atlas, I mean, there were a number of posters, but of the number of posters, the ones that stood out to me was one poster of Atlas Shrugged, the book cover in Swedish of Atlas Shrugged and the other poster of another Ayn Rand novel because it had Ayn Rand on it, it looked like a book cover, it didn't have the name of the book on it. So, first these people have in the history as an organization being exposed to Ayn Rand and know something about Ayn Rand. Anyway, I gave a talk, it was great, it was good questions. Oh, the other thing, the other thing important is that I show up at the event and one of the things I noticed was that everybody was well dressed. Most of the students wore suits and ties, the women all wore nice dresses. I mean, this was like they were going to an event and so even though, as you know, I don't pay too much attention to what I wear, it was nice to be at an event for me, at an event, there was me speaking where everybody was nicely dressed. Anyway, they were all there and so we did, we did the, I did the talk, good questions. I mean, it was just a good group, generally. And smart kids, most of the students, few graduates, few had graduated, some people came in from Stockholm but I think those were mostly students. Anyway, once the event, once the talk and the Q and A were done and I did stream the talk, so you can't see the talk. It was a talk on the morality of capitalism and I did a live stream it, so you did see it and you can't see it and the questions, as I said, were good and you can see those in the video and by the way, that's cool that I now have a set up, with my computer, my camera and these amazing mics that now I can basically, if the group itself is not organized, a live stream and event or if they don't have the equipment or they don't have good equipment, I can basically pretty easy within five, 10 minutes set up a whole live stream gig, I just need a wifi connection and power and I can set it up, so that's a nice addition to what we're doing now and what I can do, so I'm excited about that. By the way, let me know if you think the volume is too high or if it's peaking or if it's shrill at the top, so just so I know if there are any issues with the volume, so let me know that, because I'm still testing out all this equipment and everything. Anyway, so at the end of the event, they take a break and then you go back into this basement and they set up the room with two long tables and it's set up for dinner. And the students themselves, a subset of the students actually do the cooking. And so while I was speaking, they had already started the cooking and so some of the students had missed the talk and were actually in the back in the kitchen making food and the two long tables set up for dinner and a very appealing, nice-looking appetizer was on the table and everybody sits down, but then what was interesting is you sit down to eat and before you eat, oh, and there's, of course, alcohol. There's tons of alcohol everywhere. There's beer and there's this Swedish drink that has this licorice taste that maybe tastes a little bit like Arak, but it's a Swedish drink. I don't know, there were other alcoholic beverages there. Oh, and then of course in the break between the lecture and the setting up for dinner, everybody except the people setting up for dinner goes to a pub and they drink at the pub and then you come down to dinner. Anyway, before you actually eat, they start singing. They have a little songbook, some prepared specifically for the dinner and some prepared some, I think, more generalized, thicker book that they have for all their events and it turns out that a part of the tradition of social events among student organizations in Sweden is there is a lot of singing, singing and drinking. I guess like Vikings, Jennifer says, yeah, I guess so. I mean, between at the end of every song, you raise a glass and you toast the guy on the right and you toast the person on the left and you toast the person in front of you and you drink and then you put it down and then you sing again and then you raise the, and it's like constant drinking and singing and drinking and singing and drinking and singing. And then in between the drinking and singing, once in a while you eat a little bit and then there's speeches. Students get up and give like a five minute speech and then you toast, at the end of the speech there's a toast and you drink again and it's like, God, they drink and they drink. And you know, at some point, like I started out because I figured this was gonna be a long night, I started out just sipping, right? Sipping a little bit of alcohol as I went along but it became obvious that even with sipping I was gonna consume a large amount of alcohol much more than I'm used to. So I started just smelling, bringing it to my lips, smelling the alcohol and putting it down, toasting everybody in and not drinking because I can't drink. And this was beyond my limit for drinking. But basically the whole night they were singing so we had an appetizer, then we had a main course. By the time we finished the main course and singing again and more speeches and all of that and they say, okay, now we're gonna take a break while they clear the main course and they put out the dessert, it was midnight. So basically an evening that it started out at, when did I start my talk at six? I think people started showing up at five and there was socialization, I set up their livestream and everything, I think it was six, maybe 6.30. I started to talk at 6.30 and at like quarter to midnight I said, look guys, this is amazing. This is a lot of fun and it was a lot of fun. I mean, they were, and they weren't singing out of a sense of duty, they were having fun. And of course I think the alcohol helps. And so I said, I really do need to go. So basically just before midnight I left and went to my hotel and went to sleep. I had a morning flight out to London. So that was a unique experience that I've never had that. No student group that I've ever experienced sang and drunk quite as much as they did. And according to them, this continues until about one or two a.m. at which point they start dancing. And that continues at five a.m. And they apologized in advance that they would probably, they'd picked me up at the airport, which is another nice touch, nice touch to pick the speaker up at the airport instead of forcing him to like take a train and a call or whatever. Anyway, they picked me up at the airport and they wouldn't be able to take me back to the airport because they probably won't have woken up or probably won't have recovered from the night before. So I guess this is the kind of stuff that makes Sweden tick. And this is why they're happy people because they sing and drink. Anyway, a unique experience, fun and one of the perks of doing I guess what I do is to experience these cultural phenomena, cultural, I don't know what you call it. All right, so anyway, that's where I was. Yesterday I gave a talk here in London and today we did a little kind of reading group. We had a bunch of students, about 15, 20 people. And we talked about the virtue of selfishness, about Ayn Rand's morality. A lot of them were very new to Ayn Rand. So it was a really good group and it was really an interesting discussion. Anyway, so that's London. So I figured I'd be into eight countries. One of them twice, which is the UK. Eight countries over, what is it, 14 days, I've done 18 events. 