 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 Thursday, March 21st. I hope everybody's having a fantastic week starting to look forward to the weekend. Just a reminder, don't forget to tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. I'll be talking to you, Alonso, and we'll be giving you our analysis of the debate that happened on Lex Friedman's show between a couple of pro-Palestinians and a couple of pro-Israelis over the Israeli-Palestinian issue question. And we'll be breaking that debate down for you and analyzing it for you and giving opinions about how each party did. And what they missed, what they got right. I don't know if that section will be very long. So it should be a lot of fun. And this is a debate that Lex Friedman facilitated, 2.3 million views, 2.3 million views. And we'll talk about that during the show tonight. And we'll talk about God, what that means, the 2.3 million people actually saw that particular debate, what that bodes for the understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the future. All right, so let's jump into our news roundup. And of course, you can ask questions. You can ask questions about anything. You can shape the show by asking those questions. And you can do that using the Super Chat feature that YouTube provides at the bottom. It's got a dollar sign there. Just plug it in and ask the questions. I generally try not to read the comments, although I am scanning them, just to see what's going on. And I'll comment on them once in a while. But generally, if you want to ask, and you want to make sure your question will be answered, because it will be, then use the Super Chat. All right, Silvanos, thank you. Silvanos is getting a start off with a $20 sticker to get us going. Of course, if we do a few of those $20 stickers, we'll be done with at least reaching our goal. So please consider asking a question, doing a sticker, supporting the show. Because this is a listener, viewer, supporter show that you guys make the show possible. All right, budget deal. We've had a number of close calls with this Republican House of Representatives and Democratic Senate and a Democrat, of course, in the White House. We've had a number of close calls in which it appeared that the Congress would not approve a budget and that the government would shut down. They seem to constantly be averted. The budget is supposed to be approved in October. All the work is supposed to be done leading up and then a budget is supposed to be approved in October for all the functions of government. I'm not sure when the last time a budget was actually approved in October. They do these continued resolutions and they argue and they debate and they disagree and they come up with this and they stretch it over there and they and the government and they're threatened to shut it down and then they get the last minute post something else. And anyway, about half the government is still doesn't have funding for next year. And Republicans and Democrats have been negotiating. They've only had about six, seven months to do so or eight, nine months to do so. They had most of last year to do so. And basically the government would shut down next week if they don't vote on this before Saturday and they've already had these continued resolutions that basically usually usually take the previous budget and just extend it without making any real decisions about what priorities are or how to allocate the budget. And now they want to actually have a budget that goes through the end of September. We're almost there right six months. So they want to have a six-month budget that actually clears provides funding for the government and they don't have to think about it and they don't have to keep approving these continued resolutions and all that stuff. So Republicans and Democrats negotiated and the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, finally they came up with a deal. It's about a thousand pages of text in terms of what it includes and what comprises this budget. It is massive. I can't share the exact number of how many hundreds of billions of dollars. No, no, forget hundreds of billions. $1.2 trillion or $1,200 billion of this 1100-page tomb. And typically, when you have a big bill like that, Congressmen get 72 hours to read it. Which is kind of a joke, right? Who can read 1200 pages, 72 hours? Nobody. So nobody actually reads these bills. They skim them. But because there's urgency about getting this budget passed, Mike Johnson is going to wait the 72 hours and he's just going to cram it down and they're going to vote on it today or tomorrow, I think. So they're not going to even get, they're going to get 24 hours, 48 hours to read this thing. Nobody's going to read it. You remember when Nancy Pelosi said something like, but what's in the bill? Well, you'll find out after we vote for it. And the Republicans went apoplectic and make fun of her and thought it was ridiculous and just ridiculed her. Well, now the Republicans are doing exactly the same thing. They've, of course, been doing exactly the same thing forever. And, you know, so here they have 1.2 trillion with the T dollar budget, 1100 pages at least, and they're not going to read and they're going to vote on it. And the only way Mike Johnson can get this bill passed, only way he can get this bill passed, is with Democratic support because he has a tiny minority, like two people right now, I think. And the reality is that a bunch of Republicans are going to vote against this because they think spending 1.2 trillion dollars is ridiculous and not being able to read it is ridiculous. And generally, they just going to vote against it because they don't like anything that the Democrats would like. So they're going to vote against it no matter what. So he has to get a significant number of Democrats in order to get this through. On the Senate, this bill, I think, was something like 75 yeses, 22 noes. So Johnson has to now get the vote in the House. He's going to get Democratic votes. Remember that McCarthy was Speaker when he did this, when he passed a resolution with Democratic support, the Republican House basically fired him and then it was complete disarray. And finally, they came up with Johnson as Speaker. Well, Johnson has to do exactly the same thing as McCarthy did because McCarthy, because that's the reality. You cannot, the Republicans have too small of a majority. They cannot pass anything. They have to work with the Senate. And if they're not willing to shut down the government, which I'm not against, shutting down the government is not a bad idea. But given that they're not willing to shut down