 Have Western mixed economies proven more resilient than Ayn Rand predicted? With the brutal COVID lockdowns and money printing, is it unbelievable how wealthy and high functioning we still are? Yes, I mean I think I think Western mixed economies have proven more resilient than any of us expect and they keep doing that, particularly the United States. And now you have to remember that Western economies went through a change in the 1980s. They drifted towards greater free markets, more reliance on market, less government spending as a percentage of GDP at least. I mean look at the Swedish economy, the Canadian economy. Many of the economies in Europe shifted. Even France that floated with socialism in the early part of the 80s was floating with market reforms by the time we got into the 90s. The United States had Ronald Reagan, the United Kingdom had Margaret Thatcher. And on top of that, and maybe this is the most under-appreciated thing particularly among the people who like Trump, the most under-appreciated thing in the world today, and that is that China came on board, Southeast Asia came on board, came on board as much more market economies in many respects than the West was. And their productivity increase benefited us enormously because we became the consumers of the products that they created. First it was Japan, then it was South Korea, Taiwan, Taiwan where chips are made. I mean chips, not chips, but chips and computers are made. A lot of technologies made in Taiwan, but Singapore and Hong Kong and even Thailand and of course in China. But the West benefited enormously. So part of the resilience of the West is that we have a lot more people to trade with. I know that after COVID everybody thinks we need to make everything in America. This is for tomorrow's show. But no, what we've proven to ourselves is we need even more elaborate, more diversified supply chains. We shouldn't rely maybe so much on China, but we shouldn't replace China with America because in America people get sick, they stay home and we shut down industries and we shut down the economy and we can't get stuff out of Americans. But maybe if we had more plants in Vietnam and Taiwan and Africa in South America in a variety of different places. So one of the things that's so under-appreciated is the benefits of global trade of low tariffs, even in a world where they cheat, the benefits of all these countries coming online and producing and how resilient the private sector is within the mixed economies. But let me tell you that if we did not have China and Southeast Asia in a sense coming online in the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, your standard of living, your quality of life, your wealth would be dramatic lower. The ability of the U.S. economy to deal with COVID, the ability of the U.S. economy to deal with financial crisis would have been significantly reduced, significantly reduced. Trade deficits are wonderful things, wonderful things and only sustainable as long as the United States maintains a decent economy so that people want to invest here, which is what ultimately drives trade deficits. So yes, mixed economies have been more resilient partially because the free market reforms they went through in the 70s, 80s and 90s and partially because of the rest of the world coming online and partially because entrepreneurs and businessmen are amazingly resilient. 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, wins 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 like it, you know, I want to see, 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, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. 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