 fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Joran Brook Show. All right, everybody. I see what's going on. We've got a bit of an echo there, but it's gone now. Hope everybody's doing fantastically well. Today is Tuesday. I hope you had a good weekend. It's March 12th. Sorry. I wasn't able to do any shows over the weekend, but I was at the INRAN Conference in Amsterdam. It was fantastic. It was really, really, really good. I mean, I was really focused on students. There were about 50 scholarships. There were 70 students at the conference and some people who paid, some paying adults. But it was a conference that was really focused on trying to engage the students and get them interested and engaged and talking and discussing and lots of Q&A and stuff like that. And it was excellent. It worked. I mean, it was really fabulous. A lot of smart kids are interested in Objectivism. I think a number of them signed out for the INRAN University, so we're very excited about that. And I think that the future of Objectivism and Objectivists in Europe looks pretty good. And hopefully some of them will make it to the United States. But yeah, I think quite a few of them will be stuck in Europe primarily because we won't take them. And it was good. It was really good. So I gave a couple of talks. I think at some point they'll be up on YouTube, I think. I'll have to find out from the Institute, but you'll be able to see them. And yeah, so I'm excited about that. I'm here in London tomorrow. I'm giving a talk on the Israeli-Palestinian issue at a foreign policy shop here, a foreign policy think tank here. That should be really interesting. We'll see what kind of response I get from them. I don't know what the audience is going to be like. I hope it's a full house, but I really have no insight into who's coming. Students, adults, people from Parliament. It's a think tank thing. And it's right opposite from Parliament. So it's near the House of Parliament here in London. So yes, as you can tell, I'm still in London. I will be doing a show from here tomorrow at some point. Not sure what time exactly. Not this time of day. Or maybe we'll see. We'll see how tomorrow evolves. And let's see what else. Yes, I'll be heading home on Thursday and we'll start back on semi-regular kind of regular activities starting Friday. Friday evening, Friday night, 8 p.m. East Coast time. Late. 8 p.m. East Coast time. There will be a, I will be talking to Ilan Juno. So Ilan from the Institute, our Israel Middle East foreign policy expert, will be discussing a bunch of stuff. Certainly we'll be talking about Israel Hamas and what's going on. But I was actually hoping that Lex would have published his Israel-Palestinian debate by then. And then Ilan and I would kind of analyze the debate. I guess there's still a chance that in the next couple of days we'll see that debate and we'll be able to discuss it. But if not, we'll talk about something else and maybe we'll get together again after Lex publishes his debate. Yeah, next foreign trip is Latin America. I will be talking in Curitiba, Brazil. Then we'll be in Buenos Aires. We'll be doing like an intense seminar for about 50 students in Buenos Aires for one day and then two days' conference. And I think some pretty cool surprising stuff is going to happen at this conference. Yet to be announced officially, so I'm not going to spoil the official announcement. But some exciting stuff going to happen at the conference and generally exciting stuff yet to happen and to be announced in the weeks ahead. What else are we going to say? Yeah, then we're going to Chile, Santiago, one day with about 30 to 50 students. And then one day general conference beyond that, no particular surprises. I don't think in Chile, but you never know. You never know. And then back home again. So God, it's going to be a lot of traveling and April is busy and May is busy and then June is Ocon. And if everything goes smoothly, I will be not home during the summer, but I'll be doing shows regularly just now from Puerto Rico. All right. What else do we want to see? What else do we want to say? I think that's it in terms of the updates that you might be interested in. Again, some I think big news important announcements to come in the days and really in the weeks to come in the weeks to come. Some for me to announce, some for the Institute to announce, so we'll see. What else? Yeah, I think we're good. I think you're good. When am I coming to Eastern Europe? I think I'm coming to Eastern Europe in the fall. The plan is to do a trip through Eastern Europe in the probably October, probably October. A plan for that. And if not October, then November, but definitely in the fall months I'll be coming to Europe. And I definitely think Eastern Europe will be part of that. Maybe Poland. I don't know about Czech Republic. Maybe Berlin. But yeah, I'm trying for Poland. We'll see. It really is bottom line for all of you out there listening. If you want me to come to your country, it's pretty easy. You know, talk to Jonathan who runs kind of our programs in Europe for the Institute. Or to me, send me an email. And if you can organize an event where you think you can get 50 to 100 people, particularly if they're students, particularly if it's at a university, but really students more broadly, then I will come. So just wherever it happens to be, I will come if you can get it organized, if you can set it up. I