 And the proceedings yesterday were a great example of this. Not a single congressman was actually interested in the answers the CEOs had for their questions. Indeed, the whole format is designed to avoid getting answers. The whole format is designed to give politicians the opportunity for a sound bite and to try to catch these CEOs saying something wrong so they can use it to promote themselves. The whole proceedings were nothing but a circus. A circus designed by politicians for politicians as PR. The idea that any CEO would submit himself to something like this voluntarily is despicable. None of them should have been there. None of them should have agreed. You want to have a real discussion about any of these issues? They should have said, fine. But then I should be allowed to answer the questions. And the questions cannot be yes or no questions because that's not how this world works. They were constantly cut off. They were constantly told they weren't answering the question. They were constantly told they had run out of time. They were constantly told that, oh no, we just want a yes-no answer when the question was not a yes-no answerable question. It was a disgusting display of not trying to find truth. Not trying to find understanding. Not trying to find enlightenment. But it was the display of sheer power. These little people, little congressmen who have done nothing with their lives. Who have produced nothing, created nothing, built nothing, made nothing. Who haven't hired people, haven't bought other companies. Who have no business experience or technology experience. Who have young staffers who tell them maybe how an iPhone works. These little people are challenging giants who have changed the world. A challenging, the geniuses, most productive geniuses of our time? Who are they? They're nobody's. They're nothing's. The fact that we voted them in says a lot about how pathetic we are as a culture, as a people. Somebody says they don't answer the questions. Well of course they don't. They're trick questions. They're not designed to be answered. They're not designed to be answered. They shouldn't be then ever mind answering these losers' questions. They're questions that are loaded in order to trip them over. And they're questions that, you know, they think they're sophisticated because they get into the minutiae of a particular contract or particular event that happened. And expect the CO to remember all that. On live TV, be able to give the answer in a way that they won't regret afterwards. In a way, without consulting the attorney, without consulting the actual document, without consulting the vice president was engaged in it, it was just got your questions to make them look good and to make the businessman look bad. Now this is a long tradition in America, but it is getting worse and worse and worse. It happened to the railroad tycoons back in the 19th century. It happened to JPMorgan in 1913 and famous hearings, famous hearings, that ultimately led us, ultimately led us to establishing a Federal Reserve. It continued in the late 1940s with Howard Hughes. With Howard Hughes, he was accused of committing fraud against the government, which he was never tried for, never found. He was accused, said at least the federal government has some involvement, some reason for them to be interrogating him. But there is video, I meant to find it and show it on the show today, but I didn't have time. There's video of Howard Hughes in front of Congress. And he talks back at them. He doesn't take the BS. He challenges them. Not as well as an Iron Man hero would. But pretty well, I'll give him credit, one of the few businessmen ever to stand up to these bastards. And it truly is some of the most disgusting sites you will see in modern America. And what's more disgusting is that I went on Twitter today looking at what the commentators have to say about this. It's just average people, ordinary people. I just put in big tech. Overwhelming me, overwhelmingly, people sided with the politicians. Overwhelmingly, people were displaying hate towards the CEOs. Angels for last week, thank you. I really, really appreciate that, really appreciate the contribution and your comment. That's why I do this. The anti-trust laws are despicable because they attack the good for being the good. They attack success for being successful. And they should be repealed. It should be the first thing that a good president does would be repealed anti-trust laws. Stephen asked, do you think they go out of fear? Yes, I think partially it's fear. Partially it's a sense of duty. They think they need to answer these questions. And in that sense, it's partially out of a sense of guilt towards a sense of, yeah, maybe the politicians have something. Or maybe the politicians have a point or it's important for me to address them because they're important. But why are they important? They're important because they control me. They have this lever against me. They have this power on me. And that's the thing we'll get to in a second. Who has power here? Why do they call it a congressional hearing? If Congress does all the testifying, are the living out there, Dr. Floyd Ferris moments where they get to torture God? Yes, they're living out the pleasure of torturing people who are better than them. And they know that. They know that. They know these are people who are better than them. There is no argument to break up big tech. No justification. I want to talk about power and then I want to quickly talk about the speech issue, even though I've talked about in the past and my views I think are well known on this. Who has the power here? The power these businessmen