18 events in 14 days over eight countries. I think I earned my keep. All right, I earned my keep this trip. All right, so I have a few topics we're gonna talk about. Three, really, we'll do them quickly and then I'll take your super chat questions. I have set an ambitious goal for super chat today because hey, we haven't done many shows and we gotta get March going. We've only done one other show in March. Although I have done, I produced a lot of content on the live streams for you guys in both February and March and there'll be a lot more of the talks I gave that have been recorded. Particularly, I'm looking forward to the one I did in Zurich on the war that I think is particularly good. So I'm hoping that I'll arrive soon and I'll be able to post it. But we do have a lot of content being produced but on the live streams, don't really generate any revenue. So although some of you did do some super chats so I appreciate that. Stickers, thank you for that. So we need to make up for that so I'm hoping you guys, since you haven't been asked recently, you guys are flush. All right, let's talk about demographics. Whoops, demographics, there we go. What is that? How did I get it? There we go, demographics and destiny. So a couple of articles came up just like the last couple of days. One in the Economist, and I'm not sure actually where the second one was. That's the Economist, this was in, I think, Bloomberg or something. No, this is the Washington Post. So one in the Economist and one in the Washington Post. Both talking about demographics and the demographic crisis that both China and Russia are facing. We've talked about this a little bit, particularly we've talked about the fact that China, for the first time since 1961, for the first time since the massive tens of millions of people dying of starvation during the Great Leap Forward, actually should be called the Great Leap Backward, but the Great Leap Forward under Mao Zedong, for the first time China's population shrunk this year. And what's particularly interesting about the fact that it shrunk is that the Chinese admitted that it shrunk. That is, there's some speculation that says that the population has started to shrink years ago and they're only admitting it now, but anyway, they're admitting it. China's national Bureau of Statistics announced a decline of 850,000 people to a new total of 1.4118 billion. It's a first decline in 60 years, right, since 1961. The birth rate reached its lowest level on record, 6.77 per thousand people down from 7.52 in 2021. So that's a big decrease just in one year. So this is a big deal because not only does this mean China population now shrinking and indeed it is speculated that later this year, India will surpass China as the most populous country in the world for the first time probably in many centuries. I think for many centuries, China was the most populous nation on the planet. But this means that China has a shrinking workforce. It has a rapidly aging population. So you have fewer people paying in to support an older population since China does not really have a pension system or a social security system. And since many people are still relatively poor in China, it does mean that a lot of the income that young people are gonna be producing is gonna have to go to helping their parents and grandparents live. And this is gonna really be a drag on, it means saving rates are gonna go down, consumption rate's gonna go up. If you know something about economics, you know that what ultimately drives an economy is saving rates in a sense of it's fundamentally what drives an economy long term. Economic growth is investment. So there'll be less investment in China, more consumption particularly focused on the aging population. Another interesting aspect of this is that it wasn't that many people didn't predict this. That is everybody expected a population of China to start decreasing, but a lot of the expectations were that it would decrease in the 2030s in about 10 years. And this has happened 10 years earlier than many had expected. Again, this is gonna cripple the ability of China to have kind of the economic dynamism. It thinks that it needs in order to compete with the United States in order to build up a military, in order to become a dominant power in the world. It is real issue. And then of course there's a real potential for a real crisis as people age. And if China does not kind of have, if the Chinese people do not have the resources to support their parents and grandparents. There's a risk economically that China enters a period of stagnation, similar to what Japan entered in the 1990s. Remember Japan has been shrinking for a while now. And part of its economic struggles is no immigration, shrinking population, a significantly aging population. Japan I think is now the oldest society in the world where 29% of the population is over 65. That is, and China is heading in that direction and that could result. It won't be the only thing that results in stagnation but if you combine it with rising authoritarianism in China, you combine it with a shrinking of the space in which private enterprises allowed to function the limiting of the freedoms of Chinese in the economic realm. You can see that the likelihood of stagnation in China is significant. Again, I've said this for a long time now. I really don't think China is a significant threat long-term to the United States. It might be a short-term threat but long-term it's gonna have big problems domestically. Now of course demography is not destiny. Demography can change pretty quickly. Birth rates can change pretty quickly. In, if you think about demography, when in the 1970s when China's population was growing significantly and it looked like it was gonna have massive population, the state stopped that, right? The destiny of China was not to grow forever and to have massive, this massive population. The one child policy basically stopped it. So there are things that can be done and those things don't have to be coercive. Israel for a while, the Jews in Israel for a while had very low birth rates and there was a real risk that the Arab population would exceed the population of the Jews in Israel within, I don't know, by 2050. And the birth rates are accelerated in Israel and they've gone up, not just among religious Jews but also among secular Jews. I think a lot of it has to do with one's attitude. I've said this before, I think on the show, that I believe that having children is an act of optimism. It's an act of belief in the future. It's an act of one's belief and one's ability to support a family, to provide for a family, to make a living. And I think that as, you know, if China was freer, if, you know, the Chinese had significant values and believed in the future and didn't have kind of European-style cynicism, then birth rates would go up and I think that's what's happened in Israel. I think Israel, as it became richer, as it became stronger, as it became more confident in its own survival long-term, it's also, you know, that confidence and that optimism has resulted in having more children. Just one other aspect of this is, and we'll see another country where it's even worse, because of the one-child policy and because Chinese families preferred to have boys than girls, there was quite a bit of female fetuses. You know, aborted, there are, there's about 104.69 men to every 100 women in China, which of course also creates challenges instead of challenges to having kids, you know, they're just too many men, not enough women. And again, there are real restrictions on immigration, just like in Japan, kind of bringing in, if you will, women from other parts of China. Other parts of Asia or other parts of the world, why just Asia? Let me just say a few other things. Chinese trying to incentivize people having children, they're giving money to families that have a third child, they're extending paternity leave, they're trying to learn for some European countries like Hungary and Poland that have been subsidizing childbirth and have had some minimal success in increasing the number of babies in the economy. Anyway, we are seeing, I think, the beginnings of real challenges in China. The unemployment among young people is very high, it's 16.7% for a 16 to 24 year old. Economic innovation, growth in the tech sector has been reduced significantly because of the crackdown by the government. And the number of young people is shrinking. And