 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual fundamental principle. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Thursday night. It's finals week, finals day, first game of the NBA Finals is tonight. Those of you who are skeptical about my ability to pick teams, Boston made the finals and tonight they're playing the Golden State Warriors, so I'll be rushing off after the show to go see how the game is going. I will be going to see a live game next week, so there will be no show next Thursday, because I'll actually be at the Celtics game next Thursday. Based Clay says he's going to be at the game as well. Alright, we should hang out. That'll be fun. Yeah, if you're in Boston, if you're going to the game, but he says he's likely to be in San Francisco, going fives and seven. I can only afford tickets to one game. I'll be at the game next Thursday in Boston. If anybody's around, if anybody's going to the game, let me know. Maybe we can say hi. Now go Warriors, go Celtics. It'll be a fun series. It'll be fun to watch. Alright, so Based Clay's going to be at the home games as well. Cool. Yes, go share on Twitter, Facebook. Share. There's a live show going on. I have not seen Top Gun yet. I'm waiting. I've got a friend coming into town next week on Friday on Thursday. When's the game next week? Anyway, it's coming in sound next week. I promise to wait to see the movie so we can go together. So we're going to go see him with him this weekend. I'm going to watch Top Gun number one, so that I'm ready to watch Top Gun number two at the theater. Because special effects are supposed to be really cool and so on. I'm with Based Clay. I think Celtics in six. I think that's the way it's going to go. It might take seven because they just make it hard. They make everything hard. But I think this is the year. This is the year the 18th banner goes up. And yeah, if they win this year, it could be the first of a few world championships. They got a good team. They got a young team. So it should be a lot of fun and it should be interesting. Jonathan, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Talking about support, let's talk about Catherine's not here. Maybe she got insulted last time when I said I didn't need her. Of course I need her. Come back, Catherine. Come back. But anyway, talk about support. You can support the show here on Super Chat. You can do it by like Jonathan just did by sending me a sticker and with some dollars attached to it. You can do it by asking a question. That is great because that provides content and it keeps the show running and it gets me to answer questions that are interest to you rather than me just spouting off stuff that is interest to me. You cannot support the show on a monthly basis. This particular is great for those of you who are not live and therefore cannot use the Super Chat. So if you guys can go and go to www.uronbookshow.com. Support to Patreon to subscribe, start and become monthly contributors, study monthly contributors. That is great. We've been kind of stagnant in the monthly contributors. Super Chat has been doing great. Monthly contributors have been stagnant. It would be great if some of you who are listeners who are not live, who don't use the Super Chat, who listen on the podcast maybe on YouTube after the fact and would like to support the show because you get value out of the show. It would be great if you signed up. I'd very much appreciate it. And we can see a little bit of growth there that would help the future prospects of the show. Thank you, Ryan, for the support there. And Michael will get your question later on. So that's another way to support the show. And I hope you'll do it. And finally, I was thinking about this today. It would be great if those of you who have particular topics, particular passions that you'd like me to talk about, particular areas of interest. If you'd like to sponsor a show, it's $1,000. I know that's not a small amount. But I can know what he did was he ran a little campaign and he got other people to contribute and he raised $1,000 or almost $1,000 to do it. You can do that. But I think it makes it interesting and I think the show is richer when I'm also talking about things that are really interesting to you beyond just the Super Chat but big topics, interesting grand topics. So if you have ideas on what you would like, use that feature. If you can afford it, $1,000 is a great way to get me to talk about what you want me to talk about. All right, today we're going to cover a few items on the news. It's pretty thin on the news right now. There's not a lot of really interesting things going on. There's some economic stuff which, you know, just from the viewership I get that people are not that passionate about. There is a lot of stuff about guns. But I've said so much about guns and I have so little to say about guns that I just am not that passionate and interested in doing a whole show about guns. It's just not a topic that I have that much to say about and what I have to say I've already said so you know what I think about it. And you know there was the lawsuit with Amber Hood and Johnny Depp, I don't follow that kind of stuff. Maybe I should, maybe there's interest there but it just seemed I don't like celebrities and I really don't follow celebrities and these court cases dredge up all kinds of stuff. Now it turns out that it probably was an interesting case because it has to do with defamation and what counts as defamation, what doesn't count as defamation. So maybe I should have followed it more closely. But anyway it seems pretty thin unused. It seems like the crazy left is subdued, is being held back by maybe the more moderate Democrats before the midterm elections so that not to completely destroy all chances from the Democrats. There is a lot of news on the right so I will do a show. I just didn't have time to prep on the nationalist right. They publish so many articles. There's a lot of good stuff to cover there. So probably on the weekend I'll do one of the shows over the weekend on some of the stuff coming out. One of the leaders of the new right, nationalist right, has just published a book on common good constitutionalism common good constitutionalism. So that could be an interesting topic, common good constitutionalism. I'm not going to read the book, but I'll try to find his main article about it and there's at least a couple of positive reviews about the book that I'll read in prep for that. So we can cover that stuff. And there's a lot of stuff coming out of the national conservatives that we can talk about. So we'll definitely cover all that material and more and we'll start coming that material this weekend. So we'll have shows on Saturday and on Sunday. All right, I will keep you kind of abreast of where we are in terms of the super chat. I'll just do that in the chat rather than talking too much about it. It's easy in the chat. Now I can just copy paste kind of the summary of how much has been raised through the super chat and how much is remaining to reach our goal of 600. So let's start with Ukraine. Ukraine seems to be struggling. A lot of negative news coming out of Ukraine. Russia seems to be advancing. The tide of war seems, if you want to read the media and if you want to believe what is being told in the media, then the tide of war seems to be shifting. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about whether that's true or not in a minute. It is also the United States is sending more military equipment to Ukraine. Interesting military equipment, missile launches, which the Russians have in great quantity and a pounding Ukrainian positions with it. So I want to talk about basically those two things. One is the progress the Russians have made whether the tide has turned and Ukraine is now on the ropes. What impact, if any, the new American weapons being sent to Ukraine are going to have? What is the difference between the weapons systems that the Americans have and the Russian weapons systems, equivalent missile launchers? What is the equivalent of that? And yeah, so a little bit of weapons analysis. Like that stuff. You loved it when I talked about the T-72s. This is not the weapons systems I'm going to talk about today. Not so much. And I'm not going to name them by number and stuff like that. But just in general principle. But these ones I do not have personal experience with. This is just based on research. I do not have personal experience with the T-72 as I told you. I did have a personal experience with. Let's see. Okay, so let's talk first about what's going on in front. So Russia has been making progress primarily in one spot on the Eastern front. They had tried for weeks to kind of go around, create a corridor between their forces in the northeast and southeast to encircle the Ukrainian troops to basically cut them off from supplies, encircle them, and then destroy them. They failed really to make any progress doing that. They moved inches instead of miles. They suffered great casualties while doing it. And they went nowhere. And what they decided basically to do is to take all their forces and put them all at one point along one front basically to complete the capture of one province. It's the Naskets, the other province. I'm going to try to give you all the names in Ukrainian. I can barely pronounce names in English. Never mind in Ukrainian. It's the one that starts with an L. And they are basically put all their eggs in one dastard, all their forces in one place. They have reduced forces in every other location. And they use artillery and missiles very, very effectively. They have very long-range missile systems. They have large numbers, I mean huge numbers of artillery. While the Ukrainians have some of the western artillery systems, I do not get the sense that they're fully operational. I do not get the sense that they're yet fully operational at the front. And they're clearly outnumbered even with those western systems. They were being trained in Germany on them. We will see when they reach the front, these are the western howitzers, which are far superior to the Russian guns. But they are yet to make a big difference and they're yet to really reach the fighting in a significant way. And the Russians, it's pounding away. So the Russians are basically using a simple kind of World War II tactic. They use artillery to flatten an area, to make it unlivable by Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian troops have to retreat the Russians' advance. Then they take the next area, pound it into dust, and then advance. And they're using long-range missiles in order to do that. These rockets, these rocket launchers, and the rockets are, God, what's the, you know, they basically cause this massive amount of damage because each one of these rockets explodes before they reach the ground. They have multiple explosives and they wreak havoc on anything and anybody who's in the vicinity. And they have a lot of these rockets and they keep lobbing them in. And again, they're destroying whole areas and then the Russian troops move in. This is a slow way to progress. It's the opposite of kind of a blitzkrieg. It's the opposite of using tanks and ground forces to move quickly. Cluster bombs, thank you, thank you. Cluster bombs, they're using cluster bombs, which are not precision weapons, quite the opposite. I'll talk about these bombs in a few minutes. They are basically, you know, moving at the snail's pace and they've taken the city of 100,000 people that is getting them close to completing basically the occupation of this one eastern province in Ukraine. And at that point, there's some speculation that they're going to annex three provinces, the one in the south, Gershon, and the two that Donetsk and then this third province, they're going to annex to Russia. They're going to declare them all part of Russia. In the meantime, because of the Russians using these missile systems, the Ukraine, now, so let me just say, so yes, the Russians are advancing. At the same time, the Ukrainians are launching counterattacks. We know for a few weeks ago that they were very successful in countering the Russians in the northeast around Khakiv and pushing the Russians back almost to the Russian border, almost completely out of Ukraine. They have now started offensive operations in the south in the Gershon area. This is the south which is crucial to Russia because it provides the land bridge to Crimea. They are progressing slowly there. They're testing the waters. This is an area that does not have a lot of Russian troops. A lot of the Russian troops have been moved from there to the big offensive in the east. So there's a real opportunity for the Ukrainian forces here to take some ground from the Russians and beat them back. We'll see how successful they are. We'll see how that progresses. But that's what I would watch in terms of Ukrainian advances. I think what the Ukrainians are going to do, knowing that the Russians have focused all their military efforts in one area, the Ukrainians are going to try to chip away at the other areas. They're going to chip away at the sides. They're going to try to weaken all the other fronts. They're going to try to force the Russians to dilute their forces from one place to multiple places. And then they're going to launch significant counteroffensive. For that, they really are waiting for the full deployment of the howitzers that they received from the west. And now these missile systems that the United States has committed to sending to them. Now, I was shocked when I, well, not really shocked. I wasn't surprised really, but I found it interesting. Somebody, some former U.S. senior military guy did an analysis of the Russian missile systems and the American missile systems that are being sent to Ukraine. And American missile systems being sent to Ukraine are going to be the shorter range missile systems. Because one of the things the Biden, God forbid, doesn't want is any of these missiles landing in Russia, which is bizarre, right? We're arming the Ukrainians to the teeth, but we don't want them to actually shoot at Russia. They're only allowed to shoot at Russians in Ukraine. But if the supply lines go into Russia, they're not allowed to shoot anything in Russia. So we're giving them short range missile systems, rocket systems rather than long range ones. But the difference between the Russian system and the American system is basically the difference between a system built 40, 50 years ago and a system built today. The Russian system is slow. These are multiple missiles. They shoot a bunch of missiles. Then you have to restock them with missiles. The Russian system takes 40 minutes to restock. The US, the American system takes 10 minutes. The