 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Welcome everybody and thank you for joining me on this, I guess it's Thursday. Hope you had a great Christmas yesterday and that you were well behaved. So you got lots of nice gifts from Santa. For those of you, Christmas is such a fantastic holiday and it's a nice, I find this period of the year relaxing and really a time for reflection and contemplation and it really is good. So hopefully you guys had a great Christmas with family, friends, by yourself. It doesn't really matter and that you enjoyed yourself and you got some. I actually, one of my gifts was I got a drone. I got this tiny little drone. It's this size. It sits in my hand. It's truly amazing and I went outside of Kondo here to fly it and it won't fly. And I'm like, hey, why won't this fly? It turns out that I'm too close to an airport and it's programmed to identify that and not to fly if you're too close to an airport on the flight path of airplanes. So even though no airplane is going to go as low as this drone is programmed to go, I can't fly it. So I'm going to have to go take a drive somewhere and go play with the drone over there. But I was looking for actually playing around with it over here because there's kind of over the ocean. It would be really cool to be able to fly it here. I guess no, we don't want to cause any jets to crash in Puerto Rico. That would be a bad thing. That would be a bad outcome. So yeah, the drone, that's going to be fun. That's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to taking it out and playing around with it. I can imagine that I would take it on some trips. I wish I had it like when I was in the Yellow Mountains. In certain places in the world, it would just be amazing to have a drone that would take video while you're hiking or while you're walking around. That would be really cool. Maybe one of these days. One of these days, we'll do that. All right, good. I see we've got a nice international chat group here signed on from what it looks like all over the world. That's always good. Thanks for joining me tonight. So yeah, the last couple of shows I did were pretty depressing, I think. I talked about the right, the splintering of the right, the collectivism and the nihilism that is so prevalent on the right. Of course, before that, I've done shows criticizing the left. We do those videos where we play Karl Kalinsky or whatever his name is or others. And I criticize them. Actually, those videos are the videos that do the best. By far, I have more viewership on the videos where I attack the left than when I attack the right. I guess people don't want to hear me attacking the right, but they love to hear me attacking the left. So today, we're going to do something a little different. Today, we're going to talk about maybe something more positive. And then I've got to make up all the Super Chat questions from the two shows where the video crashed, where my show crashed. So we're not going to go much over an hour today because I'm worried about it crashing again today. And it seemed like it crashed at about one hour and 15 minutes. So we're going to try to stop before that. But I've got Super Chat questions that I'm going to catch up on. If you have additional Super Chat questions, I can take those, but I'll put them at the bottom of the list. Because I want to make sure that the people who already gave the money get their money's worth by me answering the questions. So, CS, I thought today we talk about the requirements for cultural change. That is, what would a culture look like? What would a culture start looking like? What would it take in terms of a culture for me to say we're winning? And for me to say, yeah, this is on a path where victory is inevitable in the future. I think victory is inevitable in the future because I think truth wins out in the future. But I'm talking about a path where you can actually see it heading in the right direction. What are the kind of things one would see in the culture that would suggest that we're moving in that direction? What would a culture or a culture look like that was ready to embrace objectivism, ready to embrace lots of capitalism, ready to embrace a limited government, a truly limited government, founding fathers like government that is sustainable, that is sustainable over the long run? Now, somebody says, what we need is economic collapse. No, I mean, if economic collapse happened, nobody is going to wake up one morning and say, oh my God, the economy collapsed. Oh, maybe we should try capitalism. Oh, maybe we should refer back to the founding fathers vision. I mean, that's not happening. When the economic collapse happens, people are going to go, we need the government to do different. Obviously, the capitalist caused this. Those billionaires, it's all their fault. And we need more government. We need a stronger president. We need somebody who knows what to do. I don't know exactly what happened in 2008. In the economy, imagine the economy collapses even more. You'd get even a bigger response than 2008. So economic collapse, cultural collapse, is not going to generate an environment that will lead to the establishment of objectivism or will lead to the establishment of a rational culture, the establishment of a lesbic capitalist world. It just doesn't happen that way. Economic collapse is likely to lead to authoritarianism. It's likely to lead to a far more dictator. It's much more likely to be a dictator than more freedom. Nobody wakes up after an economic collapse and says, yes, what we need is more freedom. Usually they blame economic collapse on freedom. So I think we have to trace this backwards. Let's start with what does the world look like the day before we've won? What does it look like the day before we've won? And then you can ask yourself, okay, how do we get there? What are the steps necessary to get there? And you can start working backwards given where we are today. So what does the world look like? What does the culture look like? What are the people most importantly? What are the individuals who make up the culture, who make up the world? What do they look like? What are they interested in? What kind of lives are they living that would lead them? What kind of character do they have most importantly? That would lead them to want lesbic capitalism, that they want limited government, that would want to bring back the founding fathers, that would want a politically free country. What does freedom require? Well, let's start psychologically. What kind of psychology wants freedom? Think of it in a nervous. What kind of psychology wants authoritarianism? What kind of psychology wants limits on itself, wants to be told what to do, wants to be restricted, wants to be constrained, wants to be enslaved? Well, a psychology that's afraid, that has no confidence in itself. A human being that is terrified of the world, terrified of reality, terrified of his ability to survive within the world. It's a low self-esteem culture. A culture of people who don't have any confidence in their own life, who don't really believe that they belong, that don't have confidence in their mind to guide them to survive, to thrive, to be successful. And they want to be told because they're