remember, who innovates? Who grows an economy? Who really is the productive energy of the future? It's young people. And when you have fewer young people, you're gonna have less innovation. Michael just noticed that I've been in this hotel before. Yes, many times. I've done quite a few YouTube shows from this hotel over many, many years. This is one of my favorite hotels. Hotel I stay at always in London, where everybody knows my name. All right, one other country is also facing real demographic collapse and real demographic challenges actually in the short run is in worse shape than China. And that country, of course, maybe not of course, but that country is Russia. I mean, Russia is really facing a kind of a nightmare scenario in many respects they deserve it. But the reality is that a China's population is shrinking dramatically. Over the last three years, the country's lost around two million people, then it would ordinarily have lost because of war, because of COVID, and because of people leaving and people are leaving to a large extent because of the war. Life expectancy of Russian males, aged 15 fell by almost five years to the same level as in Haiti. Life expectancy of Russian males is the same level as in Haiti, but not Russian males in Haiti, Haiti men in Haiti, right? The number of Russians born in April, 2022 was no higher than it was in 1942, 43. And right now, because so many young men have died on the battlefield or wounded on the battlefield, and because so many young men have escaped Russia and left Russia, gone to play like Georgia and Kazakhstan and any country that will take them. Women outnumber men in Russia by 10 million, which is a massive number. By some estimates, between 175 and 200,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded over the past year. Russia estimates are lower, but of course they're not gonna admit it. But 500,000 to one million young men have, and these are primarily educated men, these are primarily relatively high owners, have left Russia and found employment and found homes outside of Russia. So what you've got is a war that is costing a huge amount of money for the Russian economy. You've got an aging population, you've got an ailing population, and you've got a shrinking population. Not a good combination, not a good combination. Russia started this decline a long time ago, about 30 years ago, a Russian population peaked in, and this is from an economist article on March 5th published today. Russian population peaked in 1984 at 149 million. It went down, it's been zigzagging downward since, it was 145 million in 2021, and the total, within a couple of, a few decades it could be 120 million. Given the patterns we are seeing and what is going on, what is going on now, I don't know what happening, right. The number of births in 22 is the lowest since the 18th century, 18th century. And you look at this, Russia is kind of fading. And maybe that's part of why Putin wanted a war, maybe he wanted to bring in some Russian speakers from Ukraine, maybe it's an act of desperation. Maybe it's just an act of preservation for the regime, knowing everything is so horrible domestically and diverting attention elsewhere. Russia also did very badly during COVID. Total excess deaths in 2020 to 2023 has been between 1.2 and 1.6 million. And by the way, for those out there who believe that COVID vaccines are what create excess death, it is interesting that particularly mRNA vaccines that Russia didn't use an mRNA vaccine and they still have 1.2 to 1.6 million deaths. It's speculated that Russia may have the largest COVID death toll in Ukraine and may have the largest COVID death toll in the world as a percentage of the population. Maybe after India, India probably is number one, China is probably number two. Again, by the way, no mRNA vaccines. So between 20 to 22 to 2023, Russia's lost between 1.9 and 2.8 million people more than would have been expected with no pandemic and no war. This war has deep negative consequences for the Russian people and for individuals in Russia. I guess the better people have left. It's again very aging population. The young people in Russia that are there just are going to have to carry a higher burden of taking care of older people, paying for them and of course sustaining an economy, sustaining their own lives. Again, it's going to be very hard to innovate. It's going to be very hard to produce. It's going to be very hard to be cutting edge in anything. And really what's happening right now is that Russia has a third world mortality even though its population is highly educated. Of course, a lot of those highly educated people have left Russia. So it is interesting. It's not exclusive to these countries, but it is interesting that the two large, supposedly threatening, you know, countries out there, Russia and China are both facing real economic demographic challenges and the demographic and the economic are significantly related to one another. Now, a lot of other countries in the world are facing demographic problems. Certainly all of Western Europe is. The United States without immigration is certainly facing a demographic problem. But here, in many respects, the problems are much worse because not only is dynamism constrained by an authoritarian government, but it's constrained by the exodus or the lack of young people. So both of these economies, both of these countries, I think, are going to suffer significantly more than any Western countries. And also I think it's harder to reverse in an authoritarian country these kind of trends. So I wouldn't be surprised if some Western countries reverse the low birth rate trend that they're in right now by becoming more positive, more optimistic, maybe freer, whereas I don't expect that kind of reversal in either China or Russia. All right. We'll see if you guys have any questions on demographics. Let's see. All right. Homelessness. We've talked about this before. I presented my thesis a while back that homelessness is driven by the cost of housing. And indeed, the solution of homelessness is simple, straightforward, increase the quantity of housing available and homelessness is a problem really would go away. And there's a lot of skepticism about this. A lot of people say, no, it's a mental health issue. No, it's a drug issue and so on. And so I was particularly pleased this morning to see a sub-stack on a no opinion sub-stack from Aaron Carr, who is an expert on homelessness, basically making the same point I made a while back a few weeks ago, a few months ago, I can't even tell regarding homelessness and basically saying the title is Everything You Know About Homelessness is wrong. It's housing people. And he goes through all of this. So he says, you know, there's a claim out there. And this is, I'm reading from Noah's and Noah has this guest writer, Andrew Aaron Carr, who is writing about this. So he says homelessness is, people say homelessness is a mental health problem. Well, the problem is that it doesn't, there's no evidence of this. A vast majority of homeless people don't have severe mental health issues. It's less than one-third of the people. I know Schellenberg, the guy who ran for Governor of California, who's very good at energy issues, was making the point about mental health and the state needs to provide mental health facilities and it's all a problem mental health. That's just not true. The reality is that 100% of homeless people can't afford housing. But less than a third of them have mental health issues. And there's just no relationship between the two things. If you look at mental health issues, there are states in the union where mental health issues are significantly more acute, let's say California and New York where there's a homeless problem, like Mississippi, which has probably the worst healthcare system in the America, has real problems of mental health, but has the lowest homelessness rate in the country. So there's just no