the government, then they're going to have to get Democratic votes. McCarthy knew this. Johnson has learned this. But in the meantime, all these Republicans have done has created mayhem and conflict and just, you know, they proved to themselves to be unbelievably ineffective. And of course, no principle, no strategy, no ideas. Like they're not doing what Newt Gingrich did, what was it in 1994, to kind of force Clinton's hand and actually, you know, change the priorities of government spending. They're not even doing what Republicans did to Obama in, when was it, in 20, you got elected in 2010, when they basically cut a budget deal with Obama, threatened to close the government down and cut a budget deal. They actually kept spending, reduced spending as a percent of GDP and actually allocated resources in a way that they thought were more meaningful, right? Not that I agree with them, but at least they had a strategy. At least they did something. At least they used the majority of the head in the House to squeeze the Democrats and get something in return. Here, they've completely capitulated, they're giving it to everything. And, but it's not like the guys who are going to vote against this bill have a better plan. They don't, they haven't, they have an articulated strategy that got to the American people, government spending is out of control, we need to cut, here are the things that we need to cut. They haven't done that. They're afraid to do that, because they know that the reality is, that the reality is that the base of the Republican Party, the people who vote in primaries in the Republican Party, don't want government spending cut. They don't want to reduce the size and power of government. They just want the spending to come their way. They just want the power of government to be used in order to further their causes, particularly their social causes. We have no political party today in America that stands for reducing the scope of government, reducing government spending, limiting government power. There just isn't that political party anymore. It doesn't exist in the Republican Party, kind of somewhat a little bit, stood for that once, a little bit, but no more, no more. All right, let's see. So that is budget deal. You can all sigh, a big sigh of relief. The government will not shut down, and they will be spending $1.2 trillion on this piece of the budget. The budget is of course around four, and your taxpayer money will pay for part of that. A lot of it will be debt, so your taxpayer will pay for that in the future. And your kids and your grandkids, and of course, the economy will suffer the consequences, all the bad stuff that is associated with massive government intervention. We'll get to some of that later when we talk about China. Okay, statism on the rise. Another way in which statism is on the rise is a lawsuit that the government followed this morning, just hit the news this morning. The Justice Department and 17 states have sued Apple for alleging that Apple blocked software developers and mobile gaming companies from offering better options on the iPhone, resulting in higher prices for consumers. The government is complaining that the very fact that Apple controls the iPhone, controls what goes on to the iPhone, controls what apps available to people with the iPhone, controls the features of the iPhone, that very fact prevents competition and therefore makes Apple anti-competitive in a monopoly and in violation of antitrust laws. Now, I have no doubt that there is a sense in which they're absolutely right. I'm sure Apple violates antitrust laws because antitrust laws are so ambiguously written, are so subjective interpretation, are so bizarre and weird. Iron Man talked about this decades ago, that almost every successful company in the United States, why almost? Every successful company in the United States is in violation of them or in violation of some interpretation of them. And now it's just a question of how does the Justice Department, how does the FCC on any given day, on any given morning interpret those laws and choose to be in front of a court that how it on any given day chooses to interpret the antitrust laws as they apply to this particular company or that particular company. There is no objective interpretation of antitrust laws that says, okay, here's clearly what you cannot do. It's a massive, massive power grab by government. There is no laws right now because the Biden administration and Trump started this, but the Biden administration is so abusive. There are no laws on the books in the United States right now that are as abusive towards business and therefore as abusive towards the productive sector and economy as abusive towards wealth creation, innovation, and economic and technological progress as the antitrust laws. Right now you've got Amazon, Google and now Apple. And I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of others under major antitrust litigation. I don't know what the remedy here is. Maybe it's getting rid of the Apple store and allowing anybody to put any app on the Apple on the iPhone. Does anybody really imagine that that improves customer, customer what customer, you know, use customer? Does it make it cheaper? Or does it make it more expensive because ability to use the iPhone deteriorates dramatically because Apple has lost control over the platform. And the Apple's entire business model from when it was founded was to create a closed system, a system that Apple could control and therefore a system that Apple could control the quality and the experience that one gets using an Apple. And isn't that why Apple has been at least partially successful and people who don't like the closed environment of Apple? It's closed. Don't buy it. You can buy a PC. You can buy all kinds of machines that compete or you can buy an Android phone. An Android phone just as big, just as numerous as iPhones. It's true. If you buy an iPhone, you're significantly constrained in what kind of apps you can use. You're significantly constrained in terms of the experience you're going to get. It is constrained by the wishes of Apple. They made it, they created it. It's theirs and you're buying it knowing that. Don't want to buy an Apple, buy an Android. Of course, part of the claim in the lawsuit is they've made it very difficult for Apple users to move to an Android because I think one of the most essential things in capitalism is that you provide your customers with an easy, approachable, super effective way to leave you and go to your competitors. It's just horrendous. The current interpretation of antitrust laws, but of course, it's