 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this day after Christmas. Somebody said this is named Boxing Day. Somebody's going to have to explain to me why it's called Boxing Day. I guess I don't get it. You know, wasn't brought up with Christmas. All these names are new to me. So welcome. Hopefully everybody had a great Christmas and had a great time. We had a lot of fun. Spent the day before Christmas at the beach. Beach was the weather was amazing. Got to swim in the ocean. Got to swim in the pool. It was really, really cool. And then yesterday, hang out with friends, went to a really nice restaurant. And here we are. I went on a walk this morning. It was a beautiful day today. Christmas in the Caribbean is okay. It's okay. I don't miss the cold. Not that it was cold in Southern California, but still, you know, it was really cool. All right. Today we have our hangout. Special Christmas edition of the hangouts. It's supposed to be particularly, I guess, joyous and benevolent. And friendly. So no tough questions today. And yeah, not accepting tough, difficult questions because it's day after Christmas. Kidding, kidding. Well, and all right, so we will. Super chat is open. So Roland has already started us off in the super chat. Although I still seem to be able to copy paste. Now copy. So. Yes, we were super chat is open. We have our panelists here. We have six of our friends here. You know, I have a feeling some of the people will join as we go along. Of course, those of you who are on. Just on the listening in, you can use the super chat to participate. We do have our regular goal of $600 on the super chat. And, but all questions, you can ask anything. I was kidding before about no difficult questions, but you can indeed ask anything. But. Remember it is, it is Christmas. We are heading towards New Year's. Hopefully everybody has lined up in New Year's resolutions and everything. And I know I'm working on the plan for the Iran book show for next year. So that, that, that hopefully that'll be exciting. Okay, let's, let's get started with our panelists. Adam, go for it. Okay, since more people have joined, I want to share the picture again. Because I think it's very nice and symbolic. This is my. It's not sharing. Let's see, I clicked on it. Now I need to click on share. And do you see it? Yeah, it is. Okay. It's going to make everybody. This is my step daughters dinner. Composition on the theme of a partridge in a third tree. Those are actual staffed cartridges. And symbolic of the third tree. Is a wreath of herbs. Partially crashed herbs have. A wonderful smell, which combined with the taste of the partridge and the stuffing and the rest of the table is absolutely wonderful. My step daughter's name is Emily. And she's a PhD in economic history. And her mother's job is investing her mother's money. Her mother is a former senior director. In charge of the North American lab of a Swiss pharmaceutical company. And when her mother was working in Switzerland. I was the guardian of her kids. So I homeschooled two teenagers. And I think they turned out very well. And here's an example. Good job. Good job. All right, I will. How can I do this? Okay. Now you can unshare me. There we go. There we go. Thanks for sharing, Adam. That was, that was beautiful. Jennifer. Oh, I want to ask everybody. So this is a new look. Part of the changes for the one book show. Everybody was complaining that I was too close to the camera. So now I'm further away. I'm not really further away. All I did was change the lens. I was told by the pros that this is a better look. So you'll have to let me know if you agree or not. I bought myself a Christmas. A wide angle lens for, for the camera. So this is the result. Let me know what you think. Jennifer. Are there any Christmas carols that you like? Like there's some that I really like. Like Oh, holy night. For example, I don't listen. Obviously the lyrics, I don't pay attention to, but the melody is really pretty. And if it's song while it's very, very pretty. So there are any songs like that that you like. The Santa baby counts as a Christmas cow. No, I'm talking like that. I'm talking like the old traditional stuff that, you know, it's Christian. I ignore that part, but some of the songs are really pretty though. I like Santa baby. That's my favorite Christmas song. Particularly if like somebody like Marilyn Monroe is singing it. I like, I guess I like the Christmas carols. I like how they sound. I don't listen to the woods. If the song well, the harmonies are beautiful. And if you get a group of. Singers who are particularly good. Yeah, it's gorgeous. So, uh, I can't think of any particular one that I like, but I just like them generally. Cause they, you know, it's, it's just pretty music. I like a lot of, um, A lot of Christian, what you would call Christian music. So I like masses. I like requiem's. I particularly like requiem's. These, uh, you know, uh, masses for the dead. Right. But, uh, But if you look at Motard's requiem, if you look at Ferdy's requiem, Billy, Billy, yours is requiem. They're just among the most beautiful, amazing, most powerful pieces of music ever written. So the fact that people are singing religious googly go. Doesn't really, uh, detract that much, uh, from my enjoyment of it. I project it. Kind of, uh, my, the values that I think the music itself is projecting, uh, independent of the, of the, of the text. I do the same sometimes with opera because opera can get so, uh, Silly. Right. But the music is so beautiful that I, I just, you know, Project onto it. You know, I, there's a lot of music. I like listening to it. I like listening to it. I like listening to it. I like listening to it. I like listening to it. I like listening to it. I like listening to it. You know, there's a lot of music I like listening to in foreign languages. So I don't understand what they say. Well, since it was an interesting question, I will add one favorite of my own, which is the melody of the slave ride, which has been made into a carol by American entertainment. a traditional Russian sleigh ride melody. And what I like it performed without words on bells. Oh, yeah, that's really pretty. I've heard that. That's really pretty. So Shazma tells me that Aretha Kitt actually sang Santa Baby. Yes. And yeah, she sang it really sexy and really beautiful. And Thessie is amazed that I like a sexy song, but I pretty much like anything sexy. So if it's truly sexy versus vulgarity, but yes. Thanks, Jennifer, for giving me the opportunity to say how much I like Santa Baby. But Christmas carols are beautiful. Somebody asked me yesterday, the other day, if we like Christmas music, and yeah, it's festive, it's fun, it's happy, you know, generally happy. Yeah, and so it's, I enjoy it. Alexis. Hey, Aaron, what are you doing? I'm good. So would you sing Santa Baby for us? No, no. Okay, there's the question. Let me, let me give you some context after that. How do you enjoy Christmas the most, right? Is it with friends or family? You know, after a few years like spending it with our family, my wife and me will be starting to rethink our strategy a little because we are not being sure it could be delicately as relaxing as they should be, right? So how do you enjoy the most yourself? Well, it depends what you mean by family. So, you know, I enjoy it with my kids. So my direct family, obviously. Yes. But beyond that, you know, I don't have any family that would celebrate Christmas with me because everybody's in Israel, there's nobody in the US. I don't have any family in the US. But I can tell you from my recollection of celebrating Jewish holidays with family, I would prefer celebrating holidays with friends any day over family. You know, I can't think, I mean, family's great once in a while in small doses. But yeah, I mean, I much, much bigger preference for friends over family. Yeah. You're so filming what I thought as well. Yeah, it's family is, I don't know, it's tricky to navigate because the reason you have great relationship with your family, for the most part, unless you have an extraordinary family, is not necessarily because you share values. It's not just share perspective on the world or even a sense of life. It's because your family. So it's a large extent, at least with my family. There's a limited scope of what you can talk about. You don't want to touch on sensitive issues. You're kind of walking on eggs a little bit. And with friends, they're friends because they share your values. And even if you disagree about something, it's friendly. And so it completely changes. I don't know, family, you and God a little bit. And with friends, the God is down. And it's so much more relaxing and more fun. So family has its place. And if you like your family, it has its place. But the real fun stuff is with friends. Yeah, I think my way of thinking about this is you've chosen your friends. You've chosen your immediate family, but you haven't chosen the rest of it, right? Exactly. So pick and choose. You pick certain times of year where you want to be with family. And the rest is with friends. So make sense. Thanks. Sure. All right, Daniel. Sounds weird, Daniel. I'm not sure what's going on with your mic. Yeah, Nick. You hear me? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to talk about a subject that you raised that you've raised numerous times. The issue of rationalism versus empiricism. And it's not really rational versus empiricism. What you've said is it's easy, especially for young objectives, objectivists, to be very rationalistic because they don't have life experiences. And I was just thinking about that. I mean, even more older so-called objectivists like David Kelly who have written books on the subject, you've said in the past that he became very rationalistic in his work. So I'm just saying it's all over the spectrum. Is there a self? Maybe you can ask Harry this to Harry Binswanger who knows a lot about the subject when he comes on in two days. Is there any self-introspection that an objectivist can go through to see where on the because it's easy to cross the line. That's what I'm saying. So what do you do is there's got to be some sort of a thinking process where you do a self-check and see if your arguments are borderline rationalistic. Was Leonard talked about it? I'm sure he has. Oh yeah, in understanding objectivism. Understanding objectivism is much of the course is about exactly this and it's about how to identify rationalism in yourself. The key exercise to go through there is to try to concretize the things that you say. Try to find examples, point to things, point to concretes, try to explain it out loud in concrete terms. And if you can't and the best thing is not to do it out loud. The best thing is to write it down. So write down like a paragraph or page of your understanding of something, but try to make it in terms of pointing to reality, something in reality that is a concretization, a reduction of the idea that you're trying to illustrate. And if you struggle with that, if it's really hard for you to come up with examples, if you come up with the same example as you would Ayn Rand used or that Leonard Peacuff used, but you can't come up with your own example. That's