think we're done. I think that's it. You know, in terms of topics. Anything I'm missing, in terms of updates. I'm trying to think if I'm missing anything. I don't think so. I think I've covered everything. I'll just say, you know, your support is crucial for the show. I haven't done a lot of shows this month, and that's going to hurt the bottom line. So if you can afford to be generous, that'll be true today. And in the shows for the rest of the month, that'll be terrific. I do have kind of monthly targets that I need to hit in this month and next month because of travel. It's going to be tougher without a lot of your help. All right. So let's jump into some of the topics we have today. You know, one of the things that are coming to the forefront, and there's a lot of discussion in the media about, is a bill going through Congress that basically would force. The Chinese owner of TikTok, Bitdance, to sell to an American company or have the social media company shut down. So the U.S. government is going to basically place conditions on a social media company, on the ownership of social media company, and threaten to shut that social media company down. Now, I think this is a truly horrific development. I mean, it's been in the works since Donald Trump threatened to do it in 2019, something like that. But it really is horrific. There is no national security threat of TikTok. That's just straight out BS. Excuses for government intervention, excuses for central planning, excuses to metal in the affairs of consumers and producers with no justification, really. But that is what Democrats and Republicans. It looks like it has a bipartisan support, both Democrats and Republicans support this. It looks like it'll pass both the Senate and the House, and Joe Biden has said he would sign this. Now, there are a lot of challenges here, right? There was a challenge. I'm sure there'll be a lot of Bitdance for TikTok. It's a valuable, it's certainly a valuable property. But it's not clear that Chinese will sell it. A vast majority of the profits for Bitdance are going to be from China. And it's not clear that, you know, they're just willing to sell this, particularly given that it's being done for political reasons. China might just decide to poke America in the eye and refuse to sell. Now, of course, the United States is kind of sticking its fingers into the private parts of China. So, poking in the eye is a reasonable response. But, you know, China might not just sell and let this shut down. And if it shuts down, you've got a lot of issues. First of all, there are tens of millions of Americans who use TikTok every day, who are big fans of TikTok. Now, they will switch to Instagram, to YouTube Shorts, or to some other application. But I don't think they're going to be happy. Biden is having trouble with these kids, primarily because they are anti-Israel pro-Palestinian. And he needs their votes. Does he really want to upset them around TikTok after upsetting them around his foreign policy? You know, really not clear. But the bigger issue, the bigger issue both from a free market philosophical perspective, but also from the perspective, I think, of the US Supreme Court, is the issue of free speech. The issue of free speech. Put aside whether you like China or not like China, the United States typically does not get into business of defining who will own any particular company. Particularly when the company is not and has no national security issues. It's not developing and designing and selling chips. It's not involved in building weapon systems. It's not involved in any kind of high-tech. TikTok is an entertainment platform. It does nothing to threaten the national security of the United States. And the idea that the government, and you could argue arbitrarily, is going to, is threatening TikTok, threatening TikTok, or shutting down, is a direct intervention in the US economy, which is really unprecedented. Which is really unprecedented. It's really not happened before. The use of the federal government to stop. I mean, we've seen the stop-off on ownership of potential defense contractors, of builders of sensitive content, of other things, but so far we haven't seen stopping the Chinese from buying regular companies or even land. And no, should they stop these things? They didn't stop it when Japan was buying. They haven't stopped it when Russians own a lot of property in the United States. And that has not been stopped, which is good, which is a respect for private property. If you want to define and declare China an enemy of the United States, then you can do a lot of things. Then embargo it, take away all of its Jewish property. You can do a ton of things once it is an enemy. But nobody wants to declare China an enemy of the United States. I mean, we don't need to declare Russia an enemy of the United States while we're supporting Ukraine in battle against Russia. And we keep claiming Russia wants to launch a war against NATO and Russia are the bad guys and Russia are awful. And yet we're too afraid to declare them an enemy. We still have an embassy in Russia. We still have diplomatic relations with Russia. Suddenly, there is zero reason to ban TikTok. Now, if it turns out that supporting Bin Laden on TikTok is a national security threat, then ban promoting Bin Laden. And indeed, when TikTok, when a big deal was made out of the Bin Laden letter, all those videos we talked about on