always some interpretation of antitrust laws. It's always some version of this that is being used. All antitrust laws, all the interpretations are invalid. They're all corrupt and the Biden administration has just elevated the use of antitrust laws to go after pretty much every single big tech company, every single big successful tech company. Again, I'm not going to give a pass to Trump because Trump was urging that this happened. It's just taken the Justice Department and the FCC all these years to basically make the case, to build up the evidence, to be able to take it to court. Sivanos loves his Android. He doesn't like iOS. That's great. I wouldn't use an Android if you paid me. I love the Apple iOS, but that's the beauty of markets. You get to choose. Here, the government wants to make the iPhone like an Android. Why? People who like the Android open architecture can go to Android. People who don't like it can go to Apple, but the Philosopher Kings are telling you that you are being abused because you like the closed architecture of an Apple. It is insanity. It is wrong. It is immoral and it is penalizing the most productive people in our economy. What company has been more successful in the world over the last, since the late 1990s, then Apple has been. It has changed the world. It has innovated. It has produced products that people want, not just Americans, but everywhere. With all due respect to Android and even to Windows, its innovations have been mimicked and copied by everybody else. So that's exactly what they hate. That's exactly what they hate. They hate the innovation. They hate the success. They hate the prosperity created. They hate our ability to choose. They want control. And control means you got to bake up Google. You got to bake up Apple because they don't want to share. They want control. Our politicians want to be able to tell us what products to buy and not to buy. It's really horrific how explicit it is becoming. This is the most aggressive administration ever with regard to Android Trust. And if there's ever a reason to vote for Trump over Biden, I hate to even say this, but if there is a reason, then Android Trust is certainly at the top of the pile in terms of reasons to do it. Because of how destructive this is going to be for the future of the American economy, the American innovation, and progress, it is an unmitigated disaster. It's evil. It's penalizing a company like Apple for being successful. And for basically creating the whole segment of smartphones, it created, at least in its common form. Penalizing a company for creating a loyal customer base who want what they're selling. But the government is selling us, they know better than we do. God talking about they know better than we do. Biden administration today, I think today or yesterday, released the new auto greenhouse gas emissions, new auto greenhouse gas emissions standards. They are increasing those standards significantly over the next six to eight years. That is, they're basically forcing internal combustion engines to emit fewer and fewer emissions. And car companies are going to be penalized if they cause, on average, across all segments, emit higher than these new rates, which are dramatic increase in where they are today. Now, what does that mean? Basically, what that means is that auto companies are now incentivized by the government to build electric cars, even though it's clear that at least electric cars built by American companies consumers don't want, certainly not at these prices. But auto companies are going to have to build them because the only way they'll be able to get an average gas emission standard is to have a bunch of cars emitting zero, which is how I guess the electric cars are calculated. And given that, that will lower the average of their total fleet. Basically, even though the Biden administration is saying, look, these greenhouse gas emissions are not an electric vehicle mandate, they are exactly that. What Biden realizes is if he puts out an actual mandate, if he says, okay, by 2032, all American auto companies have to have 50% electric cars, people will rebel. Americans will rebel, hold them in elections. And not clear how the courts would rule in this, not clear if it would be constitutional. But the courts have already ruled 15, 60 years ago that the government can regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And if you raise greenhouse gas emission standards high enough, basically what you get is an electric vehicle mandate. What's going to be interesting is that this is going to bring in the Chinese. That is, if Americans start buying electric vehicles, why would they buy American cars for $50,000 when they can buy Chinese cars for 10? If they have to buy electric vehicles, because those are the only cars being offered on the market, why not buy the cheaper ones? So, yeah, I mean, this is a mandate. If you think about American automobile companies today put aside Tesla, EVs make up less than 8% of new auto sales last year. More than half of that was Tesla. They accounted for less than 4% of general motors and Ford sales. BMW sells 12.5% of the cars they sell the electric Mercedes 11.4 Porsche 10%. So they might have an easier time because they're already making electric cars, but GM and Ford are screwed. Of course, they're very expensive. EVs made in the United States, very expensive, not competitive globally. Japanese companies are going to have to make EVs. Stellantis, which used to be Chrysler, is already reducing deliveries of gas-powered cars, particularly the popular ones, to places like California and other states that have adopted some of mandates. Why bother sending a bunch of jeeps to California when Californians are going to be barred from being able to buy those jeeps? So you're going to send smaller amounts, you're not going to waste your time with it, and California will be soon enough dominated with only EVs for sale because of the mandate. What we're seeing here is the equivalent of a mandate. Now, one of the ways the Biden administration wants to get the price of EVs down so they can compete with China is by building batteries in the United States. So they're providing billions of dollars, billions of dollars for subsidies to build a massive EV Panasonic, so a Japanese company, but EV battery plant in Kansas. And they're going to get billions from the Inflation Reduction Act. What's this got to do with inflation? Well, it'll lower car prices, supposedly, in order for batteries to be built in the United States. Anybody want to bet those batteries will still be more expensive than the batteries they're building in China? It's