 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 Wednesday, January 17th, Davos, World Economic Forum, you know, going strong over there in Davos, Switzerland, we will talk about one particular speech. Because, you know, I listened to it about how after it was given, and all I have to say is, I know I have a lot more to say about this, but this is a good start, wow, in Davos. Well, anyway, for that matter. Wow, I mean just wow. You know, I almost never have anything good to say about politicians, and definitely have nothing positive to say about any politicians. Speeches. And Millay just gave a great speech. Now, granted, it had flaws, it could have been better from a number of different dimensions, from different perspectives, there were things I really, really, really would have liked to have changed. But you have to focus on the positives, because the positives are so overwhelmingly good, as compared to the negatives, that, wow, I highly encourage you to watch it. You know, I'm sure you've watched a lot of politician speeches that you just thoroughly hated, and putting it here in the chat, you can go watch it. It's simultaneous translation, so you get the English translation of it. And I just want to highlight a few things. First, let me just say, he really needs, I mean Millay really needs to take my public speaking course. This was not well delivered. It was not, I mean the whole sections of it that I'm sure the audience fell asleep in, it could have been so much better, just with a little bit of refinement, both a little bit of editing of the talk itself. And I'm not here talking about philosophical points, just pedagogical, public speaking. And then I know how good of a public speaker Millay can be. I've seen him, you know, and he's talked on radio and TV. He's brilliant. And, you know, he needs to get away from this. I'm a Davos. Therefore, it's a really, really intimidating audience. Therefore, I need to wear my glasses at the end of my nose and read a paper bed speech in a boring, you know, monotone fashion. So he needs to get away from that, right? But the content for the most part, there's some, I'll highlight a few things where I think he could have done better. But the content for the most part was just excellent. He starts out by basically saying all the problems that you have people are because you're moving towards socialism. And okay, you know, this probably makes Scots and other people's day. He's attacking the left, isn't this great? But then he does something really, really, really cool to undermine the Scots of the world. He actually talks about what he means by socialism. And what he means by socialism is not just the left. What he means by socialism is the logic of what I'm meant by socialism. He means statism. And he says socialism means, yes, the traditional socialist, but it also means the woke. But it also means the nationalists. It also means all these different forms of collectivism. It's all you collectivists. You're all socialists. It's not just about the left. It's equally about the right and a number of his examples when he lists the examples of socialism from the right. And wow, how many people have that understanding of socialism? A socialism understood as statism. A socialism understood as collectivism. A socialism understood as state intervention. And he says we used to think that socialism meant the state owns the means of production, but no more. Now the state has discovered that it can control the means of production without owning them. Yeah, fascism. So brilliant. Brilliant in a sense that expanding, not being narrow, not affiliating yourself with any political position. On stage he calls himself a libertarian. Now I don't think that's ideal, but it's so much better than calling himself a conservative or calling himself a right winger, or calling himself any of these easily put into a bucket. And he defines libertarianism. In a reasonable kind of way without it coming across as wacky or crazy. He constantly talks about freedom, freedom, freedom. Freedom is what makes you rich. Freedom is what I'm about. He talks about the evil of collectivism. Constantly throughout the talk he talks about collectivism, and that it's evil and it's wrong, and that the alternative is not some kind of right wing nationalism. The alternative is individualism. He names it. There were parts of the talk, I have to say, my wife was sitting next to me, I was like, either he or speech writers or somebody close to him has watched my videos. There's just stuff that he said and even the structure of a part of the talk. It's as if, I mean, there are two moments with this happen. One is when he talks about, he really structures it. Look, here's the practical case for capitalism. It works. It produces the wealth. But that's not about, it's the moral issue. And that's what everybody attacks. It's the morality of capitalism. But capitalism is wrong. Now he doesn't give a very good explanation why capitalism is wrong. He fails there, which is tragic. He needs to do a much better job there. But he doesn't, it's not all for what he does, but it's just not good. But that structure, that follows my morality of capitalism talks. And then the second one is, it's a throwaway line where he talks about the pie. He says the pie, and the fact that the pie is not static, it grows. And the pie in a static is not gross, it was, again, right out of my inequality talks. Right? So, I don't know. And, you know, I've been to Argentina several times. I've given these exact talks on inequality and on morality of capitalism several times. People in the audience, there were a lot of small, big L libertarians in the audience. Who knows what the connections are, but it's there. He talks about morality. He talks about the fact that the economic case is unequivocal, the real attack on capitalism is a moral attack. And then we need a moral defense of capitalism. Again, I think his, the moral defense he provides was weak and a little quick and a little kind of couched over. And the consequence of that is, of course, that he doesn't really, I don't know that he gets it or I don't know that he wants to give it to the audience. But that was pretty quick. But then the closing of the speech. God. The closing of the speech is so inspired by Einwand. You know, a little bit of Israel Kutzner, who he mentions in the talk, but really inspired by Einwand. The closing of the speech is truly unbelievable. It's not libertarian. Libertarians don't talk this way. Libertarians don't talk about this ever at all. This pure Einwand, she was the only one to the extent libertarians talk about it. It's because of Einwand. He talks about the