too scared, petrified, paralyzed to think for themselves. And maybe they don't have the tools to think for themselves. So a culture of fear, a culture of irrationality, and a culture of low self-esteem is a culture that is ready for authoritarianism. Now, what is the opposite of that? Well, the opposite of that is a culture of confident individuals with self-esteem. And what does self-esteem mean? It doesn't mean, oh, I feel good about myself, everybody gets a ribbon, I got pat on my back by somebody else, I might be okay because my teacher said I'm okay, or my parents said I'm okay, or my friends said I'm okay, or people out there think I'm okay, then I must be okay. No, self-esteem is something you own for yourself through achievement, through success, through attaining values, rational values, not any values, rational values. Rational values, values that are pro-life, that pro-your-life. And self-esteem is a sense, not just, oh, life is good, I'm happy or whatever. No, self-esteem is a deep sense of efficacy, of belonging, of this world is mine. I can survive and thrive in this world, on this planet. And life, it's not just that I can survive. It's not just that I'm worthy of surviving. It's not just that they have the competence to survive. But I'm worthy of happiness, and I can achieve happiness. I'm confident in my ability to be happy, to attain happiness, to be successful in everything that it is about life. It's about men and women standing tall, embracing life, loving life, loving their own existence in this world. Confident, confident, confident in their ability to live and to be happy. Not relying on other people for the self-esteem, not relying on other people for this happiness, not relying on others to pat them on the back, because they don't need that. Because in the sense of self-esteem, in the sense of their happiness, they are self-contained. They can achieve it. Other people are important, other people are great, but other people don't sustain you, you sustain you. You sustain yourself. And the only way that somebody can attain this kind of self-esteem, the kind of self-esteem that I can imagine somebody like George Washington had, that the founding fathers generally had, the kind of self-esteem that leads you to rebel against the mightiest military force in human history, the kind of self-esteem that leads you to want to be free, to want to make your own choices in life, to make your own decisions in life, to want to determine your own destiny. And what does that require? Well, it requires a deep respect for one's own mind. And this is exactly last time when I did the show about the prerequisites, the cultural prerequisites, that made possible the enlightenment that would be needed for objectivism. This plays a huge role. There's no way America is founded without a scientific revolution. Newton, in that respect, not only John Locke, but Newton is one of the founding founders of this country. Because it is through the scientific revolution that men got that respect for reason, and it's through that respect for reason, and the use of reason, and their understanding of the power and efficacy of reason, is how they gained the self-esteem necessary to view their lives as individuals as important. You can't get individualism without the efficacy of reason. Individualism is the recognition of the ability of the individual to think for himself, live for himself, strive for himself, succeed for himself. And therefore, as the individual, as the sovereign unit, as the autonomous unit, politically. And therefore, you cannot get an American revolution. You cannot get a John Locke fully thought out without the scientific revolution. So imagine this culture in which we have this immense respect for reason, thinking, that we believe that the mind is this amazing tool, not some deterministic computer that is determined by our genes and just runs its course based on the programming already embedded in it. No reason embodies in it the ability to choose the concept of, again, the concept of free will, and think again about the concept of self-esteem. How can you have self-esteem if you don't have free will? It's meaningless. It's meaningless to talk about I. It's meaningless to talk about self. If you are impotent, if you are just a product of atoms bouncing around and physical causality, the only way to have self-esteem is to recognize that you determine your own fate. You determine the content of your own consciousness. You determine, you shape your own soul. You make who you are. Your choices will determine what you become. So when you talk about self-esteem, self means you. Something that modern psychology and modern philosophy and so many of these determinists eliminate from our world. There is no self. So a world of people who recognize their self is a determining factor. A world of self-esteem. A world that respects reason. And as a consequence, a world of courage. A world of people who are embracing challenges, who embrace uncertainty, who embrace risk, who embrace the world out there, who are eager every morning to get up and go see what challenges the world throws at them. Not sitting around and moping and complaining and bitching, but who are alive, fully alive. Because they value their life too much to be passive. People who are constantly wanting new challenges, wanting new choices, wanting new paths. And then people like that, well of course they don't want the state telling them what they cannot, cannot do, what businesses they cannot, cannot open, what lines of research they cannot, cannot engage in. Who they can and cannot employ, how much they should pay. The people they employ or don't employ or whatever. Oh, they want to be left alone, to succeed, to fail, to get back up on their feet, to go at it again, because it's fun, because it means they're alive. So what would it take to get us to a world of self-esteem? Respect for reason. Courage. A world in which we recognize the importance of free will in our own capacity to shape our own lives. Well, I mean, where are we today? We're at exact opposite position. So we'll take real philosophical challenges to the dominant intellectual views in the world today. It would take a complete and upper utter turning over of our educational institutions. A complete rejection of progressive education, a complete rejection of the whole self-esteem movement, a complete rejection of the idea that school is there to socialize us, that school is there to automatize us, that school is there to train us to be workers in some mythical factory that manufacturing jobs that Trump is going to bring back to America. It would have to be a complete upheaval in our educational system, because you can't take adults, let's say over the age of 30, over the age of 40, and turn them around. It just is unthinkable that somebody can change their self-esteem late in life in middle age, or somebody can suddenly, after years of not caring about reason, gain a respect for reason, or that somebody who's been fearful their entire life suddenly embraces risk and challenges. I mean, it happens, but it's unusual. It's unusual. Ultimately, if you want to change the world, you have to change the young. And if you want to change the young, you have to get them