have is to trade with other people. It's to sell and buy products. It's to hire and fire people. It's to engage in voluntary contracts. The power they have is to trade. And other parties don't have to trade with them. Nobody can be forced to trade with Amazon, with Google. You don't have to use Google. You don't have to buy from Amazon. Walmart has a quite competent store that you can buy from. Google, you can use Microsoft search engine and there's some encrypted search engines online that keep you completely safe. There's plenty of options. You don't want them tracking you, use a VPN. You don't have to use Facebook. Facebook is not required for human life. And if you want a different social media, you can use Twitter or you can use something else. There's nothing, nothing that requires you to use any of these products. I know people who refuse to use Apple products. They just don't use anything by Apple. Completely possible in this world. All they have is the power to trade with you. That's economic power. It's the essence of economic power. And the more of it, the better. The more they can trade. The more you can choose to trade or not to trade. Political power is very different. The power of those little creepy politicians is that they have a gun. They pass laws. Try not abiding by their laws. I mean, you go to jail. They use physical force against you. I mean, maybe they find you, but what is a fine? Try not paying the fine. They regulate. They control. They intervene. They don't ask our permission. They don't ask our opinion. You know, you don't volunteer. Economic power. Political power is the power to oppress. Is the power to control. Now, cronyism has been brought up. But the fascinating thing about these four companies is they're among the least crony companies in the world. I don't know what's crony about Facebook. What exactly, what government favors that Facebook get? Luckily, the tech business has not been regulated. So, when you don't have regulations, there's not be regulated much. There's not a lot of favors to ask for because government doesn't control your life. What is Amazon? How is Amazon a crony? Now, put aside the government contracts. I don't know about the government contracts. Maybe there's cronyism there. I'm sure there is. But we're talking here about the marketplace, about selling goods. Not about the government contracts. Where is the cronyism? Where is the government protecting them? Where is the government subsidizing them? Where is the government giving them any favors? Well, crony. It's been attacked for antitrust reasons in the past because it dared to sell books and set their own prices. But cronyism? Where's the cronyism? Give me examples. What is laws? Is Apple lobbied for? Oh, Google for that matter. Now, Google spends a lot of money lobbying. A lot of money. But where are these laws that have favored Apple and Google? Mainly, they lobby to keep government off their backs. I mean, there are lots of cronies in the world out there. These four are not your prime example of them. Now, there is this section 230. And a law that was passed in 1994. By the way, 1994, when this law was passed, was before Facebook. It might be before Zuckerberg was even born. He's that young. But it's before Facebook ever existed. They couldn't have lobbied for that. It's before Google ever existed. Google was started in 1998, I think, or 99. Apple was around, but Apple doesn't care because it doesn't affect Apple. Google, Facebook, Apple, who are missing Amazon. Amazon was not around. It didn't exist. There's a provision in that law that allows platforms. And at the time, what they meant by platforms, not Twitter and not Facebook, is neither existed. What they meant at the time was like bulletin boards. What they meant at the time was comment sections. They allowed the platforms to curate, to delete content they found objectionable without being liable for the content they left on the platform. Sounds reasonable to me. Arguably, led to a massive flourishing of the internet in the United States. And the dominance of American companies globally has led to all the great products that you have online today because the companies could delete content like pornography without them being sued for content they left on. The idea was by deleting some content like pornography, you are not therefore endorsing the content you leave on and therefore you can't be sued for it. That is not being a publisher. That's being a curator. Facebook, Twitter, Google, do not publish. What does the New York Times do? New York Times hires reporters. The reporter writes an article. A publisher, an editor at New York Times edits that article. That article is presented to a senior editor. The senior editor says yes or no and edits it further. And then it gets published. That's a publisher. I submit a book proposal to a publisher. They say, yeah, we're interested. Or no, we're not. If they say they are interested, they then edit it. And then they require me, for example, to provide all my footnotes, all my sources because they know they're liable. And when I provide those and when I agree to their edits and they agree to mine and so on, that's a publisher. Facebook's not a publisher. Twitter's not a publisher. Section 230 is not corporate welfare. Section 230 is exactly what the government is supposed to do, which is to help define property rights, to help define the boundaries of what is and isn't liable. It's exactly what it does. And it's exactly appropriate. And it's exactly right. All right, now we're going to take a short break from that to remind you of a few things. There are over 230, there are 238 people watching