relationship that you can find in the data, in actual data, between homelessness and mental health. There was this idea that deinstitutionalization that happened in the 1980s or the late 1970s caused homelessness. But this theory's largely been discredited. It's just, again, not based on facts. It's kind of seems attractive and seems kind of intuitive, but it just didn't happen. At the time, particularly in the 1970s, a lot of the people deinstitutionalized found cheap housing because there was loss of it. Homelessness is directly correlated with the decline in affordable housing, decline in cheap housing. And I gave the reasons why there's no cheap housing on the show I did about homelessness. So now it's true that some people might become homeless partially because of mental illness or they don't have a job partially because of mental illness or they can't make enough income partially as a consequence of mental illness. But ultimately, they can't afford a home. And the question really is, why can't they afford a home? And part of the problem might be that they can't get a job. But then, you know, the United States is unbelievably generous in terms of welfare. It's not the mental health issue. The challenge is the cost of housing. Or there's the claim that homelessness is primarily a drug problem. But again, only 20 to 40% of homeless people suffer from substance abuse, issues, drugs, or alcohol. And yet, it's not clear if they take drugs and alcohol, if taking drugs and alcohol causes them to be homeless, or whether being homeless causes them to use drugs and alcohol. There is plenty of evidence that homelessness is indeed the reason they take drugs. So while some people become homeless partially due to drug addiction, many others develop drug addiction as a result of becoming homeless. And again, the statistics go, do not suggest that drug abuse is what causes people to be homeless. Claim three is homelessness is primarily a poverty problem. Again, it just doesn't stand scrutiny. Poor state in the Union is Mississippi. Not a lot of homeless people in Mississippi. Relatively rich states where there are a lot of homeless people. I'll give you some examples. Detroit is a high-poverty city. 31.8% of the population lives in poverty. But they have among the lowest homeless rates in America. San Francisco, on the other hand. Very few people live in poverty, about 10%. But they have the highest, among the highest rates of homelessness in America. So there's just no correlation. There's no relationship between rates of poverty and homelessness. Or maybe it's a weather issue. You know, it's warm outside. So what the hell? Why not be homeless? But California has always been warm and it never used to have a homeless problem. And indeed, there's a big homeless problem in New York. There's a big homeless problem in Vermont. And Massachusetts are places that are not particularly warm. And again, there are places that are pretty warm. I don't know, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. No homeless problems. I don't think there's a big homeless problem in Arizona. But what can you say about those states? Mississippi, Arizona, Alabama. Homes are cheap. A lot of cheap housing. Or maybe it's blue cities. The problem is blue cities. All these progressive policies causing homelessness. Well, if you look at blue cities like Detroit and Chicago, they have very low homeless rates. Very low homeless rates. And cities like San Francisco and New York that are also blue have high homeless rates. But what's different is that Detroit and Chicago have lots of housing and cheap. San Francisco and New York have a shortage of housing and expensive. And the conclusion that he comes to in the substack, homelessness is primarily a housing problem. Unlike poverty and mental illness and drug abuse and weather and welfare benefits and other factors, the places that have the highest housing costs and the least housing supply have the largest homeless population. So I told you this a few months ago. It's nice to see some of my ideas. My idea was an original. I picked it off from an essay from decades ago. And, you know, it's nice to see kind of a mainstream. NOAA is a center-left economist. It's nice to see kind of a mainstream economist picking up on this. You know, here's a quote from the economist. A quote, a few Americans lived on the streets in the early post-war period because housing was cheaper. Only one in four tenants spent more than 30% of their income on rent compared with one in two today, 30% of their income. The best evidence suggests that a 10% rise in housing costs in a pricey city promotes an 8% jump in homelessness. And by the way, by building more homes, by increasing home supply, Atlanta has reduced homelessness by 40%, Houston has reduced it by 63%, Finland has reduced it by 75%, Tokyo has reduced it by 80%. You didn't know that Tokyo had a homeless problem, but they did. When? When housing prices went through the roof. All right. So if you want to solve the homeless problem, as I think all of us want because having homeless people on the streets is a very unpleasant thing, the solution is simple. Deregulate housing, deregulate zoning, allow builders to build. You probably also have to increase immigration so you bring in of low-skilled labor so you can bring in construction workers because they're not enough workers in the United States and build, build, build homes. Build homes of all kinds. It doesn't have to be low-income homes because if you build high-income homes, people move into high-income homes where people vacate lower quality homes and basically you create low-income housing. So just build, build, build. That is the solution. By the way, as Colleen says, it seems like mental health, drug and poverty all play into the issue a little, but if there was a cheap home solution, these people would be cared for and housed by charities. Yeah, and exactly. It's much easier to deal with the issue of mental health, drugs and even poverty once somebody lives in a home, once they have that stability of having a roof above their head, once they're not roaming the streets and again, roaming the streets is likely to create depression. Roaming the streets is likely to create drug abuse. So the way to deal with the drug abuse and if you're going to help people, get them into a home, not by giving them a free home like they do in Los Angeles, but by creating a supply of low-income houses and get them working. Plenty of jobs in the United States still today until we go into a recession there are going to continue to be plenty of jobs and get them a job, get them producing income, get them living in a home and sustaining themselves and then if they need help through charities you can provide help with the drug abuse, you can provide help with the mental health. Okay, just wanted to pat myself on the back in a sense that great confirmation for a thesis I presented and again, nice to see these ideas being advocated by mainstream people because then maybe there's a chance that some of these solutions get implemented and there is now a movement primarily among, I'd say, center-left, center-right people called yes in my backyard. A lot of the building stoppages. You know, a consequence of not in my backyard and now there's a movement of yes in my backyard which has the potential of really increasing the supply of housing and solving much of this problem. All right, let's see. Colleen says, just related to this. Do you know the statistics of the people we see living in the streets versus the actual homeless number? I imagine there are a lot more people homeless than we see. I don't have the stats on me. I mean, I've looked at them, but yeah. But I think you see most of them because they tend to congregate the same place. So there's like an area in LA where they're all in and then there's certain underpasses and certain highways where they're there. So they are very visible. There's a whole area