businessman as being a hero. And in this sense, it's the best in terms of getting close to moral case or capitalism. He talks about the businessman being a hero. The business being the greatest benefactor to humanity. Who says that? Who says that except Einwand? Stunning. You know, I'll give you a few of the things that I think were wrong both stylistically and in terms of content. But he's a politician. He's standing up in Davos. Do you know who introduced him? Do you know who introduced Millet to give this particular talk? He was introduced by Klaus Schwab, the founder, the CEO, the chief behind the World Economic Forum. One of the most evil statists out there. Somebody who is the essence of the kind of socialism, the statism, really fascism, because Schwab is really a fascist, that Millet is arguing against the worst kind of, I don't know, call him an intellectual, that you could imagine. He's the one who introduced Millet. He must have been in the audience listening to this, given the context, given the place, given the audience, given, you know, and given the quality of his, you can't, you can't, I mean, we can quibble on the details, but you know, he is, I mean, this was a great speech. Sorry, this is one of the great best speeches a politician has given on a broad, kind of as a broad philosophical outlay. You know, again, so what am I against? I said two points, I mean, really one point stylistically. And a couple of places, he goes into professor mode. I'm going to teach you how, you know, too many numbers, too many stats, when he's trying to describe the growth of wealth in the West. You don't need those numbers and stats. You can, you could, I mean, you can do it in a much easier, much more easily, digestible way than what he did. He then goes into a long explanation about why markets don't fail, can't fail, which is completely right, but it just becomes too professorial, too a little bit academic, too slow, you know, you lose the audience. So those are stylistic points. Nothing he said about either one of those topics is wrong, both actually right. If anything, he underplays the benefits, the economic kind of benefits that capitalism has provided the West. There's ways to illustrate that it's even much greater than the numbers he illustrates. But he's completely right on both points. It just comes across as a little too professorial. He needs to, he needs to watch, as Michael suggests here, watch Milton Friedman a little bit do economics and do economics for the layman. Nobody was quite as good as Milton Friedman in taking economic concepts and making him digestible to the common person. So that's stylistically mainly because there was nothing content wrong. I'd say the content points, weak on the morality, just didn't get it, didn't get there, and it felt like he was rushing it. Again, I think there's an inherent discomfort with the moral point. I think he, you know, he attributes rights to God. It's a quick point. He implicitly, it doesn't make a big deal out of this, but he implicitly suggests abortion is evil. Yeah, I mean, those are the big ones that I can recall right now. The things that I would, you know, I love to see gone and redone and replaced. But so yes, so there were some weaknesses. I wish he'd spent just a little bit more on the morality and dug a little deeper into that and linked it up to his argument for individualism, individualism, individualism, and his argument against collectivism, because his argument for individualism against collectivism has to be moral at the end, and he needs to figure out what that argument is. He's going to be troubled by, if you can, link it to individualism. And then one other complaint I have, and this relates to his libertarianism, and that is the way he accuses the state of doing things. Sadly, it reveals this kind of anarchism. Reveals his anarchism. It's the hatred of the state, which is motivating. I just wish, given that he's new to all these ideas, remember, Millay was a Keynesian 12 years ago. He was a statist 12 years ago. He's new to these. I wish I had time with him to talk about the anarchy, because I really think he's smart enough, intelligent enough to get it and to overdo it. And when he says the state, which is, I mean, if you limit it to the current state, absolutely. But the way it's said, and in the context it's said, it's an accusation about the state per se, and I think that weakens your case. It would be great if in one of these talks, he articulated a moral case for a state, and the proper role, the proper role of the state. And if he did that even in a sentence, then blaming stuff on the state would be fine, because the context is the improper state, the not right state. So, again, I think that's too bad, and it reveals these weaknesses, the anarchist weaknesses. But given all that, in particular, his just praise of the businessman in the last segment of his speech in his closing was so good. And very appropriate for Davos, in the sense of, I mean, some of the best leading, most innovative businessmen are at Davos. You can criticize them all you want, but they are there. And to give them that kind of boost and to connect it to liberty, to connect it to an attack on collectivism, to connect it on attacks on statism in all its different forms, to collect it is fantastic. And I think has the potential to have a real impact on business leaders globally, which would be massive, huge in terms of the potential impact. The speech, I'm sure, will be viewed a lot, and that's great. And generally, I'm excited to see how this develops. I wish, you know, Millay got himself to the point where he's comfortable in front of an audience like this. And the same thing happened in his auguration and other formal speeches, and be less formal in his delivery. He needs to loosen up. He needs to embrace his own passion, embrace his own style without swearing, still being dignified, all of that. But just bring out that personality that then won him the election, right? And then won him the election and got people excited about him. I don't think it helps this case to be so stiff and potentially boring. So I hope I get a chance to meet Millay. I'm happy to do a short public speaking seminar for him. It wouldn't take more than an hour, and we'd be done. It really isn't that hard because he has all the skills. You know it because I've seen him do it before. All right, that is Millay. Whoa, that took 20 minutes. All right, we've got a lot of topics to cover. But there's a lot of news, and I had to skip stuff, move stuff to tomorrow because there's so much going on. That's interesting. I just couldn't cover it all. All right, Chevron, two Supreme Court