 Welcome to a discussion of radical fundamental principles of freedom Rational self-interest lays a bare capitalism and individual rights The your on Brook show starts now Everybody welcome to your on Brook show and Good morning. Good afternoon. Great weekend. All right, so You know headlines today all about Russia probe and all about the this memo and that memo and I guess They've got a first charges being filed, but nobody knows against whom and nobody knows exactly what's going on so I'm gonna just ignore all that because You know, there's no news. It's in the headlines. Everybody's talking about it, but there's actually No news so we're gonna ignore that and we're gonna focus on Focus on a number of other stories, you know, Amazon's looking for headquarters Dozens of cities, I think 200 cities or something like that have applied to try to get Amazon to have their second Headquarters in their cities. Does that make any sense? Is that what city should be doing? Is that the world of government to a try to attract business? Well, I think if you believe Donald Trump's view of the world of government, then yeah, it's certainly it certainly would be so It's I want to talk about Amazon. I want to talk about The tax tax bill tax bill that's gonna be, you know, they're getting close They're gonna be proposing something real soon here So and they're debating about which deductions they're gonna take away from us. So that of course is interesting You know, what are they gonna? What are they gonna let us deduct after they're done with with all this Nonsense in terms of taxes, but before we can talk about taxes we kind of have to talk about government spending and this budget that the Senate has passed and the house has passed nobody talks about that nobody talks about spending nobody cares about spending So but I want to put this in a broader context in a broader framework You know, what what do we have government for? Why do we have government? What's the purpose of government? What's the founders vision of why government should exist? Is it to do the the million things that we're doing right now That the government is doing right now. Is it to spend? $7 trillion and and 7 trillion sounds like a high number. I know because the federal government only spends four But if you add in everything federal state Local government if you add in what government does in the United States All government Then yeah, the federal government spends about four trillion and spending else in 17 It'll be just under 3.98 if you project into 18 It's gonna spend over four trillion growth rate of about four percent much higher than inflation This is a Republican House a Republican Senate and your government spending is growing at a faster rate than inflation They're not cutting spending God forbid They're growing spending faster than inflation. All right, but if you add in state and local and everything else you get to You know over seven seven point one seven trillion dollars. That's it's a number that is hard to comprehend It's seven thousand billion It's seven million million. I mean seven million dollars for a lot of us is a is a it's a big number Wow seven million dollars and then a thousand millions is seven billion dollars, right? you know, there are a few people who who gets seven billion because There's some people out there who make that kind of money But for most of us Seven billion is a massive number hard to really wrap your head around seven billion dollars But now we're talking about Seven trillion dollars again seven trillion is Them is a thousand billions. It's a million millions seven million millions. Oh My god, I mean it's insanity. This is what the government Spans now because it doesn't take all of that from us through taxes It it takes some of that through taxes and then the rest it finances through debt So it's one or another. It's sucking seven trillion dollars out of the US economy Every year through taxes and through debt to spend on government programs right I mean that is In my book insanity Insanity right, it's it's a huge percentage of You know of what this country produces of what this country Of what all of us make it's a suck a massive suck on the US economy And nobody cares. That's a thing. Nobody cares. I mean we're talking about Russians interfering in our elections and we're talking about You know all this other stuff. We're talking about a tax cuts We're talking about every little tweet the Donald Trump sends We've been talking about football players kneeling during the national anthem, but nobody is talking about the fact That US in the United States the so-called bastion of freedom bastion of capitalism The US government in all its various forms is going to spend over seven trillion dollars next year now the you Tyre's economy is measured by I guess GDP Which is one GDP what one gross domestic product, which is one measure of kind of the amount of production that happens It's not a very good measure, but we're gonna put that aside. It's 18.57 trillion dollars 7 trillion seven is what it's it's close to 40% The government is spending government spending constitute 40% Or you could say government theft or government taking of our stuff and government Wasting of our money is about 40% of the size size of the economy This is the so-called bastion of capitalism. This is the so-called You know free country. No, we're socialists like the rest of the world Right, that's socialism numbers 40% of the economy Being constituting government, you know, is is not that far from You know from Scandinavia, you know from the so-called You know these heavenly places that that bunny Sanders described, you know his you know of his ideal society his ideal society, right 18 7 trillion dollars 40% you know how much money The federal government so the federal government today spends about 20% right, but What did what did the federal government spend? 120 130 in a heyday of American capitalism when Almost nothing as a percent of GDP under 5% Under 5% something around between 3 to 4% today. We spent 20 21% of our production by the federal government alone In other words, you could you could shrink the federal government by 80 percent 75 80 percent and We'd have the federal government we had at the beginning of the 20th century When we were the fastest growing economy in the world where we were, you know doing Absorbing millions and millions of millions of immigrants where we were establishing the greatest businesses and the greatest industries in the In the history of mankind where we were becoming rich we creating a middle class and yet The federal government spent almost nothing almost nothing if you do a graph a Federal government spending over the last hundred and fifty years It looks like because it's exaggerated towards the last 50 years It looks like before that we didn't spend anything because you can barely see the line If you if you you know because of the scale and nobody talks about that zero So nobody cares, but this is this is what's hurting us This is what lowest standards of living because every dollar the government takes out of the private economy is a dollar Then it's not being used for investment. It's a dollar. That's not being used to increase productivity It's a dollar that does not go to increasing wages. It's a dollar that is not increasing somebody's wealth These are dollars that go into a black hole bureaucracy and get wasted redistributed They pay for a whole government organization that restricts trade that restricts Production that restricts industry through regulations controls and everything else and the shocking part of it is Nobody cares nobody's talking about it. It doesn't it doesn't appear Anywhere on the national landscape Nobody nobody nobody cares You know and and if you look at it of the of this four trillion that the federal government spends one trillion goes to welfare various forms of welfare 22% of all the money spent by government in the United States 22% of the seven trillion goes to healthcare healthcare 22% That is more than Social Security. It's more than education. It's much more than defense almost double what we spend on defense It's you know, it's I don't know four times what we spent on welfare 22% goes to healthcare and yet so many people claim that We have a free market in healthcare when the government is spending 22% of seven trillion dollars That's over a trillion almost one and a half trillion dollars. It is one and a half trillion dollars at the state federal local level on Healthcare, we don't have a free market in healthcare. We have a government controlled government subsidized government manipulated healthcare market Why are we spending one and a half trillion dollars in healthcare? Now most of that a lot of that is Medicare and Medicaid Do we really need Medicare and Medicaid this private private markets can't take care of any of that All right, we're gonna have to take a break here if you want to if you want in on this conversation 888 9 0 0 33 9 3 8 8 8 9 0 0 3 3 9 2 What do you think? About government spending and what is the role of government? What should government be spending on and is any of this stuff? Part of what government should be spending on 19% on pensions 22% on healthcare 15% on education 6% on welfare 12% on defense What are those should the government