 the radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Brook show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brook show on this Saturday night. Hope everybody has having a great long extended weekend. Thanksgiving weekend. All right great time. Great time of the year particularly here in Puerto Rico where the sun is shining and it's hot outside and the ocean is just gorgeous. It's been a little rougher the last couple of days but generally just beautiful and yeah life is good in spite of all the negativity you're gonna hear from me today. Life is good so I hope you guys are enjoying it. That's your job. Your job in life is to enjoy life. All right Jose says yesterday while listening to Iran's show he saw a smash and grab happen across the street. All right we'll get to smash and grab in a minute. It's god. I don't know how come the smash and grab stuff is not at the top of all the headlines all the time every day because the rest of this, the rest of this is everything else in the news is insignificant as comparison. All right but the top of the news everywhere is this new strain of COVID. The Omnikron, Omnikron, Omnikron, Omnikron which I get is I guess is a Greek alphabet letter or something like that, Latin something. Anyway this is a this is the new variant of COVID coming out of South Africa. South Africa is seeing a significant spike in COVID after months of pretty stable numbers. The spike is attributed to this new variant of COVID. The variant is already escaped Africa. It's significant numbers have already been UK I think has two or three and the rest of Europe and they're strong suspicious and likelihood that it's already in the United States. It's already sped all over the world but what are governments do? What are the idiots in power and those who advise them do because it makes them look like they're doing something. Trump did this in March of last year. Biden is doing it now. The Brits, the Europeans are all doing it. Shut down the borders. Too late guys. Virus is already here. Virus is already spreading locally. Who the hell just stop running our lives. Stop dictating what we can and cannot do. I'm upset because the Brits have now decided that in order to come into the UK you are going to have to go into isolation no matter whether you're vaccinated or vaccinated. You go into isolation then get a PCR test and only when you get the negative test results in the PCR test can you go out of isolation. You know given the now the demand for PCR tests who knows how long that will be. That basically destroys all my plans which I had for travel. I just bought tickets to go to the UK in January as part of a European tour. It's just so you know they have no respect for our lives, no respect for our liberty, no respect for our freedom, no respect for our ability to make choices for ourselves. Anyway the virus this new variant is already spreading around the world. It looks like it's very very contagious. It's spreading fast. There was a plane that came in from South Africa into the Netherlands that I was reading an article it said 61. 61 of the people on the plane tested positive for this new variant which is bizarre to get those kind of numbers. They didn't get it on the plane. They got it before they got it on the plane but to get in those numbers means that it's pretty prevalent in South Africa itself. So the numbers are very high. Can't go to Africa because Biden has banned all travel to Africa. So again our commanders-in-chief our the people who command our lives are dictating where we can and cannot do and how we can and cannot wear, how, what. Anyway so it's time we adopted a new metric. Case numbers are not important. Indeed COVID is endemic. We're probably all gonna get it at some point. The only thing that's important is how many people die from this and what are the demographics of those who die from it and maybe you know is it overwhelming the hospital system. That's it. The only thing that matters is you know how many people are going to ICU and how many people are dying. Case numbers are insignificant. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares how many people get a disease. The question is it's how deadly is this disease. Now usually with viruses as they mutate they become more transmittable and less potent, less deadly. Particularly if you're vaccinated that becomes, that makes you less deadly. You know the vaccine even for mutated virus is probably gonna make it less harmful to you and at some point we're just gonna have to let it go. We should have you know you could argue done this already. The only remember the lockdowns in March of last year flatten the curve for the hospitals not to achieve zero cases. That should have could have never been the goal but politicians have tasted what it power feels like. Conservative, leftists, status politicians feel what power is like whether it's the conservative Johnson, whether it's Orban in Hungary, whether it's the Germans, the French no matter where it is and of course Biden in the United States. They feel what power is like and they won't let it go. They won't let it go and of course they're afraid. They're afraid. You know it's easy to perceive politicians as these power-lusting, ooh scheming evil guys but really much of what motivates politicians is fear. What if it gets out of control? I might lose the next election. What if I'm perceived as weak? What if I'm perceived as non-scientific? What if I'm perceived? Politicians are motivated by fear and fear of the electorate and fear of how people look at them and fear of what the intelligentsia of what they crowd will think of them and they panic. So we will see what happens with all of this but it looks bad in terms of the government's responses. It looks like the government responses to this are pretty uniform across the globe so it's not the case that this is just a phenomena of the Biden administration but it looks like this this kind of crazy response, lockdown response, reduced liberty, reduced freedom, shutdown, airports. Don't allow people to travel. Tell them where they can and cannot go. Isolate them. Put them whether they test positive or negative. Doesn't matter. Get them. That kind of mentality is just going to continue on and on and on and look it could be that this variant is more deadly but for what I'm reading out of South Africa it doesn't seem that that's the case. The South African health authorities are claiming that it's less deadly, less likely to get you in hospital, particularly if you're vaccinated but it is very contagious so let's get it over with. I just heard today from a friend of mine who also hires me to give talks so I was with her at an event. What was it a week and a day ago in Colorado and no in Connecticut in Connecticut basically a week ago last Friday and it turns out that a number of people at that event got COVID. She has gotten COVID. She spent Thanksgiving kind of in oscillation struggling with COVID. I think she's doing fine. She's vaccinated. I think she's fine. One of the other speakers at the event also got COVID. He too, I saw on Facebook he's vaccinated but you know it's a little scary, particularly once you get to a certain age and he's got COVID. Anyway I still don't have it. Now I'm not eager to get it. It's not like I'm eager to get it but I do find it interesting that I have been traveling throughout. I was traveling in February, March you know airplanes all over the place without many precautions. I was traveling throughout last year 2020. I was traveling all of this year. My wife had COVID and I spent an entire week 10 days where she had symptoms and I was with a non-stop and I didn't get it. I just you know I've been lecturing unmasked and where the audience is unmasked for months and months and months and I'm not encouraging anybody else to do this. This is just what I've done and I was at this event a week ago where a bunch of people have got COVID and I didn't get COVID. So I'm happy, I'm lucky, whatever it is I have not been able to get COVID and I hope that continues but the reality is the reality is that we're probably all gonna get it. I mean deer in Michigan the entire you know significant percentage of the population of deer in Michigan have COVID and it's likely that human beings will get it back from deer and this is like endemic and this is just gonna continue and to some extent at some point we're all gonna get it. The tragedy is that nobody seems to be learning lessons from this and improving policy prescriptions for it. The response is just as fearful and as it has always always been right it's just as fearful. One of the people who says you're on is Japanese genes immune to COVID. It might be that I've been traveling so much for so many years that my immune system is well developed though you know I've got so many COVID colds that you know I don't know who knows who knows what's going on and it could be I just got lucky right. The fact is the reality is that the most likely answer is you're on is just lucky. Don't underestimate the the the the the all luck luck in the sense of you know actually having a low probability event and surviving a low probability event. All right um anyway so I just wanted to get everybody up to speed. This is spitting like crazy. Everybody's going to be talking about this. This new variant of COVID it's it's going to be everywhere. Locking down borders is not going to help. Let's hope and fight for a non-lockdown solution in the United States even if cases accelerate and increase significantly. Let's hope that the response this time is more rational. I would encourage people who are 65 and older might have comorbidities to get their booster shot. This would be a good time or maybe wait a few weeks until we know more about this particular variant and maybe the booster shots could be modified to cover this variant but this is a great time to consider getting vaccinated and and getting getting your vaccines all caught up so that if you have comorbidities if you're susceptible to COVID and susceptible to bad outcomes from COVID you reduce the odds of those bad uh of those bad um bad outcomes. So I've still not gotten my booster. I don't expect to get a booster until I know more about this new variant and whether the booster is going to be modified or not. All right um oh one last thing I would say is where's the outrage that the FDA has not approved the Pfizer and Mooc pills that are supposed to reduce basically the risk of death from COVID to zero. Where are these pills? If these pills were circulating then it wouldn't matter. None of this would matter. It would all be over. So maybe the political class has an incentive not for this not to be over because this is they're benefiting enormously in terms of the power grab from this but approve the frigging pills so that we can stop worrying about this. 700 dollar course of the Pfizer the Mooc um a pill and you're almost guaranteed not to have a significantly negative effect from COVID. I would take the pills like that. I have no qualms about taking the pill even if they're only approved for emergency use or whatever the hell they they call it. So get get the pills out there. All right um no I'm not using ivermectin. Explain why yesterday chances that ivermectin actually works on COVID are very very low and is just absolutely no reason to be using them. The fact is that if I get COVID chances of me having a really bad outcome are very very very low. I'm not going to worry about it um and uh