cases in front of the Supreme Court today. Today that have, I think, massive implications for liberty and freedom in the U.S. The two are Lopa Bright Enterprises, Inc. versus Raimondo, and Relentless Inc. versus the Department of Commerce. Both of them basically have to do with the ability of a regulatory agency when facing an ambiguity in a law to basically make a decision independent of the legislature and, importantly, independent of the courts on how to interpret the legislation. So years and years ago, in 1984, in a court case named Chevron versus NRDC, the court said, the court decided in a counter to the way this issue had been interpreted in the past, that it was going to give deference to the regulatory agency. That is, in a sense, the regulatory agency was the one that would ultimately, that would be in a position to make the decision about how to interpret ambiguity in the code. And the court went with it, including, by the way, Justice Scalia. And this completely made this doctrine, Chevron, part of the court's precedence, not just when the court was liberal, but also when the court was conservative. Because here was the leading scholar of the conservative right on the Supreme Court, citing with Chevron, and the right kind of went along with it, and it was allowed to stay in place. Finally, we now have a court that is willing to challenge this idea. One of the consequences of this have been many. One of the consequences of it have been that Congress is quite willing to write ambiguous laws and then let the regulatory agency fill in. Instead of Congress actually making sure that the laws it passes are clear and that there are no issues. And as a consequence of the ambiguity, the regulatory agencies have gained in power, gained in strength, gained in personnel, because now they get to actually interpret the laws. So actually three effects. One effect, Congress has become lazy. Just outlines the law unless the regulatory agencies fill it in. Second, this has given the president a lot more power. So when a president comes in, they can come in and by putting their people into the right places on a regulatory body, they then get to interpret the law. They get then, and this also opens it up to much more of executive orders, where they order a particular interpretation. And third, it is taking away any responsibility from the courts to interpret these statues to say, no, the statues aren't clear. Congress, go back and clarify it. We are not going to let the regulatory agency, so it's taking away their power from the judiciary. The Supreme Court has an opportunity to overturn Chevron. There is a decent chance that they will. You've got two Supreme Court justices that are really passionate about this issue. One is Gorsuch, and the other one is Thomas. They really, really want to overturn Chevron. I think that they can convince three to four other conservatives to do it. Basically, a conservative legal profession is completely behind this so that they have the full support of kind of the fed sock conservative legal guys. And, you know, I think that the likelihood, it's a really good likelihood that they will overturn Chevron. I think this reduces the power of the regulatory agencies. It puts the burden on Congress, which I love because Congress can't get anything done, so you get less laws, which is a good thing. It puts the burden on Congress not just the right ambiguous laws that they know the SEC or the FDA or some other regulatory agency will fill in, but that they have to either fill or not do it, which is great. It reduces the power of the presidency. It reduces the power of the people at the head of the regulatory agencies. And it increases the power of the courts to actually oversee regulatory agencies. Now, not all the cases are going to go to the Supreme Court. Once the Supreme Court overturns Chevron, that will give the power to regional courts, to appellate courts all over the country, to be able to now make determinations about the law. And the Supreme Court can set aside. Right now appellate courts are siding with the regulatory agencies always, and that's how they have to because they get their guidance from the Supreme Court. Chevron is, in a sense, the law of the land. And, you know, but overturning it will change the entire dynamics of the relationship between the regulatory agency and us, the citizens, and businesses. I'll give you a quick example of this one law that has to do with fisheries, that this is Lopa, a bright enterprises versus Armando. This is a law that has to do with, I guess, the Clean Air Act and it has something to do with, no, this is not it. That was the 84 that was Chevron. This has to do with fisheries. And there is a law that basically says something ambiguous about, you know, we're regulating fishing. And the regulatory agency is empowered by Congress to place a monitor on every single ship that goes out there into the sea. However, Congress has refused, refused to allocate funding to pay for these monitors. So the regulatory agency decided, okay, well, the ship owners will pay for the monitors. So they basically told the ship owners they're responsible for paying the monitors. Now, that's not in the law. It's not implied by the law. Congress has explicitly not provided funding for this. So the ship owners sued. And that's what's in front of the Supreme Court. Now, if it was just a narrow case and they just ruled about this. How these decisions are going to be argued and how the majority is going to make its case is what is going to be crucial here. Because they need to make the case that they are overturning Chevron. They mean to make the case that if the legislature does not allocate money, there's no money. If the legislature does not specify that these things happen, they don't happen. I mean, we can later argue about whether these regulatory agencies are even constitutional. We can later argue about whether Congress should have the power to regulate businesses. That's next level, right? That's where we would all like to go. But first, this is a way to get rid of massive increase in power of the regulatory agency. Something that Gorsig in particular is very dedicated to. All right, God, on the chat, I'm being accused of being liberal on religion. Let me just make it clear. Absolutely I'm liberal on religion. You know, I'm as liberal as Thomas Jefferson. I believe in a complete separation of state and church. And I believe that God doesn't exist. Sorry, guys. I know that's a tough pill to swallow, but it really is a fantasy and not a very good one either. A pretty nasty fantasy that actually drags you down into hell, not in an afterlife, but right here on