a sign of rationalism. I see a lot of objectivists use the same example that Ayn Rand used or that Leonard Peacuff used over and over and over again, and they can't come up with their own. That's a good indication that you're probably being rationalistic. So that's a good way to introspect and to do an exercise to discover your own rationalism is, what examples can you come up with? What concretes? And they have to be concrete examples, stuff you can point to. And then can you connect what you pointed to, to the abstract concepts that you have? Is this topic worthy of a show? Sure, but I'd have to... What about the upsell? You're going to ask me if I'm going to sponsor it. There you go. You should probably sponsor that. I'm going to beat you down to the punch. You should probably sponsor it particularly. I was going to say it's going to require me to do some work. But this is a very important topic. I mean, it's one of the most important topics, this process of reduction. Well, and Leonard does a lot of work on that in understanding objectivism. And then the other great course for this is objectivism through induction and others. So yes, there's a lot of good material out there. I could do a show on it. The challenge of these shows is always, am I doing the show for objectivists? Am I doing the show to bring in new people into objectivism? What's the goal of these shows? And again, different of these shows are going to be focused on different things. But yes, that would be a good topic. Harry's coming on in two days, so it'd be interesting. No, he's coming on in a week and two days. We postponed it to the first week in January. Okay, all right. It'd be interesting to get his take on it, because I'm sure he has. You can come back and use the super chat. Just make sure I got a question lined up for him. So it's Tuesday, January. I can't remember. What is it, two to four, something like that. Excellent. All right, good. Daniel, Mike, working? I don't know. Does it sound better now? No, not really, but you're audible, so I can hear you, so you can ask and we'll look around it. Okay. For Christmas, just before I needed to take my FINRA continuous education annual free training for registered representatives in financial training. Yeah. Part of, you know, they give you certain spending materials, and then they give you a test on what people speak. I'll talk you down just a little bit in the study material. The ethics problem. Ethics can be defined as a set of moral principles or rules that guide our conduct when it affects other people. In the 1920s, there were no federal rules that specifically regulated the behavior of workers. As a result, stock market manipulation and insider trading were rampant. The result was a stock market crash of 1929 and resulting worldwide depression. The financial crisis of 2008 exposed many practices in investment banking that were clearly unethical. In years leading up to 2008, the investment bankers involved in both creating and selling products of dubious value did not ask if these products were good for clients, or the economy, or even their firm. All of that is not to say they were immoral, they were simply immoral. They felt their only job was to make as much money as possible for themselves, their companies, and the company shareholders. Ethical questions were the furthest things in their minds. Did stock brokers create the stock market crash of 1929 and resulting worldwide depression? Did investment bankers create the financial crisis of 2008? Is there something about financial trading that is fundamentally amorous? It sounds like your sound is coming through maybe the computer built in. I don't know if you have a separate mic, but it sounds like it's coming through the built in and it's low and a little distorted, but I think we heard everything that was there. There are a lot in that passage that you read. There's so much of interest there because both the way they define ethics, they define ethics exclusively as your relationship with other people. They define ethics from the perspective completely from the perspective of your relationship to other people. That's the way altruism and conventional morality defines ethics. That's almost the only way people can eventually think about ethics, deal with ethics, and I think that plays partially into the question of is making money ethical if you're making money for yourself? So their assumption is, of course, that if you're focused on making money, then that's a moral at best, a moral at worst, but it can never be moral because morality only relates to other people. Of course, if you're making money for other people, I don't know how that plays into it because you're managing it, hard to tell. That is one point to make is notice always how these ethical issues are framed always in terms of the otherism, always in terms of altruism. They're always framed in terms of in terms of the other, which you do for yourself is a best-again aim all. But there was more than that. It makes some assumptions about, for example, the crash of 1929. The crash of 1929 might have been caused by a lot of different things, but suddenly the crash of 1929 didn't cause the Great Depression. Certainly the crash of 1929 that was not caused by immoral activities of stockbrokers and others, although there was some immoral activity going on in the markets, there's no question. And a lot of that, if they were protecting us from fraud or a lot of that, if they had actually, if exchanges were more mature, a lot of that would not have existed. So there was some learning curve in terms of what happens when a lot of people start engaging in stock market activity, what happens when you have unscrupulous people participating, how do you deal with all that? And the solution is not more government regulation, but it's also not doing anything about it. So 1920s, they teach something about the behavior. But much of 1920s crash was caused by the Fed, the Fed loose monetary policy leading up to the crash, and then restrictive monetary policy post-1929, post-crash, which exacerbated the crash, and then all of the rest of bad government policies from smooth holly to a bunch of other things that Hoover doubling the income tax rate, Hoover engaging in massive government expenditures into a session, so-called stimulus to the economy, all those things led to the Great Depression, not the actual crash. Of course, the same thing, yeah, go ahead, Daniel. Interestingly, both of those are wrong answers that they give you later on. When they test you, they say, did the Federal Reserve cause this? Did government, interestingly income tax rate, cause this? Unbelievable, because of course, Milton Friedman, an overpriced winner in economics, actually wrote an entire book on the history of interest rates in the United States with a co-author whose name escapes me right now. And he makes the case that it absolutely was too loose of a monetary policy, primarily too tight of a monetary policy post, a lot of other economists that made the same case, even Bernanke, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve recently, made the case that the problem, what caused the Great Depression to a large extent, was too tight of a monetary policy from the Federal Reserve in a post-1929 era. And you can tell that he learned that. He tried to apply the lessons learned from that in the financial crisis by loosening the money supply. It's dubious how successful he actually was at doing that. Money did not expand as much as I think he thought it did during 2008-2009. So, yes, I mean, it's unbelievable how you get these tests that everybody in the financial industry has to take. And they are filled with basically propaganda about economic history and about economic fact and just sheer unequivocal falsehoods that I'd say are not that controversial. That is, it's not like the opinion that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression is way out there. Many conventional economists agree with that or at least think that it had a major role to play. We could argue about how much of a role but a major role to play. I think most economists, pretty much all economists, even Paul Krugman would probably say smooth holly was played a huge role in it. But yet our government, the regulatory agencies of our government are playing an crucial role in perpetuating fallacies and perpetuating mythology about economic history and know that this is why it is so important to separate government from education because this is what happens when they run education and why the regulation of any industry is going to lead to horrific consequences. So, it really is horrifying. This is what makes our job a million times more difficult. It's not only that we have to convince people of new morality. It's not only we have to convince them of a new perspective on politics and individual rights or a theory of economics. We have to teach them history. We have to teach them economic history because they mean, and it's not to teach them. We have to undo all the damage that was done over decades and decades and decades of financial regulators and teachers and in universities and everywhere else teaching this garbage to our kids. So, it really is super discouraging. I mean, on YouTube, I've got my, I can't remember, four or five part series on the causes of the financial crisis. It was not malfeasance by the banks. Although banks, many of the banks behaved questionably, but they behaved consistent with the incentives provided them by regulators and regulations. They could have avoided those incentives and they should have and some of them did avoid them like, like BBT, John Allison's bank. But to put the blame on them rather than the people who created the incentives and rather than the regulators and rather than the whole system is, is perverse and absolutely ridiculous. Okay, Adam, you have your hand raised. Yes, I have my hand raised because you were just talking about the adverse effects of regulations. And this reminded me that this year I found a politician whom I actually like. Can you hear me? Yes, I'm saying shocking. Okay, he's the minister of digital industries in Taiwan. Okay, I was going to say, okay, so it's not in the US. That's, that's, that sounds more reasonable. Okay, and his agenda is to keep the digital industries unregulated. Excellent. Excellent. He has a government department with a grand total of 15 employees. And that includes the secretaries and the janitors. And his big problem is that many of the digital companies in Taiwan have regulated foreign markets. Taiwan has just 20 million people and they have big overseas markets. And his job, as he puts it, is to find ways to make foreign regulations inapplicable in Taiwan itself so that the industries remain unregulated. That's great. I'm impressed by a lot of things about Taiwan. And, you know, who knows, it might be that we achieve greater freedom in the East, in Southeast Asia, in certain pockets of Southeast Asia than we do in the West in the decades to come. We'll see. Now the one thing that I need to say to people who are, who have a rationalistic tendency, he's identified in Wikipedia as a conservative anarchist. No. And he still has a government position, even though he's considered a conservative anarchist. That's interesting in and of itself. Yes. So it's not the label, it's the policy. Yep. Thanks, Adam. All right. We've got a phone call from 646. Who is this? I have my suspicions. Hello. Hi, your own. It's Andrew. Andrew, how's it going? Pretty good. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. So I find that as I'm getting more advanced in my career, there are times where, you know, my commitment to honesty is tested. Particularly in situations where there are circumstances where, you know, people are, I think, talking in subtext and they don't necessarily want you to bend, to lie, but they want to test to see, like, if you'll bend the truth. You know, kind of, are you one of us type, you know, insinuation and it's hard to judge because it's, you know, communication gets more nuanced in business where some of it is, you know, advocacy and like, I see it as okay. And some of it is, I don't see it as okay. It's really, okay, now it's really bending the truth in a way that that's uncomfortable. So, you know, I kind of wanted a refresher to see if you would explain or talk a little bit about connection between honesty and self-esteem. Yeah, I mean, look, I think people who do that, it's an expression of lack of self-esteem. It's the, they're not comfortable with reality. So they're trying to bend reality in a sense. They're trying to pretend reality is something else so that they can get a kind of a pseudo self-esteem, a pretence because they don't have the real thing because they feel uncomfortable with reality as it is. So, you know, honesty is an aspect of reason. Honesty is something that reason requires because honesty basically says it's a commitment to the facts. It's a commitment to reality. It's a commitment to what is. And of course, that commitment to what is and that commitment to rationality and to reason is the essence of what generates ultimately what results in your achieving self-esteem. Self-esteem is something you achieve when you are living consistently in adherence with reality, with facts, logic, reason. That is what generates. That's what I think the the positive outcome of that is your own self-esteem, your knowledge that reality is knowable, that you can deal with it, you can succeed within it, that you can change reality, change the world out there to fit your needs by understanding reality and by living in accordance with it. So, you know, when you try to negate reality in any way, when you try to pretend to yourself or pretend to other people, that the facts are not the facts, that reality is not reality, that the things are different than what they really are. When you do that, you are undermining your commitment to reason, you're undermining your commitment to yourself, the commitment to your own life, and as a consequence, you're undermining your self-esteem. So, you really can't have self-esteem unless you're 100% committed to reality and to the truth, to facts and facts alone. Make sense? Yes. I mean, people, people tell stories to others and to themselves to make them look good, to pretend reality is different than what it is, but it's all shallow and it's all makes them maybe feel good in the moment, but it has no existent and it has no depth and it cannot survive. Yeah. I think earlier in my career, I was kind of rationalistic about it and probably too on the nose, you know, and now I sense this kind of level of communication that goes on where, you know, to be honest doesn't mean everything needs to be said or stated or, you know. Remember that honesty is primarily a virtue with regard to you, right, yourself. The most important thing is for you to be commitment, to commit yourself to the facts, to reality. And, you know, how you interact with others is going to defend, at least to some extent, on the context and on the circumstances and on the particulars that are involved, right? Right. You never want to try to gain a value through lying, but sometimes you have to protect the value by telling somebody a lie and sometimes their games people play and sometimes you play those games. As long as you know it's a game and as long as you know what the truth is, and as long as you know that you can exit that game and identify the truth and tell the truth. Right. And if the game doesn't go to more serious, like become more serious, because if the game people are very much on the line between game and seriousness and I don't think they know how much of it is serious and how much of it isn't. That's true. And you have to watch it for yourself. So it's tricky in social situations because you don't want to be drawn into that. Got you. Good. Thanks, Andrew. Great hat and sweater there, Alexis. You know, he brought the Christmas spirit to the video today. That's great. You should see our family pictures all wearing the same outfit. Very, very collectivist and conformist. I'm a sucker for Christmas jumpers. That's great. All right, let's take some super chat questions. Roland asks, any New Year resolutions? Yeah, there are going to be a few. Let's stick to, let's do those on New Year, Roland. Let's kind of go through those. We'll do a New Year's show on the 1st of January. I think that's on Saturday. So we'll do a New Year's show and we'll do resolutions. We'll do predictions. We'll do all the fun stuff for New Year's and I'll cover some of my New Year's resolutions and my New Year's resolutions for the show as well when we do that. So and a lot of those are dependent on you guys. All right. Don't forget you can use the super chat to ask questions about the show. You can use the super chat to support the show and but let's see, we've got who asked this question? I know. Oh, this is Andy. Andy, does Hazoni confuse culture, tradition and rights? Or does he see them as the same thing? I thought you made a good example with Uber. It is a choice between protecting the past or the individual. You can have both. Yes, I definitely think that's right. You can't have both. But I don't think Hazoni understands rights the way we do. He has a pre-enlightenment view of rights. You know, rights are things that the government is going to protect, but they can change their mind. They're no really inalienable rights in Hazoni's view. There's no such thing as this is your Hazoni. You might debate with him on individualism versus conservatism. In his view rights, a concept that was his view of rights is a concept that comes out of England, of common law England of the 16th and then 17th centuries. They an 18th century and they explicitly reject the Lockean and the view of rights coming out of the Netherlands, Pupendorf, and I forget the other philosopher who was a think about rights out of the Netherlands in the 17th century. They reject the whole idea of natural rights, which I reject too, but I think natural rights are much closer to the proper view of rights than his view. They're just kind of ideas about how to limit government, but you don't want to take them too seriously because they might go out of fashion or they might be a time where in the common good, you have to change them. So it's much more of an evolution. It's not inalienable. They're no principles. His whole perspective is an empiricist. His whole perspective, I mean, I think he would agree with Bentham that Locke's idea of rights on nonsense on stilts, which is what Bentham said about Lockean rights. So Hasani rejects rights in the name of culture and tradition. And he would say, look, the UK and America have a pretty good tradition of protecting what we consider rights, and therefore we should continue doing it because it's self-tradition. Other countries don't have it, and that's okay because that's their tradition. So there are no universal principles. You cannot take principles that apply to the Anglo-American context and project them onto France or project them onto Germany or protect them onto Japan. And to the extent that you do, bad things will happen. Now, if you're interested in my discussion with Hasani, the debate is up online, and I encourage you to listen to it, but I think what's even more exciting is that the two of us were interviewed by Lex Friedman the day after the debate, and that three and a half hour interview should be going up on Lex Friedman's channel any day now. So we get into a lot more and a lot deeper discussion of some of these concepts on Lex Friedman's show. And it's interesting to see what Lex pushes on and where Lex's heart is or what are the things that trigger Lex in the sense of where are the issues that he wants to follow up on. But we could have easily gone for another three hours on that discussion because we only touched on a few issues and there were a lot of issues that we never even got to. For example, religion and the world religion and all this, which would have been a great conversation. So I would definitely encourage you to go watch the Lex Friedman discussion when it goes up online, hopefully sometime this week. And please share it if you like it because I'm hoping to get a lot of new subscribers from that one. Okay, Sam asks, do property rights apply differently to living beings? I don't think so, like animal husbandry and pets and things like that. I don't think so. Right? Yeah, I can't think of how you would apply it differently, right? It's the right to use and dispose based on your judgment. So I don't see why that would change if it was a pet or animal husbandry or anything else. I don't see the difference. So I think property rights apply to all that in the same way. If you have any specific example of something you think it challenges a normal perspective on where there's a difference between physical objects and biological objects, let me know and I'll take a look at that. But I can't think of one off the top of my head. Oh, right. Remind everybody, Super Chat is open. There are a lot of Super Chat questions. So I'll keep going to the panel for as long as you guys are not asking questions. That also means we're way off target. We're already 45 minutes in and all right. Let's see, Adam. Sorry, I don't meet myself. Going back to the question of rationalism, I have an example that I think illustrates the story quite well, the problem of vaccine mandates in workplaces is a new problem and many people who consider themselves objectivists approach it rationalistically. Now, when I got into that discussion, I used a different example, the example of drunk drivers. Now a drunk driver isn't known for certain that he's going to kill someone driving on a road. But let's suppose we have a private freeway and you may remember that in Orange County, there's a private toll freeway through what was the Irvine Ranch. And the government doesn't permit the owner to allow drunk drivers on his freeway the same laws against drunk driving that apply on government roads, apply to this private road. Now that's a violation of the freeway owner's rights. By rights, he should be free to allow drunk drivers on this freeway. On the other hand, I personally would not drive on a freeway that allowed drunk drivers. Yep. And I think the question of vaccine mandates is very similar. Should a private owner have the right to admit unvaccinated patrons? Of