actually be spending money on and how do we decide? What's the principle by which we decide? Yes That's an appropriate government's expenditure. No, that is inappropriate 888 9 0 0 3 3 9 3 listening to your own book show on the blaze radio network. We'll be right back You're listening to the year on Brooks show Everybody all right. We're talking about government spending and the nuttiness the insanity of The level of government spending the amount of taxes that they take from us the amount of borrowing that they do You know the government debt now is 20 Trillion dollars if you thought seven was a big number 20 million million dollars 20 million That's the amount of debt that somebody's gonna have to pay back sometime somewhere, you know How how are we gonna do that raise taxes on our kids and grandkids? Who cares about our kids and grandkids and of course 20 trillion is right now, but we're accumulating at least half a trillion a year under Obama it was more initially less later on now. It's up to half a trillion again Trump is doing nothing to stop that nothing zero So it's gonna grow beyond half a trillion debt is just gonna accelerate Over the next few years. So we're looking at 30 trillion at some point Remember US GDP is only 18.57 Trillion so our debt now is greater than our GDP at some point at some point This is not sustainable. Don't ask me when because I don't know I don't predict these things It's impossible to do but at some point people say well, wait a minute Maybe these pieces of paper that they keep promising. They'll pay pay back. They won't be able to You know right now 6% of total government spending is on interest 6% but imagine what happens if interest rates go up Right now they're nothing 2% 2 and a half percent 1 and a half percent But imagine if they go to 5 6% that 6% of government spending could go to 30% which would blow up the deficit which would Blow up government spending Nobody cares. Nobody talks about it. It's not about that. Let's cut taxes. Republicans all about cutting taxes Let's cut taxes Unless you get spending what doesn't make You're gonna have to pay for it somehow. Oh, but we'll get economic growth and economic growth will compensate for all of it really Really, has anybody really run the numbers? I mean, yeah, you can have a growth is great and economic growth will do wonders and it's great But it doesn't Economic growth does not reduce the amount of money the government is spending economic growth will not reduce The deficit it might raise revenue a little bit It might reduce the deficit a little bit, but won't reduce the total debt Nobody is projecting a balanced budget because of economic growth given government spending and It we'll talk about the tax plan is the tax plan really gonna generate economic growth long-term We'll talk about that the way that the way to generate economic growth long-term If you know anything about economics, which most most economists don't most people who talk about economics know nothing about economics but the way to generate economic growth is Cut spending Get the government out of the business of consuming wasting throwing away our hard-earned dollars so that we can invest and save and Consume God forbid for ourselves I Mean we got a couple of callers Whoa, we got three callers Neil You want to talk about freedom and free and hopefully you're connecting it to this topic. Hey Neil. How's it going? It's going good my question today is about freedom and is This is this is just what I've heard from a lot of people when I talk about freedom to them up I I want to I go to college I talk about like iron-ramp ideas and the first argument people growing up is like well Freedom isn't really free because because of laws like the freedom to kill another person What not yet if there is I don't understand what what laws what laws give you freedom to kill another person? I Don't I don't know but I see that's the argument they use Well, I mean you can't argue against nonsensical arguments that don't provide any facts and don't provide any evidence I mean freedom is not free in the sense that freedom needs to be protected freedom needs to be fought for I'm not an anarchist. I believe that you need government will get to that in a little while But what do you need in order to protect our freedoms? You need a pretty small government But the idea if what they mean is capital punishment if somebody's a murderer then He has no freedom once you violate somebody else's rights once you commit a violent crime against somebody else you lose alright, you lose Your freedom that's what You know, that's what rights mean as soon as you violate somebody else's rights You forfeit all your own rights you forfeit your own freedom and if you kill somebody you forfeit your life It's completely legitimate. If we if we could if we could really guarantee that a guilty verdict was objective and and in legit then it would be completely Fine to kill a killer So that is not reducing anybody's freedom you do not have the freedom to kill other people. That's not a freedom That's a completely subjectivist out of no way definition of freedom Freedom is the right to pursue the values necessary for your own life Without Violating the rights of others to do the same So once you violate other people's rights forget about your freedom you have none so In that sense, yeah People's people's freedom is limited To pursuing your values your rational values without violating other people's rights That's what freedom means so there is no such thing as You know because I don't know because of capital punishment the murderer isn't free. No the murderer isn't free That's the point But that's the way by making the murderer unfree Putting him in jail. That's how you guarantee my freedom and your freedom so the government's job is to To prosecute those who violate rights to protect us from those who would violate our rights to put them in jail That's the job of the government. That's almost the only job of the government. I wish they did it better All right, Neil, I hope that answers your question. I Appreciate the call Jeff Go ahead our perception of government and you have to be quick as we're coming up to a break here Hey, yeah, and yeah, you know you were talking about government spending and I was having this conversation yesterday with somebody who's a very conservative and We really need to start with what is government. Yep This idea that it's not us that it's separate from us. It's not in the marketplace. It is not affected by capitalism You know that it has different needs than one That's just not true. And you know, we've kind of lost control But I think we can bring it back into control It doesn't matter what size government is if it's doing the collective thing that we organized it to do for us So we have free time to do, you know more a lot or whatever. No, that's right but they but the size matters because the fact is That the size is an indication of the fact that it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing It's not doing what the founders fathers intended it to do when it was doing more of that It was tiny. It was tiny So so size is definitely a proxy an indication of the fact that the government is Not fulfilling its role as expanded its role has become in my view unlimited We today have an unlimited government. They could pretty much do whatever the hell they want And I'm unconstrained by anything even the Constitution given that the Supreme Court refuses To actually abide by the Constitution given that the Constitution is moot Our politicians can do anything they want pretty much. So we have today an unlimited government Completely run a muck in terms of its size in terms of what it does 90 now We've got a break coming up in about 90 seconds Jeff Thanks for the question or the observation and that's what we're gonna get to after the break the question after the break is What is the role of government? What have we constituted government to do and what would it cost to actually have a government doing a good job at That right so what is government? What should it do? How expensive should it be? Those are really the fundamental questions that we have to ask and that's what we're gonna do That's what we're gonna do after this coming break But to give you a hint if you add up those things if you add up those things The size of government is well well well below a trillion dollars. It is Tiny it is tiny And yet here we are you're a seven trillion dollars sucked out of the private economy and Wasted by the government on things That the government really Should not be doing all right. We're coming up to a heartbreak You're listening to your own Brook show and this is the blaze radio network if you want to call in 888-900-3393 and when we come back then we'll take Brian's call the ones to talk about World War two and The economy relevant relevant to what we're talking about. We'll be right back after this And we are talking about the role of government and what government should be and what government should really do and Let's let's let's start this by taking by taking Brian's call Brian's calling from Illinois I take it. Hey Brian. Good afternoon first-time listener enjoy the show so far. Oh good good You know, I'm kind of a student of history. I'm a blue collar guy. I'm electrician