in San Francisco and downtown San Francisco where all the homeless people are. So it is, but beyond that they're all spread out beyond. So yes, they're probably more homeless than you see but they are concentrated in certain cities California being everywhere but even Austin, Texas as I said, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont they do have concentrations so we can't see them. We can't see them. They're mostly not hidden because partially they get services that they're provided with all kinds of city, state, federal services where they are and therefore they aggregate together so that these services don't go out looking for them. All right, thank you, Colleen. I really appreciate it. All right, let's see. I do have time for questions. It's fine. This is not going to be a short show. We'll go for as long as needed in terms of the questions. I would like to get to our goal today. So about $200 short of that goal so hopefully we can get there and I do have a lot of questions. So let's make it this way. From now on only $20 and above questions just because I'm worried about losing my voice. So let's make it $20 above questions from this point on. All right. Okay, one final topic I have which is the CHIP Act Giveaways. As we know, as I told you as you know, Congress passed this law the US CHIP Act, which is supposed to bring CHIP manufacturing of advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities back to the United States and to invest in that capability as part of the $280 billion US CHIPs. There is $39 billion of funding earmarked by earmarked specifically directly for companies. So this is a direct subsidy and this is the idea that we need to invest heavily in this. Taiwan basically produces today 90% of the world's leading edge chips, the ones crucial for the fence and for many things like technologies like cloud computing, fast communication networks and artificial intelligence. 90% of those chips, of the most advanced chips are produced in Taiwan. You can see why Taiwan becomes a strategic place that needs defending. So the idea was to move some of that chip manufacturing to the United States to do that, we're going to subsidize it and subsidize it in America and American companies can vie for these subsidies. Not just American companies, foreign companies, if they build in the US can vie for these subsidies. But of course, Congress can't just do a bill where, yeah, we give you money if you can build chips because it's important, right? No, there have to be all kinds of caveats and all kinds of limitations and all kinds of constraints, right? So for example, you can't you can't get any money if you also investing in China, in the chip industry in China. You can't use the funds that you receive for shaped buybacks or dividends. And if you agree to get this money from the government, you have to pay wages, you have to pay union wages for construction and by the way, you have to, have to because this is crucial for national defense, you have to ensure access to affordable childcare for all your employees if you're going to get money from the government. So there's a massive bureaucracy being created. There's a massive attempt to use this to further social policy. You know, this article in the Financial Times, you know, presents it there's a Christmas tree and now all these pressure groups all these so-called interest groups are coming in and they want a piece of it. They want something. They want some benefit. I mean, the Biden administration tried to get childcare as childcare passed, expansion of childcare provisioning by companies passed in the bill. They couldn't, they weren't successful in doing that. So it was tagged on to a bill about chips. You can't get the chip subsidy unless you provide childcare. And the excuse they give is, of course, well, if we really want employees, high-quality employees, then we have to offer them benefits. But we know that the government doesn't have to offer these benefits. The government, if employees value childcare, then employers will figure out that's the way to best attract employees and they'll provide childcare. You don't need the government to mandate it. So it's just, you know, absurd and stupid. But yes, as I said, the CHIP Act would become this center of gravity for all, you know, all the cronies out there to try to grab as much of these government subsidies as possible to try to grab as much as is feasible. And that's exactly what's happening. It was completely predictable. And it's only going to get worse because there's not only the CHIP Act, but there's also the Inflation Reduction Act that has also tens of billions. And we're talking billions of dollars here. And I know we've been desensitized to billions, but it's a lot of money. Billions of dollars to subsidize and give away all kinds of things. So this is going to be, you know, this is massive. This is not a small little blimp. There is a lot of this money to be given away in the years to come, which is going to create a massive amount of additional cronyism, a massive amount of just corruption. And of course, economic inefficiencies and injustices and taking money from some people and giving it to other people with no real standard, just some central planner's belief in what they call the national interest of common good, the regular perversion and the regular kind of crony attitudes. Okay, let's see. So we have a bunch of super chats. We're going to go over them. We're going to start with the ones that are $50 or more. I think we have like three of those. So we'll start with those and then we'll go to the $20 ones and then we'll go to the under $20 ones. Okay, let's start with Apollo Zeus. He says, recently he had a falling out with a friend which started out as an intellectual issue. He mistakenly took what was said personally and then said something I now regret. Any advice on how to sincerely apologize in such a situation? Yes, I mean, the best thing, the best form of sense of apology is just brutal honesty. Just say, I screwed up. This is exactly what happened. I think you'll agree that this was what happened or at least this is my perception of what happened. You said this and I completely, inappropriately said why. I understand why that would be insulting to you. I understand why you offended by it. I understand why that was a mistake and I apologize and your friendship is valuable to me. I don't want this to, I would like this not to get in the way of our friendship and please consider, you know, in a sense, forgiving me or giving me another chance. I think it just needs to be laid out in the open and discussed in the open and done with brutal honesty. I think that's the only way to get out of situations like this. All right, let's see. Liam says, I know many leftists who have read and really like Ayn Rand's novels but still vote for socialist policies. Basic exposure to Ayn Rand really is not enough to make a dent. People need to be spoon-fed by a sizable number of intellectuals. Well, I would never call it spoon-fed because spoon-fed is too passive. People are still going to have to have to do the work to understand and ultimately accept these ideas. But I think it is true that the novels are not enough. Millions of people have read the novels. Few of them, relatively few of them have taken the idea seriously. They've inspired maybe many, many thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people. But again, to actually bring about intellectual change, these ideas have to be constantly reaffirmed in the culture. And the only way to constantly reaffirm them in the culture is by having an entire intellectual movement and a lot of intellectuals who are constantly applying the ideas, constantly reaffirming them, constantly reminding people of them and then explaining them to them in the sense that a lot of people, for example, read The Fountain End and all they get out of it is intellectual integrity. Sorry, artistic