ivermectin is certainly not the first thing I would jump out there. Other uh drugs there's just one anti-depressant that taking a small dose has shown significant positive results with COVID much better results than ivermectin in much better studies. Uh so if you're going to get COVID and you're going to take something be scientific about it and not political and I'll jump to whatever the latest fad among the doctors that that uh that a cool happen to say yes flux fluvo xamon fluvo xamon that's it some yeah that's the that's the anti-depressant it's a it's a it's a mild antidepressant you can take it in low doses and it is proven of all the different and it's very cheap it's all the different drugs that are being tried that are very cheap that are approved already that have no side effects that are easy to use that have no issues flu fluvoxamine fluvoxamine it has produced as far as I can tell I'm not a doctor don't take my word for this as far as I can tell has produced the best results um so um and and if you take it in the right dose in low doses it won't have an effect on your on your mind and it and you can go on and off it easily so again this is the one that Scott Alexander and I've read others have said it has the best large uh a peer reviewed uh statistically significant study out there much much better uh much much more informative than uh than uh ivermectin so if I had if I was going to take something I would take that all right before I go on to smash and grab which is the main topic I wanted to talk about today um I want to remind you that you can ask questions on the super chat the super chat is available right here it is a way for you to support the show value for value I assume you're here because you get value from the show those of you're listening afterwards you can express your value to show and you know holiday seasons a great time um to express that value express some gratitude if you feel gratitude uh towards the show if you listen to it uh you can go on uranbookshow.com slash support you can get a patreon you could go to subscribe stop and make a multi contribution to the uranbook show again christmas time the holiday season is a great time to do that um I would also uh encourage you if you're on the super chat we do have a goal today that goal is um 600 at least uh we're at about 40 so just under 40 probably 35 so pick up the pace and of course you can ask me questions about anything you want and of course I appreciate the support even if it comes uh you know detached from a question we're trying to make up for the fact that there were fewer shows this month and trying to make up kind of for the numbers uh that we got yesterday was fantastic so thank you for all of those who used the super chat to support the show yesterday but so far two questions we need a lot more questions and yes before you leave today give it a thumbs up if you like the show if you didn't like the show that's fine but if you like the show give it a thumbs up before you leave that would be um that would be great thank you so we're going to a little experiment right now particularly in states and uh local localities that uh that that have adopted a let's call it soft policing stands particularly on property crimes if you remember during the dark days of the summer 2020 as the Black Lives Matter demonstrations many of them turned into riots and some of those riots in particular I remember the case in Chicago turned into out and out looting uh if you remember the the large mobs uh looted stores on the Miracle Mile uh that's Michigan Avenue in Chicago stole from uh stole large quantities of goods from places like uh from luxury goods like Louis Vuitton and other places and um and Black Lives Matter the next day I remember I held the demonstration outside the courthouse demanding that whoever was arrested be released that this wasn't uh this wasn't a crime shouldn't be viewed as a crime this was just an attempt to reduce inequality in the culture that this was just a form of redistribution of wealth the fact that they stole Louis Vuitton bags would be an opportunity for them to sell those bags get a little bit of money and who hey many commentators on the left said what's the big deal all these stores have insurance why is anybody upset uh you know insurance companies evil and large and and and bad guys and uh you know these are luxury stores and only the rich care about these places and the rich be damned and everybody thinks income inequality is a bad thing so this is just a little action to reduce income inequality when stores were damaged and destroyed in Portland Oregon during those same uh during riots under the guise of the same cause nobody cared nobody cared it was the attack on the federal building that got Trump all excited but smashed stores destroyed property nobody seemed to care anywhere and of course this was a phenomena all over the United States even in Minneapolis um uh where of course the the the BLM uh demonstration started after the George Floyd killing even in Minneapolis when they burnt their own people stores when they burned stores in their own neighborhoods well they're just expressing themselves it's a form of expression at the time if you remember the the the theme was defund the police or even better abolish the police let's get rid of the police and I did a whole show on how it was so's idea that indeed it is civilization and it's institutions including the police which is part of the institutions of civilization it is civilization that causes crime that man in a in a sense in a state of nature without the institutions of civilization without reason science right without the constraints of morality man is violence free that is heaven that is beauty what corrupts man is his mind its reason what corrupts man is capitalism what corrupt man corrupt man are the institutions of civilization what corrupts man is the law property rights if only we could abolish property rights if only we could abolish the police everything would be in a state of nature would be peaceful and wonderful that is directly out of Rousseau and of course we know that Rousseau's ideas inspired the most monstrous of uh of of the the the uh uh executioners of the French Revolution the the most bloodthirsty participants in the French Revolution were carried with them everywhere they went who are spare for example copies of Rousseau's books so there was a whole movement about defunding the police and getting rid of the police now a lot of that didn't go anywhere although a lot of defunding happened nobody got rid of the police even in Minneapolis when they actually took it to vote with the people they voted it down just this last month but the mentality of soft property crimes don't matter it's just redistribution who cares it's just luxury stores no big deal that mentality survived and indeed got institutionalized in some areas with with district attorneys that believed this stuff that internalized these this agenda indeed they were voted in advocating for this agenda agenda of again uh no bail let's release criminals early property crimes and not real crimes and the police the police are the enemy the police are the enemy they are the problem from which for which we need to find a solution well we've seen over the last year and a half now a significant increase in crime we've seen an increase in violent crime an increase in spite of the fact that for since 1991 I think it is violent crime has seen an historic unprecedented decline from 1991 until about 2018 a dramatic decline in that in motor in property crimes in battery in all forms of violent crimes and property rights we saw a dramatic particularly in motor dramatic decline in spite of donald trump's claim in 2016 that we had you know that there was uh what was it uh you know uh uh you know bloodshed everywhere and and uh and uh our streets and cities were riddled with crime that 2016 was very close to the some of the most um peaceful devout of criminality periods in american history but that is starting to reverse itself crime is definitely on the uptick unsurprisingly since we started to talk about how property crime are no big deal how we don't need the police how we could do we could do really really well with fewer police don't need a lot of police murder has been a significant uptick but generally crime has seen a significant uptick and you can see it over the last few weeks really over the last week in what has been going on just a few examples right so you remember reading that story about this guy who drove his truck through a christmas parade i think he killed six injured dozens some of those injured might still die a guy who has behaved like this in the past who has shown homicidal tendencies and he was out on bail a thousand dollar bail that you think maybe a thousand dollar bail it would maybe be a victimless crime maybe he was caught with possession of some drug maybe he was drunk or whatever no he was out on bail when he ran down these dozens of people a thousand dollar bail for running over the mother of his child i mean this is a guy who was using his car as a weapon and had in the past and for running over his girlfriend in the past or whatever the mother of his child he was given a thousand dollar bail and released a thousand dollars and then and this is like this is not like that was not some freak thing this guy's been in trouble with the law over and over and over again and surprise surprise he goes on and commits another heinous crime this time with many victims unrelated now now this happened in a county with a district attorney who's a real progressive who believes criminals should get a second chance and we shouldn't penalize poor criminals with high bail and we should let them all loosen we're seeing the same thing in la san francisco philadelphia miniapolis but this this was in a milwaukee county and the consequence is shockingly rising crime thousand dollar bail for running over a woman purposefully not accidentally purposefully in other words attempted murder thousand dollar bail it's mind boggling why would somebody like this be allowed out on bail at all a headline in um in the washington post described this event where six people have died including an age old boy and and as i said dozens were injured this is the headline the work i'm gonna butcher the name i apologize of the county in of the city in milwaukee in in in wisconsin the walk is tragedy caused by a suv you know what do you what can you do but laugh first of all it's not a tragedy tragedy is like stuff stuff happens this is like murder this is like a massive crime and the suv didn't do it i mean it's one thing to say gun violence as if guns are violent because guns are you know a tool of violence that's what they are okay right still somebody had to pull the trigger but suvs are now it's not the person god forbid we blame anybody because you know they're just products of their genes or products of their environment you know they they can't help themselves they just all what they are it's probably systemic racism in one way or another or systemic poverty or systemic neglect or systemically unloved or whatever systemic thing caused this suv to do it i mean i wonder if the suv what color suv was maybe the suv was like a maybe it was orange or something some horrible color and and people insulted it and it was feeling insulted so they decided to run a bunch of people over now as it happened the guy who actually ran over the people the guy who ran over