young, because so much of what determines whether we'll be afraid or restaking whether we'll be confident or afraid whether we'll have a respect for reason or be second-handed social metaphysicians that view society as determining the truth rather than our own mind, whether we respect reason or mysticism, whether we respect reason or just follow the leader. So much of that is determined in our school years. So much of that is determined when we're young. So much of that is determined in our schools. They don't teach us content, and the content they do teach when they teach content is often wrong, whether it's on America about American history, what's about history generally, whether it's about what shapes history, what determines history, which is so crucial because if you don't know the past, there's no way to understand the present or understand the future. Or whether the way our schools shape, you know, so we need schools that actually taught content that was true. We'd have to have schools that taught science. And Matt, just like I said, the Enlightenment could not happen without a scientific revolution, you cannot have an objectivist revolution without a respect for science. And a respect for science has to come from school, from education. And it has that respect for science should breed, not necessarily everybody becomes a scientist, however you might understand science, but it breeds a respect for reason. It breeds a respect for the truth of knowing reality. So science education has to be reformed completely to emphasize the role of reason in understanding the world out there, in understanding the material world. History would have to be reformed completely to understand the cause of relationship between events and again show that ideas, reason, thinking matter. History is not some dialectic, some predetermined dialectic that is shaped by external mystical forces, whether you're an atheist or a religionist. You'd have to have an educational system that encouraged people to push themselves, kids to push themselves, to challenge themselves, to constantly get better, not to sit around emoting, not to sit around spouting nonsense, but to actually think and constantly improve and constantly challenge themselves. It would have to be an educational system that was ready to fail kids because the only way to gain self-esteem is to be graded, not on some curve, but to be graded based on knowledge, based on reality. So it would have to be an educational system that challenged kids, that pushed them and yet one that encouraged their individuality, that encouraged them to think for themselves, that encouraged them to use their mind to come up with ideas, with ways of doing things that may be original for the kids, but then was willing to say no, that's nonsense because it doesn't lead to the right answer. So it has to be both disciplined and with the ability to allow for individualism, individuality if you will. I mean, Montessori Method is the ideal for young kids where they both get, in a sense, rigorous training about reality, but done in a way that leaves them free to take risks, to navigate the world around them, to explore. So we have a Montessori Education that's a great foundation, but then you need to build on it. We need a K-12 educational system that is built in the foundations of the Montessori Method. That expands on it, deepens it, and encourages people, kids again, to have true self-esteem, true self-confidence, earned self-confidence, respect for the mind, respect for reason, respect for fact, and importantly, which kids have no concept of today, respect for knowledge. I mean, God, the number of people I see out there spawning completely ignorant views, ignorant ideas, ignorant data, just data that's wrong. But doing so with confidence, with this false, I got a ribbon self-esteem because somebody told them they were geniuses when they were young, and now they think they can just say anything. And they can be in their early 20s and think they know everything about the world because they read a book, because they got a ribbon, because somebody admires them, because they got feedback from some fans on YouTube or whatever. So respect for knowledge, respect for knowledge, which is rare in the world in which we live in today, where young people think they know everything because they've got Google. That means a world in which people have, they have their attention span to listen to an actual argument, to listen to an actual argument, think about it, not just emote about it, but think about it, consider it, mull it over, and then respond with an argument, with an actual argument. We live in a world with attention plans of maximum three minutes to fit the latest hip-hop or whatever song that exists, that is out there on the radio. Can't think in more than three-minute bites. Three minutes, I guess, is a lot these days on Twitter, on YouTube, on Snapchat, or whatever. Three minutes is a long attention span. You need an attention span. You need to be able to read. You need to be able to think. You need to be able to consider. You need to be able to make an argument. So, again, this goes back to thinking, training kids in thinking, in using their mind. So, we need, that all has to happen. That change has to happen. How, how does it happen? I mean, I think the two primary paths to this. One is philosophical and the second is autistic. And in philosophical, I mean, well, it's not right. They're not two paths to this. They're many paths to this. So, there are many paths to this. I'm going to take three today. I'm going to take three. One is education, two is intellectual content, intellectuals, and three is art. So, let's start with the scores. We need to replace the government's scores. We just need to replace the government's scores. There's no more important political issue than privatizing education. Or just, as a stopgap measure, just increasing the options in education. Just increasing the options in education. Because the government's scores will never change. You cannot bring the kind of educational reforms, kind of a change in educational attitude that I'm talking about into the government's scores. That just is never going to happen. There's incentive and there's the opposite incentive. So, it just never will happen. You have to find private outlets for schooling. You know, anything would go. I'm not a huge fan of vouchers, but for now it's better than nothing. I'm not a fan of charter schools, but for now it's better than nothing. And the ultimate which we should be arguing for. We should be arguing. So, the ultimate needs to be that we need to argue for private education in every opportunity, in every stage, every single, everywhere. The complete and other privatization of education. The complete eradication of any state involvement in education. And you know, we'll do a whole, we've done shows about that in the past. We'll do more shows about that in the future. But that is so, so crucial. Number two, we need large numbers of intellectuals to be producing the material that reshapes the debate. Reshapes the debate completely. We need to reshape the debate about economics. We need to reshape the debate about history. We need some real history, true history, valid history to be