Russian system, the missiles are guided optically. They're guided by sight. The movement is by hand. You pull levers, you move things, you do stuff like that. The American system is all electronic, all GPS guided. And it'll hit the target within five meters of the target. It will hit. It is unbelievable precision. The Russian systems, approximately. That's why they use cluster bombs. Because with cluster you don't have to worry about hitting the target directly. You can just wipe up the whole area and you're fine, right? So the difference really is between a Russian way of fighting, which is really old school, really World War II-like, really 70s and 80s technology versus the American system, which is modular, fast. The truck basically can shoot the missiles, move immediately. So it's not targeted by a counterattack, not targeted by drones, not targeted by airplanes, can move immediately, restock within 10 minutes, shoot again. The targeting is all GPS, all automatic. The Russian crew is six or seven people. The American crew is three people. By every measure, the American weapons systems is light years ahead of what the Russians can deploy. And this is, of course, what I told you from day one and one of the reasons that as long as the Ukrainians were fully stocked with Western weapons systems, the Russians had no chance. The Russians were aging and decrepit and bad technologically weapons systems from their MiG airplanes to the T-72s to these missile systems. They're just no match for the West. This is why I said if NATO entered the war, it would last hours, you know, not weeks, not months, hours. Somebody said, ooh, you know, we're likely all this stuff is going to piss off the Russians and the Russians are going to expand the war into NATO. The last thing in the world Russia wants to do is expand the war to NATO. Because if you expand the war to NATO, I mean, it can barely move a few meters fighting Ukrainians who are not that well-trained, who have limited number of weapons. Certainly offensive weapons have very little of them. I mean, can you even imagine what the full force of NATO or of the U.S. military would be and how quickly it could destroy Russian forces? So, I mean, for Russia to encourage NATO to enter the wars, for Russia to commit suicide, militarily. Now, again, they could use tactical nukes. They could use nukes. That's a completely different story. But in conventional warfare, the last thing in the world Russia wants to do is to get the West NATO directly involved, as it is. From everything I read, the Russians are going apoplectic over these rockets because they realize how precise, how overwhelming in terms of firepower these rockets are. And even though they might have more systems, the rockets provided by the West of the Ukrainians are going to be so much more effective that the Russians don't have a chance. So it's, you know, the more the war goes on, the more the tourism that, you know, authoritarians just can't fight wars. They don't know how to do it. They don't do a good job. They ultimately lose. They almost always lose. Generally, evil is impotent. Evil is incompetent. Evil is destructive to itself and to everybody around it. But it's destructive. It cannot win. Evil people don't win throughout all of history. They don't win. Nothing survives. Nothing survives. They live short, horrible, violent, miserable, lonely, painful lives. That's evil. And that's true of individuals. That's true of countries. So Russia's not going to survive. And those of you who think Russia, the United States, ah, morally equivalent of all the same, you just don't know what you're thinking about. You just don't know what you're talking about. You have no conception. And you have no conception of morality and you have no conception of who these people are and what they're doing. The idea that the United States is as bad as Russia or as bad even as the Soviet Union, as some of you think, some people out there think, is just absurd and ridiculous. The United States is still a mostly free country. The United States mostly invades other countries in order to in some vague, bizarre, evasive way try to make the world a better place even though they never do. The American wars never do. They're not guided by empire-building. They're not guided by, you know, nihilistic will to destroy. And you can tell that by how countries are governed from within. You have a lot more freedoms, a lot more liberty in the United States than you do in Russia. Now or during the Soviet Union. So forget it. In the meantime, because Russia seems to be making advances or at least the Ukrainians don't seem like they're pushing back, the French and the Germans continue in the New York Times. The French, the Germans and the New York Times continue to advocate for peace, compromise, appeasement. In other words, Ukraine should give up big chunks of its land for the sake of peace. My worldview, the only way to teach a bully, not to be a bully, is to slap him down and the only solution to the war in Ukraine is a Ukrainian victory. And the West should do whatever it can to secure Ukrainian victory. And the only thing the West has to fear from Russia. And it's a significant fear. It's the use of nuclear weapons. That's it. There's nothing else that the West should fear Russia for. But Europeans as always are appeasing, appeasing, appeasing. I give the Biden administration credit for not being appeases. So far, Biden administration has kept to its position that Russia should leave all of Ukraine and Ukraine should not compromise. So far so good. We'll see how long that lasts. And to their position of providing Ukraine with strong offensive weapons. I think it could be more. I'd rather that the United States sell the weapons to Ukraine, rather than give them weapons. I don't like the idea of using tax money to arm anybody in the world. But of all the uses and abuses and horrible things that the US federal government does with our tax money, arming the Ukrainians is not one of the worst. Not one of the worst. So let's hope the America sticks its guns. If America gets on the bandwagon of ceasefires and then compromising peace, then I don't think Ukraine can stand up to both Europe and the United States. Eastern Europe, the Poles, for example, are very adamant that the Ukrainians can and should win. And because they know. They understand Russia. They know Russia. It's interesting that the nationalists in Eastern Europe are splitting with Poland being very, very anti-Russia and Hungary, Orban being very pro-Russia. And that is going to be an interesting split and see how that develops in the future. The American right, the nationalist right is 100% committed to its pro-Russia position. And it has not moderated one Iota. And the last article I saw by one of them about the Ukrainian situation is basically declaring, Oh, Russia's winning. Ukrainians on the road. Ukraine is going to be defeated. All to justify the anti-Ukraine pro-Russia perspective. All right. So that's my quick update. I still think Ukraine can win this. I still think the Russians are in deep, deep trouble. They can shoot these rockets, but somebody has to build the rockets. A lot of their weapons systems require western parts that are not being shipped to Russia. So they can go through all their weapons systems. They can go through a lot of soldiers. They can draft new soldiers