course. Would I go to a place where there are unvaccinated people and take the risk at my age and with my health conditions of contracting COVID? I wouldn't. But that's the beauty of making a voluntary. That is, you could go. Somebody else might choose yes to go. And we all can make our own decisions based on the relevant information. But I don't actually agree with you in terms of the parallel because I think there's a difference with drunk driving. And the difference is the cop can't actually stop you, even today, or theoretically can't stop you. I think they do, but can't stop you unless there's probable cause. And the probable cause could be you're weaving through the lanes, you're going left and right, you're driving fast and then slow. And then you're exhibiting some behavior that leads them to think that you are drunk. So I don't think, I don't think, for example, stopping all drivers and giving them a sobriety check is a legitimate thing for the government to do. I do think it's legitimate for the government to stop people who exhibit bad behavior. So for example, I do think it's legitimate to say, if you're exhibiting, put aside COVID because COVID is this mixed case particularly right now. But let's say we had a really deadly disease where people not just with older and with existing conditions, but people just dropping dead from. Government can certainly say if you're exhibiting any symptoms, we have a right to force to test you, to get you tested or isolate you, one or the other, you get to choose. That would be the same as weaving during drunk driving, right? You exhibit some symptoms and that's the drug driving and therefore the government can step in to adjust it. But I agree with you on private property. Certainly employers have every right to make a decision and you as an employee or as a visitor or as a contractor or as whatever have a right to decide whether you want to engage with that company or not. But right now the existential threat to me personally is that hospitals are forced to admit unvaccinated patients. And two of my specialists actually retired rather than continue working because they didn't want to be in contact with unvaccinated people. Yep, no. But the evil there is government interference in healthcare. And that's why the hospitals are the way they are. It's not because I see I don't buy the story of the hospitals overloaded because they're unvaccinated. Hospitals overloaded because they don't have the ability to adjust the supply of healthcare to the demand because they were overloaded before we got vaccines. If they had adjusted then they would be quite ready to deal with overload today. So the real cause of our problems and the whole issue around COVID is government involvement in healthcare, government involvement in hospitals, government regulation of doctors, government regulations of all these things. I don't see why the doctors couldn't have said you can't come to my practice unless you're vaccinated. They have everything to do that. And you know, I think almost every state, maybe not in Florida and Texas, but almost every other state, you can choose not to deal with unvaccinated people. Interestingly, in California there is no limit on hospital capacity. And at the time when there was a threat of the hospitals running out of capacity, the owner of the Los Angeles Times who's a self-made billionaire in the biotech industry actually opened his own private hospital just in case there was an increase capacity. Is that true though? Edema, was it an exception during COVID? Because as far as I know, the state government has to approve. Any request by a hospital to increase the number of beds they have has to be approved by the state government. Well, right now the law in California is that a hospital has a normal capacity and an overload capacity in case there's a disaster such as an earthquake. So for example, the hospitals where I had my shoulder replacement surgery has three times as many available beds as are normally used. They are used when in normal mode as lounges, waiting rooms and so on. But they have all the connections, all that's needed to do to triple the capacity of the hospital is to roll the beds out of storage, connect them to the existing connection. That's really interesting. The capacity. Yeah, that's really interesting that California is prepared because of earthquakes. For example, New York has none of that. New York has a huge shortage of hospital beds because they're not prepared at all for disasters. That's fascinating. All right, let's see, Jennifer. We've talked before about risk aversion being common in the country. But I was wondering is there more to it in the cases? It seems like I see a parallel where like with plastic waste, for example, the solution is not to deal with the waste, but just get rid of plastic. And then of course we know what they did with COVID and climate change, same thing. Instead of trying to adjust the solution is, oh, just get rid of fossil fuels. It's always just cut your head out for a headache. Is that just risk aversion or is there something more going on there? Well, there's a lot more than that. There's a lack of trust, you could say, a lack of a belief in the ability of markets and individuals to adjust. We don't trust people. So the easiest thing we get, the easiest thing we don't trust people to behave in irrational ways. The easiest thing to do is to ban, is to dictate to them how they can behave instead of trusting their own judgment. And it's a disbelief and a distrust of the markets and technology to come up with solutions and to adjust to changing circumstances. So we have to dictate what the new circumstances shall be. So it's more than just risk aversion. It is, and then it's fear. But from some people, it's also, I think, even consciously for some, just an opportunity to take more control. Don't let a crisis go to waste. Right? All right, there's a crisis. I can take over. And they do. So I think it's a combination of all those things. And that's why it's so bad. Yeah, lack of nuance thinking too, for sure. Yeah, lack of any kind of thinking, absolutely. So they're not thinkers. They are motors, definitely. Thank you. Daniel. So Russia has been doing a lot of saber rattling. If they actually do invade Ukraine, what should the military, the US do? Should we provide intelligence? Should we send drones in and offer to make strikes? Should we put boots on the ground? What should we do? Nothing. I really don't think the US should do anything. I mean, I think the US should pull its ambassador and its entire embassy staff out of Russia. I think the US should deem Russia a, what do you call it, an aggressor nation and just withdraw its sanction from Putin and everybody else involved. But it's not the role of the US. It's not its job. It's not its responsibility. It's not, it shouldn't be part of, you know, no individual rights or Americans are in danger. No individual rights or Americans are threatened. It should basically tell the Russians, your whole way in which you're going to relate to America in the future is going to be different because we don't trust you anymore, because you are an aggressor, you're an aggressor in the world stage. We're keeping an eye on you. We're not going to treat you as a regular country, but we're not, you know, we're not going to sacrifice treasure or lives for the sake of Ukraine, you know, as much as it's tragic and horrific. We'll sell Ukraine weapons. You know, maybe we provide them with intelligence. It doesn't cost anything. But more than that, we don't, we don't, we're not involved. And would we say anything about Germany, you know, lying draws here, you can go into Ukraine and we're not going to do much, but we have enough American interests, business interests in Germany that if you, you attack Germany, then we will get involved. Now, there's a sense in which we don't have a choice today, but to defend Germany because they're part of NATO and we have a treaty and part of that treaty commits us to defending Germany. I don't believe we should stay in NATO. I think the United States should leave NATO, should have left NATO a long time ago. I mean, I didn't believe we should have been in NATO even during the Cold War. Never mind today when there's no Cold War. And look, Germany is a rich country. The idea that Russia would be in a position to defeat Germany is absurd. The only reason Russia is in a position to defeat Germany is that Germany, like the rest of Europe, freerides off of the United States. They invest nothing in their military technologies. They don't have it built in army. Partially, we like that because Germany has been an aggressor, was an aggressor in the 12th, 20th century, and we wanted to keep their military small, just like Japan has a very small military. But it's none of our business in a sense, and Germany is in a position to defend. And look, if I were Germany, I might come to the defense of Ukraine because I wouldn't want Putin that much close to me. Now, the challenge there is, of course, Germany is dependent on Russia for natural gas. Without natural gas, Germany can't heat itself in the winter. It can't provide electricity. And it's going to be more dependent on because they have the new pipeline, so it's only going to be more dependent on Russia. Instead of building LNG ports and encouraging importation of natural gas from the US, they built more pipelines from Russia so they become more dependent on them. But look, Germany might have a national interest in what happens in Ukraine, in terms of protecting its individuals. The United States just doesn't. I mean, we should be leaving Europe. We should bring our troops home. We might want an airfield in Europe if the Germans will allow us to keep it so we can get to places like the Middle East and other places more quickly and more rapidly. But generally, we have way too many troops over there. We spend way too much money over there. And the military likes it because they like sending people and they like being posted in Germany. And they won this global empire in a sense. But it is not protecting US interests to have the kind of troops presence we have in Europe today. And it means we have to defend Lithuania and Latvia and those are really at risk of a Russian invasion. And because they're part of NATO and it puts, I think, the lives of American troops and it puts in real danger of getting involved in a war with Russia, which makes no sense from the perspective of American individual rights protection. And if Germany does have an interest in not seeing Ukraine overthrown, maybe we offer the Germans to sell them all the way to part where we got over there. We got a bunch of fighter jets. We got them to warheads. Oh, yeah. The problem is people. They don't have the people. They don't have a big enough trained army. NATO generally is way too dependent on the United States. You know, German special forces, German military are not very good from everything I can tell. And it's a problem that we've created this dependency over decades since World War II. And I think one of the few things that, well, one of the few things Trump was right about, wrong, you know, right, but in a wrong way was the whole