Earth. But that's for another day. I've many times told you that I worry about bipartisan bills. Bipartisanship means that the Democrats and Republicans have agreed on something. And usually when Democrats and Republicans agree on something, it usually involves the violation of our rights. It usually involves more statism, because that's one thing both left and right agree on. They both want to increase the power of the state. They might have different priorities in terms of where and how and when and in what form, but they both agree on increasing the power of the state. Now there is a tax bill, a bipartisan tax bill that is going through Congress slowly. The headline in the story says the Congress tiptoes towards a tax deal because it is taxes and it's hard. And a deal that cuts the tax burden for some people. It actually provides 78, supposedly, right, as these people actually go after. It's supposed to be a 78 billion in tax breaks and expanded credits, 78 billion. Isn't that great? It is called, at least for now, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024. How can you be against a tax bill that cuts tax, that gives tax breaks, expands credits, a relief for American families and workers, and that both Republicans and Democrats support? I mean, this is a stunning development. How could it be that both Republicans and Democrats support this? And a tax bill that it is claimed, it is claimed, is mostly paid for. That is paid for in a sense of, you know, that they will find spending cuts to offset the increase in the decrease in tax revenue. So, I just have to comment on this, you know, just because it's stuck out. This is my problem. You know, these super chats pop up in my thing and I quickly read them and I'm in the middle of a thought and it's completely distracting. But it's part of what makes this show authentic and live and real and so on. And Justin writes, stop criticizing Trump and God if you want to grow. And that is such an offensive statement, Justin. It is so bizarre and absurd. Sell your soul if you want to grow. Advocate for things you don't believe in if you want to grow. You know, don't offend people who deserve to be offended if you want to grow. Endorse evil in the world if you want to grow. To hell with integrity, honesty. Tell with your own mind you're on. Give up on your own mind. Give up on your own integrity. Give up on morality if you want to grow. Well, all I have to say to that is screw you. Never will that happen. My integrity is more important than growth. My integrity is all I have at the end of the day. It's my life, my mind, my views. I will call out evil wherever I see it and I don't care who it is. I will stand by my ideas and my principles no matter how many people unsubscribe and leave. If I can't make a living based on my integrity, if I can't make a living advocating for ideas I believe in, I'd rather go work in a query. I'd rather go do physical labor. I'd rather do something else. You want me to support corruption? Never. Find somebody else to watch. Find somebody else to support financially. Find somebody else. You know, I will continue to be who I am. And again, if I can't do that, I'd rather not do it at all. I don't care. I don't care. I've known for many years that I could get a lot more following if I just changed my ideas a little bit. It ain't happening. I will continue to attack Trump as the evil bastard that he is, bastard and moron that he is. I thought I was too soft on him yesterday, so there will be a correctus to that. And I would continue to attack religion in all its forms, whether it's Islam or Judaism or Christianity. I will continue to attack religion for the evil that it does, for the horror that it inflicts on human life and has for millennia. And if you think I'm too harsh on Trump, tough. I'm not going to moderate because I am harsh on Trump on purpose. I know exactly why. I don't hear arguments why I'm wrong. All I hear is Trump deragement syndrome. He's too tough on him. You'll lose subscribers. Content, guys, content. Anyway, tax bill. So the tax bill has two components. One that both Democrats and Republicans love. And the other that only Republicans love. Maybe different Republicans, so it works by whooping them all in. One is an increase in the child tax credit. Which Republicans, which Democrats are huge supporters of. It's, you know, currently low income families whose income tax liability is just a sort of dispatch. A lower than the credit. Don't receive the full 2000 per child because the credit isn't fully refundable. They can only get a maximum of 1600. The new framework increases it so that it can get 1800 in 2023 1900 in 2024 and the full 2000 in 2025. So the left is very happy with this. But what was mildly surprising is how really, really, really excited the writers about this. They huge supporting children. They want more children. They want to see and they want to support. Therefore, enlarging the welfare state when it comes to particular ways in which it's done, particularly the child credit. They love this. The John Schwepp, the director of policy and government affairs at the populist conservative American principles project. One of the Trump oriented think tanks out there is a huge supporter. He basically said, we're always going to support the expansion of the child tax credit. We actually want much bigger support for the child's tax credit, much bigger support for the child tax credit. And it's too bad. This is so small of a support. We want much bigger, but we'll take it and we'll support it. A number of Republicans supporting this both in the House and in the Senate. Second issue here is you're getting some business deductions. Research and development costs are going to be, you'll be able to deduct immediately rather than spending them out over five years. You'll be able to fully expense investments in machinery and equipment. Something that lapsed in 2022, that would be restored. The cap on the amount small businesses can write off would be raised from $1 million to $1.29 million for interest on expenses. Business interest, deducted business interest, the cap. So a few candies, a few favors. I mean, this is horrible. This is stupid. This is the kind of bipartisan bill you would expect. Yeah, I'm for increasing expenses and R&D and all of that. That's great. I'm very much against increasing child credit. Ideally, we just get to a system, again, where we eliminate all these credits, all these subsidies, all these tax breaks, simple. All this will do is it makes the tax system more complicated, more complicated. So this is exactly the kind of system that, you know, we live in a world in which the US government