right now on YouTube. Please like, press the like button. There are only 135 likes, we can easily get that up to 200. It helps the algorithms, helps me rise up and helps get this in front of more people. If you care about that, please like the show and do that. Don't forget to subscribe. Those of you who are not subscribers, don't forget to press the bell button that way you get notification when I go live and you can come and join me. Of course, don't forget if you value what I say, even if you don't agree with everything I say, but if you value what I say, get you thinking, it contributes something to your life, please support the show. Support me financially. Make it possible for me to keep doing this. We now have, you have the ability to support it at $2 all the way up to $500 a month. And you get different perks based on how much you contribute. You can do so on Patreon. You can do so on Subscribestar and you can do so on uranbookshow.com slash support. And, you know, particularly right now, particularly with COVID, particularly with everything going on, I can't do any public speaking. I don't get paid for any public speaking. I have no other source of income for my intellectual content. You're it. So thank you for all my supporters, all my generous contributors. You make, you know, you really, you make this show possible. And by showing me your appreciation, you know, it motivates me to keep going. So thank you and I encourage everybody else who's not a supporter to support the show. All right, they're not a publisher. But aren't they blocking conservative ideas? Aren't they blocking ideas of liberty and which are not the same as conservative, by the way? Aren't they promoting the left? Maybe. I mean, it's interesting. If you go hang out with real crazy leftists, which I don't do, but I've read, I read them stuff online. It turns out that Facebook and Twitter ban some of the crazy lefties. And they constantly complain that Facebook and Twitter are two right wing where you were launched, launched just to ask, what is your opinion on big tech acting as publishers while enjoying the protection of wing classified as a platform? I don't know what that means. But I just answered this question like two minutes ago. I just did a whole thing about why they are not acting as publishers at all. You know, gave you exact examples of the difference between, this is a super chat question, that's why I'm relating it to it, gave the differences between what a publisher does at the New York Times or at a book publishing company and what Facebook and Twitter do. It's completely different. It's a completely different function. They're completely within their rights to curate the material on their site without being liable for the stuff they keep on. And if you make them liable for the stuff they keep on, then forget about social media. It's dead. It's finished. And if they have to keep everything on social media, then do they keep pornography? Do they keep ISIS? Do they keep any racist who wants to blabber there? They get to keep everything? Why? Why? Why can't they decide some things are off bounds, some things are off limits? And if you don't like where they draw their line, don't use them. Don't use them. It's unbelievable to me. There are people who claim to be pro-free markets. No. People who claim to be pro-free speech argue that platforms should be told what's speech to allow and what's speech not to allow. I don't allow all speech in my house. You come to my house spawning leftist ideas. I show you the door and ask you to leave. You come to my house spawning racist ideas. I show you the window and encourage you to jump. That was me being funny, by the way. Facebook built a house. You come to their house. There are certain things you can't say. If you don't say it, if you say it, they kick you out. Why is that a problem? Now, they happen to be run by leftists. Which means they're going to be biased to the left. Which means they think that certain things said by the right is more offensive. The certain things said by the left that we think is equally offensive. But that's their house. Their property. Their algorithms. They built it. They get to decide who uses it. How it's used. When it's used. They block people that I wouldn't block. They do a lot of things I wouldn't do. I want the iPhone in a different color. But Apple won't produce in a different color. How dare they not do what I want? And sure. There is a danger that if these platforms become block huge swaths of opinions. What will happen if you think that happens? People will go and establish new platforms. They will compete. But that danger is the danger of being alive. That danger is a danger of having a free market. That danger is a danger of being alive. Of living in freedom. Liberty is not risk-free. You want risk-free? Die. It's the only thing that has no risks involved in it. Non-certainty. You die. You're gone. You're finished. There's no problems. It's all gone. Living is risky. You don't like Facebook's decisions about who they deplatform. Fight them. Not with force. Fight them with ideas. Argue against it. Start a new platform. Switch. Leave. Go to Twitter. You don't like Twitter's decision? Go to what's the new one? Paula. Go to Paula. If you believe in breaking up Facebook and Twitter, then your anti-liberty, anti-capitalism, anti-freedom, if you believe in regulating their speech, then your anti-free speech, it's their speech because it's their platform. They can have any political views they want. They can enforce whatever political views they want. They can do whatever they want. It's theirs. Have they violated your rights? No. You don't have