produced. So, we need, you know, people waiting about the enlightenment, writing about the founding of America like Brad Thompson just had, has in his book about the founding, about, well, in his book about the Declaration of Independence. We need people to, we need intellectuals to present the facts about the world out there, about science, about capitalism, about freedom, about history, about what really happened. Partially because that's what our schools in the future will use as the basis for what they're going to teach the kids. So we need intellectuals in philosophy and history and economics, but also in places like biology and the sciences. In every one of these fields, we need more than one intellectual. We need multiple voices who can articulate the case for objective reality and objective facts and the truth about what is really going on. So we need good scientists, good psychologists, good historians, good philosophers, and we need hundreds of them. They need to dominate the debate. And they need to be the kind of intellectuals, I like to call them crusaders, who are willing to take on the fight, who are willing to take on the enemy, who are willing to challenge the status quo, who are willing through their example and their theories to teach people how to think. Stefan says online, epistemology is so important. Yes, and the best way to teach people epistemology is to model it, to make arguments based on reason, to use logic, to discuss facts, to show people how thinking is done. So we need to incrementally over the next 100 years, because it's going to take a long time. We need to privatize the schools. We need to get dozens and ultimately hundreds of new intellectuals, writing, speaking, teaching, writing, writing, writing. And then the third is we need artists because art is a shortcut. Art is a shortcut that inspires people to be the best that they can be, to rise up to the occasion. If you want people with self-esteem, with courage, then we need to model that courage. We need to show them what courage makes possible. We need to show them what bravery means. We need to show, not just talk, show. And art shows. It shows in its novels, in its paintings, in its poems, in its sculpture, in its paintings, what life can and should be. It shows what it means to live a full life, what the universe can be if one lives such a life. It would show the effects of freedom, the effects of the right philosophy on an individual life and why they should embrace it. It's a shortcut to show the kind of values, the kind of world, the kind of life that is possible to individual human beings. So we need great romantic art, great romantic art. Not cheap romantic art, not poor romantic art. Not mediocre romantic art, but great romantic art. We need more who-goers and more rands and more Dostoevsky's. Although you're not going to get them immediately, so you need people who are not as good, but somewhere in between, somewhere on the way. At every level we need good children's art, but we need great young adult art and we need fantastic grown-up art. Because art can show us what is possible to us. Most of us lack the kind of imagination that would project what is possible. That's the beauty of artists. They have that imagination. They have that ability to recreate a world in their own image based on their own values and we need them to have the right values. So that's what needs to be done. And it's a long path. And there's a lot of things that need to be done to change the world. From getting our schools privatized or at least moving in that direction to getting some great artists who produce inspiring art to producing the kind of intellectual content that is going to move the culture in the right direction because it's going to move the culture in the direction of facts, in the direction of learning the right lessons from history, understanding the principles of economics to understand what the consequences of actions are. We need all of that. And as we move towards a world in which people can think as they've been educated properly, they have the, oh, by the way, attention span. I wanted to say this about attention span. Art is one way in which we can expand and extend our own attention span. Whether it's by sitting down and reading a book, a novel by Victor Hugo, which is thousands, you know, hundreds of pages long and engaging with it and really delving into that universe and letting it sink in and spending the time in that place without shifting between an iPhone and whatever else stimulates us out there, but really sitting quietly in a room and reading. Or another way you can extend your own focus and your own attention span. It's use classical music. Put on a 45-minute symphony and try to do nothing but listen. Your mind will drift. You will lose focus, but put your cell phone and everything else far, far away from you. I've said many times, turn off the lights, close your eyes, try to think about nothing except follow the music. When your mind drifts, use your will, your will to focus back on the music. It'll train you to focus and it'll train you to sustain that focus because classical music is long. It takes time, and therefore it needs sustained, it requires sustained focus. So I think using art, great art, there's plenty of great art that's being produced in our history. Not a movie that something needs to blow up, something needs to explode, somebody needs to be shot, some blood needs to splatter all over the screen every two minutes in order to keep your attention. But no, go watch an old movie. Go watch a movie from the 40s and 50s that were slow and smart with great dialogue and real meaning and real purpose. And again, sit and watch the movie for an hour and a half without looking at your phone. Turn off all the lights, just focus on the screen and nothing else. So try to get away from action movies. Now that doesn't mean you should go watch the Irishman, which is four hours long of sustained, I mean you cannot sustain an attention span during the Irishman because it's such a bad movie. But there are long movies, the Godfather for one, that don't involve constant violence and constant car chases and constant explosions in order to keep your interest. Think dialogue, think characters, and I can give you recommendations if you want about movies. So use art to improve yourself, to improve your own moral character by looking at the art and thinking about what makes certain people heroic and what makes certain people cowards. Watch the art, experience the art and try to allow and focus on it, even on a painting. If you just look at a painting or you can focus on a painting, try to really look, try to see what the artist is trying to convey. Look at all the details, look at everything that's in there. It'll sharpen your mind. If you go to a museum and you do it right and you really focus on all the elements in a painting and you spend real time in front of paintings, not just quick running through the museum. Then when you get home, things in your environment you didn't notice before. It'll sharpen your mental acuity. I think music does that. It'll increase your attention span and increase your focus. Art is incredibly powerful. Now, I will do another show maybe later this week. We'll talk