his mother of his child the guy who got out on bail for a thousand dollars it looks like he's a fan of adolf hitler one article you know suggests that in the new york post dowbrook shed pro hitler memes called for violence against white people that's interesting that you're both pro hitler and anti white people you know i i go go figure this out go figure all this out it doesn't matter the guy is a nut a violent nut should have never ever ever been allowed out on bail right yeah he was he was uh big on on killing jews those the kind of white people he really wanted to kill uh was jews right anti anti cops so yeah i mean this this this guy was a piece of work we all piece of work but it's not his fault it's the suv did it the orange suv maybe it was an orange i don't know you're seeing a pattern but then over the last few days seemingly out of nowhere it looks like a bunch of people looked at the video of what happened in chicago last summer notice that what happened there is it was a large group of people rushed in stole a bunch of stuff rushed out gun and they caused drove away almost nobody was arrested the ones who arrested were released with a slap on the wrist because blm advocated for the cause somebody sat down and figured out huh i wonder if we can replicate that all right so i'm i'm being corrected it wasn't orange it was red okay well if it was red that makes sense you'd expect that of a red suv right i'm trying to be funny here i don't know if it's working but you'd expect that of a red suv not of a different color suv maybe a red suv you could expect that anyway it says if somebody sat down and figured out huh i wonder if we can replicate what happened in chicago and get away with it and indeed if we replicated what's the big deal if we can get enough people to run into a store all at once grab as much stuff as we can run outside getting our cars and drive away what are the police gonna do if there's so many of us how are they gonna catch us if there's so many of us what are they gonna start shooting they're not gonna shoot us because we know what happens if the police shoot and the security guards are not gonna shoot us they're too afraid to shoot so we can beat up the security guards grab as much Louis Vuitton or Best Buy Stuff as we can run into the car get out of there and what you're seeing across california started in san francisco but across california is flash mobs you remember the flash mobs where they start dancing or they start playing music or they start singing and it's really really cool and really really beautiful well now these flash mobs obviously well orchestrated what planned what thought in advance a burglarizing store after store after store in california started in san francisco san francisco that has a district attorney that basically is not prosecuting shoplifting stores have closed in san francisco the first store in which they came in robbed and escaped was a Louis Vuitton in Union Square they've now done it at Best Buy and other luxury stores this is now spread to minneapolis another one of these district attorneys that are very very soft on property crimes and there's no end in sight some of these mobs are not just attacking the stores but if their people around there were shopping bags or bags they're grabbing the shopping bags grabbing people's wallets and running away some of them are armed some of them are not but they basically you know there was a there was a one flash mob took on a home depot and they went in and they got sledgehammers and all kinds of equipment so that they could go I guess and rob the best buy and smash the windows and grab the stuff and I mean looking at my news feed it's like this is everywhere for at least a decade now we have told poor people over and over again that they are victims of the system that they are poor not for any fault of their own but because the system makes them poor the system by the way is capitalism and that the way that manifests itself is through inequality that inequality was a way in which nobody ever explains how this works but it's a way in which the rich the wealthy the establishment the successful have oppressed the poor and kept them down this has been a popular suggestion a popular storyline of the left that has been picked up since Trump by the right and has become now just something that everybody accepts the working class the whether it's white working class a rural working class whether it's in a city working class the working class is being screwed by the rest by the so-called elites and whether you're right or left it doesn't matter it's the fact that you're working class and the rich don't deserve what they have it's all at your expense whatever they have they've stolen from you they don't deserve it it's not theirs on top of that the left for the last certainly for the last four five years has been aggressively advocating the far left an anti-poverty rights perspective what is socialism after all what is bernie sand is after all if not a hater of property rights when politicians float the idea of having wealth taxes taxes on unearned capital gains increasing taxes on the wealthy everybody knows what that means that means stealing stuff to redistribute and then when riots happened last summer and nobody really condemned them and when vandalism and burning of stores an explicit straight out looting happened nobody objected states government cities didn't do much stop it federal government didn't do much again federal government deployed forces only to protect the federal building did nothing what is the message that's being sent to people property rights don't matter rich don't deserve what they have after all it's just a way of redistributing wealth theft when people who shoplift are not prosecuted so if you steal a little bit then it's okay but if i steal a lot it's not okay what's a lot what's a little isn't it the case that if i can get away with it it's okay when the left and right advocate for nihilism for not caring about values for no respect for human life or property then people learn the lesson they internalize it at least the people at the margins oh so we just need to figure out how to do it when the police are deemed impotent when the police in t indeed are told to stand down when people can riot in place like canisar burns people down and the police are told not to intervene then what the hell let's start a riot and then we'll steal stuff on the side what all these ideas what the nihilism the hatred the wanting to see the world burn by certain intellectuals who of course tell the looters that it's not their fault indeed they are the victims they're only doing it as a sign of protest against systemic fill in the blank systemic discrimination systemic racism systemic exploitation when people tell them that the jobs they have a slavery are no different than slavery then they live in a slave society and it's time to rise up against the slave owners all the messages people are getting have been getting over the last year and a half have been that the rule of law is unjust and that they should just go implicitly just go and take what they want and that's what they're doing and they figured out we'll see how far the spreads around the country so far as I said most of the stories I've seen are in california where we have very soft attorney generals I doubt you'll see this in orange county in california but you'll see it in la county you'll see it in san francisco and you'll see it in places like minnesota miniapolis this is anarchy this is what happens when there's no respect for the rule of law when the police are shackled when you have no police or that they're not allowed to do their job this is what happens when we let criminals out with no punishment this is what happens when you throw in the top and yeah it's not a consequence of the last year and a half it's just the last year and a half it's become explicit yeah it's a trend that's been happening for a hundred years as we have eroded any respect for individual rights and we've eroded any respect for individual sovereignty as we've eroded any respect for individual agency as we've attributed all actions to genes and environment and we're all just automatons and yeah we go up and down in the 70s was particularly bad 80s and 90s were at least starting in the 90s crime declined significantly trump signed a massive federal prisoner release bill yeah one of the few things that trump did that was very good because the kind of people he released was drugs and that's that's great instead of devoting police resources to protecting louis Vuitton and to protecting best buy let's go pick up those kids who might be shooting up some heroin or might be smoking some moana victimless crimes the victim is themselves why are we i mean the legal the laws against illegal drugs are completely provoking and distorting all of this but this is the consequence of leftist anti-capitalist um anti-individualist ideas that have now infiltrated every aspect of our lives and infiltrated both left and right so they're no longer just leftist ideas this is the consequence of of Kant and Hegel and Marx and post-modernists and the nationalists and all of them or as Stephanie says of the consequence of the government regulating so much that you can't even sell lemonade without a license this is what happens no looting in Puerto Rico and i don't blame crt crt i mean it's it's shallow to blame the latest three-letter you know manifestation among some intellectuals at the top this idea of you determined by your genes is an ancient idea crt didn't invent it indeed nothing crt says it invented or is particularly original it's just the latest manifestation of ideas that have been percolating around since immanuel Kant and really even before that he said just medieval ideas kori says but those drugs make them a danger to society putting others in danger who who's in danger because of drugs i mean you're in danger because drugs are illegal and therefore people fight over them but if drugs were legal they'd be cheap and people wouldn't fight and they would crime and death and murder and violence would decline dramatically would decline dramatically and you know so no it's the drugs are not the danger it's the one drugs that is the danger the one drugs its consequences inevitably are more crime more deaths more destruction more corruption among the police i know kori's being sarcastic but i'm taking him seriously because i'm sure that people out there who would be seriously serious about a question like that all right um let's see let's see let's see let's see um yeah henry reminds me good time to recommend that people uh listen to let him pick up lecture about what to do about crime what to do about crime i can't remember when he gave that lecture but i think it was in the early 90s before we started to see a sharp decline in crime whatever was being done in those days was actually working uh says he says the one drugs is causing more waste of money than anything sure but the real problem with the one drugs is the um what is is the is not it's cost but it's the murderous nature of it the number of people that have died as a consequence um kori did you you did a 50 australian dollar question but then you said continued but i don't see the continuation oh there it is you continue to with the five dollars of course i didn't notice i only noticed the 50 that's not right i mean i'll pay a lot more attention to the first half the question the second half the