integrity. The broader ideas, the broader concepts and why artistic integrity can't exist without a broader conception of integrity, without a broader self-interested conception of morality, those are the things that the intellectuals have to constantly explain and articulate in the culture. And this is why we need lots of high quality intellectuals willing to speak and explain and debate. All right, Mark says, I am pretty young and still in state of building up my normative framework. I just watched your video on Bronze Age perverts fascist philosophy. And I must admit, this has been a great reality check of what logical conclusions not to follow. Yes, I mean, I hope so. I think that Bronze Age, that Bap's philosophy is a philosophy of emotionalism. It's a philosophy that's attached from reality. It's a philosophy that ultimately is self-destructive and destructive to you as an individual. It is exactly the opposite of how it presents itself. It presents itself as strong and efficacious. But efficaciousness requires reason. Strength requires thought and requires reason and consideration. Bronze Age pervert is the idea, ultimately the physical force that it is muscle that gains you any kind of success in life. And that is a failed barbaric ideology and one that, yeah, one that if you value your life and if you value what it means to be human, Bronze Age pervert rejects humanity because he rejects reason. What it means to be human is to be rational. We are the rational animal. And Bap and much of this ideology grounded in materialism and in muscle is a rejection of the very nature of mankind, which is a reasoning being. All right. Thank you, Mark. And great, it's great to see young people here on the show listening and hopefully gaining some knowledge from the Iran book show. All right, Hopa Campbell, you don't have to be an altruist to have to see an end to homelessness and poverty. I think a few generations of objective governance and we would have to explain to our grandchildren the poverty and homelessness even more. Yes, I mean poverty could be eradicated fairly quickly if you establish real economic freedom and as a result get real economic growth and that economic growth would wipe out poverty very quickly. People would start making much, much more money because they would be much, much more productive and that can all be attained by freeing up the economy, by getting rid of regulations, getting rid of taxes and really liberating an economy to its full potential, which that full potential is most people under that full potential well off. There's just no poverty, there's no homelessness. These are not issues. And of course, as I said, homelessness is caused by housing, free market, plenty of housing. The whole restraint on housing goes away. You get massive quantities of houses, house prices that you buy a house shouldn't go up. If anything, it should go down. You're using, it's a used house compared to a new house. Housing prices should be stable to down, not going up. The only reason they go up is because of control over the supply of houses because of regulation. Okay, Liam says, take it there are few, if any homeless people in Europe, as you have seen throughout your travels, even Eastern Europe, all of the students asking you how America has this phenomena of massive homelessness. Yes, but it's very simple. In Europe, there are far fewer constraints on building homes. Europe has plenty of housing units as a percentage of population. The United States is still a growing population. Europe, much of Europe is shrinking and therefore there's excess housing. There's empty houses. And there's also far fewer restrictions on building new homes. So the consequence of that is there's just far less of a problem of housing and therefore of homelessness. Now you do see some homelessness in London and the reason for that is that London housing prices are really, really high because of all the zoning and building limitations that exist in London. But I think London is different than most of the rest of Europe where housing is abundant. And again, it's a question of housing versus population and America has seen massive divergence between ever-growing, because of the growing population, because of immigration and better birth rates, ever-growing demand for housing. And at the same time, the supply of housing is capped by very limited production of new housing. You don't see that in Europe. What you see in London here is homelessness because of the cost of housing, but also the other dimension of this is because Europe has immigration as does the United States, but they don't let the people work. And this is also a cause of homelessness in the U.S. is if the immigrants come in but they can't work, then how are they supposed to make a living? How are they supposed to pay for homes? Why not just let them work legally illegal, give them a work visa at least so they can be productive, they can earn a living, they can buy a house? So it really is two things. We want to get people working and we want to make sure that there are just enough houses. And we don't have to make sure of that. All we need is to free up the economy and supply and demand all that takes care of itself. Eastern Europe has lots of, I think has lots of housing, partially because, again, the population has been shrinking, people have been leaving, people go overseas to work and send money back. So there's no, I don't think there's any homeless problem because there's plenty of housing relative to the size of the population. All right, Themaster just came in with $50. Thank you, Themaster, actually 50 pounds, so more than $50. Themaster says, do you think Lex Friedman doesn't invite Alex Epstein on his show because he is principled to humility and humbleness. He invites pro-fossile fuel guests like Bjorn Lombard and Andrew Rifkin, but they are more about data than human flourishing. You know, I don't want to speculate on why Lex Friedman doesn't invite Alex and I don't know that he hasn't or I don't know what the situation is. Lex Friedman certainly knows about Alex. I would be surprised if Alex is not on his show at some point, but I don't know and I don't want to speculate. I don't think it's fair for me to try to speculate. Again, I have a huge amount of respect for Lex and very, very thankful that he's invited me on his show as many times as he has and I wouldn't want to, you know, so I don't know. Maybe if I get to talk to Lex one day, I'll ask him. Jennifer, thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the $20. We're only $22 away from the goal. This is great. Thank you, guys. Themaster says, what is the population climb like in India considering that they have many romantic musicals in their movies so that sex doesn't become animalistic and therefore shrink? Yeah, I don't know if it's related to their music, but in their movies, you know, India is still growing, but its growth rate is slowing as India becomes more of a class, as people become wealthier in India, they're having fewer kids, so it's following the same pattern as other developing countries. Once they reach a certain level of development, the growth in population will shrink. India will not grow forever. You will see a flip. The place where you're seeing the most growth in terms of population is Africa. That is the fastest growing continent, the fastest growing area, and again, poverty is associated with having lots of kids. Once poverty goes away, you start having fewer kids. How much fewer kids is, I think, then a question of this issue of optimism, right? So, you know, and whether people get married and whether they're willing to make long-term commitments and having kids as a long-term commitment, and that relates to the level of their belief and their own ability to the future, and I think this is, you know, something that sustains Israel, could sustain any other country, but I don't think that's what's the cause in India. I think India, the