about what you personally can do to make your life better and prepare you for this amazing world of the future. But we'll talk about that, personal values, how to live a better life for yourself. Now we're still talking about the culture. All right, so that's what we need. That's what we need to fight for. That's what we need to get to. It's a lot to do. There's a lot to cover within each one of these elements. Art, intellectual battle, education, all kinds of strategies can be involved. There's all kinds of things that can be engaged. Somebody put up one of my favorite movies of all time, which is This Land is Mine, which I discovered decades ago. There's actually a review of This Land of Mine. The only movie review I ever wrote that made it online, if you put This Land is Mine and you're on book, you'll find my review of the movie. It's a great movie exactly for that, for discovering what makes a hero a hero, what makes a coward a coward. And while there's a little bit of action in the movie, it's such a deep movie about values and about individual courage and about, again, what heroism really means. It's better than I tell you what it's about. You have to see it. It's one of the great movies of all time. It's one of the great movies of all time. This Land is Mine, one of the great actors of all times. Charles Lawton. It's set in a pretend village, in a pretend country that is being occupied by the Nazis in World War II. It was filmed as a so-called anti-Nazi propaganda movie, but it is truly brilliant, truly brilliant. So, yeah, somebody on Facebook has posted the Wikipedia connection to it. We know how and Charles Lawton, both phenomenal actors, but Charles Lawton, this is one of the greatest acting from my perspective, based on what I know about acting. One of the greatest acting performances you will ever see. You will ever see. I don't know where you can get it. I don't know how you can find it. You might have to buy a DVD. I just don't know. I have a DVD of it. I have a DVD of it. Yeah, this one is, by the way, this one is in my top five of all time. All right, let's see. I'm going to just do, I'm just going to do simple chat questions now. I've got like 20 of them. Don't ask anymore. I'm just going to go down these and see if we can get as many as I can get before my computer crashes, right? So here we go, right? Star Wars has slavery, AI and poverty. Is this a confused thinking by the producer, Lucas, or a deliberate misreading of facts for ideological purposes? I don't think it's a misleading, no, I just think people don't understand that advanced technology requires freedom. You see this in most science fiction movies and most dystopian novels where the state has this amazing technology. But how did it get it if it's so authoritarian? That's why Anthem is so brilliant because Anthem understands, Ayn Rand's Anthem understands that the dystopian society and authoritarian society, a collectivistic society is a poor society. It lacks technology, doesn't have any of the fancy spaceships that advanced technology requires freedom. This is what the Chinese will learn. They want to be rich, they better be free. If they're not going to be free, they won't ultimately be rich. That's a reality. And you see that, that's one of the great flaws in most science fiction, is they don't see the connection between freedom and prosperity, freedom in technology, freedom in science. Yeah, I see the discussion on this land is mine in the chat. Yeah, I mean, I discovered it years and years ago in the late 80s, flipping through channels when I was living in Austin, Texas, and then I kind of introduced it to many, many other objectivists. And again, you can find the review online of the movie. Was Ludwig von Mises an anarchist? Or is it that a libertarian, or is it a libertarian distortion as they have similarly done with Ain Rand? Did Rand ever address this concept of prexology? No, von Mises was not an anarchist. And indeed it's a massive distortion and the whole Ludwig von Mises Institute is a distortion of his legacy. In many respects, one of them, and the main one being their advocacy for anarchy when he was clearly not an anarchist. He believed in the role of the state, the limited role of the state, a limited government that basically protected individual rights although he would term it slightly differently. Did Rand ever address this concept of prexology? Yeah, I mean, she thought prexology was wrong. She thought that it was an attempt by an economist to do philosophy when he didn't know philosophy that it had got its concepts wrong, it got its understanding wrong. He admired Mises' economics and thought his prexology was wrong, was founded, was bad philosophy. Should I save up and buy my next vehicle with cash or should I finance it? Well, it depends, right? I mean, I generally would suggest you finance it if you have a job and you have a certain confidence and your ability to make money in the future. Why wait until you have the cash? If you have a job, if the job is steady or the income is steady, wherever the source of the income is, and the income is steady and you know you can make the payments in the car, then why wait? Why suffer through all this period of not having a car when you can, in a sense, have it now and pay for it over time? So I am very big on mortgages, on financing cars, generally using debt in a rational way to do what economists call consumption smoothing. That is, be able to consume stuff now that you couldn't afford now if you had to pay for it in cash. But only, only if you can afford it. That is, if you're confident that you have the money to pay. And why would you want to save interest? Interest is just a cost. Just like, that would be like, I don't want to pay for food because I want to save the money. Interest is the cost for getting the loan so you can use the car before you've saved enough to buy one. So interest should be viewed like paying for something. You're paying interest for something for the advancement of the money. So you can buy a car. So no, I'm a big believer in debt. I'm a big believer in paying the interest if you're in a position to be able to afford to pay it back. To pay it back. It makes no sense to sit around when you need a car not to buy a car. So you wait until you save enough to buy a car. If you did that with a home, you might have to wait decades before you had enough money to pay cash for a home. The beauty of it, somebody will lend you the money in upfront so that you can buy the home now, live it and enjoy it and then pay it off later and get the tax deduction in the meantime. Yeah, I mean, if you already have the cash, then yeah, sometimes it doesn't make sense to pay interest for a loan. But often it does because I can make more money if you put the money in the market this year. You'd be up, I don't know, 27%. The cost of an auto loan is probably, I don't know, 5%. You'd be way ahead of yourself. So it's not obvious that cash always beats debt. How do we counter the GOP charge China got rich at our expense? There's no basis for it. You know, the person who's making the positive argument needs to provide some evidence. What is the evidence that China got rich at our expense? Indeed, the economic evidence, the actual evidence