question i appreciate i appreciate the 55 australian dollars and and you've already asked another question uh and by the way i'll just remind you all i won't dwell on it but i remind you that we still have four hundred and twenty eight dollars to go before we reach our goal tonight so uh those who are asking five dollar questions ramp it up to 20 so we can get to uh we can get to our goal as kori says recently we watched your seido interview sam seida picked up on the fact that one of the objections to what makes property yours is that it can still physically be stolen from you and there was no matter physical phenomena from stopping that by that logic next they'll be saying that murder can be wrong because it is physically possible to kill somebody yes i mean it is a it is nonsensical and of course one of the things they um they ignore they evade is the evil of the use of force and why the use of force is evil what they evade and ignore what they reject completely is the idea that force is evil to them force is just a one means in which people relate to one another and if that's if that's the case what's the big deal about stealing stuff if force is a legitimate means by which we interact then yeah i can steal your stuff what they really don't like and and again really only on the basis of emotion is violent and they take violence to mean murder punching you in the face but if i can steal your stuff without assaulting you without physically bodily hurting you but nothing wrong with that i mean didn't you know in a sense isn't that what we do if the world is just some game which is what many of them believe what what their their their you know infantile economic ideas lead them to believe if the world is just some game then any wealth that is that is accumulated is stolen it's just somebody else's expense if wages are form of slavery then the person employing you your boss owner of the business is committing violence against you you're owning wage slave wages they throw around the word slavery as if it's has no meaning to them the voluntary exchange done under wages under business agreement is equivalent to slavery so of course stealing is equivalent to earning creating building why wouldn't it be concepts lose their meaning and violence is just one way in which we interact it's just one other way in which we relate to one another in which we exchange in quotation marks values with one another and since the only real evil according to some of them at least is bodily harm against you if i don't give it bodily harm against you then i just steal your stuff what's the big deal about that it's just stuff and they drop completely you know completely evade completely that stuff has to be created that somebody has to create it the time and effort to create stuff the thought the energy the time the life to create it is yours that they're not just stealing the thing but they're stealing that everything that thing represents or the other value that went into it all the time all the money or the effort that went into that thing the you created theft is a direct attack on your life it is a direct attack on your values it is a direct attack on your effort on your time on your energy on your mind it's no less of an attack on you than is violence against you all right let's see um let's see if there's anything related to what we be talking about um Thessie asks for 20 dollars why do you think BLM did not stand out for black cops and minorities on the force who died on the job well because they hate the police did this undermine their overall organization and mission yes it seems only BLM for certain parts of society yeah no look BLM was um is not uh you know it's not an organization dedicated to um I mean originally the idea was organization dedicated to fighting police abuse and maybe then it evolved into we're an organization dedicated to fighting police abuse against blacks and then it kind of became more explicit that what they really were about is organization against police against capitalism against the entire system in the world today organization that wants to completely demolish the existing culture civilized culture that exists in the world today we're nihilists who want to bring down the system bring down the world as it exists today some of us are Marxists some of us are just straight out nihilists some of us are just straight out racists but the intellectuals behind BLM were not interested in police violence in particular they were not interested in police interested in police violence and abuse of violence in general they wanted no police they wanted to return us to state of nature they want us to destroy capitalism and if you go back if you went back to BLM of 2015 when it first was founded back then they were explicitly anti-capitalist they then took some of that off their website in order not to alienate certain people and particularly certain funders who gave them money who didn't want to fund their explicit anti-capitalist agenda but BLM was never a good organization dedicated to preserving the rights and protecting anybody including black people because yes you're right if you were black police they didn't care what i owed about you because you were police and that was a greater evil all right where i saw kori put up another 50 australian thank you kori says absolutely except perfect example of the anti-conceptual mentality yes especially when they try to formulate a gotcha when they smugly asked you how government protects rights implying no difference between assault and self-defense i can't remember the actual exchange so i apologize i can't remember that but yeah it makes complete sense and again i would say that what we're experiencing in the works in the world today broadly speaking in at least in the united states but i think this is true is the anti-conceptual mentality what did i mean by anti-conceptual if you think about what makes human consciousness what makes human consciousness unique what makes thinking possible is our ability to conceptualize ability to abstract ability to go from concretes from perceptions to concepts then integrate and create new concepts on concept and create greater and greater and greater and higher and higher and higher abstractions if you think about a baby very young very early they don't abstract they can't think in terms of abstractions they don't think what they can see are just concretes they just they stuff happening they can't understand it they can't experience cause and they can't understand cause and effect they can't discover cause and effect because that requires a level of abstraction conceptualizations an anti-conceptual mentality is a mentality stuck at the perceptual level stuck at seeing concrete things for example if i buy an iphone what the anti-conceptual mentality sees i give apple a thousand dollars and i get this thing it seems to them like it's a zero-sum game there's no value has been created here whatever profit apple made was at my expense it can't conceive of the value added to me and how the iphone is worth much more than a thousand dollars to me it can't conceive of the fact that the iphone doesn't exist unless apple has profits it can't conceive of the thought the effort the planning the organization the coordination that has to go into creating an iphone none of that is is is is available to them because all they have is perception all they have is the things out there the iphone as wonderfiemann said it's just a miracle it just popped out of nowhere indeed the general attitude towards innovation in the world out there by many people is that it just happens it's not it doesn't require any particular effort it doesn't require any particular system it doesn't require any particular principles it just happens the inevitability of progress the inevitability of innovation you don't need any incentives motivations a system to protect property rights no innovation just happens no matter what so um they are anti-conceptual and in that sense corey absolutely right the the the one of the great evils in the world in which we live is that people will not rise up don't make the effort to rise up and and if they to the conceptual level to the level of abstractions they might do it in a particular area of their life and they completely ignore it in other areas of their life and i highly recommend reading on rand on this she does a you know brilliant job in in her essay the anti-conceptual mentality which i cannot remember which of her books it is but definitely worth reading um let's see if we have other related questions otherwise i'll just go to 20 dollar questions um just a reminder that uh again we're still way short of where we need to be so uh if anybody wants to mimic uh or follow up on um follow up on corey with some uh more substantial contributions rather than five dollars at a time then maybe we have a shot at getting to our goal and making catherine's evening but otherwise you're going to make catherine very disappointed if uh if we can't get to uh to where we need to go i appreciate the five dollar ones but let's try to really ramp it up to get to where we need to get all right um okay ryan asked uh this is uh he says off topic i think there must be many similarities between productive geniuses and autistic geniuses however there must also be some distinct differences can you offer some examples of similarities and differences um i think the similarities are wow i mean that's a it's not that is not an easy question to answer off the cuff let me try i think all genius requires the same toolkit in a sense it requires focus focus on what it is you know a clear vision of what you want and then the the ability to mentally focus on creating and producing it it requires the ability to stay focused it requires the ability to reason to think abstractly to to project into the future to project whatever it is that you're creating and see it manifest in reality out there that is true of both productive geniuses and autistic geniuses uh whether it's michael angelo looking at a piece of marble and knowing the form he's going to create in it evaluating every crack every seam the angle of the things of the of the seams in the marble to see to be able to figure out how the image is going to be inserted or whether it is a uh a steve jobs uh you know imagining what an iphone will will do approximately what it would look like and what the steps you have to take to get from where you are to where you need to be it's that ability to abstract it's that ability to plan it's that ability to be unbelievably focused in achieving the goal you have set to yourself i think that's true of every every form of productivity and and remember that autistic geniuses you know that they have to be you know if they if they're gonna create um um they uh they have that's the form productivity and all productivity is is this is this focus and ability to abstract and to um uh know what your goal is imagine what your goal is and then develop the plan and work hard you know dedicate the the time the effort the work in order to get to that plan right you know reared in with reared in mail he knew what he was going for and now he's just taking the steps to get there trying failing reevaluating thinking through figuring out correcting fixing moving forward i can't i'm trying to think about the difference i mean the difference is the realm in which it is done the the the the productive genius the businessman genius is functioning primarily in the realm of the