not going to solve the problem. It's not going to make this any easier. And of course, if the United States goes majority EV, they're going to need a lot of batteries if you're going to have to build those cars in the U.S. And one plant in Kansas is not going to solve your problem. I mean, this continues the theme of intervention in the economy, manipulating the economy, central planning, industrial policy, which the left and the right obsessed with, obsessed with and convinced will work. All right, quickly a Trump story, you know, Trump is having a hard time finding the money to pay the bond and all of that. And generally, you know, he's not very liquid. Most of his net worth is in real estate. So it's very hard for him to raise money for this bond that he has to pay or has to raise while he appeals the ruling on the fraud case. And it turns out that he can't. Nobody will actually lend him the money to get this bond off of his real estate. But there might be an out for Trump, not in the near future. That is, it's not going to happen anytime soon, but it could be as we move into the future in a few months, maybe in a year. Truth social is probably going to go public in the next few days. It has this entity that is already public. By truth social, that deal, you know, had all kinds of problems, all kinds of problems inside of trading convictions, corruption, accusations, massive amounts of money lost. But in spite of all that, the shell company is actually going to take by truth social and basically make it a public company in the next few days. It's been approved by the SEC. So it will happen. It's going to happen. In the meantime, Donald Trump fans are buying stock in the shell company like crazy. And they're driving the price up. It's like the meme stock phenomena of 2021, where a bunch of young people who decided the game stop was the B end all end all and they could manipulate its price, drove it to the stratosphere. Well, anyway, they're trying to do the same thing. These are, you know, mega fans are trying to do the same thing with the truth social app that supposedly they are driving the price up dramatically, giving it a staggering $8 billion valuation, even though I don't think truth social makes any money. It's going to be valued at $6 billion, which will give Donald Trump something around $3 to $3.5 billion. It's not a bad payday. That could solve many of his financial problems. The problem is he's not allowed to sell the stock for six months. And the question is, can these meme stock traders, we'll call them, keep the pressure on the stock, keep it high so that, you know, it'll be a meaningful amount for Trump when he actually can sell out of the stock. So it's going to be interesting to watch. It's just a fun little thing. I don't think it affects anything. If anybody has the stomach to show the stock, you know, I'm sure a lot of people are eyeing it and thinking about it and considering it and maybe that'll happen. But it is, you know, it is going to be interesting to watch what happens with the stock of truth social as it go public and as more people get engaged in buying and selling it. And yeah, and as these mega fans maybe lose some money, will they rush to the exits, will they double up? Hard to tell. But just like we watch the meme stocks in the day, we will watch truth social and see how it does. All right, finally, there was an excellent editorial. I think it's today. Yes, today in the Wall Street Journal. Highly recommended. It's called America Slating Towards Chinese Style Capitalism, which is a bad title, because there is no Chinese style capitalism. All there is is capitalism, and then there's not capitalism. And what is going on in China is not capitalism. It is, you know, a centrally planned economy with some semblance of free markets. But what the article brings up is the fact that in the intellectual ideological battle out there for the kind of political, economic system that we should all embrace, the Chinese have won. What do I mean by the change of one? Basically, the world is moving. So for a long time, let me backtrack. For a long time, the idea was China will move towards the West. China will liberate its economy, ultimately liberate its politics, and ultimately, you know, move more towards a mixed economy slash more free markets system like the United States or like Western Europe. But the reality has been the opposite. China peaked probably in terms of its market reforms and its freedom in the marketplace. Probably in 2014 or 2016, it peaked. And since then, it has been increasing the power of the central government. It has been consolidating power of state run entities. It has been reducing the independence and the ability of the private sector to function. It has been engaging in more, not less subsidies and promotions and manipulations and all the rest of it. But at the same time, what has happened in the West? Many, I remember 15 years ago, many people in the West were looking at China saying, oh, we should be more like them. Look how fast they are growing. We need to increase state control. We need to do more state central planning. We need to do industrial policy. And while a lot of people laughed at that and thought, that's ridiculous. We know central planning doesn't work. We know industrial policy doesn't work. What are you talking about? China will suffer because it does this. And the more it does it, the more it will suffer. It didn't make any difference. The reality is that today, it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or if you're a Republican. Today, Washington is all about state control of the economy. It's all about central planning and industrial policy. I mean, just think about this is from the op ad. Who decides whether TikTok stays Chinese is banned or sold? Washington, politicians. Who determines whether an American or Japanese company gets to buy United States steel? Washington. Who is giving Intel $8.5 billion, we talked about this yesterday, to make semiconductors in the United States subsidies? Washington. And we can go on and on. Who's giving Panasonic $1 billion to build a battery manufacturing plant in the United States? Washington. Who's telling other companies whether they should build electric vehicles or internal combustion engines? Washington. Washington's standing in for the political class, for political parties. And it's not an issue of Democrats or Republicans. It's true that President Biden has come out against the U.S. Steel deal against Nippon, the Japanese company buying U.S. Steel. But so is Donald Trump, both buying for union votes. By the way, the union endorsed Biden, not