suggests that we got rich at the same time as China got rich. That is, the economic growth that the United States has generated over the last 30 to 40 years is to a large extent the consequence of trade with China. It's to a large extent the consequence of our ability to reduce costs, our ability to buy cheaper stuff, our ability to trade. So the simple economic argument is the trade is win-win. If China got rich by trading with us, then we got rich too. And the fact is that if we hadn't traded with China, we'd have gotten less rich. That's called division of labor. It's basic economics. Basic economics. We grew faster because of China than if China had not existed, significantly faster. China has saved massive amounts of consumption, so poor people's standard of living is much higher because of China, but also China and Japan, Asia generally, including China, are net savers. And what that means is that capital that they have saved is being invested where? Well, to a large extent, it's being invested in the United States. We don't save. And yet we grew. How do we grow an economy if you don't save? Well, we grew because other people saved, including China. And they saved because they got rich. So there's no economical empirical argument to suggest that China got rich at our expense. Just zero data. Now, the fact is we could have grown faster if we weren't heavily regulated, heavily controlled, and heavily taxed and all that, but we still would have benefited from trade with China. It just would have manifested itself differently. That is, you probably would have invested differently in China. Different things would have moved to China. Different, it just, the story would have been a different story. But trade is always good. A country like China, when it's starting poor and rising, will always be able to supply certain things like cheap labor to the United States that we can supply ourselves. And that will always be an advantage, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing, because it allows us to focus higher up in the productivity chain. So there's just nothing in economics that would suggest that trade with China is that detriment to the United States. It's been a huge, massive, but every estimate, massive plus. I truly think there's an audience for RAND and the Iran Book Show and the Greater Liberty Movement at large. Even if they don't agree 100%, do you agree? Well, yes, but they're not coming. They all know who I am at the Greater Liberty Movement, but they're not here. So I don't know. I don't think they're interested. I don't think they're interested in the kind of analysis they might do. I don't think they're interested. They like, you know, they like the people that they like, Peter Schiff and other podcasters of libertarian bent, but they're not here. And they're not here not because they don't know that it exists, not because they don't know that I exist, just because they've chosen and that they think it isn't that interesting. So they should be listening because they won't get the stuff they get here anywhere else, but they're not. So if you can convince them to listen, that'd be great. Do you believe that no one has the right to commit suicide or self-harm in order to absolve oneself, absolve someone else or other people of sins or otherwise wrong doings? So rights, don't confuse rights with morality with right or wrong, right? Rights of both of them all, but in this context, they're a political concept. If you have a right to commit suicide for whatever reason you want, does it make sense? Is it right? Is it moral to commit suicide or absolve other people of sins that they committed? Well, of course not. It's evil. It's evil. Your life is yours. It's not theirs. Your life is not other people's. And if other people commit sins, why? It's a gross injustice for you to suffer for the sins of other people. I mean, we do all the time. We suffer for the sins of our government, for the sins of our intellectuals, for the sins of all kinds of people in our culture. But it's a gross injustice for you to die for the sins of somebody else. That's why I consider the story of Jesus as an immoral story. It's a gross, massive injustice just as what happens to Jesus. He dies for our sins. I mean, you should die for your sins. You should suffer for your sins. But you shouldn't suffer for other people's sins. That's just wrong, nasty. It's just unjust. Just is getting what you deserve based on your actions, based on your character, based on who you are. Altruism is what drives one to think that you should die for somebody else. You shouldn't. Heard of Maxime Bernier ran for PM of Canada. The plan is to eliminate corporate welfare and reduce foreign aid, balance the budget and get out of the way. I mean, that's great. I had not heard of Maxime Bernier, but if that is the plan, that is about as good of a plan for a politician one can imagine in the day in which we live. So hopefully Canada will vote for him, although I doubt it. Where does Turning Point USA stand on the right spectrum you just discussed? They feature Ben Shapura as the defender of the Constitution and limited government. So I think Turning Point USA is like in between. They're in a very uncomfortable situation. They started out as an organization started by Charlie Koch, who was very influenced by Ayn Rand and actually very influenced by or somewhat influenced by me. They started out as a pro-free markets, pro-funding fathers, pro-liberty conservative student group on high schools and college campuses. And they were pretty good. And they had a pretty good agenda and they focused on the Constitution and on the founders and on Ayn Rand and on limited government. And they completely changed with the election of Donald Trump as did so much of the conservative movement. And I'll be talking more about that in a next few shows about Trump's effect on conservatism. So they have now become much more focused on Trump on his vision, if you can call it a vision, a kind of pragmatism, a kind of nationalism, a kind of getting, you know, anti-left at all costs. You know, what defines the right is they're all anti-left, just being anti-left for the sake of being anti-left. And very little positive agenda. Now there's still something in them that still remembers what they used to be. So they have people like you know, Ben Shapiro, the better parts of Ben Shapiro on. But they've also become more religious, more nationalist and the chapters of the Turning Point USA have become quite alt-right and racist and white supremacist. And indeed Turning Point USA has to kick out members and has to get rid of certain chapters at universities because they were attracting the alt-right racist types to them. And I think, you know, one could argue Trump has done the same, so Charlie Cook went from somebody who, at my time, ran very pro-free markets always religious, so he was always a little religious, relatively rational, very ambitious, very successful to completely selling out to the Trump agenda, I mean completely selling out to the Trump agenda to having to, at the same time, protect himself from not going too far in being associated with the alt-rights and now the alt-right is protesting Charlie Cook, because he hasn't gone far enough, because