by trade You know World War two is the watershed event that our modern world flows from and the reason I say that is When the war ended the United States was the only Prosperous standing economy in the world. We were a colossus compared to everybody else. The British Empire had collapsed Russia Almost perished into the war, but they fought their way back because we gave them material because we helped them They would not have been able to fight back without our help Right. We sustained Stalin in power. We need to remember that right and we knew and Churchill knew how nasty Stalin really was but it was either hammer Hitler and so we chose when I might view one of the biggest mistakes We've ever made but okay, we'll get to that go ahead, right? But you know at the start of the war we were a tiny we had a tiny military We had a large economy, but militarily we were very very small We were nothing and it's astounding how ignorant most Americans are about the basic facts of World War two They just have no idea what went on. They don't know what the sacrifice was. They don't they don't understand any of it But anyway, the point I'll drive out is economic reasons Okay, so the war ends and you had Russia on the rise a communist country. You had China shortly became communist So before the war after the war there was this tension socialism was on the rise So we had then they knew the next big battle was to face down socialism and the communists Yeah, and here we were with a huge economy all this manufacturing capability in George Marshall and other big thinkers thought We need to help the world recover from or yet recover from the catastrophe of the most important So we we rescued the Germans rescue the French the Italians the Japanese. I mean you name it We threw in billions of dollars and all kinds of material to save these economies and bring them back to life Yeah So once you start doing that We're spending billions of dollars saving the rest of the world from communism basically in starvation Yeah, then the average American says hey You know, we're spilling billions of dollars over there in Japan and Germany, you know Why can't we spend a little money here in the United States? You know, why can't we give ourselves some health care? Why can't we you know, we had health care? Let's let's be clear We had the best health care system in the world at the time Right, but see at the time that's the key phrase See my parents are from a rural part of Western Illinois. Both my parents were born at home They were born into homes that had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. That's how rural they were But that was common for that area and that time that was reality that was that's how people lived and My grandmother gave birth to her children in her own bedroom with a midwife half the time And there was a country doctor that was Sublime go I'm sorry to cut you up But go to the point because otherwise we're going all over the place. It's really easy to get on that train Well, we're helping the world. Yeah, you know, we got a lot of poor Americans, too. We got to help them. Yeah Yeah, I think I think you're right. I think that's part of the mentality was hey if we're spending billions of dollars and helping the world Why don't we spend billions of dollars helping ourselves? You know, isn't that? isn't that a you know, Isn't that a way to value or I want yeah, I know absolutely, but this is this is the of course the challenge is that By shifting money to the federal government by shifting money to the state and local governments to so-called quote Help Americans. I believe we have done massive amounts of harm both economically to ourselves and To future generations. We've done massive harm to our perception of government We've given up control of our own lives and shifted it to Washington or Sacramento or Springfield, Illinois. We have taken away Whole generations view a personal responsibility and now they sit there expecting handouts and You know in a kind of entitlement victim mentality We have destroyed our educational system because the government has taken it over even more than it did before We've destroyed or in the process of destroying our health care system because the government now is spending Well over 50% of every dollar spent on health care is government spending So we've taken away that dynamism that is capitalism from the industry that needs that dynamism called health care the Consequences of this shift that happened post-World War two as you identify it really happened I think post-World War one because it really started with the Great Depression and and FDR all these government programs the massive regulation of business the Establishment of Social Security the regulation of financial industry all of that really begun with FDR and then really accelerated post-World War two and a you know particularly in the 60s and 70s and all of that is Unbelievably damaging to America and instead of talking about Rolling that back instead of talking about bringing back America to Americans instead of talking about Bringing back the ideas that made this country great the ideas that made this country rich the ideas that made this country a success instead of that we've bought into European Basically mixed economy with a heavy dose of socialism model that is Crippling us instead of us teaching the rest of the world how to become capitalist we have to learn from the Europeans how to Crush capitalism and how to establish a mixed economy mostly socialism Which is which is that I think Is the reason why you you got the existential angst in the middle class today? Why we have elected? Somebody like Donald Trump why we even had a choice between somebody like Hillary Clinton and the Donald Trump You know the most horrific choice in American history and and why economy is barely growing wages of barely growing productivity is barely going up and We are massing huge quantities of debt so that we're guaranteeing that the economy for our kids and grandkids It's gonna be worse than what we have today all of this is a consequence of those horrible decisions Made pre-World War two and post-World War two and we can talk about why those decisions were made But but I don't think it I think it fundamentally has to do with ideas, but We are crippled today and and and I agree with you a lot of it has to do with that coming out of World War two The arrogance of with the only big economy we're rich You know nobody else has anything and we can spend money We can spend money building all these other countries and then we can spend money domestically on Medicare and Medicaid on on Welfare state on all war poverty. Where's that God knows I don't want drugs. We have that God in us and on all these you know all this government spending up the kazoo and All of it destructive in my view all of it negative all of it You know wasteful so but that's that's where we are and a complete abandonment of The real purpose of government of the role of government, right and and instead You know today If you look at the budget that Republicans have put together It's just a hodgepodge of Special interest pressure groups You know who's managed to grab a bigger piece of the pie There's no thought given to the budget. There's no thought given to the role of government There's no thought given a government spending every year They spend more and more and more we get less and less and less for it They abuse our rights as individuals more and more and more and more and it's just the cycle that never ends Destructive cycle the never ends. I'm sorry Brian. Did you have anything else to add? Yeah, yeah, I would I agree with a lot of what you've said But I think there's a balance. There's a balance in life. It's just like, you know You work you play your rest you diet and exercise. There's always a balance And that's the hard part is achieving the balancing act I don't think it can be all one way or all the other and All right, so so let me take that just on the bright side Yeah, I make the point that the average human being in America lives much much much better Than a member of a royal court did in Europe. Oh hundred years ago. No question. No question Think about all the modern technology. Absolutely the average person. It's just crazy. It's unbelievable You know as electrician I really have an appreciation for that. Yeah, and then I Have to take a break Brian Stick around when I come back I want to talk about your last point about the the standard of living that we all have being as high as it is Because I think that's an underappreciated point But I also want to talk about this balance stuff because we're not gonna agree on balance I'm I'm very much against balance if what you mean by balance is I want to balance nutritional food with poison I want it. I want some nutritional food, but I want some poison. That's a good balanced diet Which is what I think the idea of balance when it comes to government is all right We're gonna take a quick break here You know really appreciate you guys all listening to your on Brook show on the blaze radio network And we're gonna come back right after this break Hey, you're listening to your on book show and we're here on the blaze and We are talking about the role of government and Brian was on I guess he's he's dropped off now but