Trump. And the TikTok, not allowing TikTok to stay in Chinese hands, both political parties support this. Yes, Trump is against it, but he of course started it when he was president. He started the move towards this. It's just more expedient for him to be against it right now. And you know, this goes back to a gazillion different examples, including all the antitrust cases that are there today. Who gets to decide what kind of platform Apple can create for its willing, voluntary users? Washington. I mean, Trump placed tariffs on Bombardier because Boeing asked him for it. He placed tariffs on Steel because the Steel manufacturers asked for it. And by the way, not just on China, on everybody, on our allies, on and on and on and on. We are today. We are today much more like China. We have moved towards China. I said this during COVID. Chinese political and economic model have won. They locked everybody down. We locked everybody down. They want to control their industry, subsidize and control. We want to control the industry, subsidize and control. We are China with a veneer of freedom. But it's becoming more and more of a veneer and less and less of a reality. Less and less of a reality, more and more of just pretence. When government can just shut us down, take our stuff, tax us through tariffs, determine who owns what, who can buy what, you know, what companies can and cannot do constantly on scale. They've always done this, but now it's on scale. Are we free? Are we significantly freer than the Chinese? In other words, the bottom line is China's won. China's won in the intellectual battle. By the way, the U.S. is now investing billions of dollars in ports to replace China-made cranes because somehow they pose a national security threat. You know, the cranes that take the containers and move them? We're placing all those cranes because there's a national security threat somehow, which we can't deal with without dumping all those cranes and work fine and replacing them with, quote, American-made cranes. It's insane. It's insane. And we will pay for this nonsense. We will pay for this economic ignorance, economic, I don't know, barbarism, because in the 21st century, we should know better, economic barbarism for the next, you know, forever, for the next few decades, for the next few decades. I guess Edward is voting for Biden because the crane thing is America first. Absolutely. So you should, you're voting for Biden. Wow. Didn't know that, Edward. Truly stunning for the land of capitalism, for the land of free markets, for the land of people who believed in a constitution, a Declaration of Independence, that granted individuals personal liberty and personal freedom all out the window, all gone. We're now just a smaller, you know, kind of less effective, kind of apologetic version of Chinese Central Planners. I encourage you to read the op-ed. It's by Greg Epp from the Wall Street Journal. It's in today's Wall Street Journal. You can get it online. I think you can get the editorials online without a subscription. But yeah, you should definitely, you should definitely read it. It's really well done. And he correctly blames both Republicans and Democrats. Good for, good for Mr. Epp. All right. Let us go to our questions and to the super chat. Remind everybody that you can ask any questions you want. Also remind you that the Ayn Rand Institute is a sponsor of the show. So please go to Ayn Rand.org, Ayn Rand.org slash start here. The slash start here is, is where you will find the latest kind of offers, the latest breaking news or the greatest, the latest things that are happening that you can get involved in. And, and they will also know that you came from the Iran book show, which will be great. So Iran book, sorry, not Iran book, Ayn Rand.org slash start here. Of course, you should go to Iranbrookshow.com slash membership to become a member, to become, to support the show on a monthly basis. You can also do that on Patreon. You can also do it here on YouTube by becoming a member, a member. All right. And what else did I want to say? Yeah, I want to remind you, those of you in Latin America and maybe some of you in the US who would like to come, there will be a Ayn Rand Latin America conference in Argentina in a couple of weeks. The six, I think the sixth and seventh, the seventh and eighth, sixth and seventh, I think of April, it will be in Buenos Aires. And the big news that broke a couple of days ago is that Millay, President Millay will be attending the conference. He will come. He will participate. I don't think it's being completely confirmed, the final or anything, but the plan as of right now is for me and him to do kind of a Q&A together. We will both answer questions opposed to us by Maria Martí. We'll see if that happens. There's some issue about Spanish and English and all of that. But whatever happens, it does look like and they have confirmed again that Millay will be at the conference, will be participating, and I'm looking forward to that. That should be really, really cool. What about Subscribestar? You can also subscribe to Subscribestar. It's just the number of people subscribing there has declined significantly. I think they take Subscribestar, it takes about the same amount of money as Patreon. I think Patreon has just a better interface, a more user friendly experience. It's easier for us to kind of update you on stuff going on through Patreon than Subscribestar. So the general experience I think in Patreon is better. But they take about the same money as Subscribestar does. All right, let's see. So that's where we are. I hope to see some of you at least in Buenos Aires. We'll also be in Santiago a few days later in Chile. And I will be speaking in Sao Paulo in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, Brazil just before probably on April 3rd. On April 3rd, I'll be in Sao Paulo, Brazil. But yeah, you can subscribe to Subscribestar Patreon or PayPal, which is your own bookshow.com slash membership, or you can subscribe right here on YouTube for membership. Although that is the most expensive in terms of I get the least amount of money from your subscription there. Patreon might be Uberwoke, maybe it's not. It hasn't kicked me off. And it's a better platform. They just do a better job. Maybe the non-Uberwoke tech companies need to wake up and produce some good products. That would be good. All right, let's go for a super chat. Remind you that that is for you, those of you watching live, we've got almost 100 people watching live. This is the best way to support the show. It's not only great because we get instant feedback here in terms of the support, but