is running massive deficits. Massive. It's issuing huge quantities of debt. Government spending is out of control. All we need right now is a focus on cutting government spending. Cutting government spending. Not selective tax breaks to a few people who the government has decided a good cause. Either cut taxes across the board, which I don't think you should do right now because now it's up to time. What you should be doing is simplifying, simplifying, simplifying, simplifying. And then, you know, finally, cut spending. Other provisions of this bill include boosting low income housing credit, reducing the tax burden for businesses and employees working in both Taiwan and the US. So, you know, and providing disaster relief for communities affected by natural disasters and the Ohio train derailment. That's a little get you for JD Vance so that he would vote for this. How do they offsetting this? They're offsetting this by, you know, fighting fraud related to the COVID era employee retention tax credit program. Shouldn't think I'm going to be fighting fraud anyway. Shouldn't this be done anyway? They're changing. They're going to change the deadline for backdated claims to January 2024 instead of April 2025. It's going to run out here soon. Finds and penalties are going to go up and all kinds of stuff like that, fraud and everything. Shouldn't they be doing this anyway? They think they can raise, they think they can save $70 billion by doing this. Isn't this kind of obvious? Isn't this what the government should, I mean, why do we need like some kind of convoluted tax bakes in order to save $70 billion on fraud? Shouldn't that be 101? Because the reason they're doing this is to convince you that this is a convince voters convince whoever that it's tax neutral. This will never happen. They'll never make the savings. The savings will never happen because they don't care about fraud. They don't care about any of this stuff. They just want the tax bakes because they could give candy to their constituencies and they can pretend that they've cut taxes to whoever they think they want to appease. So boo on this. I'm against the whole thing. All right. Quickly, because we don't have a lot of time. China. The big story out of China today is that demographics are even worse than everybody expected, maybe with the accept of what's his name, the demographer Peter Zain. He's the only one who's really talked about this, but the demography is even worse than people thought. China's population shrunk by another 2 million last year, that's according to official numbers. Who knows what the real number is? Both dropped by more than 500,000 last year. Fewer babies born to just over 9 million in total. That means the population is shrinking. Fertility rates. Fertility rates in China are probably close to one, maybe under one, probably under one, which is like South Korea, Japan levels, fastest shrinking countries in the world. A number of old people is over 20%. That is over 60. That would include me as old. Middle-aged and old people is 20%. This is a disaster from a narrow perspective of economics, if you will. I think it's interesting, since they got away with one child policy, birth rates have declined dramatically. Indeed, China's throwing incentives at women to have kids, and Chinese women are shrugging. Indeed, the more freedom they have to take control over their reproduction, the less kids they're having. So on the one hand, I think this is great. It's great in a sense that people in China, women in China have control over their own destiny. They get to choose, they're not being coerced. They get to make decisions, and they are free enough, wealthy enough, successful enough, independent enough, have enough career opportunities for women that they don't have to have kids and buy into conventional gender roles and conventional family structures. Good for Chinese women who wait for them. It's bad for the Chinese economy. They're hitting a shrinking population, a growing elderly population, just at the same time as they've got a massive debt crisis, a massive real estate crisis, and an economy that is struggling to grow, struggling to grow. So this is horrible for China long term, because it will exacerbate its economic problems. China does not have a robust immigration, although it needs it. It's unlikely that China is going to embrace immigration. It's also not clear who's going to come. Certainly, China is experiencing a brain drain. You can see that on our southern border with a number of middle class Chinese trying to sneak into the United States. People who've left China. So there's definitely a challenge here for the Chinese. But on the other hand, good for the Chinese women, good for Chinese families, good for the Chinese people, that they now have the freedom, the time to pursue their own values, whether those include children or not. I'm all for, in some cases, not having children. All right, Iran. Yesterday, Iran in retaliation supposedly against ISIS for the suicide bombings a few weeks ago on the fourth commemoration of the fourth four years to Soleimani's death. The Iranian regime bombed yesterday, targets in Iraq and in Pakistan. In Iraq, they claimed this was some kind of bastion of Israeli intelligence or something. And in Pakistan, they claimed that this was a base for ISIS. Pakistan is not very positive about this. Pakistan's sovereignty has been infringed. They weren't told about this. Of course, they deserve it because they are indeed a bastion of Islamists groups all over Pakistan that are creating havoc in all kinds of places around the world. But they got bombed. Pakistan is not happy. Remember, Pakistan actually has nuclear weapons. It is the only Islamic country in the world that has nuclear weapons. They are considering what their response to Iran is going to be. Iran, again, is playing with fire. It's not clear Pakistan is going to act as weakly as the United States has or as Israel has with regard to Iranian aggression. It might actually be that Pakistan takes its sovereignty more seriously than Americans take the lives of American soldiers more seriously than even Israel takes its sovereignty. So we'll see what happens. But I'm going to do a show, whether it's this week or next week. I will do a show on Canada, the Middle East and World War III, if you will, because I do think that it's American weakness, American global weakness under Obama, Trump, and Biden is the biggest threat to world peace right now. And what we're seeing is a dramatic increase in these flare-ups, a dramatic increase in violent hostility, a dramatic increase in potential war. The kind of increases I don't remember when