issue of NATO and it's over dependence on us and the fact that we pay too much into it. But the right approach is why are we there? We shouldn't be in there. We shouldn't have, why do we have a base in Japan? I mean, maybe we need a couple of bases in the Pacific for a fleet, but why do we have such a huge presence in Japan? Why are we committed to defending Japan? I guess it's because we don't want the Japanese to arm themselves so they don't become, but Japanese of today are not the same as the Japanese, you know, culture changes. There's no reason. It's like the Germans are not the Nazis. We shouldn't make those assumptions. Adam, is that a hand? Yes, it's a hand. And what I wanted to point out is that individuals have a natural right to volunteer for combat if that's aligned with their values. And our neighbor to the north, Canada, has many individuals who volunteered, who are veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces, which are armed with US weapons, who volunteered to go to the Ukraine and teach the Ukrainians how to use those weapons. So that's something that the US also ought to change. If somebody wants to volunteer in a conflict, especially a conflict against the fascist dictator like Putin, Americans should certainly be free to do that. Once again, let me just, yes, I have some caveats, but we have to be careful with those kind of, let me promote the panelist, okay. Geoffrey Miller is joining us, excellent. My only caveat with that is it has to be consistent with US foreign policy. That is, yes, you can go fight the fascists, but if you want to fight for the fascists, the United States should not allow that. So it has to be consistent with some foreign policy that we have, and we have to have some knowledge of that foreign policy. Geoffrey, if you're on, there's something weird about the connection. I don't quite, okay, there you are. Okay, you're connected. You can put on your video if you'd like. Let's see who's next. I think it's Alexis. Hey, so short question, and I'm sorry if you already covered it during the show, because I'm a few shows late, so you know, it's something you already answered. Feel free to go fast answering that question. What's going on in Turkey right now? That's the question. So from what I heard, they decided to fight inflation by lowering their interest rate, which sounds like, you know, the most irrational monetary policy in living time. And, you know, in this damn time that says a lot, actually. So have they completely lost their mind or is there more to it that I don't get? No, they've lost their mind, right? They're basically trying to flaunt the laws of physics, the laws of economic principle. This crisis in Turkey has been going on for a few years now. The Turkish lira, I think it is, collapsed a couple of years ago, and now it's collapsing again. It's kind of a second round. And the reason is Turkey borrowed a lot of money in dollars. So Turkish companies borrowed a lot of money overseas in dollars. And the challenge was that is that you have to repay the money in dollars. And at the same time, but what they took advantage of was very low interest rates. But at the same time, the Turkish government went on a spending spree. Deficit rose, and the central bank printed money to basically monetize the deficits, which is, I think, familiar to us these days. Inflation increased. The value of the lira declined dramatically vis-a-vis the dollar. And suddenly, all these companies that owed money in dollar, you know, ran to try to convert their liras into dollars so that they could pay back their debt, which caused the lira to collapse even further and caused a lot. Some companies to go bankrupt because they couldn't pay. They just ran out of liras to convert their dollars. They got a little bit of stability over the last couple of years from that. I'm not sure exactly what. I haven't dug into it deeply enough to figure out exactly what they did to get. But now there's a second round. That is, I think, probably all the stimulus money just like everywhere else. Turkey had to issue stimulus during COVID. And all that is manifesting in inflation, which is resulting in the lira collapsing again. I think this time around, fewer companies have their debt in dollars, but some still do. So again, they're exacerbating the problem by trying to buy dollars, sell lira, which makes the lira go down even more. You know, when three years ago, when this happened or two years ago, whenever it happened, the way they dealt with this was to raise interest rates, which is usually what you do in order to increase the value of your currency in order to reduce inflation. Although that doesn't always work. Sometimes raising interest rates actually causes inflation to go up even more. Now, why is that? Because if raising of interest rates causes the government deficits to increase because their interest payments are increasing, then the market then anticipates inflation being higher in the future, because deficits are higher in the future. And you will have to inflate one way or the other to pay off the deficit. So as you increase interest rates, deficits increase and inflation increases. So what argument is in order to reduce inflation, it's not enough to increase interest rates. You have to do a second thing, which is fiscal discipline. You have to reduce spending or increase taxes. You have to convince the markets that you will pay the debt back. You won't use inflation, i.e. monetizing the debt, to pay your debt back. So what happened when Tokyo raised interest rates is it suffered harsh economic times. It didn't do well. So they're trying the opposite. I wonder if we can reduce the interest rates and see what happens. Reducing interest rate never works because it increases the incentive of people to borrow money, which increases the amount of money in circulation in the economy. It increases the velocity of the money. And while it reduces government debt interest rate obligations, it doesn't reduce actual government spending. So while it reduces government spending a little bit, but it doesn't give the markets any signal that government is committed to actually reducing spending or committed to limiting debt in the long run. So it's super inflationary. So yeah, I mean, it's basically putting a wish above everything else. It's really just voodoo economics praying, you know, the Islamists, maybe God is on their side. I don't know. Allah might be on their side. But there's zero economic logic behind it. Oh, I think you are not allowed to charge interest in Islamic finance. So yeah, you're not allowed to charge interest in Islamic finance. And I'm not sure how the government actually does it, given that Ogo one claims to be an Islamist. So I'm not sure how he what kind of borrowing is done there. Now there are Islamic banks that pretend they don't charge interest, but they charge something else that's very similar to interest. So it very much looks like interest, even though it's not called interest. But here we know that it's interest and it's called interest and it behaves like interest. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how they get around that. That's a really good issue, Alexis. I'm not sure how in Turkey they get around the prohibition. I'll have to look into that. Me neither. Just in question. Yeah, maybe they're not as Islamist as they would like some people to believe. All right, Nick. A comment and a question. Are you going to be doing a series? I saw that you're back on the Sam Cedars show on the issue of regulation. I guess you're picking off on... Yeah. I thought I saw something there. I guess you're not. I know nothing about it. Whoever put it up. False flag. Okay. All right. That's hilarious. It was on Sam Cedars months ago. I haven't been on Sam Cedars. Yeah, I know about that. That's what I was wondering. I was wondering if this was the second coming. But no. Okay. All right. So that's moved on to my question. Okay. My question is when you're doing capitalism and socialism, right? Most people are aware of the arguments for capitalism, the collectivist ones, the utilitarian arguments and all that. Now, do you bring them up just to contrast by the way, yes, capitalism does this from a collectivist perspective, but my point is what I mean, I'm arguing it from an egoist perspective. It does... That does two things. It contrasts. It makes clear your egoist perspectives for capitalism and it contrasts what you want to say. It makes it more clear because a lot of people haven't heard the egoist perspective for capitalism. So what I'm saying is when you're making the argument... I never make the collectivist argument. So I think every argument I make is an egoistic argument, but that does not mean that economic aggregates, in a sense, that the economy doing better is not an egoistic argument. The economy does do better under capitalism and that's very egoistic because I benefit. When other people do better, I also benefit. So when everybody's doing better, I benefit. So I consider that the economic argument and I think you have to make the economic argument because one of the things we're trying to illustrate and trying to convey is that the practical, the moral is the practical and the practical is the moral. That is, it's not an accident that capitalism works to benefit people, individuals in society and that's how I think about it. It's not benefiting quote society because there is no such thing in a sense. It's benefiting the individuals within society and that's true, but I don't consider that a collectivistic argument. That's just an economic argument. That's just the economic facts and I think you have to make that argument because even though people have heard it, they need to hear it again. They need to hear it again from an egoist, from I think we've been a unique perspective and passion to it, and they need to see how that is integrated into the moral argument, into the argument from individualism or from a morality of egoism. So they need to see that integration and the more we can show people that the moral is the practical and the practical is the moral, the more our morality will appeal to them. I mean, people want to be happy and if we can say, I'm a wealthy, it's about happiness. That's what it's about. It's not about duties, it's not about sacrifice, it's about happiness or it's about success economically. It's about making money. The more people I think will be attracted to what we have to say. So you're refining the collectivist framework, making it into an economic aggregate framework where you're arguing for egoism, but you're saying, by the way, the economic aggregate also leads to this, but my primary, correct? Yeah, but it's economic. I never use again. What I say is individuals in society are better off. Individuals, more than one. That's the aggregate. I try not to talk, I talk about GDP per capita, but the point is that individuals are better off. What about when you're comparing countries or regions like Asia? Yeah, individuals in these countries are better off than individuals in those countries. So in a way, you're taking the group framework and you're saying, it leads, the aggregate leads to, we're egoists, but by the way, the