main cause, is just the poverty. Okay, Michael says, did you watch Bill Ma's recent monologue making fun of leftist attempts to abolish selfishness by imposing socialism? With a watch would be great if you could get on a show. He still has some ties to reality. I've not seen it, so thanks for pointing it out. I look forward, and yeah, he does. I wish he'd invite me on the show. I tried in the past and not been successful. Mark, thanks for the support, really appreciate it. Not your average algorithm. Has North Korea been the most effective regime in keeping out Western influence in history? Even the USSR couldn't keep out Western television and radio like North Korea has. How did they even have a replacement birth rate? I don't think they do have a replacement birth rate. I think, and right now, I've just recently read that North Korea right now, as we speak, is suffering through massive starvation and massive numbers of deaths as a consequence of starvation. Who knows what the population of North Korea really is? Every few years, they have a drought or something weather-wise that happens. They just wipes out their crops and people are dying of starvation. COVID, suppose it was very brutal in North Korea and killed a lot of people. I don't think they have a replacement rate. I think they're way below that. I think they have these whitebouts periodically that really shrink their population. North Korea has been able to keep out Western influence. Maybe it's the best in human history because they've erected such a wall around it. I can't think of anybody who's done a better job. Better job, worse job. I don't know how you want to phrase it. Shahzabat says, so they say that homelessness is a mental health issue and mass shootings are not. Yes, they do say that. Clearly, mass shootings are clearly a mental health issue and also a cultural issue, a nihilism issue. Really, we, something, I don't know, Swedish Kronos, thank you for the talk in Uppsala. It was very inspiring. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed and enjoyed everybody's company in Uppsala, so that was fantastic. Thank you. Shahzabat, have you seen South Park's episode on homelessness? I have not. I'm sure it's hysterical, but I have not. I've seen very little South Park. Clark says, the amount of respect I have for Iran is incalculable. Never stop. Thank you, Clark. Don't let the speed of progress discourage you and make sure to rent large safe rental cars during your travels. If we lose you, if we lose you, the world is doomed. I doubt the world is doomed just because of me, but I appreciate the sentiments and yes, I will do my best to drive safely and I don't expect you will lose me anytime soon. I'm working hard to stay alive and fit and working for a few more decades, for a few more decades, maybe slowing down a little bit. Anonymous user says, you say there are plenty of jobs in the U.S., however, I see many engineering graduates apply for dozens to hundreds of jobs and receive only a few interviews, a minor fraction of those yield offers. Why is this? I really don't know. I mean, the reality is that there are massive quantities of want ads, both for engineers and other positions. I mean, maybe there's a mismatch between what people are studying or what people have knowledge in and what employers actually want. Maybe we need somehow to align what people study and the skills people attain and what the job market is actually looking for, much better. I think those are real issues. But they are. I mean, in spite of all the layoffs of engineers that have happened over the last few months, it seemed that most of them have gotten good jobs elsewhere, maybe not paying quite as much as they did before. And there's been some evidence here in the chat of people who found really good jobs lately in engineering and other fields. So, you know, I don't know why some people have a harder time finding a job, but I think it's some kind of mismatch of skill sets. There's also an issue of having the basic skills of work, having the basic skills and in an interview, being able to express just the kind of, that you have the kind of personality that's going to work hard. You're going to be the kind of person that's going to be responsible and take responsibility for your own work and your own efforts. And that you're the kind of person that they will enjoy or benefit from managing, which I think a lot of young people maybe don't have and maybe in our culture is rarer. Maybe in our culture it's rarer. Jeremy, thank you for the support. I really appreciate it. Okay. Mike Hope says, if an individual boycotts and refuses to vote in an election, is he automatically sanctioned supporting whoever wins in the election? If yes, are there certain elections in which context matters, or is this always the case? I mean, I think, I don't think you're sanctioning whoever wins the election because you don't support either one of them. Now, you know, so I think it's completely legitimate not to vote when the two evils are too evil for you to vote for. I don't think, I think, when you vote for somebody, you're sanctioning and supporting them. I don't think by not voting, you're sanctioning and supporting whoever wins, you're expressing disdain from the choice. And I think that's completely legitimate. And I don't think you're responsible for what other people choose. And also taking into account that anyone vote doesn't matter. So you can't burden yourself with this idea that you're responsible for the outcome. You're not. Colleen says, could there be a way to restrict these bills from dealing with multiple items? Only can address one item like chips or childcare at a time when these things couldn't get snuck in. Yes, I mean, there is. There's a way in which we can make bills be one-issue bills, be simple bills, they can't have attachments, they can't have provisions. But of course, politicians don't want to do that. They want to use these bills in order to give favors and to fight for the different social agendas. You would have to change the very nature of lawmaking in Washington, D.C., which is going to be quite a difficult enterprise. I think that the best way is just not to have these bills and the best way is to advocate for partisanship that is for gridlock. I'm a big, big supporter of gridlock. Andrew says, do you feel mixed about the CHIP Act in that it may result in more computer chips being produced here, and that is dangerous for us to rely on a foreign power for them? No, I mean, I'm against it, period. Again, as I've said many times, I think if it's necessary for the Defense Department to have the chips that we need for weapons systems be produced in the United States or in a friendly country, then the Defense Department can subsidize these things for the particular needs of the Defense Department. It could do it in the U.S. It could do it. One of the ideas is you don't have to unsure. You can friend-sure. You can make sure that countries that you're unlikely to be at war with are the places in which these chips or places where the supply chain cannot easily be disrupted, like Taiwan or even South Korea, bring chip production to Europe or to Mexico, but it doesn't matter. The government should be subsidizing it unless it's a Defense Department because it's a national security issue. Daniel says any more thoughts on Vivek Ramaswamy? No, not really. Not more than I gave. I'm sure we'll have more as the election gets closer and as I haven't really seen much more of him since I last commented. Frank says is an altruism the attempt to create the value of morality by combining religious intrinsic duty with emotional subjectivism? Yes, but if you really think about it, religious intrinsic duty is emotional subjectivism because there is no such thing as intrinsic anything. So the idea that morality is actually getting it from your own emotional, your own subjective view. So, intrinsicism ultimately is always subjectivism. I