the last time we saw this and how, you know, when we last saw it be this bad. We are teetering on the edge here, and I think to a large extent it's a consequence of the fact that the West is asleep. The Biden administration is asleep. The Trump administration was asleep. And Obama was the first president in American history to basically make a moral equivocation between the U.S. and the rest of the world. Obama was the first American president to say America shouldn't lead. Obama was the first American president to kind of put the United States from a global foreign policy perspective on pause. And Trump and Biden have just accelerated and reinforced that position. And I think this explains Russia, Russia's hostility. It explains what's going on in the Middle East with Hamas and Iran. It explains China's increased aggression and North Korea now's increased aggression. And it's going to get worse. It's going to get worse. And it doesn't matter who wins because everybody running for president right now, with the exception of Niki Haley, is committed to the United States taking a backseat. Is committed to the United States sitting it out. Is committed to the United States not pursuing its national self-interest on a global scale, every single one of them. I'd finally, some more good news. We started with good news with Mele. We've got a little bit more good news. Sorry, maybe we'll have to wait till tomorrow. A couple of Saudi stories. So let's see a couple of quick stories. One is they've cloned a monkey. They've cloned a rhesus monkey. And not only have they cloned it, but it's lived to adulthood. Most cloned monkeys die young, but they have now a new method of cloning, a new method of in vitro fertilization. And we now have a cloned rhesus, R-H-E-S-U-S monkey. He's named Ritro and he survived until adulthood and he's doing well and he's completely normal and really, really cool. You know, this technology is really, really interesting. It's exciting. It's exciting in terms of what can be done for humans in terms of ultimately being able to enhance the human genome in vitro and to be able to clone at least certain aspects of human beings. Anyway, this is fantastic. I am a huge fan of cloning. It's playing God, absolutely. I think human beings should play God. I think human beings do play God. I think human beings need to accelerate playing God. This is exactly what human beings are. We are. You know, since there is no other God, we're it, so we better play it. Second story, again, a kind of playing God, this is a playing God, is a second drug, a second treatment that uses gene editing, CRISPR gene editing. This is absolutely playing God. This is where you send in a pair of scissors into the DNA, literally goes into the DNA. All of you freaking out from mRNA. This is like a thousand times more invasive than mRNA. It goes in to the DNA and it literally cuts certain sequences out and in the future we'll be able to replace them, cuts certain figures. Now we got a gene editing, that's what it is, editing, cutting out CRISPR technology. This is absolutely playing God. We got a sickle cell anemia drug approved a few weeks ago by the FDA, huge move, sickle cell disease. And that was cleared by the FDA and now that was in December. Now they've just expanded approval of CRISPR to include a treatment for something I've never heard of, beta thalosamia. Maybe some of biologists can tell us what that is. But it doesn't matter what it is. It's a disease that cannot be cured. And it can be cured using a method that is astounding in terms of its implications, in terms of what we'll be able to do in the future and the extent to which we'll be able to play God in the future. So yay for genetic engineering, yay for CRISPR and yay for cloning. This is all terrific news, good for science, good for scientists, go you biologists. I do think we're entering into the decade of biotech, where biotech is going to change much of how we understand the world and much of how we understand the ability in a sense to shape who we are as human beings, at least the biology of who we are as human beings. All right, we went way over today, which actually deserves a much higher goal than what we have. So we should be raising a lot more money given how much we've gone over. But let's jump into the super chats because that's where the action is and I know there are a lot of questions. John Glue, I'm sure I'm mispronouncing your name, but anyway John says, hey Iran, I just finished your Trump episode. It was very good. Take my money. You deserve it. I'm looking forward to your coherence review. That's right. I skipped it yesterday. God. All right, I need a review. I'll do it next time I do movies. I'll do coherence. I think the most telling line in the movie is when one of the characters says, if they started here, they belong here. Well, yes, in the sense of it's an important line, but it's, God, it's, yeah, it's a strange movie. It's a strange movie. But it's one of these movies that deals with the multiverse. But yeah, thanks John. I would have never watched the movie if not for you encouraging me. But and thank you for the supporting my Trump show as you can see some people would like me to stop attacking Trump. And it will never happen. I actually think that I was a little too positive on Trump. Well, not too positive. I was not anti-Trump enough. And that will be corrected in the show's weeks, days to come. I think Trump is even worse than I described him in the show. All right. John says, listening to the speech, this is, I guess, Millay, was awesome. He offered a model defensive capitalism. Well, he didn't offer it. He said one is needed and he kind of vaguely gave something, but he didn't actually offer a model defensive capitalism. Just saying capitalism's model is not a model defensive capitalism. He needs a defense. He needs an argument. And it's very hard to make that argument unless you're willing to make a philosophical model defensive individualism. And he hasn't yet done that. I mean, he, that's where he needs the work. That's where it bumps up against conventional morality, which you would have to challenge, which is even bigger than challenging conventional political views. He's almost there, but we need to get him. We need to push him over the top. I mean, I remember when people, you know, Arthur Brooks and others would talk about morality of capitalism, and then they wouldn't really make a model defensive capitalism. Millay is floating with that. And I wish he could be better. He did make a model case for businessman, at least part of a, again, part of a model case for businessman, which was terrific, really, really good. I think