in. But at some point this gets very, very expensive, very, very difficult. And I don't think sustainable. The Russian economy has crashed. The standard of living here in Russia, which was poor to begin with, has become significantly worse. Russians are significantly poorer than they were before the war started. Of course, the same is true of Ukraine. Ukrainians lost a lot of people and is losing people every single day. Dozens of people are dying every single day. Ukrainian cities are basically flattened, turned into dust. So war, as I said, to begin with, nobody wins. Yeah, a few weapons manufacturers wins, but it's marginal as compared to the vast losses that everybody suffers. Everybody. The world economy is suffering. The Russians are suffering. The Ukrainians are suffering. Everybody is suffering. And all for what? For the mythology that Putin has convinced himself and a few of his friends of. A mythology of greater Russia, a mythology of great nationalism, a mythology of NATO in the West being a threat to his imperial ambitions. Thousands and thousands, tens of thousands are dying because of that delusion, because of that mystical, you know, ideology. So we will see, we'll see how to progress. But I think ultimately the Ukrainians are going to engage in some counter-offensives that are going to push the Russians back and actually cause the Russians to be defeated. Now the Russians might sue for peace before that happens. They'll annex these territories and then sue for peace. We'll see if that actually works. We will see. All right. That was the first topic. Let's see if there are any questions about that topic. No. Oh. Yeah. No, not really. Someone from Eastern Europe described the experience of having Russia as a neighbor as living with a rabid dog in your house. Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. I mean, rabid dog is angry, any rational. And that's exactly what the Russians are. Landon says the only two ways Russia could hurt the West is one, nuclear bombs. And second is, which would detail the mutually assured destruction scenario. And the second is let the sanction of the victim. And that's exactly the appeasement, that's exactly the path the West is going on. All right. Let's see. Let's see. All right. Just to remind you, if you have a question for me on anything, you can use the super chat. You can put $2 in, $5 in, $500 in. I don't think you can go over $500, $4.99 maybe. But that is the way to ask me questions. Don't do it in the super chat. I can't keep track of all of them and I can't follow them all. All right. I want to say quickly something about the lockdown in China. They were opened, I think today, yesterday, the last couple of days, the Shanghai lockdown has been loosened. 25 million people have finally been allowed out of their homes, have been allowed to get food, have been allowed to go back to work, have been allowed to go back to school, have been allowed to just go outside and get some fresh air. What happened in Shanghai over the last two months is truly stunning and horrific. It is, I can't think of an example, anything as bad as what they did, 25 million people. I mean, they'd locked down smaller cities, 10, 15, 25 million people. Shanghai, I don't know how many of you have been to Shanghai. Shanghai is one of the most exciting cities in the world. It is vibrant, dynamic, full of energy, skyscrapers, some of the best skyscrapers in the world. It has some of the most exciting manufacturing plants in the world, including a Tesla plant. It is an incredibly productive area. It is one of the engines of the Chinese economy. People who live there are people who have migrated from the countryside, people who have left farming, have left villages all over China, and migrated to Shanghai to find a better life. Shanghai is a city of vast inequality. You can see it. I mean, the condo buildings along the river, some of the most amazing condos in the world, some of the most amazing views in the world, some of the greatest light shows in the world, a vast middle class, huge middle class, living primarily in modern condominium buildings, many of them very beautiful. Then, of course, you've got massive slums, huge numbers of slums with very, very poor people living in them. These are the latest people to come from the countryside who then slowly make their way up the socioeconomic ladder. To take 25 million people who are so dynamic, so full of energy, so productive, and locked them up for two months over two months, it's just stunning. And we don't know, and my guess is we will never know, ever know. How many people died while they were locked up? How many people starved to death? There were real food shortages? How many people, and this is probably the majority of the people who died, how many people died because they didn't get medical care? For a variety of different ailments unrelated to COVID. How many people are going to be penalized for standing up against the lockdown? There were some. And it truly is a horror. Chinese social media, in spite of the census, in spite of the authoritarian nature of the regime, Chinese social media, people are complaining bitterly about the conditions under which they were forced to live under. They're complaining about the government. They're complaining about the leadership. It's going to be really, really, really interesting. As we had in the early fall into the once every five years meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, where they basically choose their leader for the next five years, Xi is up for his third term. In the past, they have been termed out after two terms. I think during Deng Cha Peng's era as president, leader, whatever it's called, both power was diffused across a number of leaders and term limits were put in place. Xi is doing away with those term limits, is going to nominate himself a third term, and it's completely likely that he will get it. That's what everybody expects. They thought it would be smooth and unquestioning, but it's turned out that there was a lot of questions being raised about the zero tolerance, zero COVID policies, about a two-month lockdown in Shanghai, about why it took so long, whether the policy makes any sense, why the Chinese vaccine is so weak and bad, why they refused, for example, to import mRNA vaccines and vaccinate their population, why they're not just opening up given that Omnicron and its variants are relatively weak and don't cause the kind of death rates that the first wave of COVID forced. And of course, the consequences of all this and the consequence globally are broken supply chain, which means higher prices, empty shelves. It means complete disruption and distortion of the global economy. But domestically it means a real shrinking in the size of the Chinese economy, a real economic slowdown, real economic problems. At the same time, a lot of the tech industry is in shambles because of the crackdowns from the central government and a lot of people are complaining about that. The real estate market has crashed, people have lost a lot of money, people are unhappy about that. The stock market is, you know, people have lost a fortune and the stock market much worse than what's happening in the United States. People are super unhappy right now in China with Xi and with the Communist Party. And it's going to be interesting whether he can pull it off, whether