aggregate of all egoists leads to this, as personified by country, by Taiwan, by Hong Kong, by so forth. Your individuals are better off in free societies. You can say that and that's not a collectivistic argument. And look, America's freer than North Korea. Look, we're better off than the people in North Korea. And you can use the we without it being collectivist. By the way, I'm going to send you an email. I got an idea for something. So check it out, please. Good. All right. Jeffrey, you can unmute yourself. There we go. Yeah, I'm here. I'm kind of just doing work in the restaurant in the meantime. Okay. If you want to ask a question, you can. Of course. Mostly I'm just happy to be alive again. I'm happy to be here. Of course, my questions are all restaurant related, but are there any restaurants you're excited to get to anywhere in the world in 2022? God. So there's a, and I can't remember the name of it, but there's a restaurant in Giron in Spain, G-I-R-O-N. It was ranked number one in the world a few years ago. Now, the way the 50 best restaurants in the world works is if you rank number one in any given year, you'll bump up to the VIP category and they never rank you again. So they were best restaurants in the world for three years. It's in, it's northeast of Barcelona, and let me find it. I'll find it. Anyway, my plan is to be in the Barcelona area in May. And what I, so I went on their website and tried to get a reservation. And of course, you can't. It's like a year in advance. You have to book it a year in advance. And now they're open for December. The reservation's open for December of next year. So I put myself on the waiting list for the two days I can, and I called up American Express. I've got like a platinum card at American Express and I said, can the concierge an American Express? Give me a reservation. So they're going to try. And that's the one because I know I'm going to be in Spain with my wife. So, you know, I know we're going to, I know I'd like to try that one. I'm trying to think if there are any others, you know, I'm going to be in Norway in, probably, in Norway in October and there's a restaurant in Norway that sounds really exciting. So, you know, it was on one of these lists and it looked really good, but they only take reservations a month in advance. So I'm going to have to wait until September to try to get a reservation. So, you know, the reservation mechanics in these different restaurants vary from place to place. And it's hard. This might not be interesting to all of your listeners and viewers, but I would love an inclusion of restaurant updates with Iran as you travel. Even if it's you know, not a noteworthy place. Alright, so here's the place. It's called El Selao de Kanoka. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I thought you would know it once I mentioned it. So I've never been, it's considered one of the best restaurants in the world. The Roka, you know, it's a couple of brothers. I once went to a restaurant of theirs in Barcelona years and years and years ago. And it was exceptional. It was really good. This is the flagship. So I'm really looking forward to if I can ever get a reservation. It's like I never made it to El Bouli because you can never get a reservation. I've never been to Norma in Copenhagen, even though I go to Copenhagen all the time because I can never get a reservation. If you're Norma, I've been once and it's incredible. There are only so many places where I can help you, but if you're back in Copenhagen, let me know. Oh, I will. I have a good friend who's there and so on. Excellent. And the second restaurant in Copenhagen, which is God, I'm so terrible with names. It's pathetic. They just won. It just got in this list. They just made number two. That one I've been to like three times because they're like geranium, geranium again. So I think I've been there three times because one of the owners of geranium is a friend and he's always got me in. So and geranium is switching to an all vegetarian menu now. So that's going to be interesting. So I'll have to try it again next time I go to see how they do the vegetarian stuff. That'll be interesting. Are you going to London anytime soon? Always. At least I always have a plan to go to London soon. Whether COVID will allow me to go, I don't know. If you haven't been to Lyles, I recommend it. I've been to Lyles once and I loved it. It was terrific. Yes. Okay. And if you're going to go to, if you're going to London, then I would recommend Inoki. How do you spell that? Let me just say, no, it's, I'll get it in a second. It's IK. Oh, Ikeoi. Yeah. I haven't been but I've been following them for a long time. I guess Ikeoi. So Ikeoi is like the place I go to every time I'm in London. Oh, cool. I try to get either lunch or dinner or lunch. There's always, you can get reservations and it's an African restaurant for those of you guys who don't know. It's an African restaurant that says a prefix menu and it's just, it's just, it's flavors and textures and stuff you're not familiar with because it's, it's African. I don't usually eat African food and it's just delicious. It's fun. It's delicious. It's a little spicy. It really is, it really is good. There's, this is, this is my last recommendation. If you're ever back in California in, it's just outside of Mountain View. It's just, it's a little Afghan restaurant called Kabul. For me, one of the, one of the appealing things for me is that it's, there's not a lot of Afghan food around. So for me, it's sort of the same thing, a lot of unfamiliar flavors and ingredients, but it's exceptional. Sunnyvale, it's in Sunnyvale. Sunnyvale. I know Sunnyvale well. Good. Just a little family-owned restaurant in the strip mall. That's great. Yeah, I love those. That's great. We had, we had some good meals over Christmas. So Christmas Eve, we went to this restaurant here in San Juan that he does, the chef basically, he, he, there's no menu and he just, on the day decides what he's going to make and it's bite-sized. Everything is bite-sized. We had 22 courses, six of which were desserts, which I never have. So, you know, that was difficult for me, but 22 courses, each bite-sized, and it was just, it was just fun. Not all the courses worked. Not everything was great. Part of the challenge with doing that is you don't refine them and you don't get them just right. And you could tell some of them were just not quite there, but it was fun. It was, it was, it was great. He was his only local stuff in Puerto Rico and he's big on Puerto Rican cuisine and everything. And it was, it was a blast. And then last night, we went to probably what's our favorite restaurant in San Juan, which is Marmalade. Marmalade is the chef is, is a guy from the Midwest who married a Puerto Rican woman and moved here, I don't know, 20 years ago and set up a restaurant in Old Town and it's pretty much a body recognizes the best restaurant in Puerto Rico. And it's always a delight and the food was fantastic and, and we had a bit, we do our Thanksgiving dinners and our Christmas dinners at Marmalade. So I just looked it up. It's very highly reviewed. Yes. And it's just, the food is, he's very, it's, it's really unique and interesting. He again, good, good flavor combinations. And he does a lot of vegan stuff because his wife's vegan. So he's an expert at cooking vegan. So he's got a lot of vegan stuff in there. And I usually don't like vegetarians. But he does it so well that a number of my favorite dishes, they happen to be vegetarian. Do you avoid sugar in general, or do you just not like sweet things? I try to avoid sugar in general. And I, and now I don't like them. I, I've noticed that the less, the less sugar I eat, the more if it's fruit or something, it, it doesn't taste strange. But the less sugar I eat, when I eat something that's very sweet, it seems, I don't know, it seems almost like wrong too much. It's too much. And I, and I actually feel bad after, I don't feel well afterwards if I eat too much, like, like the six desserts really hit me Friday night. Like, I mean, the small, you take a bite of each, but just the sugar overload. Plus, there was a lot of wine involved. You know, the combination was not good for me Friday night. But do, do I have time to ask a very broad question? Sure. And why don't you say something about your restaurant given, say, mention the restaurant so that everybody knows. Sure. Well, my, my restaurant is Rosella. It's where I am right now. It was closed for the last week since I had COVID. But it's a little sushi restaurant in the East Village, serving primarily local seafood. It's very, I'm quite not Japanese. I trained under a number of Japanese chefs, but I feel somewhat liberated now. And I think the food reflects that liberated in the sense that there's so much tradition and, and very formal structure in the way that traditional Japanese is, is prepared. And now there's no, there's no chef to tell me that I can't do this or that. And so I just kind of do whatever I want. And it was excellent. I, I spent a wonderful evening there with, with Jeffrey. I opposite him as he, as he made, you know, made the food and it was just delightful. It was, it was a great meal and great company. You should ask for the chef's table if you go and get the prefix and, and you get to chat with Jeffrey while, while he's making the food. And, and I know you don't eat that much rice and I'm just, just so you know, it's always an option. There's so much that we can pull from, that we could very easily serve a rice free menu for you that. Okay. Okay. Next time we can do that. That would be fun. You know, I would never ask that in a traditional Japanese restaurant because they would be so insulted. Sure. Yeah, but it's, what's the, you know, it's, I take a lot of pride in what I do, but this is just meant to be a fun place. It's designed, I designed it so that it would feel like a bar in here more than a formal restaurant. It's really nice. I recommend everybody go, feel New York. Thank you. Question. Yeah. Again, very broad, not restaurant related, but I, I have my own ideas as to this, but what do you, what do you think is, what do you, what do you think is the appeal of the, the Iran book show to most people who watch? God, I don't know. I think it, I think the appeal is different to different people, right? I really do because I think we have different, the audience is segregated. It's quite segregated. So I don't know somebody like, I'm just looking at the people here. I mean, I've known Daniel for what, 30 years, 20 something years easily, right? So he's been involved in objectivism for a very long time. Adam has been involved in objectivism for a very long time. I think there's a segment of the audience that's been involved for a long time. They've taken all of Lena Peacock's courses. They've written everything by Iran and, and they just get some energy, I think from me reminding them, bringing it in the context, in the, explaining the world out there because they're busy and they don't necessarily have time, but a lot of it is reinforcing what they already know, right? It's not, there's nothing revelatory or dramatically new. I'm not teaching them anything new in philosophy. It