physical world um it's the realm of shaping if you will the material of the world in his image the artist is primarily i think is deals with i think two worlds at the same time very much kind of a and a a sense of life world they and if you will an emotional world the world of of of what are his values what are the things important to him at a very abstract but for the artist experiences it as a very strong emotion as a very strong passion and then dealing with how to take that emotion that passion and turn it into a physical manifestation whether it's a sculpture a painting or piece of music but what that piece of music what the sculpture what the painting is doing is projecting onto the world his value judgments his view of the world so it's taking that uh implicit philosophy that he has the artist has metaphysical value judgments implicit fundamental philosophical premises and projecting them around to the world and then the question for him is well how do i do it i mean it's now it's very similar to the productive challenge okay this is what i want so the source of the value the source of what you're heading for comes from a different place it's not any question of um in a sense what kind of product do i want to see in the world what do i think would be successful in the world what i think will enhance productivity in the world you know an iphone that would be great if everybody had an iphone i had an iphone this is how it would be used it's how do i project onto the world my view of man as a hero man is competent in dealing with reality so the level of abstraction of what you're trying to project is different but the process of projecting it of making it real is very similar both require real skills you have to know how to paint you have to know how to manage you have to know how to produce artists also the one other difference i think there's a lot more reliance on other people for productive genius for for steeve jobs like person go gauge type person an artist is an honest job is very lonely now with exception maybe of an actor or or director or producer on stage and film but most art is done in solitary that's a difference i don't know how important it is jacob thank you fifty dollars that's incredibly generous really appreciated that gets us um that gets us uh where does that get us oh uh all right that goes past a halfway mark so we're still looking for about 250 dollars to get us to where we need to be so i need a few more jacobs to pitch in with 50 dollar uh questions but jacob says happy thanksgiving planning on introducing someone close to me to objectivism i think it could really help her life like it has mine that's great any tips she's from taiwan so it has duty beaten into thinking rather than religion it's quite odd to me yes it's duty and it's family so the the the whole the world you you don't have jesus which is great makes life easier um you don't have a kind of kind of altruism that is universal you have to the extent that you have altruism it's more to your family which is um which i think is healthier so i think i i i generally think the asian cultures should be more open to objectivism because of the lack of particularly christianity um i'd suggest the fountainhead particularly if she is a creative entrepreneurial spirit i think uh then i would definitely uh recommend starting with the fountainhead or if you wanted the non-fiction the virtue of selfishness the city of your life is yours ask about any duty the simple question of why why so yeah uh iron man has a good essay thanks rob called causality versus duty which undermined and where she undermines undercuts disproves the whole duty premise the whole duty premise so uh good luck but a fountainhead virtue of selfishness you should read causality versus duty before you talk to her don't have her read it it's a little too advanced it assumes too much context i think for somebody fresh to start out with that but uh i i do think after the fountainhead it's things like that that would be good to read but just the question of why why is your life not yours to live as you see fit for your own benefit and for your own happiness why why not give me a reason why that would be bad all right kathryn is doing a courageous job in trying really trying you guys need to help her out a few more questions you know uh if we just got um i don't know uh 12 questions or 20 bucks each would be where we need to be so uh please step in and and help us out here okay this he asks why is it called black lives matter then has to be renamed so much it's sue them for false advertising can't sue for something like this only those who have been victims of police brutality matter name needs to be changed message is false of course the message is forced it's been forced from the beginning they lie just like everybody else lies um almost everybody else not everybody else names don't mean anything you have to look behind the name you have to look at what's actually being said or being done or or being promoted and black lives matter was black lives matter was never really about black lives it was about a a leftist to lausthen nihilist anti-capitalist agenda so don't be shocked by the fact that people people lie they do that's the reality in which we live all right james asked what do you think about the metaverse spending most of one's life with the virtual reality helmet compatible with rand's vision of human greatness no but but look human greatness doesn't mean climbing up mountains it means creating and building and inventing and the fact is the building creating and inventing is going to be done differently in 50 years than it's done today and today it's being done differently than it was done a hundred years ago so um you know today we set opposite a computer screen and we write code and and and we develop and create stuff that is unique and exciting and different and and and a huge achievement and some of that will be done you know using some kind of glasses goggles whatever you want to call it i don't think uh that is you know the the the form the technology takes is what matters but we have to also recognize the fact that we live in a real world we eat in the real world we have sex in the real world we we much of what we do watch of what we gain benefit from is in physical matter in the real world and that it is important for us to stay connected to that real world and you can't eat virtually i guess you could put in a um you can get in a an infusion and just play video games all day or just be with that helmet on and and not have to go out and eat but that is is i don't think that is going to be life a life worth living one has to be engaged with the world not just its representation which is what the meta verse is its representation of reality stand one has to have a connection to reality so i don't think that humanity is going to just be stuck in a metaverse but i do think we're gonna have more of it i mean you know every new technology is resisted i mean how many parents thought their children were going to go brain dad brain numb if not brain dad because of television and now i don't know because of uh then because of the of computers and now because of the ipad and next because of one because of facebook and next because of the oculus scuggles that they were so i don't believe the metaverse uh will survive a healthy culture now the problem is the culture is not healthy we know that so you know what we need to do is fight not fight the metaverse fight for positive values fight for reason fight for living with the capital l thing right fight for values yes i think all of us will in the long run benefit from and benefit from this virtual reality this ability to manipulate object opening i mean people could do surgeries from afar now which is pretty amazing you know with robots i think more and more of that's going to happen and more and more of that is probably good up to a limit you still have to go out and engage with other people engage with reality engage and enjoying one's food and enjoying the things that one can create within reality that doesn't mean we negate one part of reality which is the virtual which we create jj jj jj whatever ask me if i've tried virtual reality i mean a long time ago i'm sure it's much much better much more intense today but i don't find virtual reality that interesting i don't find games that interesting uh computer games uh or whatever you call them today i guess i'm not computer games anymore um and and i also know they're addictive in one of the reasons i resist them and stay away from them all right uh same person asks sorry to return to this i watched squid games seems it was in the tradition of lord of the flies portraying humanity as innately as evil by placing its character in a fantastically setting that is ultimately meaningless i think that's right um but it's not meaningless in a sense that it's it the meaning is evil the meaning is the innate evilness of human beings um but here there was an additional twist on it because clearly it was against money and against wealth and it clearly had this additional ancient message which is you know money um money uh uh corrupts and a lot of money corrupts a lot so the corruption of wealth the corruption of money and ultimately the corruption of capitalism although that's less of the theme and and just as i said the theme was just the the the the the evil that is human nature human beings and that they're no real good guys not who can survive so yes i i i agree with you on squid games i'm sorry and i thought it was a painful experience a horrible series a gratuitous gratuitous violence and i'm sorry you watched it in spite of my recommendation not to but some people enjoy that stuff i i i despise it um what do you think of ali asks what do you think of this statement believe in science and follow science i think i find it wrong uh by all means since science is a tool not something to believe in i mean it's what does it mean that science is a tool right so science is the discovery of knowledge in the physical world right it's discovery of knowledge in the physical world of of of how the physical world works to the extent that science is discovering knowledge i believe in that science i believe in knowledge knowledge is important and sometimes i don't know the knowledge i believe it because i don't have the time to prove it to myself so i don't think belief here is out of context right i i believe my doctor even sometimes when i don't completely understand what she's talking about because i don't have the full context of her knowledge about it and in that sense i'm believing the science and yes you should follow the science the question is you should always ask yourself is it science that is science is the discovery of knowledge about the physical world right so you don't want to turn science into religion in the sense that or not so much science into religion because you can't do that you don't want to turn the scientist into um religious figures where you believe everything the scientist says you've always got to have a mind the scientists could be wrong they could be maliciously wrong or they could just be wrong they could just be mistaken so you want to treat science like every other piece of human knowledge you want to evaluate it whether it's true or false but sometimes you're not going to have the tools to evaluate its truth or false it and you're going to have to make a case for given my knowledge of this doctor given my knowledge of