he can pull off a third term. I mean, I think he has basically spent the last 10 years basically taking over all the levels of power so that he has almost guaranteed another appointment. But I think it's going to be much rougher, I think people are going to be much more unhappy. I think he's going to have a harder time and I only see things getting worse in China, not better. There's a huge movement of my young people in China to leave China and not to return. There's also movement by the authorities to make it more difficult now for Chinese to go on vacation because they worry they won't come back. So we're going to see a movement out of talent, a brain drain out of China. And I think the Chinese authorities are going to be worried about that. So I see China as a threat that is being reduced. And while I generally despise the Biden administration and everything that they do and his policies are being awful and terrible and destructive on almost every front, I will say that Biden has been braver than any president in the last, any president really, including Trump, in reaching out to the Taiwanese, expressing support for Taiwan. There is now being negotiated kind of a free trade deal with Taiwan, which is kind of a slap in the face to the Chinese. The Chinese again are apoplectic and angry and they want the Americans to immediately rescind this. But the US just signed some kind of free trade agreement. I mean it's not free trade, it's a little bit less restricted trade with a bunch of Asian countries. They excluded Taiwan because these other countries didn't want to piss off the Chinese. So what the US did is they took exactly the same program that they did with these other countries and they're applying it to Taiwan without these other countries, so that other countries can't suffer, won't be blamed for what the United States is doing. But in a sense the United States is standing up to the Chinese in action, not just in words. And that's a good thing. I would like to see the Biden administration as part of that, eliminating the tariffs that Trump placed on trade, all trade including Chinese trade, while basically reducing tariffs to zero with Taiwan and selling them the best weapons systems we have in stock. Ultimately the solution for Taiwan is to have a nuclear, is to have nukes which would stop the Chinese from doing anything. So it's going to be interesting for two years the Chinese model of locking down, shutting down cities starting with Wuhan seemed to have been superficially successful. It seemed like China was going to avoid the economic problems that the West had and man has that all come back to haunt them. Man has that come back in spades because they locked everybody down. Natural immunity was never created because they locked everybody down. People expect zero COVID and because they could not produce vaccines that were worth anything and because they refused to import vaccines from the West, the Chinese population is not vaccinated. So even though we have mild strains of COVID now, if China just opened up, COVID would go wild over there because they have no immunity. While the death rates would be a lot lower, there would be significant death rates and that's what they were afraid of. So if they open up, they're screwed, they shut down, they're screwed. I think they have to open up, but at this point they committed to the zero COVID strategy which is insane. And they've kept the shutdowns. All right, let's see. I didn't say vaccines prevent the spread of COVID. I said vaccines prevent dying from COVID, which they do. All right. Finally, last topic, forgiving college debt. The Biden administration today announced that they will forgive about $5 billion of college debt from students who were students at Corinthian College. Only students from Corinthian College will see their debt forgiven by the US government, which is bizarre. Corinthian College was a school shut down by the US government with all kinds of claims, but at the end of the day, Corinthian College was shut down because the government didn't like Corinthian College. Corinthian College was shut down because it's a private college, but it's worse than just being a private college. It's the ultimate sin for the left. It's a for-profit college. Richard, thank you. Wow, $100. Really appreciate that. It's good to have you back. So they shut the college down, which basically prevented the students from getting an education, which basically threw the students out into the streets. And now to compensate for that, they're going to forgive all those students their debt. The students who were thrown out of college, but also students who got a degree at the college and now might have jobs, might have decent jobs, might have good jobs. Why just Corinthian College? What about the millions of other students who have student debt? There's over a trillion dollars of student debts out there. Why some? Why not everybody? Why, you know, what's cherry picking? Does somebody in the Biden administration have a care to went to Corinthian? Did somebody in the Biden administration have friends who have kids who have went to Corinthian? Did somebody in the Biden administration get a job offer from when they leave government, from somebody who has kids? I don't know. One school? I mean, I think they feel guilty because they shut the school down, but a lot of people who have debt graduated well before they did that. What about all the other schools they shut down? They've shut down a bunch of private schools because they're private for-profit schools. They shut down a bunch of private for-profit schools. Are they going to forgive all of their debt? But why just them? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why, because I know exactly why. Because the perception is, and you know, this is reality, not just perception. The reality is that the students who went to Corinthian College, but the students who go to most private for-profit colleges, are students who are generally from a poor background, from a background in a lower socioeconomic stratum, whereas the students who went to Harvard and Yale and Princeton are middle-class and up, for the most part. And what the Democrats are really afraid of if they forget all debt is that they'll be accused of benefiting rich and middle-class kids at the expense of the U.S. economy, which will be true. But if they only forgive the debt of poor kids and they can't, they don't know how to measure that because all students are poor, right? That's part of being a student. You know, how do they measure by their parents? How do they figure out who's poor and who's rich? Well, one way to do it is to say, well, if you went to a crappy, or it's perceived as crappy, private school, then you must be poor and therefore will forgive your debt. But if you went to Harvard, for now at least, we're not going to forgive your debt. Now ultimately, ultimately, before an important election, they'll have to forgive the debt of the middle-class kids because that's where the votes are. They will vote in the middle-class. And if you want people to vote for you as Democrats are desperate to have, then you've got to throw some goodies towards the people who actually vote and towards the big numbers, and they are the middle-class. So, you know, every time they forgive the debt, it's a gift that we are all paying for. It is basically