really is just applying it and, and reinforcing for them things that they, that they really know. And then at the other side of it, there are people here who know nothing about, or just introduced Iran or I introduced them to Iran, right? They, they never read it until they discovered the show. And there it's, I think what they're getting out of it is, it's stimulating. It's, it's a completely new perspective on the world. It's a little earth-shattering to them. It's intriguing. And, and hopefully, you know, it leads them to read Iran. I mean, that's my hope. And, and, and I think in many cases it does. But, and then there's everybody in between, you know, so we're learning stuff. I mean, the fact that so many people are listening to the Yuan's rules for life, which a lot of that is not new. There's nothing new there. It's taking already well-known ideas in objectivism and kind of chewing them, suggest that there are people who are beginners in objectivism or in the middle of their path and they're looking for ways to apply and to, and I'm helping them to, I'm helping them apply it. So it's a wide, I think there's a wide variety in that sense of what people get out of it. Yeah. I'm curious what you guys think. Anybody want to chime in? I think it's fantastic that you're changing the culture one reader, one listener at a time. That, that's the real value of Yuan. Yeah. It's adding people. It's, it's adding people on and it's, it's getting them more deeply engaged, right? So they might have read Alice Shrug, but they don't know what to do next. They don't know how to apply a million things and they come and listen and we're helping them go deep and encouraging them to read more and get more engaged in their ideas. For me, it began as the appeal initially was, you know, I don't, I imagine that other, other objectivists or iron ran followers find themselves in this state of feeling kind of alone in their ideas compared with the people around them. And so initially the appeal of the show to me was, it was a connection to something that I, that I took so seriously that I didn't really have in my daily life. And then the more I watched it, the more interested I became in, in applying the ideas to the world around me as you, as you're describing. And also, as I told you when you were here, I spend so much time in this restaurant alone. It does be, it feels like having the company of a friend here while I'm, while I'm in here listening. So here's another aspect to that, because I really do think that's true. You know, and people are going to misunderstand this, but hopefully there is value to community. There really is value to community. There is value to, to being a part of a group of people who broadly share your values, who you can talk to, who you can debate, discuss, disagree with, like they do in the chat, that you can, you know, put yourself up against and engage with. There is a reason people like to go to church, even when they're not that religious. There is a reason people like certain ceremonies are like to get together for the holidays and things like that. I think the Iran Book Show serves as a gathering place for, for a few hundred people who, whether they listen to lives or listen afterwards or sometimes catch it live or something, where they feel like they're part of a community. And I think there's real value in that. You feel like there are other people in the world who share your values, who engage in the same struggle in the same attempt to change the world, are challenged by the same things you are, but are also driving towards the same goals as you are. So I think, I think it serves that. I used to think that Leonard Peacock's show, when he had a radio show every Sunday, was like Objectivist Church. It's like everybody got together, everybody was listening. You knew everybody else that was listening to the show was probably shared a lot of values with you that gave you a sense of, I'm not alone, there are other people out there. And I think this engagement does the same thing. And so I think all of those, all of those are part of it. No, but Greg Salamieri said that he's never seen so many new Objectivists that have been introduced by the year on Brookshow. So you're serving, you're addressing where Objectivism kind of failed in the sense that you're chewing things for people, you're making it easy, it's fast food, they can digest it right away. And now if they want to dig deeper, they can dig deeper. And more than likely, they will dig deeper. I think that's great. And the Ironman Institute has told me that a lot of the OEC applicants said they were introduced Ironman's ideas through the show. Those are the future intellectuals. So I'm getting not just numbers with quality as well. And look, the numbers are not high, not because there are not many Objectivists out there, but a lot of Objectivists drop off, right? They listen to the show for a while and some people don't find it that interesting or are not interested in hearing me talk about politics over and over again, because politics is boring, or whatever, right? So it doesn't surprise me that I don't get many, many more of the old kind of line, old time Objectivist listening, because there are other things, there are other forms in which they can create the same. Yeah, but you're bringing in fresh blood, that's the point. That's the important thing, is to bring in the fresh blood. So we're running out of time, I've got a bunch of super chat questions. Adam, really brief if you've got something, and then Andrew, really brief. So Adam first. You talked about community. One thing that I'd like to do is bring together one table's worth of friends in the local area and go to a different interesting restaurant once a month. I don't know how that's going to progress, but that's one of my projects for next year. I think projects like that are great, and it's partially how we build an Objectivist community, and I think it's worth building such a community. So Objectivist local groups, going to restaurants together, watching movies together, going to museums once in a while together, I think these are great activities. Andrew? Andrew? I started off unmuted and then I muted myself. All right, I think I have an emotionalistic, pro-conservative knot that I'm looking probably for you to untangle. So regarding COVID, they're objecting to the authorities stupidly. I'm sure we can agree. However, what scares me more than kind of reflexive objection is reflexive compliance. Do you give the conservatives any credit for saying no? No, not in the face of science, not in the face of facts and reality. I don't. I guess you could get a little bit, if they had said yes, we'll be vaccinated, but if we're going to be vaccinated, we don't know where masks anymore, I'd be sympathetic because I think masks are ridiculous once you're vaccinated, and anybody wearing a mask, anybody young wearing a mask outdoors is absurd. To get COVID outdoors, you're more likely to be hit by lightning or to be hit by a meteor. I mean, it's just outdoors. So there's certain things I would have, if they had stood up and said no to lockdowns, I would have given them more respect than the vaccines, and getting caught up in ivermectin in like a frantic way as if, you know, put aside the science of it as if, you know, who cares? I mean, it's either work, so it doesn't work. Why is this something to be passionate about? What's the issue here? Let the scientists figure out if it works or doesn't. I have nothing against ivermectin, but so not in the face of, you know, the evidence of vaccines is now overwhelming, you know, hundreds of millions of doses are being given. What exactly are they protesting? What are they what are they saying no to exactly? So, so, so no, what are the things you're on? Let me ask you this. They are pushing back on advocating for them. I just think I'm reading it is that they're pushing back on the lying, you know, the 10, 14 days to stop the spread and then, you know, on and on and on. But did they push back? Did they push back when when Donald Trump said it's just going to be gone? It just it just will go away. Did they push back when when he said there was no issue with COVID at all in February? And then in June when he said it was just going to go away, not to worry about it. So I get it that they're pushing back about the lying, but they push back about only lies when it's from the other side. They don't push back about the lies from their side. And so to me, it's tribal. It's not individualistic, don't tread on me. It's tribal. Your side is lying. So your side is lying. So I'm going to protest, but my side when they lie, it's not a lie. You didn't understand if you're taking him out of context, you know, that kind of garbage. So it's tribal. And you know, for them to prove to me that it's not tribal, they have to be consistent. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. So I respect if people were anti the Trump lies, then yeah, they should be furious about the Biden lies. But if you weren't upset about it, it's also aligning yourself with false claims in order to combat misrepresentations on the other side. Exactly. I'm gonna I'm gonna align myself with unreality to fight unreality. It doesn't work ever. All right, we've got a bunch of super chat questions. Let me go over them quickly. Sorry, guys, I don't have a lot of time to do these, but because I have to go to a restaurant for dinner. I'm a real glutton. Let's see, we've got a $50 from Derek. Thank you, Derek. Oh, and you got $50 for somebody who didn't ask K-Fax. Thank you. Very generous. Really appreciate that. Let's see, how come intellect, no, why intellectual so stubbornly opposed? No, not that one. I wonder if the best video medium for Atlas Shrug will be a limited animated series rather than a live action movie. So much of the book power is in the ideas which a good director could convey with illustrations, not literal animation thoughts. I mean, you could make a good Atlas Shrug that was illustrated. Animation gives you enormous power to do things. So I do like that. I actually think Anthem is more appropriate for an illustrated movie. I'd love to see an illustrated movie of Anthem. I think it's perfect for it. I think Disney wanted to do it in some way, way back. It's very stark. You could even imagine all the initial scenes kind of in black and white, and then when he discovers the forest, when he goes into the forest, everything turns into color, but you could, everything there is very, yeah. So Atlas Shrug does a complex, the real challenge with Atlas Shrug, let me say it this way. The real challenge with Atlas Shrug is not live action or animation. The real challenge with Atlas Shrug is how do you shrink the story? Who do you get rid of? You can't have as many heroes as Atlas Shrug has in a movie. You can't have as many storylines. You can't have Dagny having so many love, relationships. It just doesn't work in a movie or even in a TV series. So it has to be condensed to its essentials. That's the challenge. How do you do that? And how you present it, I think, is less important. But yeah, I think you can do amazing things with animation because so much of it is under your control. Okay, Michael