Brian was saying what we need is more balance and No, no, no what we need is more freedom What we need is more freedom what we need is less government. So so let's talk about government Let's talk about government. What is government What is government? What is this sensual characteristic of government? Well, the sensual characteristic of government as our founders understood really well The sensual characteristic of government is force the sensual characteristic of government is a gun The sensual characteristic of government is compulsion You don't do what they say They put you in jail it's really simple That's what government is. And so the question of course is, well if government is force, why do we need it? What do we need government for? Shouldn't we just be left alone? Should we just all be carrying a weapon by our side to defend ourselves and the answers? No. A civilized society needs a monopoly over the use of force, but only that force should only be used to protect us. To protect us in self-defense. So the job of government is to defend our rights, it's to defend our freedom, that's its job. And for that government only needs a military, a police, and a judiciary. There's no issue of balance here. The government needs to be 100% dedicated, fully, fully to defending my freedom, not of violating my freedom, not interfering with my freedom, defending my freedom. Not telling me how to live, where to live, how much to earn, how much to pay my employees, what kind of business I can and cannot open. No, the role of government is to protect my ability to do all those things. That's what government is for, protection, self-defense, that's it. Other than that, it's supposed to leave us alone. And if you add up the numbers, if you go to government spending and you add up the numbers, how much of government spending actually goes to that, really to protect us from criminals and crooks and fraudsters and all of those kind of things, then maybe, maybe if I'm being generous, it's 20%, 20% of government spending goes to that, maybe, but that's still less than health care. And you know, it's probably less than that and of course you could argue that our defense spending is not very efficient and not very productive, but let's even say it's 20%. It means you can cut state, federal, local, all of those government budgets by 80%, 80%. And all you'd be cutting is stuff that the government shouldn't be doing anyway, shouldn't be doing anyway. And you should take that money and return it to the private sector where it belongs, where it can be applied effectively and efficiently to make money. And how do you make money? By producing values, right? And what is producing values going to do to our standard of living? It's going to increase it. We could have economic growth of five, six, seven percent, I believe that. But to do that, we would have to shrink government spending by 80%. Now that won't happen in a day. It won't happen in a decade, maybe, but you know what? It would be nice to get started on the road. It would be nice if we took total government spending, local, state and federal, and said, you know what? We're going to cut 5% of a year. We're just going to cut 5% of a year until we get down to where the government is only doing what it's supposed to be doing. And that is protecting individual rights. Ha, that would be amazing. That would be truly, truly amazing if we could do that. But no, no. The one political party that claims, that claims that they are for free markets, that they are for limited government, that they believe in the constitution, that they admire the founding fathers. That one political party called the Republican Party is too busy spending your hard-owned money, my hard-owned money on the pressure group that influences them the most and tries to make me so angry, right? So this is the point. The point is we've got to refocus the debate to spending and away from taxes. Republicans obsessed with taxes. They believe that reducing taxes solves all problems. It does not. What solves problems is getting government out of the way. What solves problems is actually cutting government spending. I'll tell you about two countries that did this. Two countries it's hard to believe actually did this. It's actually pretty amazing, right? Canada in the mid-90s was in real financial trouble. Was like Greece today. By the way, same thing true of Sweden. Both Sweden and Canada since the mid-1990s have been cutting government spending. Just to give you an indication that it is possible. America, the United States, has never cut spending. Sweden, the so-called socialist Sweden, is far more. We owe when it comes to these things than we are in America. We think we're capitalists. That's a joke given how much our government spends, how much our government regulates, how involved our government is in everything that we do in every aspect of our lives. All right, so I would cut. Should the government... So let's take this idea. The government is there to protect our individual rights and let's take all the different government programs. So government spends about $1 trillion, $1.2 trillion on welfare. Is welfare, the redistribution of wealth, is that necessary to protection of freedom? No. No, quite the contrary. The only way to do welfare is to violate some people's freedom by taking their money away from them by force. You know, if you need help, then ask for help. You don't have a right to take my stuff. You don't have a right to steal my money just because you need help. Welfare is not about protecting freedom. Welfare is about redistribution of wealth. It's about stealing from someone, giving to others. Welfare is socialism on a maybe smaller scale, but it's socialism. It's the state deciding which charities we should engage in. It's the state using its guns to take money from some to give to others. It's the state deciding who's worthy to get the money and who isn't worthy to get the money. It's the state creating hundreds, hundreds of inefficient, inefficient programs so-called to help the poor and the old. All these programs do is institutionalize people into poverty, eliminate the incentives to actually improve your lot in life, establish a victimhood and entitlement mentality. That's what Welfare does. Welfare has nothing to do with the protection of rights. There should be no government Welfare, zero in my world. Regulation. Regulation is not about protecting my rights. Now, if a regulation is there because there's a known risk and we know what happens when you engage in particular activity, I don't know, you build a certain plant and these plants explode once in a while, then yeah, the government can come in and say, no, you can't build those plants anymore in the name of protecting rights because the plant is a threat to people. But that's not what regulations today do, telling us what we can and cannot do, all the licensing laws that tell us what businesses we can have and what we can't have and what we profession we can go into and how much you pay and how much are you going to get paid. All of that government today is involved in. You want to drain the swamp? I'm all for draining the swamp. To drain the swamp, you have to cut government spending, slowly phase out Welfare, slowly eliminate regulations. That's what draining the swamp would entail. Unfortunately, that's not what Donald Trump is about. It's not what Donald Trump is going to do. All right, we're coming up to a hard break here, which I have to take. We've got Jacob on the line. I hope you can stay through the break. It's a little bit of a long break. I hope you can stay through the break. And we'll pick you up right after the break. So we're talking about the role of government. And Welfare is not part of the role of government. Regulation and control of business at the levels we have today, suddenly, but even at much smaller levels, it's not the role of government. Subsidizing business is not the role of government. All the subsidies that government spends. All this stuff, right? So what is defense? A military, you need a military, police, they protect us, they protect us, hopefully, right? And a judiciary. 20. That's it. That's it. Defense, police, judiciary. That's all you need. That's the only functions of a proper government. 