he also means the state and it's come in form. Not a model state. Not a model state. I was moved to tears, honestly. I'm with you. But no, he means, the way he says the state, the context in which he talks about the state, the fact that we know he considers himself an anarchist all comes together. And he's talking about the state qua state, unfortunately, but again, I'll take it given everything else that he says. Remo, what are your favorite works from Beethoven? Oh, wow. Seventh Symphony, of course, the ninth, but the seventh is my favorite. Ninth, let's see, fourth and fifth piano concertos, the violin concerto. I love his violin sonatas. What else? I love the quartets. The quartets are hard, though, but I love the quartets. What am I missing? His misa, misa solemnis, religious piece, amazing, stunning, a mass, a mass. Yeah, I mean, I think those are my top favorites. Those are my top favorites. Oh, and of course, some of the piano, you know, moonlight sonata and some of the other passion, the other sonatas, I can't pronounce them. Anyway, they're like three or four sonatas that are just unbelievable. I mean, they're all good, but they're three or four that are just stunningly beautiful. And I love all of that. But Beethoven is somebody I can listen to almost anything. I like Fidelio. When it comes to opera, it's a great story, one of the best stories in all of opera history. He's not a great opera composer, in my view. I mean, it's a little stilted. I say that with respect, you know, I have for Beethoven. He doesn't compare to Verdi and Puccini and others, but the story is fantastic. And the opera is still really, really, really good. It's just not one of my favorites in terms of Beethoven. Brice says, the left is scared of Trump being an authoritarian, but they love power so much they won't do anything about it. Congress would take back the executive power they have given the presidents in any time without the court. Yes, you're right. I mean, they don't want to give up executive power because they use it. And they're scared of Trump being an authoritarian. But they're really scared of, you know, Trump for many reasons being an authoritarian is just one of them. I think they are. It's the way in which his authoritarianism manifests because you could argue that Biden's authoritarian too, and that doesn't scare them. And many of them are super authoritarian, and that doesn't scare them. Mary Arlene, Nucca's steel mills are non-union. Obama packed OSHA with pro-unions, union a-holes. This is not good for us. I worked for Nucca for 17 years. Yes. I mean, Nucca, I think, was much more innovative and dynamic. I forget the name of the CEO who really put Nucca on the map. And it became, I think, post-Obama in the last 10 years, it's become a lot less so. And to a large extent because of the union, the OSHA, and because of the protection. I mean, protectionism hurts the people that it's trying to help. Nucca was hurt by protectionism. It wasn't helped by protectionism. Sylvanos, just watch your show from last night. Loved it. I wish I could show it to my Trumpist father, but he's a lost cause. Thanks, Sylvanos. Again, more to come on Trump. I'm going to double my efforts between now and super Tuesday in the hope of affecting a few of your votes who might vote for Trump and away from him. You know, probably won't be very successful in affecting them, but at least I will feel, I will have the sense that I've done my bit. You know, the primary season of what matters for now. And then, of course, I will redouble my effort once he wins. You know, if I wasn't clear yesterday, I think that a vote for Trump, one should not vote for Trump no matter, pretty much no matter what. Alright, Michael says, will melee success at aggressive deregulation influence the next Republican administration? I don't see any signs that it will. I don't see any reason to think that it will. I don't think Republicans are really paying attention. I don't think they care other than beat the left, you know, which is that, you know, melee beat the left. I think they care about that, but they don't. I don't think they care about the specifics. I don't think they care about economics. I mean, if I'm relayed from his speech today, you can tell the guy isn't economist. He loves economics. He wants to teach economics. He's trying to teach economics at the World Economic Forum from the stage. I mean, it's pretty funny and inspiring and a little sad because he's not going to be successful. But there's something unique about melee that just doesn't exist in the Republican Party right now. There's just nobody, not even Rand Paul. Nobody who has that kind of attitude towards economics in the world of government. Not a single one of them. Fendt Hopper, did you get the impression that libertarianism manifests differently abroad? Yeah, in many respects it does. American libertarianism, particularly the anarchist version, is very, very anti-American. It's very, very anti-American self-defense. It tends to be pro-America's enemies. And that comes directly from Rothbard. Libertarians outside of America, particularly Eastern Europe, particularly South America, have far more experience with the evil than Americans do, and therefore they know that the alternative to what we have today cannot... Russia is not better than America. Communism is not better than America. Islamism is not better than America. They have much more respect for Western civilization than libertarians do overseas. They have far more respect for America. They love America, whereas American libertarians hate America. Somebody like Millet loves America, and that's true, I think, uniformly among libertarians outside of the U.S. They might still be anarchists, but they don't have the hatred of their good states, the relatively good states that Americans do, because they know what a bad state looks like, unlike Americans who think somehow life in the Soviet Union wasn't that bad. The real evil was what America does. They've witnessed, and they don't even condemn America for impassee, be evil the way libertarians do in assassinating leaders and intervening and so on, because they know what would happen if America didn't do that, how evil the people who America intervened against were. So whether America should intervene or not is an internal American question, but they know that America almost always intervenes in order to make things better, not in order to make things worse, and they know what worse looks like, whereas they don't. Americans don't. American libertarians have no clue. I mean, they're really clueless about history, about what it's like to live in another country, about the world, about