asks, how come intellectuals have been able to reject Christian metaphysics but not Christian ethics? Because they just haven't been able to figure it out. They haven't been able to come up with an alternative. I think, in many respects, because they created a barrier between is an art, they haven't been able to come up with an ethics that was based on science, that was based on nature and reality. And that has been their challenge. Why now that Iman has presented one? Do they reject it? I don't know. I don't understand it. There's some barrier that they presented to these ideas. And you can see people like Sam Harris, Stephen Pinker, Michael Schoema, all trying to come up with a secular ethics that rejects Christianity, that is based on the getting rid of these art barrier. And they fail because they're not deep enough and Inran has it. She's figured out and because they've accepted the fundamental Christian premise that ethics is about the other. And it cannot be about the self. And that kills them every time. And why they can't do that? I don't know. Is altruism a form of narcissistic gaslighting? I don't even know what that means exactly, but no, I don't think so. Altruism is a philosophical idea, derived, I think, ultimately for Christianity, but it has deep philosophical roots in Kant and deep philosophical roots in Comte and in, but really, it pervades all of Western thought going back to Christianity, going back to Jesus. Michael, again, you said most people are wrong most of the time. I'm not sure that's exactly right. I said that, but I'm not sure I'm exactly right. I'm a little exaggerating. Why is this the case? If evading reality is deadly, you think that so many people being wrong simultaneously would weed itself out? I think ultimately it will. Ultimately, all the things that people are wrong about will cause civilization to decay and decline. So all consequences, I think the impact it has on people is it makes them unhappy. But it can be the case that most people are wrong most of the time. They're wrong most of the time about the big abstract issues, but they ignore abstractions. They ignore principles, which is good because the principles are wrong, when it comes to day-to-day lives, so they know how to put food on the table, the right about the basic functions that they need to engage in, in order to survive. And they have still enough freedom in the world to be able to do the things necessary for them to survive. Why intellectuals so stubbornly opposed to reason and individualism even when they know it's right? Because acknowledging reason and individualism, A, would take away their ability to have power over the people. And they have built up a whole intellectual metaphysical epistemological context in which individualism and reason are irrelevant, wrong, and they reject. And it's too much for them to ignore that entire context. Shahzad asked, did you get the email regarding movie review selection? Yes, it's the children animated movie you want me to do. I haven't watched it yet. I did watch a League of its own of their own. If you want me to review that as well, I can do that. Gail, I was alarmed the right has become so statist, Hazoni. Would it be worth raising in debates the welfare state, government education, coddling, coddling parenting is causing the kind of individual courage and self-esteem? Yes, absolutely. And if we had more time and if the debate had gone in a kind of different direction, I would have. But he would argue that it's his statism is better than their statism. The way he would do statism wouldn't have this result. It's liberal statism, which is bad. Conservative statism would be different. That's the argument they would make. All right. Is it wrong to make children believe in Santa? I see my family keep trying to push the idea of Santa onto my little brother. I can't stop wondering whether it's harmful or harmful if fun. Your thoughts. I don't know. I mean, I couldn't do it. It seemed like I was lying to my kids when I did it. So I never pretended about Santa. But Lenin Pieckoff did. And he defends the idea of fantasy and harmless fun and so on. And he did that with Kira, his daughter. So I don't want to go up against Lenin Pieckoff. So I'm going to punt on the question. But I did not. My kids knew that Santa was... My main challenge was to stop my kids from telling everybody else in the world that Santa didn't exist, which they tended to do to all other little kids and made a lot of parents very unhappy as a consequence. Let's see. Okay. We got a few super chats here. Quickly. Cole says, regarding Ukraine, don't we have a treaty where we guarantee the protection and the condition that they give up their nukes? I feel like we've already screwed over Ukraine with our foreign policy. We had some agreement. We've reneged on it already when Putin took Crimea. The treaty was long to begin with. But yeah, I mean, we have no foreign policy. I keep telling you we have no foreign policy. There is no consistent foreign policy. If there was, we'd at least stand up for the treaties we have and we're not ourselves out of those treaties over time. But we would at least protect the treaties as they are today, given that we have no foreign policy, given that nobody expects us to line up with these things I wouldn't today. But yes, Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons and the assumptions that the United States would stand up for their sovereignty when the time came. We haven't. We've reneged on that completely. We should have never made that deal to begin with. I understand that human rights don't apply to animals. Is it fundamentally a matter of intelligence level? And can we own animals but not humans? That we can own animals but not humans? It's an issue of rights. And rights apply not because of intelligence levels. Rights apply because of the capacity to reason and the capacity to reason is not an issue of IQ. IQ doesn't relate to animals. It only relates to human beings because you have to be able to reason to have an IQ at all. So it's an issue of free will and reason. Animals don't have free will and they cannot reason. They don't have that faculty. Fessi asked, I've decided to attend Russian classes. Beginner style, end of January onward. Keep being told I look Eastern European by industry and hey, it's an added skill. Excited. Think I'll be judged. I don't know what you'll be judged based on. The fact that you know Russian doesn't make you Russian. And even if you're Russian, it doesn't make you Putin. It doesn't make you responsible for everything Putin does. Alexis, did you have your hand up earlier and I missed it? Yeah, it was about the restaurant question. Okay, go with the restaurant quickly. So I have two questions. One you already answered that one good restaurants in London. So you guys already covered that. So another one I would do in London is Palomar, which is a spectacular Israeli restaurant in London. Just just just really, really, really good. So also in in it's around less than square, not far from less than square. Okay, so yeah, my wife are looking for spots as soon as we can get a nanny for our kids. Anyway, the other question was, was your restaurant experience disrupted in any way? Because you know, of shortage of staff or whatever, the great resignation, because it happened to me actually in London that I had a restaurant booked with one of my friends. They called me and they said, sorry, we don't have any waiters today, so we can't serve you. What happened to you? Yes, it has both because of the shortages of staff that we experienced in the months leading up to where we are today, but particularly now with Omicron, we had a reservation on Wednesday at one of my favorite restaurants and they called us up and said, we've got three people in it, you know, who tested positive for COVID, so we have to close the restaurant. So we just don't have staff to keep it open. So yes, it's a real challenge. And a great resignation, is it a real thing in your mind? Yes, I did a show on that and I'll probably do another one in January on it because definitely something is happening. There's no question. I need to catch up on the show then. Sounds good. All right, two super chats. Frank, do you know Rand's lesson works? I saw production I think twice on the night of January 16th. I like Ideo Red Pawn, the simplest thing in the world. Yes, I like all of those. I've seen the night of January 16th. I've actually seen it in English. I've seen it in Spanish and I've seen it in Ukrainian, in Kiev. I didn't understand a word, but it was a good production. And the heroine, the woman who played the heroine looked like an Ein Rand heroine. I mean, she had that look. So I was impressed by night of January 16th in Ukrainian. All right, boys, that's the last question. What's your take on NFTs? Oh, God, a complicated question. Is this the new beanie bags? What is your take on recent Ray Dalio talk with Lex saying that Bitcoin eventually will be with us? I haven't seen Ray Dalio's talk with Lex. I actually am curious. I'm going to go and listen to it. I am less confident Bitcoin is worth zero than I was a few months ago. So I'm still going to, I'm still thinking about it and I'm still talking to people who know something about it to try to figure it out. I think NFTs are a bubble that blown out of proportions, but interesting. I mean, if you can buy a piece of digital something that is unique, that only you can own, that only you can reproduce, that only you have real, it's another form of property rights. It's another form of digesting, defining property rights online, which I think is interesting. I don't see anything wrong with it or that it being a beanie bag. I think a lot of the NFTs that are sold are beanie bags, but that's the quality of the thing you're buying. But I can imagine, imagine if we took the Ein Rand archives and we turned some of the material there into these digital NFTs, like you would have your own copy of something of a handwritten thing of Ein Rand's and you were the only person in the world other than the archive. We had this digital image. That would be kind of cool and you would pay something for it. I don't know how much you'd pay, but you might pay something for it. And NFTs are just a way to secure it. So it's yours, can be copied by anybody and so on and so forth. So I don't think it's a complete nonsense, but it is bubbly and a lot of the stopping sold as NFTs are probably real nonsense. All right, guys. Thank you, panelists. Thanks for all your support. Thanks for being here and asking great questions and participating. Merry Christmas to everybody. I have a great New Year and New Year's Eve and have a great week. This is a cool week because this is kind of a week of thinking about the past and thinking about the future. I view this week as the transition into 2022. So I'm going to be doing a lot of kind of planning and stuff, which is going to be fun. And I will see you all probably on Tuesday. I might do a show tomorrow because I didn't do one yesterday. We'll see, but I'll definitely see you on Tuesday and on Thursday, maybe also tomorrow. I will see you all soon. Have a great week. Happy New Year, everybody. Bye. Bye, Iran.