10. All right, we'll come back. We'll talk about this more after this break and we'll talk to Jacob when we get back. You're listening to your own book show on the blaze radio network. We'll be back right after this. Welcome to a discussion of radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, laissez-faire capitalism, and individual rights. The Iran Brookshow starts now. All right, welcome. Welcome back to the Iran Brookshow. We're talking about the role of government today and we talked about spending the first hour. I want to talk a little bit about taxes and some other things that I've noticed the last week in terms of what government does and the, you know, the inappropriateness of government involvement in many of these things. Let's talk a little bit about taxes or maybe let's take this call from Jacob. Let's see what Jacob wants. Hey, Jacob. You're in the Iran Brookshow. What's up? Hey, Iran. It's actually a relevant call about taxes. So my dad is a partner at one of the big four tax companies and we are talking about taxes and the tax rates and he's around 40 to 50 percent. And so he knows that most of the money is going towards social engineering. But his thing was after I got talking more with him, he said he's fine being taxed at that rate. He just wishes it went to different social engineering. And a background to that is he says he's conservative but also Roman Catholic. So I think there's a lot of guilt there. So how should we go ahead or how should I go ahead and change the mind or talk to him about, say, that money is yours. It's not right for someone else. Well, I mean, it's hard. It's hard because at a certain age, it's hard to change people's minds about these things. But look, you're absolutely right. Everybody's a social engineer. The Democrats are social engineers. The Republicans are social engineers. The centrists, everybody on the political spectrum, as we know it today, are social engineers. They want their specific pet project, pet pressure group, pre-ideology to be funded. And they don't care whose money they have to basically steal in order to get it funded. And you're seeing that everywhere. And there's no difference in terms of how much money they're spending. Like everybody looks and sees a pie of $7 trillion of government spending. And what they want to do is shift their allocation towards their causes and away from somebody else's cause. But nobody, nobody on the political spectrum is arguing for decreasing spending. And the reason is that two reasons. One, there is no conception of individual rights. There's no conception that my money is mine. You don't get to decide what to do with my money. You don't get to decide this is good for society or bad for society. Society is not the standard to measure how to use the money. It's my money I get to decide. Not based on what's good for society, but based on what's good for me. So for that, we have to change the whole perspective of people and how they look at their money and how they look at their lives. The purpose of life is not to benefit society around us. The purpose of life is to benefit yourself. To live the best life you can live. And if you have excess money, then give it to charity. Find a charity you really believe in and give it to them. But the idea that the government has a right to take your money by force and then to give it to whatever the majority votes for, whatever the pressure group with the most that makes the most noise that banks hardest on the table, that they get to determine how to use your money. That's corrupt. That's wrong. And until we convince people that government is there to protect individual rights, not to do social engineering, it's useless. And to do that, we have to convince people that the moral purpose of their life is to live and be successful and take responsibility for their own life, which means taking responsibility for the use of their own money, not just to throw it away through taxes. If you want to use it for charity, use it for charity. You don't need an intermediary who uses force and who allocates the money based on politics, politics, in other words, based on force, not based on which you would actually want to use it for. I would also add, I think a lot of his perception is the guilt of doing so well means he has to give back. And that goes to that goes to what is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of morality? And my view is your purpose of life is to live a good life. Your purpose of life is to be productive, to be rational, and to live a happy, successful, flourishing life without expecting anybody to sacrifice for you, but without you sacrificing for anybody else, living life for yourself by producing. And if you live that life, then you don't feel guilty about success. You embrace that success. And yeah, if you want to help people out, you choose those people who are consistent with your values, those programs that are consistent with your values. And you help them out. But that's a personal choice, and you should never do it out of a sense of guilt. Your success is not something to feel guilty about. All right, thanks, Jacob. Thanks for calling. Really appreciate it. And so we're talking about, I want to talk about, go back to taxes. I want to talk about taxes for a minute. So the Republicans have just floated this idea that they're going to cut taxes, simplify the tax code. It's not clear exactly what any of that means, but they're going to be revenue neutral, so they're not actually going to raise less money. In other words, they're not going to actually take less money from us, and they're actually going to steal less money from us. They're just going to redistribute it somehow. They're just going to move it around. And in order to be able to cut rates, which they think is really, really important, one of the ideas is to start cutting deductions. Now, I am all for eliminating all deductions. I don't believe that government should incentivize us to buy a home versus renting, mortgage deduction, or to give to charity versus investing, the charitable deduction, or to save money. I think saving money is good, and we'll get to that in a minute. But they should cut taxes and leave us more money in our pockets, which would increase our incentive to save, not we should get rid of all deductions. You make X amount of money, you pay a flat rate. Everybody should pay the same. Everybody should pay something like 5%, 10% max, flat, no deductions, postcard. I mean, since we have a tax system, and we have to pay for all these things as we phase them out ideally, let's at least have a tax that is simple, straightforward, flat, easy to understand, and that doesn't do social engineering, doesn't tell us these things if you spend on, you get a tax deduction, those things you don't. These things we value, those things we don't. The government shouldn't be in the business of telling us what to value or not. Again, the role of government is to protect individual rights. There are no rights being protected by the government incentivizing us to give to charity. There are no rights being protected by the government incentivizing us to buy a home rather than to rent a home. Government should get out of the way, and we could use tax code to help get the government out of the way, and this is true of corporate taxes. Get rid of all the deductions, get rid of all the loopholes, but also get rid of all the subsidies. Have a flat rate. Again, ideally, that rate would be zero, but that's not going to happen. OK, so make it 10%, 15%, 20%, 15 would be a good number. But get rid of all the ways in which we manipulate businesses to do more R&D, or to invest more here, or to invest more there, or to just, I don't know, for example, to buy us health insurance. No, I don't want my employer to get a tax deduction for buying me health insurance. I want to buy the health insurance. I want to get rid of this employer-based health insurance. It's part of the great distortion of our health care system is that we incentivize the system to provide health insurance through our employer, because when I lose my job, I lose my health care. How does that work? That's wrong. That shouldn't be the way it works. So many of these issues, really, it's just so distorted that it is truly, truly, truly, where do you start? And that's the real challenge, is that there's so many distortions, so many perversions, and nobody out there is actually willing to face them, actually willing to engage with them. Nobody. And as a consequence, there's no debate about the role of government. There's no debate about a real debate about taxes. Instead, there's what I call a stupid debate. Now, all the deductions we get on our taxes, deductions for 401ks, if you care about the economy, make the most sense. Now, I would do away with all deductions, all of them, period. But if you're going to have a deduction, a deduction that encourages people to save for the future is the one that makes the most sense. Now, it's true. A lot of people don't take advantage of this deduction. But that's their own, if you will, stupidity. That's their mistake. But saving for the future is essential for a happy, successful life. Saving the future, if you're depending on Social Security, to live on Medicare, to live, particularly if you're young today, no. So let's take away people's incentive. Let's make them more dependent on government. Let's take them more dependent on Social Security and Medicare. Let's provide them with an incentive to lobby Congress to increase Social Security and increase Medicare. Two programs that are going to bankrupt this country, because they're so massive and growing at such a speed. Let's not incentivize people to save. And of course, when you don't save, what you're doing is you're not investing. And when you're not investing, you're not creating new businesses. We're not creating new businesses. You're not creating new jobs. We're not creating new jobs. You're not growing the economy. When you're not growing the economy, you're getting more people on welfare and more people dependent on the government. So if you destroy saving, you destroy the economy. You destroy the future. You destroy people's capacity to make a living. But that's the deduction Republicans are going for. Because you know what? There's no constituent out there that's going