raising our taxes. It is basically raising inflation, which is a tax. It is basically shifting the costs, right? The university still has the money. It's shifting the cost from the student who is supposed to pay back the debt to the government, which then has to tax me less and or to fund its expenditures. It's shifting it to all of us. So it's not just a gift to the student. It's a gift paid for by you. So take this personally. It's a gift paid by you through inflation or through taxes directly. There is no free gift. Every time the government forgives debt, it's raising the deficit. It has to get that money from somewhere. Guess who it's going to get it from? You. So, I mean, debt forgiveness. I mean, what the government should do, I've said this many times, is get out of the student loan business. Remember, all student loans in the United States today, since the Obama administration, have been granted by the government. And I don't know a single Republican who is advocating for doing away with that system. I don't think Trump advocated for doing away with that. Nobody advocates for doing away with that system, but that is the system in which we live, which is a system where the government gives all the student debt. And it gives you a loan no matter what degree you're pursuing, no matter what university you're going to, no matter what your prospects for returning that loan are in the future, that is, no matter what your job prospects are, they're willing to give a loan to anybody who's accepted to any university. Now, that's not how private markets function. In a private market, private lenders would ask you, what degree are you getting? Well, if you're getting a degree in feminist studies, transgender feminist studies, then how are you going to make a living? And if you don't expect to make a living, how are you going to pay back the debt? Oh, we're not going to give you a loan. Or we're going to give you a loan at such a high interest rate, you don't want the loan. Oh, you're getting a degree at MIT in engineering. Yeah, we'll give you all the loans you want. That's how markets work. They assess the risk of the loan. And they adjust. Get the government out of loan guarantees for mortgages, for businesses, for students, for everything. And what will happen? You privatize it? Maybe fewer students will go to college. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe some crazy departments will shut down where students are, quote, learning, supposedly learning something that is not useful. They'll never be able to make any money from it, never be able to return the loan. Some of those departments might shut down for lack of funding. Maybe, maybe, students will be steered towards more life-enhancing careers. And finally, in a shocking turn of events, it might be that tuition will come down. Because universities will actually have to compete. It won't be so easy to get the money to go to school. So universities will have to lower the amount they charge. If you look at tuition, it's gone through the roof. Much higher rate than inflation, much higher rate than any other good. Why? Because it's completely 100% subsidized by the government. If Harvard wants to charge an extra $10,000 a year, that's fine. Because the government will lend me an extra $10,000 a year if I can get it to Harvard. There's no price constraint. And students think, oh, I go to Harvard. I'll be easily paid whatever amount of money I'm going to owe them, owe the government. And hey, maybe by the time I get there, there'll be a president who forgives all the debt. We live in a crazy world where the problems, specific actions of government make the problems. And they're easy to solve. And nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody. Not on the right, not on the left, not on the middle. Nobody cares. They continue to advocate the same stupid policies. They put band-aids and band-aids and band-aids and band-aids and band-aids on them to cover them up. But they actually do the things that would solve the problem. No. You actually want to get rid of poverty? No, they don't. They actually want to make school affordable for people? No, they don't. They want to cover their asses. And they want to keep power. And they want to keep control. And they want to keep growing. And they don't want to shake the boat. And they don't want to do anything radical. They don't want to do anything too crazy. And they don't want to lose their elections. God forbid they lose an election. And they've got this tool, altruism, to constantly pound away at the American people and to put those band-aids on all the time, all in the name of altruism. The evil of self-interest, the evil of profit, the evil of private. And we solve it by layering on government solutions that are always altruistic. Oh, it's poor kids. Oh, it's, you know, these kids who, you know, they paid a lot of money for that education. Those greedy universities, and now we're saving them. How can you not want to save them? And of course, none of us as an individual bear a lot of the cost. We bear a little bit of the cost, and we bear it every year for a long period of time. So it's a little bit of a year, so we don't feel it. So we don't get excited. Nobody out there is getting, you know, there are no riots in the streets over the fact that our money is being stolen from us and given to college students so they don't have to pay back their debts. Because we don't really feel it. It's two bucks here, two bucks in a few more days, two bucks in a few days after that. We'll never see it. There's no bill that arrives. Okay, this is the cost to you of the college debt repayment. Write a check. If we actually literally had to write a check, we wouldn't agree to these policies. But we don't. It just goes. It's just a little bit more, a little bit of great taxes, goods that are priced at a little higher price, which is what price inflation is. And we never feel it. So we don't get up in arms. I mean, we didn't get up in arms when we locked down. Never want to get up in arms in about a slight increase in our cost of living so that we can, so that we can do good for those, those, those debt burdened students out there. Well, they're not students anymore. They have employed debt burdened young people. That's horrible. All right. Let's do some super chats. You got a bunch, a bunch of super chat. Thank you. You know, a lot of, a lot of $20 super chats today that that is really helpful to get us to the numbers we need to go with. We're halfway to the $600 mark to a large extent because of Richard's $100. But yeah, if you keep coming in with $20, $50 super chat questions, we should be able to make the $600 mark. I certainly hope so. We've got about half an hour. Celtics game is starting in a couple of minutes. So I don't want to go too long today. So if there are a few of you who are willing to spend $50 on a question so we can get out and go watch the game, that'll be terrific. All right. Michael says Amber Hood said she said that her free speech, her free speech was violated and that she was sued for telling her story. Does she have a point? How is defamation enforced in a free society? Are defamations law legitimate? Yes, they are legitimate. But they're very, very tricky. And I'm not an expert on this. And I don't know who is an expert on this. But and this is partially why I didn't watch it because