also because I get to answer your questions. So you can ask a question, but you can also do it by a sticker. Geffrey, John, glue, thank you. And yeah, so those are stickers. Of course, I thanked Yvonne earlier. We're about halfway to our goal. So please consider doing a sticker with an amount of people on right now, even if you do a $2 sticker, that really helps and that gets us closer to where we need to be. All right, clock. I start with the $20 questions. People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound and looking for a scapegoat. I think that's fundamentally right. And I think that's a consequence of altruism. It's a consequence of the fact that they've been taught a morality that says, don't think about yourself. Don't be selfish. Be selfless. And they don't want to be selfless. They want to improve their circumstances. They want to get better. But they are taught that if they overly think about themselves, that is a sign of vice. That is a sign of immorality. And therefore they're never taught to think about themselves, to think about self-improvement, to think about how to make their life better, to think about the things, the values they need to pursue in order to achieve the things that they want to achieve. They've never even taught to take their life seriously. To have a plan. I gave a talk last night and one of the points I made in the talk last night was, this is to a bunch of entrepreneurs, a lot of people deal with their business in a very rational way. They have a plan. They have goals. They monitor the execution of the goals. They have priorities. Some goals are more important than others. They have a hierarchy. But they don't, you know, they have a business plan. They have a strategy. How many people have a strategy for their life? A business plan for their life? A hierarchy of values to determine their choices in life? Very few think in those terms. Take their life seriously enough to really think it through. Now, you know, business is an important part of that and an important part of life. So to the extent that you're a business person, you're doing that in your career. But why aren't you doing that in every aspect of your life? Every aspect of life should be treated as seriously as you treat a startup, as seriously as you treat your business. And that's what people don't know how to do. So they don't know how to improve themselves. And they buy self-improvement books. They give them 12 rules for doing this. And I'm sure a lot of the rules are very valuable and helpful. But the whole orientation needs to change. Your life is the thing you should be focused on and how to make it better. And the tool to do that is reason, rationality. And that's what you should be focused on. How do I create a higher key of values? How do I achieve my values? And how do I make sure my values are the right values? My values are actually going to lead me to success. Actually going to lead me to being the best human being I can be. Actually lead me to happiness and prosperity. So, you know, that is a huge challenge. But we're not taught to embrace that challenge. We're not taught to actually go out and do that. All right, Sylvanos. I can't wait for the brown outs or worse that come from overtaxing the grid with all these EVs. Too bad America turned its back to nuclear power. Yeah, absolutely. And it's nuclear power. And it's natural gas. And it's thermal energy. And it's a million types of energy that could actually be used to produce electricity effectively. Instead, we put gazillions of dollars, just gazillions of dollars and wasted in, you know, windmills and solar panels. And what Alex has seen calls unreliables. We've got a bunch of unreliables. Lots of unreliable energy. And of course, there's a consequence of that very little money because the money went into building these solar panel farms and wind farms. We haven't put the money into building out the grid. We haven't put the money into, you know, latest generation software to manage the electricity. We haven't built nuclear power plants. We haven't put power plants next to where the electricity is being used. They have to travel thousands of miles or hundreds of miles on wires and be wasted. You know, with small nuclear power plants, you should be able to put them in places that require electricity and put them next to some of these massive data centers that are being built. I mean, that's the other thing. Massive data centers are going to be built sucking up all the electricity. Now you want to put cars on the grid? Now somebody said, somebody said no, no cars. You charge the car in the evening and at night. At night time is when people don't use a lot of electricity. First of all, I'm not sure that's true during the summer. People are running their air conditionings all night. But secondly, it's also the period where there's no solar power. And the more we become reliant on solar power, the more nighttime charging of anything becomes problematic. Then you have to invest in massive batteries to store the power. So no, I mean, this is a massive burden on the grid and it is, the grid is barely holding up right now. It's only going to get become worse. All right, James, leftists live in a pretend world and want to take it as far as they can. Well, it depends which leftist, but certainly the far left lives in worse than a pretend world. They live, they have a clear goal. And they go, they don't hold this explicitly, but their goal implicitly is to destroy humanity. It's to destroy civilization. It's the destroy industry. And so it's not just they're going to get there by accident. It's not an unintended consequence of their action. But no, if you understand their philosophy, if you understand what actually drives them, this is the consequence they are shooting for. This is the consequence they want. They are nihilists and they are anti-civilization and they are anti-growth and anti-production. So when we don't get the growth, when civilization collapses for lack of power, for lack of energy, it won't be an unintended consequences. It will be an intended consequence, whether, again, they hold it explicitly or they hold it implicitly. It's there. Hopper Campbell, what are the similarities between David Kelly and Nathaniel Brandon? Oh God. I don't think there are many similarities other than they don't get it. But I don't think David Kelly is, I mean, there's a sense in which he's just honest by claiming that new stuff that he develops is objectivism and by that trying to claim Inran's sanction. But Nathaniel is much more dishonest and Nathaniel didn't get it. And I don't think David is. And Nathaniel rejected