to go into the streets and march and not vote against them, because this is what they cut. They want to cut it by 90%. Right now, you can save $24,000 a year if you're over $50,000 into a 401k, or $18,000 if you're under $50,000 into a 401k. They want to make it $2,400. That's a joke in terms of the savings that most Americans need. But why are they doing it? They're doing it because people who save $24,000 tend to be rich. They don't need a save. And $2,400 is probably some median number. That's what most people out there save. So we don't want to hood most people. We just want to screw the rich. But that's going to screw the economy. It's going to screw everybody because fewer, less saving means less investment, means less jobs for everybody. And then we become more and more and more dependent on government. This is a Republican House, a Republican Senate. And this is the best they can do in terms of tax reform to make us more dependent on government, to cripple the US economy in the future, to enslave our children and grandchildren to the government. It's just horrific. It's just horrific. I'd expect this from Democrats. All right, we're going to take a quick break here. We'll be right back. You're listening to Iran Book Show on the Blaze Radio Network. You're listening to the Iran Book Show on the Blaze Radio Network. All right, so we'll be talking about the size of government, government spending. We'll be talking about taxes and the pathetic attempt to reform our tax code. It really is pathetic. And not touching government spending, which is the core, the real economic problem that we face. The government spends, regulates, controls too much of the economy. The only way we're going to get the US economy revved up is by eliminating all of that. And yeah, some of Trump's appointees are doing that as heads of regulatory agencies. They're loosening up. They're reducing the regulations. They're not enforcing regulations. They're doing all these things. But at the end of the day, to really cut regulations, it has to be legislative. Congress has to pass laws that eliminate agencies, eliminate departments, shrink government spending. All right, I want to talk about Amazon. But let's take Joe. Joe's on the line. Hi, Joe. You want to talk about from Joe. Joe, you want to talk about the size of government? I did. And I actually called about something a little bit different. But right before you went to the break, you were talking about the plan to reduce the tax deductibility of savings. And the very first thing that came to my mind was sort of a famous, I guess it's famous phrase, if give a man a fish feed him for a day, give him a fishing pole feed him for his lifetime. And I thought, you know what that is? This is the opposite of that. If you want to agitate someone, take away their fish. If you really want to screw with them, take away their fishing pole. Well, and that's taking away the fishing pole. You're absolutely right. Saving is a fishing pole. Investment is a fishing pole. And it's a fishing pole not just for the person. It's a fishing pole for the entire economy, because saving turns into investment, turns into jobs for people. And what they are trying to do is destroy that. They should be increasing the cap for 401K. They should be encouraging all of us to save even more money tax-free. But no. Yeah, I 100% agree. But what I originally called about was because for maybe 30 years, I thought, gee, you know what would be a great, great PhD thesis for an economics or maybe even a policy major goes to sort of what you were talking about a little earlier, how much government is the right amount of government, right? I mean, how much less? I mean, obviously there needs to be some. And you were talking about cutting by 5%, 5%, I think. Every year. I want to, yeah, right. I want to say it was Rand Paul, although I could be getting it wrong, had something called the penny plan, which was, I think, to cut it by 1% a year. Yeah, yeah. Down until some, you know, some, I don't know what, you know, what the- I'll take 1% a year over increasing it by 4% a year, which is what they're doing now. But you know what the problem is now, even when you reduce the rate of increase, everybody screams cut, cut, cut. I know. It's not cut. I know, but you see, we get the government we deserve. So if we don't demand a shrinking government, the government will not shrink. If we expect more and more and more goodies, more and more fish to use the analogy from before. If we expect us, the government to throw at us more and more and more fish, then that's what we're going to get. We, the people have to rise up and instead of electing losers like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we need to elect people who will actually stand for and live up to the idea of shrinking government, giving us our fishing poles back, giving the fish that we produce back, like we fish and for every two fish we fish, the government takes one and it takes our pole. They shouldn't be giving our fish back. They should be letting us keep- Yeah, just leave it, exactly. Let us keep the fish. Let us keep the fish and let us keep the pole. So you're absolutely right. And look, my view is this, the way to think about this always is, government is forced. This is what George Washington said in his second inaugural address. Government is a gun. And the question is always, is a gun appropriate in filling the blank? Is a gun inappropriate in charity? No, no welfare state. Is a gun inappropriate in healthcare? No, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Obamacare. Is the government appropriate in education? No, get rid of the Department of Education. Is a gun, is force, is coercion? Appropriate in any of these areas and the answers? No, that's how you shrink government. Is a gun appropriate in self-defense? Yes, I need a military. Is the government appropriate in laws? Laws that protect individual rights? Yes, so we need a legislature, we need a government, but we need it just to do what it's appropriate to use force and coercion and a gun for, which is self-defense period, everything else should go. And that means ultimately shrinking the government by 80, probably 90% from where it is today. All right, thanks Joe, thanks for calling. So to talk about another issue where this relates to the size of government and the role of government, is this Amazon thing? So Amazon's looking for a second headquarter. They don't want to expand in Seattle, partially because Seattle has decided they don't really want Amazon. The headache of these high paying jobs and a lot of traffic and rents are going up and home prices are going up. And if Amazon expands, there'll be more traffic and rents prices will go up. Now rent and home prices don't have to go up because that's an issue of supply and the city of Seattle constraints supply. But put that aside, all the problems in Seattle are blamed on Amazon. So Amazon is looking for a second headquarter and what we've got is all these cities in the United States competing about giving them favors. We'll give you free land and we'll give you no taxes and we'll give you, we'll pay you, we'll subsidize you. And there's this massive competition of throwing money at Amazon to try to get Amazon to come to the city. Now look, I'm all for tax breaks but everybody should get them. How about if you're a city that wants Amazon then you cut this deal with your city. You say nobody gets to pay taxes for the next 10 years. Amazon gets zero but all other businesses in the city get zero. Why is Amazon special? Why is Amazon, why should Amazon get to keep their fish to go to the analogy from before and everybody else doesn't? That's just immoral and wrong. So all the, and this is a trend, right? States and cities are competing to attract business to them by subsidizing the business, not the world of government. The best thing a city can do is create a great business environment. How do you create a great business environment? By reducing regulation, by reducing taxes, zero would be good, by making sure the city is safe and by allowing for housing and for the building of infrastructure, preferably by private enterprise. And if you do that, if you do that, you don't need to pay people to come to your city. You don't need to subsidize them. You don't need to steal from your small and medium-sized businesses in your community which is what a subsidy entails to give to some company to move into your town. That's so wrong. And this is about pressure groups, right? All right, so I'll give you an example, right? So Wisconsin created this incentive to big, I think it was Foxconn over there, $3 billion. Now I don't know how they calculate these things. So granted, I'm not convinced about the number, but they say $3 billion over 15 years, right? 