the state of the science this makes sense to me even though i can't prove it even though i don't know it a hundred percent i know it it seems reasonable enough for me to act on it i don't i don't know the science uh uh behind uh my computer i know elements of it i know pieces of it but yeah i the science seems to work i believe in whatever the science is that's behind us in in a sense i follow the science it says press the button then it'll turn on yeah i press the button then it turns on so you know you you've got to you've got to think for yourself you've got to observe for yourself you've got to research for yourself and the more importance the science is to your life medical for example the more research you should do to independently verify it but you can't learn and know everything so to some extent yeah i'm fine with believing the science and follow the science just make sure that it is science that it is knowledge i believe in knowledge and i follow knowledge what else is there no i'm not following science i'm following whatever i feel like today i'm not following science i'm following joe i'm not following science i'm gonna follow voodoo i'm gonna make it up as i go along well what else is there other than knowledge science is one form of knowledge so i think one of the great tragedies of covid of of of the um of the whole populist of populism one of the great tragedies of populism that have manifest themselves more so in covid than ever before is on the one hand the disrespect we have for science for experts for for for people who you know are studying and and experts in a particular realm and on the other side certain people um choosing which scientists to listen to because of course scientists don't always agree and using what they believe is the the the majority of you as dogma and both sides undermining what real science is and how it should really deal with science coey says science at the end of the day ultimately boils down to sense perception yeah if you boil it all down but you you know it's hard there can be no break in the chain from abstract to direct perception yes i think that's right but that is not simple right we can't see atoms we can't see them there's no sense perception that gives us atoms but we can abstract two atoms through the help of observing things with our sensors physical phenomena that are observable to the sensors and then doing experiments which are observable to instruments which were developed based on what was observable and ultimately using all that plus math to understand the existence of atoms and how they behave even though we can't actually see them we can't actually directly observe them through our sensors so yes everything should be observable to our sensors that is hard is my point not it's hard to make those connections and the same in biology we don't see the molecules we can't observe directly all the cells in our body and what a particular medicine is doing to all ourselves in our body or what a vaccine is doing we know how it works we can see it under the microsoft we don't know how it works in the environment of the body that's why you run tests what's observable as the response and we can from our observations we can abstract an explanation but those explanations could be wrong because we're not observing them directly this is why it's so important to have a chain of reasoning to be able to follow a chain of reasoning to test the chain of reasoning to challenge the continuously challenge that chain of reasoning all right uh let's see any other $20 questions yes james did the viral enable more nationalism workforces and stop global work expansion it appears that on one hand that a worker working from home can work anyway so why not hire anyway will this be an employer revolution um it's very difficult to hire people anyway i mean in theory that sounds amazing but let's say i want to the book media and consulting that's the company that runs this uh podcast and youtube channel let's say book media and consulting wants to hire somebody in california and have them work for me from california as an employee well now i in porto rico have to now abide by california law i have to do it all the things that california law demands of me vis-a-vis that employee i probably have to file for taxes in california at least on a portion of the income that portion that they can attribute to the employee in california and then if i hire somebody in california and then hire somebody in new york now i have another state another set of regulations another set of controls another set of taxes that bmc has to abide by so you pick any state you want you think texas doesn't have employment regulations you think flyer doesn't everybody does everywhere does and each one of them are different and therefore each one of them if you have employees in different states you're gonna have to so it's not that easy now if you add to that different countries austin texas has employment regulations texas is not a free market texas is relatively highly regulated more highly regulated for example than florida i think it ranks in the top 10 of least regulated states in the country but i don't think texas is in the top five so hiring people all over the place is very difficult very complicated because of statism if we lived in a world in a true free market absolutely you could hire anybody anyway now imagine if i hired somebody in france or in thailand the all kinds of regulations there international taxes i have to worry about moving money across country lines none of this is easy because statism government makes it very difficult and you're right that kovat has expanded nationalism has grown the nationalist tendency populism generally has and then kovat has just encouraged populism even more and that is going to stop global work expansion it's going to stop trade it's going to stop the massive benefits of globalization massive benefits of globalization and and that's a great tragedy because kovat you know populism has driven up nationalism but it's also covered as then people live under the illusion that they need supply chains close at a home they need to produce more stuff at home for national security reasons and to be healthier and all this bullshit and uh we can't trust these people can't trust those people you know it just enhances all of that i can only trust my neighbors i can only trust people with the same culture of the same color skin or whatever all right oh kori keeps keeps on coming that's great um ali thank you that's great ali says thank you for the answer but some what's so-called science like global warming and string theory have zero experiment to prove it and has tens of thousands of papers also some university uh promoting bad health habits because it is environment friendly yes there's a lot of bad science there is unfortunately a lot of bad or better than bad science there's a lot of pseudo science there is a lot of stuff that presents itself as if it's science but it's not so you have to be able to differentiate and distinguish between science and non-science this is why you shouldn't worship scientists but you should have a lot of respect for science real science string theory is not science string theory is math detached from reality did i swear alan is putting money in the swear jar i don't remember swearing maybe alan swore when he has to put money in the swear jar um so don't confuse the field science with the people with the personalities with their agendas with their politics with what they're pushing with what they're advocating for and not everything that people call science is science string theory for example it's not physics it's mind games so it's your responsibility to figure out if you if you care right if you're going to follow science respect science it's your responsibility to figure out what is science and what isn't again string theory is not science climate change is a mixture of science and bs right and you have to figure out even climate change what is bs and what isn't and a lot of the reason you get a lot of this stuff is because of statism because the government sponsors research about things that are meaningless that you know scientists get funding for projects that mean nothing and have no usability and lead to nothing because the government is granting funds and and you get a complete perversion government funding of science perverts science and creates a lot of pseudoscience but don't confuse pseudoscience with science real science is worth believing in and following what's the alternative again i ask you what's the alternative to following science for example nutrition do you want to follow science or do you want to follow urges hunches emotions it's all emotions at the end mystical revelations the bible it says don't eat a cow with its mother milk mother's milk not a cow a calf with its mother's milk and the jews have a whole convoluted perverted distorted bizarre view about what is kosher and what is not partially because of this one little sentence in the old testament so they don't eat meat meat and milk in the same at the same time all that said is about its mother's milk not in principle all right uh kori oh i totally forgot to ask this question he says but it's good you remembered i'd be meaning to ask for a while what do you think of of the saying ignorance of the law is no excuse especially in today's heavily regulated world i think that it is a complete distortion and perversion and immoral and a tool of the authoritarians to rule over our lives they purposefully purposefully they purposefully um create laws that you cannot understand that you cannot follow that you cannot even read that you can't know who's red dot frank from beginning to end a few lawyers so of course we ignorant of the law do i understand the tax code no do i understand the aspect of every regulation that out there that applies to me no and i can't and there's no way for me to do it this is the evil of of of statism as it exists today all statism but particularly of the regulatory state so no of course ignorance of the law is an excuse now in a proper society in a rational society where the law is not complex it's fairly straightforward it mainly is i won't say just but it mainly is right the protection of property rights protection of individuals laws are written in plain english not legalese generally laws anybody in the any civilians should be able to read them and understand them then i would agree with the ignorance of the law is no excuse if you engage in a particular activity know what laws relate to that activity but that is places a burden on the people writing the laws and that they write the laws in ways that are understandable to us right ways that are understandable to us okay and and we don't have that today at all not even close so that would be a great achievement if we got to that point and only then would that you know ignorance of the law is no excuse would be applicable hopefully that answers your question kori quickly ali says maybe follow reasons supported by science yeah but what is science proper science science science which i assume is proper science is reason it's the application of reason to solving particular problems the problems of explaining the material world so science is reason manifest in the exploration of the physical world it's not some separate thing there's reason and there's science and as long as i use reason to understand science i'm okay well you should use your reason and try to