he isn't right enough, because he isn't adopting the alt-rights messaging, so now there's a whole movement among the alt-right to protest Charlie Cook events in this way. So, you know, that's what you get. So Turning Point USA is somewhere on the bridge towards the alt-right but not quite there, but a long way from kind of the old line to the extent there was an old line pro-free markets, pro-constitution, pro-founding fathers conservatism, they've moved away from that dramatically, they've become they're part of this nationalist conservative movement now. What are your thoughts on the Ken Burns documentaries? Do you enjoy them despite their leftist views? Yeah, I mean I do enjoy the Ken Burns documentaries the ones I've seen, I saw the one on baseball which was terrific, I saw the one in the Civil War maybe I saw one other one. I mean he just does a great job and technically they're beautiful he has a great narration voice the fact interesting he tells a great story I'm not enough of an historian to know if all the facts are always true I assume they are when it comes when it comes, when there's something when he talks about baseball and stuff like that, when it comes to politics, political events, historical events I'm less sure. Somebody in the chat says the alt-right doesn't exist. Of course the alt-right exists. There's lots of alt-rights and they're not leftists, there's a clear distinction between the alt-right and the left and even the alt-left. There's the right is not the left they're both collectivists but they're not the same thing, it's a different form of collectivism it takes on a different type of collectivism, right? Oh by the way somebody says I should sprinkle in requests for likes. Yeah I like my stuff because if you like my stuff it bumps it up on Google, it gets higher everything, liking and sharing are the two most important things and not only is it an alt-right but the alt-right is now splinted into multiple different factions multiple different entities from what I talked about a few episodes ago Bronze Age pervert to purpose to traditional alt-right to the white nationalists, white supremacists, white realists but they're all the same thing, they're all alt-right many of them. Okay please like the show, please share the show. Did you realize that Ben Shapiro got 15 million views and Bernie Sanders got 11 million on Joe Rogan's podcast we need to find a way to get you on the only way to get on Joe Rogan's podcast that I can think of is for all of you to repeatedly tell them that tell Joe Rogan that I should get on the show. Somebody asked why not just call them white nationalists or isolationists. Well isolationists is too ambiguous white nationalists is a better term but not all of them exactly white nationalists. For example this Nick Fuentes is an Hispanic and yet he is a racist so and so what was that? Jesse Lee something who is black white nationalists, alt-right is a great term it's a great term and then there's the nihilist right and there's the nationalist right which is less racist, more nationalist and it's all these groups that ultimately are leading us towards authoritarianism and ultimately are all in some respect another authoritarian nationalist or alternative nihilists and that's the alt-right these days. I mean the real nationalists not the kind of nationalist conservatives that are not yet alt-right but it's all very confusing, the right is very confusing, the right is very confusing. So I'd love to be in Joe Rogan's show, I never got invited he I don't know what it's going to take because what's his name Dave Rubin was on Joe Rogan's show, told Joe Rogan you should get your own book on the show you should have your own book on the show he then emailed me and Joe Rogan and Joe Rogan never responded never responded you're on how much would you pay for banana and a piece of tape you couldn't pay me enough to take the banana with a piece of tape unless I got to eat it and then I'd pay the going rate for banana if it was a decent looking banana if it hadn't rotted yet I mean that's referring to this artwork that sold for I don't know hundreds of thousands of dollars or something somebody literally peeled it off the wall and ate it and that was the work of art just phew but that's so-called art that's so-called art that's the state of the culture that's what needs to be reversed everybody in the culture including the intellectuals laugh at that then we will know in the right direction can we get Jonathan Honing on the show talking about his investment philosophy and his various investment courses he has already done show we had Jonathan Honing on the show to talk about his book textbook for Americanism which I encourage you all to buy and read we can have it on to talk about investments Jonathan was listening to the show before so we can maybe we can get him on the chat to tell us if he'd come on if I invited him to talk about investments let's see what are the pros and cons of the way that children are taught sports in public schools not gym class but actual organized leagues I mean I think sports Jonathan says that I should have my people call his people we can do that we can have my people Angela call his people I don't know and coordinate something we'll get something done I like organized leagues I like team sports I like sports generally I like cultivating the body and I like being fit and looking good but being healthy and you know building muscles and not in a grotesque bodybuilding sense but just being fit being healthy again being a full human being and I think sports is great sports get you fit it's fun it's enjoyable so it's so I think it teaches you a lot about discipline about teamwork about your own capabilities what you're capable of about hard work about practice about training I mean I could do a whole show about the benefits of sports for young people I think there's no accident that Greeks emphasize not just philosophy and learning but also sports and Olympics and athleticism I think it's very very important does the mixed economy turn people into cynical nihilists because of the lack of opportunity it creates artificially imposed lack of upward mobility makes people resentful and hateful yes absolutely absolutely this is part of what I've called the fact that they they feel what's the term I'm looking for they feel frustrated they feel you know mocks called it what did mocks call you know what the proletarian feel anyway you know it's incredibly alienated they feel alienated they feel alienated from life because they can't move but it's more than just upward economic mobility they don't understand the world around them everything everything is a mixed is a mixture it's the mixed economy of the soul not just the mixed economy of economics nothing is right nothing is wrong there's no black and white it's why they're attracted to the whites the perception of nationalism we're the good guys we're white we're the Americans the ugliness of black and white fascist ideologies attractive to people or the complete rejection of all ideas which is what nihilism is just a cynical nihilism just crush everything destroy everything hate everything it's because a culture is so black it's so mediocre it's so mixed it's so indefinite it's