10 minutes. Instead of giving Foxconn $3 billion over 15 years, they could have cut corporate taxes in the whole state of Wisconsin by 21%, by 21%. All subsidies do is encourage waste, bad decision-making. They distort the allocation of capital, whoops. They distort the allocation of capital. They pivot and they take money from hard-working people and they give it to other hard-working people. Why, how is that right? In the name, again, of the common good, social, public good or whatever, right? This is not the role of government. Not the role of government to decide what business you should be in my city and what business you should not. The role of government is to protect us. Spend as much money you need to protect us. Have a police force, have a judiciary. That's fine, but don't. I mean, 200 cities, 100 cities, I guess, are competing through massive subsidies to get this. By the way, the first state to ever do this was Mississippi in the 1930s. How did that work out for Mississippi? Still, I think the poorest state in the country. Stop, stop economic development. We don't need cities, states, or the government to be involved in economic development. Just get out of the way. 10. Capitalists and businessmen can do the economic development for you. All right, you're listening to Ron Bookshow on the Blaze Radio Network. We'll be right back. All right, so we're talking today about the role of government and what government should be doing, should be protecting us. And if you had a boiler down to, what government shouldn't be doing? Anytime somebody starts talking about the public interest, the common good, good for the city, good for the country, good for the state, for the most part, I would run. For the most part, I'd vote against them. Yeah, I think the only time when they talk about America first, it's appropriate, is when we're talking about foreign policy, when we're talking about defending ourselves. But when it talks about domestic policy, what is America first? What is public interest? What does the common good even mean? Nothing, because the public and all of us, we're just individuals, just individuals. And the question should be, what is the policy that best supports individual freedom? Best supports individual freedom. And subsidizing Amazon to come to your town doesn't support individual freedom. Now, I love Amazon. Let's be clear. I want, if I were living in a particular city, I'd want Amazon to move. I'd say high-paying jobs. It just, you know, it's huge benefits. But stealing from some to give to others is not, you know, the benefits don't justify that. Here's another one. And by the way, before we get to this other example, the last segment of the show, which is coming up, you know, we've made into a moment of reason so you can call and ask any question you want. Any question you want, just call up and we will discuss it. So it's 888-900-3393, 888-900-3393. Whether on the topic of the show or not, you can call up 888-900-3393 to you on Brookshow. All right, so one more example that I, you know, that I kind of noticed, looking through the news in the last week or so, it's an issue of affordable housing. Cities all over the country are spending huge amounts of money. States, federal government, there's a whole pyramid of subsidies to subsidize affordable housing, particularly in California, housing is very expensive. And the state, the cities, and of course, they get money from the federal government, are subsidizing developers to build what are called affordable housing. But how affordable is affordable housing? Well, not very, it turns out. So in Emmerville, California, they're building a housing development. It's being built by a nonprofit, mixed-use buildings. And they're building 84 new apartments, 84 new apartments, I don't make a dent in poverty in California, total cost of the project, $64 million. Which basically boils down to per unit, per apartment. It's costing $700,000 per unit, $700,000. Now, I don't know about you guys, but that's not affordable housing. That's not affordable housing at all. That's expensive housing. That's clearly middle-class housing. $700,000 for little condo. Now, part of the problem is, they're not that little, part of the problem is that these are gorgeous places. They have a zen garden. They have a skydeck. They're right on a bot which is the underground station. Prime real estate. And our government is subsidizing the unit at $700,000 a unit. Governments shouldn't be in the business of real estate. Even Jerry Brown, the crazy leftist governor of California, by the way, as lefty as Jerry Brown is, he's like right wing. He's like way out there in terms of pro-free markets as compared to the California legislature. And this is an example. Jerry Brown has basically said, I'm not increasing housing subsidies, $1, until you find a way to lower the cost. Now, that's the wrong attitude. You should be shrinking it, and it shouldn't matter what the cost is, but easily somewhat, moderately, vaguely, physically responsible, you would say. In San Francisco, they're building a project. $600,000 per unit. So-called affordable housing. And just so you don't think this is just a California phenomena and this is just crazy Californians. In St. Paul, Minneapolis, they're doing a renovation of a downtown building. It's gonna cost $665,000 per unit, subsidized by you, subsidized by taxpayers, in order to create, quote, affordable housing. Really? Talk about, ugh. So it turns out that when you look, on average, publicly subsidized housing, affordable housing costs much more to build, not a little bit, much more to build than market rate housing. So if you just leave the market alone, if you just let developers develop, because there is demand for affordable housing, they will build much cheaper. And as an example, a one bedroom apartment in this development in Portland costs $65,000 to develop. $65,000. And the reason it costs $65,000 is they did not get a dime from local, state, or federal government. They did not have to abide by local, state, federal government mandates, which mandate the size of the apartment, mandate the wages you pay your employees, mandate all the different amenities they're gonna be part of this. So all these mandates don't exist. That's why they can do it. And of course they innovate, they use new materials, which the government won't allow because you have to get city engineering approval on all this stuff. According to, you know, the government itself, they write central city development programs are inefficient spending much more per unit of new affordable housing, for example, in the center city than they could in the suburbs. But it's the government that wants them to do it in the center city. Partially because people in the suburbs don't want the affordable houses built there. The city rules, government rules, government mandates or would make affordable housing expensive. So people complain about housing prices. Yeah, get the government out of the way and it's easy because this isn't something government should be doing. The test, remember the test is housing somewhere where a gun is appropriate. Is housing somewhere where corrosion and force is appropriate? Nope, they get the government out of it. Is investing in housing protecting individual rights? No, it violates individual rights because it requires taking money from some and giving to others, which by definition is a violation of rights. And it turns out it's inefficient. It's unproductive. It raises the cost of building. It raises the cost of apartments. It increases the number of homeless people. It makes it unaffordable for poor people to own homes. It makes it unaffordable. Government subsidies of housing make it unaffordable for poor people to own homes because they drive the cost of construction up dramatically up. What happened? A big part of the homeless problem as we know it. Now there's mental health issues, but a big part of it is that starting in the 1980s, you got all these mandates on the quality of housing. So the materials you could use and the size of a one bedroom apartment, all these things, all these things created a situation where developers could not build cheap housing. Safety, all the different requirements, distance from shopping, distance from this, the location, all of these things made it so expensive that nobody could build cheap housing. So housing, so what they did in places like New York is they demolished the old, horrible public housing complexes. They promised the poor people that they had evicted in order to demolish these housing that they could come back into the new houses that were being built. But once the new houses were built, it was obvious that these poor people couldn't afford to come back. So they were left homeless. And to a large extent, the homeless problem in America was caused, is caused, continuously caused, by the cost of constructing new housing that is driven up, up, up, up by government regulations, by government restrictions, by government mandates, and even by government subsidies, which are corrupting. It turns out that these government projects, the people who work in these government projects, the foremen, the engineers, and so on, highest rates in the industry. It's better to work for a project that involves low income housing subsidized by the government than any other for profit. Because if it's a for profit thing, guess what happens? People watch for the costs. People are trying to make a profit. All right, so this is a quick introduction to the idea that government should be limited. The government needs to shrink, and the principle is individual rights. Does this program protect individual rights or not? If it protects it, good. If it violates it, bad. And force, coercion should only, only be used in self-defense. So when you're using force and