understand what the science is but it's not two different things i mean it is in a sense that science is one one application of reason so yeah i like follow reason supported by well just follow reason respect science i love science i follow science once i know that it's science that it's knowledge that it's not sudo and once i understand it that's where my reason comes in so you never do anything without reason adam thank you that's very generous i appreciate the support what do you think of companies that hire people in other states and countries to work for them meet all the local regulations etc would you agree that the future of elementary education is companies that do this for pods of tutoring students okay i'm trying to understand the question it's not super clear what do you think of companies that hire people in other states and countries to work for you yeah oh okay yeah i think those are great these are outsourcing companies companies that specialize in doing this for you they deal with the regulations they pay they pay the benefit they pay you pay them and they they take care of the benefits and the regulations and they take care all of that yeah i think that's great but of course it costs you money they don't do it for free so it's a transaction cost and then the question is is it worth it some places it is uh sometimes it isn't but it's it's a cost that in a free society we wouldn't have to bear right would you agree that the future of elementary education is companies that do this for pods of tutor students i think that's part of the future of education or the of the future of elementary education i also think the future of elementary education is in in private schools like higher ground that are based on a rational curriculum i think the future of education is also in people developing good curriculum and trying to infiltrate even the the you know the the normal schools but i think it's in private education that is guided by a rational curriculum and some of that could be pods where you get six seven kids together and they study together maybe it's online that's one form it's very difficult to scale that it's very good very difficult to get that on scale pods but it is a way to alter education but i think generally private education and and alternatives and experimentation and different different ways of the living education is the future um all right let us see okay so we are short basically 80 bucks so it would be nice if we got 40 20 dollar questions and not 40 for 20 dollar questions and we'd be able to reach a goal for the day that would be terrific we wouldn't want to make this the only day where we miss our goal i still got a lot of super chat questions but they're all that kind of the five and ten dollars i think i've done all the 20 dollar ones so those of you who have additional questions please no more five dollar questions ten dollar questions let's try to make them all 20 dollar questions and let's make sure we get at least four you can also make a contribution to your own book show without asking a question that's cool too we're looking right now for about 80 bucks to get to our 600 dollar target all right jao from brazil asks what are your thoughts on free will i like it i have it you do too what can i argue with the determinist that he understands my position you introspect you can if you properly introspect you can experience the fact that you choose and that you can also experience the fact if you follow your day and you really introspect that your primary choice the fundamental choices to focus on the question or not no i could i could easily just fade out of it to focus on not to focus to focus your mind to elevate your consciousness put it into a focused state into a state of full awareness yeah i have evidence of free will i can see it do i have evidence that this pen exists yeah i can see it do i have evidence of free will yeah if i introspect i can see it um i highly recommend um because i'm not an expert on free will there's a number of videos that have been made with some philosophers on the iron rand institute website iron rand institute youtube channel on free will you get a lot of really good um examples and discussions there's even a video i think iron rand versus sam harris on youtube iron rand versus sam harris vis-a-vis free will is on uh is on youtube right so uh check that out i'm happy to engage you on it if it was earlier in the evening but um it's better to get it directly from the philosophers all right guys somebody has to come in with a super 80-dollar super chat question so we can all go to go to bed okay so it's we got fredrik thank you fredrik appreciate it uh okay michael ask what gave you the impression the judge was biased for written house i think he rightly called out the prosecution for commenting on the defendants post arrest silence yeah i think he he justifiably called out the prosecution on several occasions but i also think that he on a number of occasions and i cannot remember the specifics i just remember the impression i had at the time that on a number of occasions at that time he made comments that suggested that you know uh that he he seemed to have an opinion about this case already wrapped up uh that's fine a judge can have that opinion if it doesn't affect uh his his decision making i don't think this case will be appealed um i don't think the prosecutor is going to challenge that the judge did a good job in spite of being maybe somewhat biased but i do think he made some comments to suggest that he had made up his mind i can't remember the details of the comments i apologize fredrik thank you fredrik is kind of trickling the money in to get us to where we need to go he's he's challenging katharine's ability to add and to do math it's good it's good keep katharine on her toes michael asks in an objectiveist court system would there be defense attorneys and prosecutors or would you have a panel of judges trying to find out the facts look i don't know i'm not a philosopher of the law i don't have a strong view here let it peak off who thought about this a lot more than i have who is smarter than i am and certainly knows objectivism better than i do philosophically um is of the opinion that some kind of panel of judges some kind of a french system that does not have an adversarial relationship between the defense attorneys and the prosecutors would be more consistent with the idea of justice and i find it very difficult to disagree with liner peak off on issues like this uh and he's made the case and if you're interested i think he talks about it um uh and at photo forum talk right after the oj simpson trial and and i think on his pot on his podcast or the or the talk that he gave about the oj simpson trial i think he discussed the the weaknesses of a jury-based system there so um that's my view but i would suggest that um there is no formal objectivist position on it and i would suggest that as we approach the free society this is the kind of work that um philosophers of law inspired by objectivism would have to grapple with in order to set up the legal system in this ideal society of the future michael says don't seek revenge the rotten fruit will fall by themselves aristata um yeah but i don't see why revenge is bad i'm a i'm a fan of revenge if you can do it without sacrificing your values without diverting your attention for what's important in life i love revenge stories i love the counter monarch crystal and other type of revenge stories i think seeking out justice is important yes they will suffer but i can expedite that suffering and i can make that suffering just a little bit greater and if i can make sure the justice is played out why not so don't sacrifice your life your values for revenge but as i've told you before i i'm a believer in hate i believe i these negative emotions are there for a reason and they are healthy and they're good for you some people deserve it some revenge is justified and and sometimes revenge is sweet we've only got fifty three dollars to get to our goal so fredrick could trickle in fifty three dollars maybe or we could just get somebody to step in with a fifty dollar uh contribution or fifty dollar super chat question any one of those would work or three people could do twenty dollars each five people could do ten dollars each that would work too why don't you like the sport of boxing um you look i don't like sports the shed blood um i don't like the violence i don't like the celebration of violence um i don't think it's civilized i poor violence i think violence is essentially anti-production anti-everything as wonder freeman says um boxing often result in brain damage that's horrible i can't think of i mean that's what violence does violence is brain damage but here it's physically brain damaging it's why i've stopped not completely but mostly watching football american football because of of the brain damage that american football causes i don't like i don't think it's it is it is rational or noble you know wrestling not the funny so the olympic type wrestling is is physical it's it's physical superiority it's got technique it's got all that but there's no blood shed blood does not flow it's not violence against somebody else in the sense that boxing uh mma uh all these other sports are i'm fine with practicing boxing practicing uh martial arts for self defense but but not as a sport because i think it's not i don't think it's a sport it's not entertaining to see people bashing each other's brains out and causing brain damage to the other side i think that's bob eric korey thank you i think korey set us i'm you know i think kathryn is figuring out australian dollars and the exchange ratio which changes day to day and i think all the exchange ratios changed quite dramatically on um on friday with the uh with a dramatic drop in the stock market and and dramatic drop in in bitcoin and huge changes in uh relative value of of different currencies thank you dean thank you frederick um i i think we're over 600 by this point uh but kathryn will update us once she does all the transactions got to transfer the shekel into dollars she's got to get australian dollars into american dollars uh she's working hard in this in the in the back uh back somewhere there to get it all uh to get it all right okay andrew asked for 20 dollars do you think the main problem today with relying on statistical analysis is widespread ignorance of statistics or widespread not objectivity of the more in the motives of intellectuals well both of course because the intellectuals don't have any incentive because of their motives they don't have an incentive in teaching us educating us guiding us towards a proper understanding of the statistics they're using they have an incentive powerful incentive to use the statistics against us and to use our ignorance against us and whenever your ignorant it's the fear is it's going to you use but from an individual perspective so many of us buy in to statistics out of ignorance and out of a sudden tribalism a following of authority a a because the statistics reaffirm what we already think but statistics are hard they require reasoning they require thinking they require knowledge like everything else they require knowledge and you need to educate yourself because if you could trust the intellectuals they could interpret it for you and they would tell look this is what the statistics means but you can't trust them not some of them you can't trust because they're