so and the messages they get again messages of capitalism sucks but we need capitalism because that's the only way we can produce wealth and you'll only get a job through capitalism but it really sucks and the ideal is you know healthcare you know Medicare for all but they have a decent insurance policy and do they really want to get it from the government when they don't trust the post office it's just a mishmash and the intellectuals whose job in life should be to provide clarity provide ambiguity provide more muck and yuck and garbage so that people become nihilistic they become depressed and they become alienated and that alienation leads them to nihilism and it leads them to fascism or to communism it leads them to extreme collectivistic ideas and that's what we're seeing in the world we're seeing as the mixed economy leads them to go into the streets and to protest and they don't know exactly why they're protesting what they're protesting for, what they're against look at the yellow vest in France they don't know what they're against they don't know what they're for they just know that life sucks in the way it is right now and that's a consequence of the mixed economy and everything that leads to the mixed economy the whole philosophy of the mixed economy I am a comic artist let's produce comic books, graphic novels dynamic fun stories with objective morality it's called yes go do it you do it but make sure it's good before it's objective is make sure it's good otherwise you're doing nothing is it second handed to worry about not going to college because other people in your social economy class will think less of you yes it's second handed stop thinking about what people will think of you think about what you want to do why you want to do it where you want to go in life how you want to get there and just live your life your friends, your peers the girls, the boys I don't know whoever the only person that matters is you you have to do what's good for you isn't that the lesson of fountain it if you read the fountain it that is the one thing the one thing that you should get out of it that you must determine your own life must determine your own values is bad art better than no art well it depends what you mean by bad art if you mean the garbage that passes for art today then no it's worse because what it does is it it dulls us to the existence of good art because if people have in a folder called art a banana stuck to the wall a urinal framed in a frame and Michelangelo's David Leonardo's Mona Lisa then it doesn't connect to them and it's all garbage because the first two are garbage they have no idea what to do with art and they reject art completely so having non-objective art or non-objective so called art is worse than anything worse than anything and bad art it depends I think bad art is never good right aesthetically bad art does nothing so it's not better than no art which mediocre art is better than no art but bad art I mean it depends what you mean by bad and how you define bad I mean that's a whole show that's a whole show we can talk about what constitute bad art and how you would even think about what bad art is and is it better than no art currently reading ominous parallels and loving it everybody should read ominous parallels I was intrigued by the fact that when I myself googled the causes of Nazism almost none of the content emphasized ideas as the cause it was almost always emphasis on politics and conflict that is the way people think today that is reality so nobody views ideas of the drivers of history it's not an original objective point of view but it's a point of view that only objectives and monotimes take completely seriously so yes it is pathetic how bad the interpretations of history are and if that's true of the rise of the Nazis imagine what that is doubly true about every other piece of history you've ever studied it's always ideas and you never taught that so you haven't really been taught history not properly, not objectively imagine an ominous parallel that explains every major historical event in human history and you that is possible that is really possible because it's all driven by ideas okay last three subject questions Joe Rogan said he hates golden gecko types like Iran first thing we need to do is correct his ignorance about wall street character yes but I also hate golden gecko, golden gecko is a bad guy as portrayed in the wall street movie he's purposefully portrayed as an objectively bad guy and he gives objectively really really evil bad speeches particularly towards the end of the movie that is all of a stone doing that on purpose so I don't I love the kind of people that were the golden geckos of the time but I hate golden gecko because he's objectively a bad person okay how come capitalism gets blamed for every failure of the controlled aspects of the economy I mean I've covered this many many many times because of altruism because we always blame those who are seeking their self interest we always blame those who are profiting we always blame those who are greedy those who are after it for themselves the public servant who is after the common good the public interest always gets a free ride in all of history we always blame the businessman because the businessman is so obviously selfish and we've learned from when we were very young that selfishness is evil therefore the evil guys must have done it but if you are interested in that listen to my lecture on the morality of capitalism I go into a lot of detail in that have I seen THX 1138 yeah no I think I saw it a long long time ago like in the 70s but yeah Lucas is philosophically bad he's not just not perfect he's bad philosophically as most directors are who are the best historians to take ideas Seussi well I mean Brad Thompson who is a fellow objectivist it's definitely worth looking at I mean I think they're I don't know it's not a question I can really answer I mean I like to eat a lot of history I think there are a lot of good histories out there where if you know a little bit about ideas you can fill in the blanks but and you have to be able to do it in a not rationalistic way in terms of how you tell the philosophy because it's not that ideas imprint themselves in history somehow it's a sophisticated interaction and I think Arminus Paulus is a good illustration of that and how the back and forth works but I'll have to think about which historians I've read that I've really liked alright everybody thank you I hope you enjoyed the show today not sure when the next one is going to be definitely at least one before the end of the year where we'll do the most important story of 2019 the most important trend phenomena movement, thing that's happened in 2019 alright, thanks everybody hope you enjoyed the show don't forget to like it subscribe and if you like the shows generally and if you follow me then please support the show by going to your own book show.com slash support or subscribe star.com slash your own book show even a small contribution of $2 a month all the way up to several thousand dollars a month all of very much appreciated and help both motivate me and support financially the production of the show and the videos that you get out of it alright see you soon guys bye