think Lene Picoff makes this point in OPA. But yes, so altruism ultimately is about emotional subjectivism even when it's couched as religious intrinsic duty. Hopefully that makes sense, Frank. Lene Drowsy says how could objective ideas be implemented at the level of a local school district? I teach high school in Texas for context. Well, I mean, I don't know what you teach, right? So, but your curriculum could be designed in a way that emphasized the virtue of reason, the virtue of thinking for yourself, the virtue of independence. You could be very strict in terms of being just giving A students A and F students F. You could, you could, you know, make it clear to students that, again, depending on the subject of teaching that man's basic means of survival is his reason. So there are many, many ways that you can integrate objective ideas into your curriculum when explicitly or implicitly. But just the value of reason, the value of thinking, the value, you know, of the rational mind. That would be huge if you could get that into the curriculum. Fenn Harper says, time flies with so many shows, money well spent, happy and safe travels as you school the world on capitalism. Thank you Fenn Harper. Johannes, speaking of destiny, when are you going to have a debate versus him? It's one of those debates that could have huge potentials in many regards. You know, encourage some of these debate sites to invite me in destiny to debate. That's the best way to make it happen is to go to some of these Twitter, YouTube, Discord, whatever, debate sites and say, we want to debate with your unbroken destiny. They can make it happen. Michael says, does Ayn Rand need some spin-off philosophers to be successful? And Iman Okan had Hegel and Marx in order to his philosophy to be taken seriously by public and employment and by government. I mean, I don't know what spin-off means, but given that Ayn Rand's philosophy is not in a sense, is not complete in a sense that it covers everything, there need to be philosophers that are drawing on her ideas and expanding, and there need to be philosophers influenced by Ayn Rand doing work across philosophy. Absolutely. And that will happen and that is happening. And they need to be some philosophers who agree with Ayn Rand completely. Some philosophers just influenced by her a whole variety of people engaging with Ayn Rand's ideas. This is why we need hundreds, if not thousands of intellectuals among them real philosophers. Not the average algorithm. Why are there no objectives in New York City? The center of finance and big dreams, Ayn Rand spent most of her life there. There are lots of objectives in New York City. Now some of them have moved, many have moved to Florida, some have moved to Texas, but there's still lots of objectives in New York City. You just need to find them. They're there. I mean, I've told you about a restaurant that I go to when I'm in New York that is run where the chef is an objectivist, but there are many objectivists in New York. A number of the people in the chat, you know, are from New York City. So I don't give up on New York City. Clark says, if someone dies and they don't have a will or any family members, is it proper for the government to confiscate any assets they left behind? That is currently what happens. Is this just a theft? Yeah, the restaurant is Rosella. Thank you, Jennifer, for reminding me. I mean, the money has to go somewhere and the government is not a bad thing, particularly in a free society, for the money to go to government. It funds the kind of things that government is supposed to do in a free society. So, you know, if the person really didn't leave it to anybody and there's no family in this, then where else would it go? So I don't see anybody having a claim on it and therefore it can be theft. It's a ban on property and given that the government is doing things to sustain civilization, one would hope, that's not an unreasonable place for the money to go. James, I often hear people discuss the homeless crisis as natural consequence of the late-stage capitalism. In reality, isn't this the natural consequences of early-stage socialism? Yes, it's a natural consequence of mixed economy. It's a natural consequence of having socialist policies with regard to housing. Andrew says that the COVID restrictions and the growing totalitarianism in China is probably not making people want to have babies. That's true, but it's also true that people don't have babies in Japan and they didn't have quite anywhere near the kind of COVID restrictions China had and they do not have going to totalitarianism. So it's not just those features in the modern world. I think it's lack of values. I think it's, again, lack of self-esteem, lack of confidence in the future. I think it's a lot of things like that. That could be a whole show at some point. PB says individual thriving in capitalism seems to require understanding of balance sheets, P&L, spreadsheet, etc. Can you recommend learning for dummies? Yeah, I think that learning for dummies books are pretty good, particularly for these kind of technical things, absolutely. And yeah, you should all be able to do a basic balance sheet, basically profit and loss, keep track of your own accounts, keep track of your investments, know how to use the spreadsheet. Seems like basic tools, like learning how to use a typewriter when age has passed. Valjean, what period in American history was America great for black people? I think now is the period in which America's greatest for black people. I mean, it's not as great as it could be. I think the welfare state has really hurt black people. It could be that the best period for black people was the period just the civil rights was being established. But before the full impact of the welfare state was, you know, impactful. But yeah, black people have not fared well in terms of the way the culture and the law have treated them. And it's maybe the greatest tragedy of America. Michael says, either collectivism goes away or human beings go extinct. Well, I mean, collectivism has been with us to some extent from the beginning. Why people have not gone extinct. So I think that's a little too simplistic. Robert says, OK, you good people. Heading out to the symphony, the dexter community orchestras playing Beethoven 6. Oh wow, Beethoven 6 is amazing. We'll catch the rest of the show later. Thank you, Robert. And Tvorosek. What do you know, think about Andrei Sakovov? God, I don't know much about Andrei Sakovov. I mean, he was a dissident, a Russian dissident who spoke up against the Soviet regime, if I'm not mistaken. And that takes obviously a huge amount of coverage. And he was a nuclear physicist and a real dissident, ultimately won an overpriced activist for nuclear disarmament. I mean, I think basically a good guy philosophically probably not attuned to objectivism, but then you wouldn't expect that, given that he was born when he was born and when he lived. He basically spent his whole life under communism until he didn't quite get to see the end of the Soviet Union, but maybe he saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 just before he died. He was born in 21, died in 89. So a heroic character overall, a heroic character, just by the fact that he was willing to stand up to the Soviet regime and that takes a lot of courage. All right, fantastic, thanks guys. I am going to drop on bed and go to sleep. Yes. I will see you all on Tuesday. So tomorrow no shows, I'll be flying all day, but Tuesday we'll do a news show, an evening show. We'll get back on schedule for most of March until I travel again. April and May are going to be rough, but at least most of March we're going to be on schedule. So I'm looking forward to that. So I will see you all on Tuesday. Thank you to all the superchatters. You guys were great tonight. We beat our target. And that is truly fantastic. Yeah, see you all Tuesday. Bye everybody. Wish me a good flight. Bye.