a right, a free speech on other people's property. Free speech, the first amendment, guarantees that the government does not abridge your ability to publish and speak. The government, they're not the government. They're Facebook. They have every right to prevent you from speaking if they don't like what you're saying. That's the system of government we have. That's the beauty of the American system. It's about property rights. On your property, you can say whatever you want. On my property, you cannot. Now, let me just give you an historical example of this. In the 1970s, in the 1970s, there were only three television stations that produced news. There was no CNN. There was no Fox. There was no MSNBCC, NBC Fox Business, all these others. There were three, ABC, NBC, CBS. That's it. All of them, by the way, run by leftists. All of them biased. And there was no internet. No internet. I know it's hard to imagine. I know some of you don't really believe me. But there really wasn't an internet in the 1970s. And the newspapers, those New York Times and Washington Post, basically run by leftists. I remember complaining about the New York Times being biased to the left in the 60s and 70s. There were laws that said that if you're going to have a liberal, a leftist point of view, you need to have a conservative point of view. And they would try to implement that. But it was a joke. It was a joke. Because why just those two and why not other points of view? Are these the best of the two? It was just ridiculous. But because of the dominance of the left, the right supported this and passed this. And because the airwaves were considered public property, there was this requirement that they be fair and balanced. By the way, stop the super chats and let's it's big money because there are way too many. And I'm already at an hour, 20 minutes. So we have to slow down here. You'll have another opportunity on Saturday to ask me more. And maybe some of these questions will have to hold over until then. You know, we survived. We survived. Did the New York Times filter out conservative points of view? Sure. Did ABC, CBS, NBC? Yes, sure. Were they biased? Sure. Did Ronald Reagan get elected? Yeah, absolutely. You complain today when you have a gazillion sources of news, a gazillion sources of commentary, a gazillion places to publish your stuff, a gazillion places to have conversations. There's never been an error in all of human history ever where people have had more opportunities to speak, to talk, to debate, to discuss, to bring up new ideas, to debate those new ideas. Free of censorship, free of control. The very fact that you are all listening to this on YouTube, owned by Google, that Google, in their great benevolence, allows me to use this platform for free. They charge me nothing. They even, they even, this is amazing to me, they even go out of their way to try to go and get ads to put on my shows so I can make a little bit of money off of ad revenue. Somebody says, Google and Facebook, they don't come out and say their leftist. I'm not sure but the New York Times has never said their leftist. ABC, CBS, NBC in the 70s never said their leftist. They don't think of themselves as leftist anymore. The Fox thinks of themselves as rightist. What is their slogan? We're fair and balanced. Really? Are they fair and balanced? BS. The right wing TV show. TV station. Always happy. So what are you talking about? If YouTube tomorrow kicked me off of the platform, I would say thank you for the years of allowing me to use your platform for free. They don't owe me anything. What have I done for them? And they're not the government. They don't owe me some kind of respect of something. Their platform, their rules, they think I violated their rules. I mean, what I would like all these platforms to do is have clear definitions of their standards so we could all understand when we violate the rules. I think that is missing. But that's a business decision. And somebody should start a platform with clear objective rules. But you know what? Jordan Peterson tried. You know, Dave Rubin has locals. Great. All good platforms. But you know one of the challenges that Jordan Peterson really had is how do you decide what is acceptable speech and what is not? Because even Jordan Peterson doesn't want some people on his platform. Everybody has to have some standards. You don't like the standards that Facebook has embraced. Then leave. Leave, leave, leave. You don't like Twitter. Leave. But it's their platform. They get to determine the standards. You don't follow the standards. Even if they're vague and ambiguous, they kick you off. If they violate a contract, sue them. If they violate a contract, sue them. But they're not violating your free speech rights. You forcing yourself on their platform. That's a violation of free speech. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on, reminder. Please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who are liking it, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there. Help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at youronbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon or Subscribestar or locals and show your support for the work, for the value. Hopefully you're receiving from this. And of course, don't forget, if you're not a subscriber, even if you just come here to troll, or even if you're here like Matthew to defend Marx, then you should subscribe, because that way you'll know when to show up. You'll know what shows are on, when they're on. You'll get notified. So yes, like, share, subscribe, support. Like, share, subscribe, support. So easy. Do one, all of those, please.