international politics, about the world. They know nothing about it. They live in a fantasy world, a fantasy world guided by their hatred. Why should some people never own a house or a condo, isn't renting your entire life an enormous waste? Why? Why is it a waste? You know, real estate is a consumption good. I mean, other than the tax-dictability of a mortgage, there shouldn't be, in a free market certainly, there isn't any advantage to buying a property. Sometimes in the world in which we live today, it makes more sense to rent. Sometimes it makes more sense to buy, depending on the government incentives being provided to the marketplace. But in a free market, the financial issue of renting and buying, you would be indifferent. It's more of a question of whether you want to own your own place, that you can change, you can renovate, you can do what you want with, or not. But it should be, that choice is from a financial perspective, and from an idea perspective I think ultimately is, but from a financial perspective, you should be indifferent between renting and owning. In a free market, the value of a home does not automatically go up. It's only in a statist world in which homeowners, lobby governments, and basically manipulate government to protect themselves to raise the prices of their own real estate, the value of the real estate go up. So there's context, right? It depends what you want. Owning is more stable, nobody's going to kick you out. Renting is more flexible. The periods in life maybe make sense to own, periods in life would make sense to rent. So it almost wastes to whom, and for what? So it all is a context. Michael, you ever watched Milton Friedman's Q&A's in the 70s? The students actually asked intelligent questions. They could form concepts. Yeah, but more importantly, he gave great answers. I mean, I wish we had more economic communicators at the level of a Milton Friedman, because he gave them answers at their level, not at some abstract economist level. JDUC says, loved your discussion on breed love podcast. Thank you. About the money speech, engaging with Goldbugs and Bitcoiners, Austrian economists, is how I first found you. Yeah, I was on a breed loves podcast. He's a huge Bitcoiner. He's a huge advocate for Bitcoin. I've done a number of discussions with him about a year ago, maybe more. We did a whole series of interviews where we discussed Ayn Rand's virtue of selfishness. Yesterday he released a video of me and him discussing Francisco Danconia's money speech from Atlas Shrugged. He recently finished Atlas Shrugged, reading it and loved it. And the discussion of the money speech was really, really good. Please go listen to it. Please support it by just listening. Get the views up. I think you'll enjoy it anyway. So it's Robert Breedlove's podcast, Breedlove, B-R-E-E-D-L-O-V-E, his podcast. So yeah, please go listen to it and support what I do by just listening. Anonymous user says, great melee update. Thanks, anonymous user. Justice says, is the success of electric cars a proof government subsidies work? No. I mean, what was the alternative use of that capital? What else could have happened? Electric cars, good. Should we be driving electric cars? Who gets to decide that? You could argue that our lives are worse off of driving electric cars. Success in what context? So if all that capital had gone to other things, would we be better off? I don't drive an electric car. Somebody showed, I saw this little thing. I remember where maybe on Twitter, of somebody in these really frigid weather right now who was driving and had to recharge his car. But it was so cold outside, he had to keep the heater on while he was charging the car, which slowed down the charging dramatically. So he was sitting there for like an hour to charge the car while his heater was running. Of course, he couldn't on one charge go for the entire distance. He had to keep stopping and recharging. This was in Canada somewhere on the chat they're saying in Chicago. What I read was, I thought it was in Canada, but maybe in Chicago, maybe they're more than one story. It's like that. But is that better? Is that a success? Or is that an actual decline in the quality of life? China, by the way, is hugely, quote, successful in getting people to drive electric cars in China. They're cheap and everybody has a significant percentage of the cars sold in China, electric now. Is that good? Is that bad for China, for anybody? Andrew says, how do you react to Trump's attempted humor? He's quick-witted. I think you'd agree. But do you find it funny? No, I don't find it funny. I find it vulgar and stupid mostly. I don't find it funny at all. I don't think I've ever laughed out from something funny he tried to say. Usually, I find it false. It falls flat because, I mean, he's not very smart. He's just not very smart. The points he's trying to make are not very clever. So maybe he's quick-witted in that sense. But I don't find it funny. Savano says, what China forced people to have kids? I don't think so. I think the rebellion would be too harsh if they tried. Mary Benz says, he's a biologist, because I do gene therapy, I get accused of playing God. I can't even get my eight-year-old to go to bed. I'm sure there's a gene therapy to fix your eight-year-old so she will listen to you. Yeah, I know. Playing God is overrated. You just don't have, God doesn't have the abilities we thought he did. Like, he has no power over eight-year-olds. Andrew, a great show today, High Energy. I'm motivated to fly through a work spreadsheet this afternoon. That is aspirational. Here's a small tip for the boost. I appreciate that. Andrew, thank you. Yeah, it reminds me about the spreadsheets I need to fly through. Mary Eileen, great show. Thanks. Also, there is no case in which I would vote for Donald Trump. Pigs will fly first. I'm with you. Even if they drop pigs from airplanes somehow, it ain't happening. Apollo Zeus, High Importance, humor in romantic love. I don't think much. I mean, it's nice if you share a sense of humor or some elements of sense of humor, but I'm not funny and I found love. So, yeah, if you have very divergent sense of humor, maybe it's hard. But I don't think you have to be funny in that sense. I mean, you just have to be able to kind of, in a sense, share what's funny. All right. Thank you, guys. I appreciate the support. We did this in the chat pretty quickly. Yeah, go listen to me, ladies, a speech if you haven't. I put it in the chat. I put the URL in the chat and I think you'll enjoy it. And have a great rest of your week. I will see you all tomorrow for another episode of news updates. Talk to you then. Bye, everybody.