idiots or because they don't know statistics either which makes them idiots in a sense some of them you can't trust because they're non-objective and because they have evil motivations or because they're purposefully deceiving you but the fact of reality is today since you cannot trust the intellectuals to tell you what the stuff really actually means if in a sense what the science actually means because science particularly in healthcare is so much driven by statistics that you have to know a little bit yourself i'm going to do a show on on what's his name on on steven pinker's book uh we'll talk about more about statistics when i do the show frank thank you frank for the twenty dollars um we're well over the six hundred six sixty five now that's great thank you guys this is fantastic is habeas corpus the original right the detached the law from the state and protected the individual i mean i think habeas corpus is in the magna cotta i think generally the magna cotta is the beginning of recognition of a law that is beyond the men that is a law that has objective status and does not depend on the king of the aristocrats or anybody like that to dictate it right so um habeas corpus is certainly part of that because it's part of that magna cotta which was the first place now you could argue that in the at least the jewish tradition there was a there was a certain aspect of the law having that relationship even before the magna cotta and indeed much of british common law there's some school of thought that attributes much of english common law to um a certain study in respect for the talmud the jewish talmud which is very similar to common law if you read it it has similar attributes to common law so it could be that that is the origins but certainly in the western tradition it is the magna cotta and the habeas corpus i think is is is in that magna cotta and represents part of that achievement a moral pancake pancake i asked the 20 dollar question south africa is coming up in six months since the zuma riots 340 deaths 10 walls burned 2 billion of property damage during the ludi um there was very little learned do you see this possibly happening in america um yeah i do unfortunately i think as respect for private property as respect for capitalism as respect for freedom as respect for individualism as respect for the rule of law diminish and they certainly did in south africa over the last 20 years under a a a sudo marxist sudo marxist regime of of uh of the a and c as that happens in america we will see more looting more damage more riots more deaths more property damage i don't think look at what's happening right now with the smash and grab it just encourages the nihilists it gives them the courage if you want to go out and do it smash and burn and destroy knock everything down all right michael when it comes to dating don't play hard to get play hard to forget okay i'll buy that dean writes sorry just $10 today was israel acting pragmatically by making peace with egypt uh when is making peace okay and if egypt work why peace with hamas and balustinian national authority won't work um you have to make i mean you have to make an assessment about whether the other party is sincere or not whether they have a real interest or not and whether they are willing to make certain commitments that express that sincerity i think in the case of egypt for israel uh uh it was a cautious peace um you know it would be would have been a mistake to celebrate that peace as the be all involved because while sadat seemed to be motivated have the right intentions really want peace the culture from which he came was not ready for peace didn't really want the peace and indeed killed him about a year after the peace was established as a reflection of their fact and israel still has quote peace with egypt but that could flip on a dime because egypt is fundamentally unfree and there's only so much you can do with an unfree country but it didn't cost israel much to have peace with it with egypt uh uh and israel is not in a position to defeat egypt and therefore peace with egypt under those circumstances given sadats seeming um sincerity made sense not costed out his life and uh he was a very brave man for attempting it because it was it was quite clear that he put his life in danger now why can't you have peace with hamas and and in the pacific national authority because they clearly don't want peace they clearly are committed to violence they clearly are committed to destroying israel they clearly committed to all to war and their their ideology everything about them is committed to violence and therefore there's nobody to do peace with there's no other side in the case of hamas and the palestinian authority you can't deal with people committed to violence so that seemed and persuasively convinced israelis that he had changed that he was now no longer committed to violence but even if hamas recognized the right of israel to exist but still was committed to using violence you cannot negotiate with him you cannot negotiate with the side committed to violence thesy asks they don't want to see the world burn they want to have bureaucratic power over it to feel important some of them some of them are just power lusters some of them want to see the world burn many of them want to see the world burn and one of the ways they won't admit that to themselves they pretend they want bureaucratic power over it so they can make it quote better but what they really want is to see it burn and as things the cheery read under they watch they enjoy it and they love it so there is the explicit motivation there's the implicit motivation low legard legend says slavery is taking on one's right to autonomy that is the definition most government force is as immoral a slave we must define it this way no i don't think so i think you have to be able to define different levels of subjugation the state through taxes and through government force subjugate you to a point slavy subjugate you a lot more slavy is an extreme form a consistent unmitigated form of subjugation i think it's a mistake to conflate them i think it it it's an injustice to slaves slavy is much worse than what you have it today with the regulatory state korey thank you really appreciate that he's brought us up to 700 um kathryn just made kathryn's day she achieved her goal scott writes do you think fouchi has done a decent job generally in managing covered response are there significant disagreements you have with him no i don't think fouchi's done a good job i think he's done a lousy job i think fouchi is a scientist from everything i can tell a good scientist but not a good policy guy and he shouldn't be a policy guy scientists shouldn't be dictating policy scientists shouldn't be involved in decisions about lockdowns mandates uh uh uh mask mandates children in school opening school closing schools they can voice opinions but they shouldn't be in a position of power to dictate any of that those are political decisions fouchi's a lousy politician he's a lousy central planner so it's pretty much everybody i disagree with fouchi on lockdowns i disagree with fouchi on children in school i disagree on fouchi on children getting uh vaccines i disagree with fouchi on a lot of things because i think he's taken on the role instead of giving us the science okay if children go to school hear the risks hear the benefits that's what a scientist would do scientist has no business no business recommending or being in a position of dictating policy what is the science say about children going to school how many will get infected how bad will be how many will die how many of them will go home and infect the grandparents or their obese parents those are the questions science gives us an indication about what to do about it how to respond that's politics now you have to take into account individual rights the rule of government the government power what kind of government powers should the government should have what is feasible what is not feasible what is right what is not right those are completely different considerations so the problem is that the trump administration completely defaulted on its political responsibility in dealing with covid it completely blew it in the first three months of the pandemic handed over the reins basically to fouchi and his committee to say do manage whatever they wanted to the political part of the white house completely defaulted and disappeared whenever trump would come out and talk about covid it was nonsense and then this is after two months of denying that even the problem even existed and and and and not you know letting the cdc doing the stupidity of the cdc dead and so on so uh uh you know fouchi has a incredibly respected um history as a scientist i think as a policymaker with regard to this crisis or with regard to any crisis he is a disaster and he shouldn't be in that position and and particularly given that's all politicized and he's playing the political game and i i i don't know why he doesn't i would have quit if i was fouchi to be put in that position okay last question could you recommend some books and movies about honor i mean the most powerful story about honor i mean the two most powerful stories about honor are plays and that's all i can think of right now i'll make a note of myself to try to think of others uh for a future show but um a couple of a couple of ones from from uh plays from um drama and tigany and el sit both by the way part of lennon pickups eight great plays el sit is about honor and tigany is about honor so um i recommend both of those plays uh you know el sit is made into a movie but i don't think the movie is that good i don't think the godfather is about honor it's not the theme of the godfather i don't think it's even a main theme of the godfather um godfather has a you know anyway sueno sueno yeah sueno is a good one sueno you can watch the movie sueno is definitely one of the themes is honor no question right you got three plays sueno el sit and um and um and tigany uh i don't think the scholar pimpinola is primarily about honor i mean it's a great story it's a great movie it's mr sunshine about honor mr sunshine is about the conflict between value i don't think honor is the value in mr sunshine the kind of montecristo mulan heston i don't know um monavana i don't think it's the theme is honor i mean the bad guy who husband is all about honor but he's the bad guy all right good well hunting no i don't know i don't know why you think all these movies are about honor i'll i'll think if i can see other other ones ivenho maybe maybe ivenho that's a book one of my favorite books by the way ivenho i love that story let him pick up doesn't so just to be objective about this let him pick up does not like ivenho never liked it but i loved it um it's last time oh he can's about honor lemezu wobblers i don't think it's about honor it depends what you mean by about is that the main theme i don't think that's the main theme mr jones wow i mean basically every movie i'll think about all right guys it's been a long show over two hours now all right i need to go it's late here it's already 10 o'clock over here in puerto i will see you tomorrow thank you for all the incredibly generous superchatters we made our target uh don't forget to like the show before you leave don't forget to uh use the holiday season to increase your monthly support or to begin your monthly support to the uran book show um at uran book show that comes