I, you know, maybe, maybe if I'd watch it, I have a strong opinion about this. But you have to make a very, very strong case that somebody is defaming you versus criticizing you. Somebody is defaming you in a way that literally, you know, hoods your bottom line that actually causes you financial ill for which you sue. But it has to be outrageous. It has to be a lie. It has to be something, but yet something that people could believe. And yet not open to interpretation and not just criticism because criticism and disagreement is protected under First Amendment. I can say, I think you're full of it. I can say, you know, so where's the line between me criticizing you and me defaming you? So it's, it's very tricky. It's very difficult to find that line. I don't know exactly where that line is drawn. But you have to be careful because I mean, basically drawn when you lie, but it has to be it's not just it has to have a lie that has that is known to you that you're lying and has significant consequences on the other side. That's the best I have. But it's not easy. And this is why it is an issue of free speech defining defamation right is crucial is what Saturday Night Live does to politicians and to others. Is that defamation? It's not is or what comics do or what, you know, so how do you draw the line? Legal philosophers have to think very clearly about where it is because it does have First Amendment, significant First Amendment consequences, significant First Amendment consequences. All right, Richard put another hundred bucks to get us to watch the game to get us closer to watching the game with 200 bucks now away from the $600 mark that will allow us to do that. Let's keep going with the super chat. In cities such as New York City, Andy asks whether die die Fragum law makes it a crime punishable punishable by jail civil penalties and loss of employment. Would a cop be justified in letting violent criminals flee? Or is it a duty to challenge the law? So this is the one caveat I have for everything that I said the other day about the police, my rant about the police, the laws that make it so difficult for the police or so easy to convict police for hurting and killing and the kind of penalties that police have to suffer, but that make it relatively easy to convict the police are going to make police hesitate are going to make police slow down. Now I don't think that applies to school because I don't think there was anything in the school, but I actually completely agree with you, Andy, that they are going to be more and more and more circumstances where the police decide not to confront a violent criminal, that it's much easier not to do anything, but of course, you know, if you had any ounce of self esteem and self respect, you'd resign, you'd leave the force. How can you do a job without doing your job? Without being allowed to do your job, but accepting that. So, yes, I agree that doing nothing is easier. The police, because of the laws that we have today that are so anti police in so many cases, the police are more likely to hesitate and more likely not to protect you, not to do their job. The good police, the police that have any kind of integrity will either move to jurisdictions where it's easier for them to do their job or just retire, just go do something else, switch jobs. Colleen asks, is it possible the police in Texas did not rush in because they thought it might be a hostage situation? I can see hoping for a peaceful resolution. You can't do that when he's shooting people. And when you've got people, I mean kids, children bleeding out. So, if he's actively shooting, you cannot treat it as a hostage situation. You have to storm the thing and kill him as quickly as possible. And the faster you do it, fewer people will die. So, no, I don't think. Now, you know, maybe they rationalized it that way. There is some evidence that they brought in a hostage negotiator to try to call the guy, but that's just bizarre and it's against regs. The regulations about school shootings are pretty clear. You go in and you confront and you shoot to kill. Because, you know, there's no reason to believe this is a hostage situation, the exact opposite. There's every reason to think this is just murder, given the experience we've had with school shootings over the last 40 years. So, I don't know. I think that would be a rationalization they made. There's actually, I still don't see any reason why they didn't storm the thing other than they were afraid. Ultimately, the people who stormed it weren't even those police. The people who stormed it were Border Patrol agents who, you know, trained for these kind of things. But okay, there's a consequence of that. A lot of kids died that didn't have to die. And look, if he wasn't shooting, if he was just holding hostages, that's one thing. But they were literally getting a 911 call from little girls saying, he's killing us. And they could hear the gunshots. And kids are bleeding out. And they're begging for you to come. And you say, no, we'll keep trying to call him even though he's not answering. I don't get it. I don't get how you get a peaceful resolution for that. I mean, I think a lot of hostage situations, you have to go in and you have to shoot the bastard, particularly when it's a lot of people that he's holding hostage. Dave says, homeless people keep sleeping on the subways, accosting riders, police do nothing, leftists have turned to homeless and mentally ill into the sacred cows of India. They can't be relocated or inconvenienced in any way. Yes, absolutely. And that's true in many, many cities. Austin, Texas, they live under the bridges and they're all over the place. But San Francisco, California is the worst. New York is really, really bad. And many other cities, I don't know how Miami has managed to stop it, but maybe it's because they're tougher on them and they won't let them get away with it. But there's no question. The rule of law does not apply to the homeless. And you're not going to get anywhere holding that position. Now, things are changing. I mean, supposedly in San Francisco, they're starting to get a little tough on the homeless. It looks like the Attorney General in San Francisco is going to be, what do you call it, when they vote him out? They're going to vote him out. He's going to be recalled. So the tide is changing. People are getting really sick of this. Colleen says, the last show talking about police not being required to protect us really makes the case for citizens being allowed to have guns. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. If the police won't protect me, literally won't protect me, then I want to conceal the weapons from it, and I want everybody to be able to carry it. Certainly, it's certain places. The worry is that, I mean, I don't know, I've said this many times, but guns are dangerous. And a few people are trained to use guns. Yeah, I mean, you go to the firing range and you shoot at a target, and that's a little bit of training. But that's not the same as pointing a gun at a human being. It's not the same as shooting a human being in a crowded area. It's not the same of shooting when you're stressed, when you're scared, when your hand is shaking. So few people are trained to do it right. But yes, once there's no police, you have no choice. It's each man for himself. But that's the breakdown of civilization. You know, neutering the police, making the police impotent, is the end of civilization. It really is. It's anarchy. And the so-called anarcho-capitalists will get what they want. And it'll be ugly. It'll be unbelievably ugly. Fender Harper says, for the newest rules for life while listening, I was wondering if you plan on having Jean Maroney on sometime. She has an Eight Family of Emotion concept I heard her mention in an interview with Don Watkins that is fascinating. I am. I talked to her about it. When did I see her in January? But I haven't got around to actually having her on, but I will. It is definitely my intention to have Jean on in the next few months. And thanks for reminding me of that because I dropped the ball. I talked to her. She sent me an email and I have not followed up. But I do want to have her on. All right, let's see. In the UK, there are few COVID deaths than there are flu. Today, that's true. Yet there are recently window bars on buses to keep them open. Is this irrational or maybe there are more hospitalizations with COVID than flu or something else? I don't know. I haven't seen the COVID versus flu numbers for recently and in London. I mean, the nice thing about keeping the windows open is that you're likely to get less flu as well. So it's just better circulation is good for everybody, not just with regard to COVID. London can also get pretty cold, so it's not particularly pleasant to have the windows open on buses. So I think it's basically irrational, but the NHS might be overloaded with flu and it doesn't need COVID on top of it, although now it's not flu season. So I don't know. I mean, it strikes me as, yeah, probably just irrational stuff. And now bars, having the windows open to bars and every more circulation is not a bad thing. Putting aside COVID, it's just not a bad thing. It stinks in those bars. It's not pleasant. All right, Justin, do you think the CCP ideologically aiming for communism or have they just accepted that fascism with Chinese characteristics is pragmatically the only way to hold on to power? Yeah, no, I don't think they have there's any connection between what the Chinese are doing and any kind of Marxist ideal or Marxist ideology. There's a sense in which what they're trying to do is achieve Marxist utopia without all the intermediate steps. So they want to get so rich that everybody is rich and nobody has to work and nobody has to, you know, this is Marxist utopia. But I don't think they even do. I don't know that the delusion I left to even believe that. So I think what they do is they find communist thinkers that seem to think that markets are okay if they're managed and they can be sustained and so on. In order to give themselves legitimacy, whether they believe it or not, I don't think they do, but they probably evade that fact. They probably convince themselves that they do, but they don't really. So I think, I think, you know, it's hard to tell how an evil bad person thinks about these things. But I don't think they're communists. I mean, they basically want power. They rationalize the power by thinking it's the best way to guide China. China would be chaos. China would be anarchy without the Communist Party holding on to power. That was Don Charpeng's explanation. And they, you know, so by doing that, they will use any tool, including the verbiage of communism, to sustain themselves. They don't think in terms of fascism. They think in terms of control. And that they are good for society. They're good for the world. Michael says, as objectivists, we are the smallest of minorities discussing calculus while the rest of the culture is debating the merits of arithmetic. I think that's right. Friend Harper says, in VRChat, a virtual reality chat room software, most of the backdrop for maps that are in cities are panoramic shots of Hong Kong. It's amazing looking from even that sort of view. Yeah, Hong Kong is an amazing, amazing place. I mean, one of the Apple TV, what do you call it, screensavers, is an area of view of Hong Kong. And it's a magnificent city. It's beautiful in every respect. But being on the ground is unmatched because what you don't get from the pictures is the energy. The poppable energy in the air, the energy that the people exude, or at least used to. I don't know if it's still there. Michael says, would it make sense to forgive the debt but then never give out another loan again? That way the issue will end and college prices will drop. I'm fine with that if they did that. Okay, so you take a hit once and you're done. You're going to have to do stuff like that as you privatize the economy. I'm not sure that's the best way to handle it. I don't see why it will be handled that way. What I would do is I'd repackage it and sell it to private banks and financial institutions and let them deal with collecting it, maybe negotiating it, maybe giving the students a discount. But I would get it off the books of the government. And by the way, by selling it, the government would get the money up front and that would help them pay off other debts because the government, remember the government owes a lot of money. They should apply this principle to all universities and the former students can't pay back the debts. The university should have to pay them back. This would force universities to assess the risk. Yeah, but the government is just giving debt to anybody. That's not fair. So, no, I don't think the university should be liable. I think the government should just get out of this business. All right. We've got two questions left. We're $170 short of the $600 mark. It would be great if we got there. I don't know if there's anybody who wants to jump in and do it. But basically these are going to be the last two questions unless I get more super chat questions now. You have asked about the founding fathers being alive today. Can you imagine Sam Adams, John Hancock, Ben Franklin, Tom Plain with their own YouTube channels? No, I can't. It would be amazing. But the world would be so different. The world, as we know it, would be so different if we had men of that caliber alive today. We just don't, certainly not ones who are willing to go into politics and engage in the world. We just don't have that caliber of person. All right. Last question. Let's see. Would privatizing schools fully help with the violence in the schools? That way parents can choose to send us kids to secure school if they want to. Doesn't having more liberty outweigh the risks that come with it? No question. In privatizing schools, you'd get better curriculum. You'd get better parent involvement. You'd get more motivated teachers. You'd get schools with various security levels and parents could choose. But the whole problem, I think it's the number one priority in terms of moving towards liberty and freedom and security, is to privatize the schools. Excellent. All right, guys, we did not make a $600 goal, which is unfortunate. You'll have to make it up over the weekend. I am going to go watch the game and hope you guys have a great rest of your week. I will see you on Saturday. Not sure if it's going to be 3 p.m. eastern time or 8 p.m. eastern time, but we will have shows on Saturday and on Sunday. Yeah, no Catherine, no goal. I guess so. I guess it's not enough Catherine beating you over the head and guilting you into contributing. All right, everybody. See you on the weekend.