his objectivism. David Kelly claims he's still an objectivist. So I mean, I think there are a lot of differences. I don't know. I don't know them well enough really to give you a complete answer. James, World War II never ended. It just changed into another animal and hid for a while. No, I mean, I don't think that's right. World War II ended. The Nazis and the, you can't, just because the anti-lightenment forces are always out there. So in that sense, there's always a war, right? Since the enlightenment started, there's a war between the anti-lightenment forces and the enlightenment forces. In that sense, yeah, it never ends. But no, those particular enemies were defeated thoroughly and systematically. The fact that there's the war continues is primarily the consequence of the weakness of the good guys, the weakness of the enlightenment forces. So the changed animal is the anti-lightenment. But Christianity was anti-lightenment in that sense. You know, Kant was anti-lightenment. German nationalism was anti-lightenment in the 19th century. Nationalism, generally, 19th century nationalism was mostly anti-lightenment. And so is communism, so is fascism, so is environmentalism. But the real weakness here, the real reason they keep coming back is not because they go hide and pop up again. It's because the good guys are so weak. The good guys are so weak. All right, Hamid, Hamad. I came late to the show, would like to mention the developers for Apple's closed system in App Store see higher numbers of subscribers and higher quality apps because of how Apple controls the quality in their stores. Absolutely. There's no question about that. But that's not the point. The point is that it's a closed system. And a closed system by some interpretation of antitrust is a violation of antitrust. And the government, if it's a closed system, Apple has control over your choices. And the government at the end wants control over your choices. It doesn't want Apple to have it. It doesn't want powerful economic powers out there. But I agree with you completely, Hamid. I love Apple's closed system. I know the apps that I get will work. I know that the high quality and I know how Apple works. I know they all have a certain shared, what is it, UI, user interface. And there's huge advantages for some consumers. And some consumers complain because arbitrarily they'd like the Apple to be like an Android. If you want your Apple to be like an Android, go buy an Android. It's very simple. So yeah, I mean, this use of antitrust against Apple is despicable, disgusting, an anti-consumer, anti-user, anti-user. They don't care about your user experience. They care about their perception of what user experience should be. All right. I'll remind you again. This show is funded by users like you. We set targets. These are kind of targets that kind of set how much money needs to be raised by the show in order for it to be self-sustaining. So these are not completely random targets. They're targets that have to do with the cost involving running a show, primarily my time. So it's great when we reach them. It's great when we exceed them. That's a great when we don't reach them. That's a great when we don't exceed them. So please, if you want to support the show, now's a great time through the super chat. Or you can also go of course to Patreon, subscribe star, or uranbookshow.com slash membership. All right. Final three questions, unless we get some more in the next few minutes. Michael says, will Netanyahu ultimately go with the will of the Israeli public over a sphere how Biden and Europeans perceive him? I think so. But he will do it in such a way and is already true that Israeli soldiers will die needlessly. He will do it in such a way that Hamas that he might not win in the end, that Hamas might find a way to survive because he's giving them enough time to prepare. He'll do it in such a way that stretches this war far, far, far longer than it needed to be. It's already longer than it needed to be. So while I think in the end, Netanyahu is very sensitive to his domestic audience and because he needs to be reelected and he's always been this power-lusting political animal that he will do what his constituents want, I don't think he's going to do it in a way that is helpful for Israel's long-term national interests. Latest story is that Republicans in the House are going to invite Netanyahu to come and speak before the House. Schumer has said that he would support him speaking before a joint session of Congress, even though if you remember a few days ago Schumer said that Netanyahu should resign. It could be that Netanyahu is coming to Washington to address a joint session of Congress. Again, that would be a big political win for him in terms of the Israeli public. I don't know how much it helps in terms of convincing the Americans to let Israel do what's necessary in order to win, but it certainly will go a long way to establishing Netanyahu, helping him out domestically and fixing the damage that was caused by what Schumer said the other day. James, do we actually know that Joe Biden has dementia? He's just senile. I don't even know what the difference is between dementia and senile. That is, I'm not qualified to tell the difference. I don't think anybody knows. I mean, he's old. He's forgetful. He's clumsy. He's old. I know everybody in the 80s is forgetful, clumsy. So it's not, there's nothing special here. He's not, he doesn't suffer from complete dementia where he doesn't know, you know, if you've seen people who have Alzheimer's, he's nowhere near that. And Joe Biden was never particularly sharp. Joe Biden was always made stupid errors and bungled his speeches and, you know, bungled his language and was just incoherent. So there's nothing new about the condition Biden's in. It's just now add to his natural state the fact that he's got age and there you go. And that's what you have. All right. Last question, guys. J. J. Jigby's. This background composition is fantastic you're on. I've been away, so I'm seeing it for the first time. I appreciate that. Thanks. We put a little bit of work into it. I like it. We moved my desk. We moved the camera. We put on a tripod further away. The whole orientation is a little different. You might find me looking to the side a little bit more because my monitor is a little further away. So if I have to read something, it's a little further away. But for the most part, you know, I like the setup. I like the way it looks. It's not finished yet. We've still got some lighting that we're going to add to this to make it look cooler. And we'll keep improving it over time. I know that the