coercion against somebody, not appropriate for government to do, period. And that's the standard, and that's how you cut 80% of government, affordable housing. That's a violation of rights, cut that. Trying to incentivize Amazon to cut. That's a violation of rights, cut that. And if you do that for program after program after program after program at the local, state, and federal level, we can shrink total government spending in the United States from $7 trillion to one. And that's how we get our country back. That's how we resurrect the principles on which this country was founded. All right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna take a question from Brian and Skyler on the Moment of Reasons segment. You're listening to your Unbrook Show on the Blaze Radio Network. Is the Unbrook Show. All right, so last week we came up with this phrase, you know, describing our foreign policy as whack-a-mole foreign policy, just no principles, just whacking them all over the place. I'm all for kind of a whack-a-program cutting government spending, whack-a-program. So any program that pops up that does not protect individual rights, whack it. Cut it, decapitate it, eliminate it. I don't know, that's the best I could come with today. You know, sorry. All right, let's see. We have Brian on the line who, this is our Moment of Reasons segment where you get to ask whatever you wanna ask me on any topic. That's cool. Brian, go ahead. Oh, hi, Aaron. This is Brian Korn from Dayton, Ohio. Dayton, Ohio, cool. Go ahead. My question has to do with embargoes. There's a lot of people saying that they don't think embargoes work. It just hurts the people, the innocent civilians that doesn't affect the leadership of the countries at all. And they say, well, we should end this embargo with Cuba because it just hurts the people. And a lot of them say, well, we'd like to be able to get that Cuban rum and cigars. They think it's good. Do you think embargoes work? Should we have an embargo with Cuba or Iran? Yeah, so a number of issues there. So yes, I definitely think embargoes work and they work because they hurt the people. So there's no question they hurt the people. But the people of what make it possible for the government to do what it does. Without the people making money, the government can't tax them and build nuclear weapons with that money. Without the people being patriotic and wanting to fight for the military, the military of that country becomes less effective. If the people are hooting enough, maybe they rise up and replace the regime. So there's no question in my mind that embargoes work. Now, I only think you should impose embargoes on very specific conditions. I think embargoes should be imposed only on countries that pose an existential threat to you. So for example, I don't believe Cuba poses a threat to the United States. So I do not believe we should have an embargo on Cuba. Let people trade. I wouldn't trade with Cuba because I know the government benefits and the government is oppressive then. I don't want to help the communist government at all in Cuba. But the United States government should not impose an embargo. You as an individuals can stay. I am boycotting Cuba. But the government should only intervene. This goes back to the theme of the show. In defense of individual rights. And Cuba is not violating my rights. It's violating Cuban's rights, the people of Cuba. But that's not the job of my government. The job of the US government is to protect my rights. And it doesn't do that by having an embargo on Cuba. Now, when Cuba was affiliated with the Soviet Union and 50-something years ago was maybe putting nuclear weapons on Cuba, then suddenly you want to embargo it. But as long as Cuba is not a threat to the United States, it should not be embargoed. Now, we should have an embargo on Iran. We should have an embargo on North Korea. The embargo should be much, much, much, much, much tougher than they are today. Because those are real existential threats. Now, I think with Iran we should do more than an embargo. But okay, if the most we can get through is an embargo, of course, we don't even have an embargo anymore. So I think they are effective. I think we should have had an embargo on the Soviet Union in the 1970s. If we'd had that instead of sending them food, maybe the Berlin Wall would have come down a decade earlier. Maybe there would have been a revolution in Russia much, much earlier. We basically kept the Soviet Union alive for 20 years. And if we had just let them starve, if we had not done any business with the Soviet Union and not let our so-called allies do any business with the Soviet Union during that period, I think there would have been a good chance that the people of those countries would have been freed much, much earlier. So yes, I think embargoes work. I think they should be exercised, but only against regimes that pose, that are evil and pose a threat against the United States. That make sense, Brian? Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's a lot clearer to me now. Good, and again, the standard is individual rights of Americans. Does this foreign government pose a threat to the individual rights of Americans? Yes, then embargo is a stage one. Ultimately, you might need military force if they exercise on that threat, if they become an imminent threat. But as long as they're not a real, as long as they're a remote threat, then absolutely no diplomatic relations, no embassy, and no trade, zero trade. And then if the military is the only solution to deal with the threat, because it's really, they're gonna kill Americans, then you have to engage in the military. But embargo is definitely on the scale of interaction with other countries, definitely on there. All right, thank you, Brian. Really appreciate your call. Skyler, how's it going? Hey, how you doing, Dr. Brooks? Good, good. What's up? I want to know how proper is it to have a greatest and a favorite, and I'll give you an example. My favorite film director is what's Anderson, I think the greatest director is Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah, no, I think it's very appropriate to have two different categories. A favorite is the one that you like the most, which might not be the greatest. A favorite might appeal to your values in some specific way, particularly in art, that the greatest artist doesn't, because of your particular circumstances, your particular values, your particular experiences. So you could have a favorite song because it reminds you of something wonderful when you were growing up, but it's not a great song. It might not even be a good song, aesthetically. But it's your favorite song because of how it makes you feel. So great is a different evaluation. So favorite is, the evaluation is purely my values. Great, now you have to have an objective value. Now you have to know something about the art form. So for example, I would never try to say who's the greatest director of film, why? Because film is an unbelievably complex art form. And I don't feel qualified to be able to make the greatest film director of all time evaluation because film requires an understanding of what it means to direct, how that impacts acting and what good acting is and what good acting isn't. It's cinematography, it's music, it's so many different things. It's such a complex art form. I mean, I agree with you to the extent, and I'll place this copy, to the extent I understand film, I agree with you 100% that Hitchcock is better than who did you mention? Wes Anderson. Much better, a much better director. But whether Hitchcock is the greatest director, you know, there's John Ford and there's, I don't know, there's Coppola and there's all kinds of people. And you'd have to know much more about the art and you'd have to study it and have an opinion and have an objective criteria for assessing greatness in the field of fill in the blank. And that's why it's hard to say who the greatest composer is or who the greatest painter is. In art, it's very, you have to be, you have to be a great expert in that field. But you can always say the favorite because a favorite is that which makes you feel the best, respond the best to. Does that make sense? Sure, thank you very much, I appreciate it. Yeah, so when I evaluate movies, I often say I like that movies. I have void, I try to avoid saying things like that was a great movie. Because to say that was a great movie requires real understanding of the aesthetics of movies and being able to defend the greatness of the movie based on the aesthetic, the theory, the aesthetic of theory of movie making. But I can easily say I enjoyed that movie because I either did or didn't. I can say, and I can say even that I understand why I enjoyed it and I can explain why that happened. And in what sense I think a movie is good. But you have to be cautious, you have to be careful and even I slip into this, right? Even I sometimes say something's great. 20. When I can't really justify saying that fully. So we have to be objective about our own knowledge and have to be objective about the field that we're evaluating. All right, great questions. Thank you, Skyler. Thank you, Brian. We're gonna do this every week. Moment of reason, last segment. And you're done. All right, we're done. See you next week.