sound could use just marginal improvement. So I think some acoustic panels and some other stuff on the walls. I've got a carpet, maybe more carpet. I don't know. But we will continue to kind of tweak the setup to make it better, to make the sound better, to make everything better. And yeah, I mean, this is basically my full-time job. So I want to make this as professional and as absolutely possible. And that's thanks to you guys and your support. And talk about support. Sylvanus just did $100 so we could reach our goal. So thank you, Sylvanus. Really, really appreciate it. And I think that gets us over together with John, who also did $20. John says, what are the odds that the US will get involved militarily in Haiti? I think they're fairly high. Haiti is kind of the responsibility of the French, but the US have gone in there to bring about order, exactly how, under what auspices, how it gets, how it happens. I don't know. But I actually think there's quite a good chance that, I mean, it's happened before, right? If I remember right, and you know, I don't have Haiti's history, but if I remember right under Clinton, United States forces went into Haiti to kind of calm things down and settle a rebellion. Of course, it didn't really help in the long run for whatever reason. And I don't know what it is about Haiti that is so disastrous. But Haiti just can't get stabilized. And it's a complete, what is it? Complete shit show. And it has been for decades. And it doesn't seem like anything really helps and really, you know, makes it function properly. Savanos, thank you again. Richard, I refuse to use Apple's locked in ecosystem, but defend their right to keep it closed. It's like I ran defending the right to produce porn, even though she hated it. I don't particularly like that analogy, but okay. Yes. I'm glad you're supporting it. I love Apple's ecosystem. I loved it since the first time I used a Mac in 1989. And it was a class project and we were doing a spreadsheet and we were doing it on a PC. And one of the teammates said, let me show you something. And he took us over to a Mac lab and it was just a few Macs there. And I fell in love. And since then, I've only used Macs. I don't even know how to turn on a PC. I've used lots of phones, right? Because before the iPhone, I had a BlackBerry. I had a, you remember what they call it? I forget all the names of the different phones, Motorola, Flip phone. But since there's an iPhone, I've only used iPhones. I love the closed system. I love the fact that it's all integrated. I love the fact that everywhere I go, it's integrated and communicating. It's, yeah. So I'm a huge fan of Apple's closed system. Thank you, Richard. Wow, Hamad just came in with $100. Thank you, Hamad. It would be helpful to review how Apple defends itself in EU through their statement in future shows. The Department of Justice is following in the EU's steps. And your message could reach many people, customers or employees of Apple. That's a good point. I'll look it up. I'll look. The Apple defense was weak. They kept appealing and everything. They lost in the end. But it was ultimately philosophically weak. They don't have. They'll make all the practical arguments, the kind of argument you made earlier, Hamad, how stable it is and quality and safety and privacy and all those arguments they will make. And I think they all are true. But it's, unless you make them all argument and unless you make a principled argument against antitrust, a principled argument about this is not the role of government. This is none of the government's business. Really, none of the government's business. This is the marketplace we'll solve. If Apple is doing something customers don't like, then customers will start buying Apple. They'll go with Richard and they'll buy Android or something else. As long as we accept that some central planner, good natured, good from the perspective of economics, good, just a nice person, smart, smartest person in the world, most well-meaning person in the world. Doesn't matter. As soon as we accept that they have a right to dictate to a private company how they should manage their business, run their products, it's over. And I'm sure Apple grants that to the regulators. I'm sure Apple grants that to the government. The only way to stop this is to advocate for separation of state from economics. Government has no business dictating to companies one way or the other how they should run their business. Unless they're somehow violating people's rights, poisoning them, killing them, committing fraud. Nobody's arguing that that's what's happening here. Thank you, Ahmed. That was very, very generous. Really appreciate it. And finally, Christian, have you done a review of Lena Kahn's article, Amazon's Antitrust Paradox? I haven't. I've talked about Lena Kahn and talked about that article. I haven't had done a real systematic review of it. It could be interesting to look at. But again, I mean, once you accept the paradigm, the government has a role in running in entirely companies how they can run and in protecting, quote, something as ambiguous as consumer interest, the public interest, the common good. Then she could write anything she wants. Because once you accept that, then it's just then you're just figuring out the particular excuse that the government is going to use in a particular case to go after a particular company. But you've already granted them the ability and the sanction to do it. All right, guys. Wow. I mean, we blew away the target. Thank you, in particular, to Ahmed and Silvanus. Silvanus who gave over a hundred dollars. But thank you to all the superchatters for making that possible. Thanks for listening to show. Don't forget tonight, I'll be talking to Ilan Juno about the Lex Friedman interview. Sorry, Lex Friedman debate on Israel Palestine is a lot to say about that debate. And Ilan and I will be covering it and discussing it. And we look forward to you being there and asking lots of tough questions. I mean, it would be great if you guys participated. The debate is way too long. But it's not surprising, given the kind of stuff they were debating, which was you could have debated forever because it was going to go nowhere. And so I encourage you guys to please join us tonight. Bring your questions, particularly your tough ones, about anything related to Israeli-Palestinian conflict or anything you learned from that debate that you're curious about or anything about the conflict that you're curious about. Bring the questions with you. It's at 7 p.m. East Coast time, 7 p.m. East Coast time on right here. Same place. See you then. Bye everybody.