the show, all those videos praising the Bin Laden letter about 9-11, TikTok took it down, took all the videos down. So there is no threat, zero threat. I mean, propaganda, sure, every platform has propaganda. Propaganda is not a threat. Propaganda does not give the government the right to decide who can talk and who cannot talk, even if the talking is done or monitored by a company in a foreign state, even if that company is suspected, reasonably so, to be involved with that foreign government. If you want to declare them an enemy, declare them an enemy. Short of that, you have no right to shut down a company that is not involved in a national security issue. No right, zero. And indeed, I have a feeling that if this goes to court and if it reaches the Supreme Court, I think the Supreme Court will agree with me. That is, there is a clear violation of the First Amendment here. There is nothing in the First Amendment that says that if you promote videos of people we hate, you could be shut down. There is nothing in the First Amendment that says that a foreign newspaper can't come to the United States or a foreign media company can't come to the United States and promote its agenda, sell its media. We had for years in the United States, Russia today, all over the place. We have all kinds of stations and media companies in the United States that are not owned by Americans. And once you do that, you're giving immense arbitrary power to the federal government. I mean, it strikes me as nuts as usual, right? It strikes me as nuts as people who claim they promote limited government who want to support capitalism, who claim to be capitalists, want to give the federal government more power, more arbitrary power, more power to decide what media companies we can use and what media companies we cannot based on nothing, nothing but some kind of populist, arbitrary, I don't know. I'm not even sure who they're trying to appeal here. Now, on top of that, Trump is kind of being funny on this. I think the best way to categorize this is funny. So Trump came out and said he opposes the bill to ban TikTok. He started this whole thing and he opposes it. Now, it's not clear why he opposes it because he also called TikTok a threat. But he also said that some kids will go crazy without him. He doesn't want kids to go crazy. Some people are speculating that he has donors with a big financial interest in TikTok and maybe that's why he has changed his mind and flip-flops on this. He also said that he doesn't want TikTok to be sold, well, TikTok to be closed because that would strengthen one of his arch enemies, which is Facebook. Which, if you remember, Facebook banned him after the January 6th insurgency. Insurrection, not insurgency, insurrection. But he basically said he thinks the bill should not pass. Now, this will be interesting. This will be interesting. Will congressional leaders, Republicans, MAGA members of Congress, will they listen to Trump or will they go ahead and pass this anyway? MAGA seems pretty anti-TikTok, but Trump seems pretty pro-TikTok, for whatever reason. So the House of Representatives said to vote tomorrow under fast-track rules that require two-thirds of the member to vote yes for the measure to win passage. There's a good chance they'll get two-thirds, depending again on how influential Trump's voice on this is going to be. Anyway, this is the issue that people are concerned about. This, we'll talk about other issues in a minute, but we're worried about TikTok. Trump said, I'm not looking to make Facebook double the size. And if you ban TikTok, then Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. Anyway, we will see. We will see if this goes through. I think it's horrible. We will see if I'm sure TikTok will sue. It'll be interesting if the courts take this up, and it'll be interesting if this ultimately comes to the Supreme Court. But I think this is a clear-cut First Amendment issue. This is a free speech issue. And the courts, the conservative courts are being pretty good on free speech. And hey, Trump, here's an example if Trump is on the right side of this issue. As usual, almost certainly for all the wrong reasons. So yes, I condemn Trump no matter even when he's on the right side of issues because he's a moron. His rambling on this issue are stupid. And I'm going to call him when he does, is the fear of Facebook. He's not here defending free speech, God forbid. That would be something to really get my attention. The day that Trump comes out for free speech and as an advocate for free speech and standing up for free speech, then I don't know what I'll do myself. I'll be completely, completely crazy. So Trump is right for the wrong reasons. Trump is right, but he's rambling. If you listen to his discussion on TikTok and one of the interviews he did, he can't put a sentence together. He can't put a coherent sentence. People talk about Biden losing it. They're both way too old to be president. They both, mind is just not there. Neither one of them has a mind that's completely there. All right, so yeah, we'll watch TikTok. And particularly, I'm interested in what happens when it goes to court. I'm particularly interested if the First Amendment issue is raised and whether the Supreme Court will stick by its usual pretty good defense of the First Amendment. We'll see if they continue on that path. I hope so. I hope so. That'll be cool. All right, what else? Where are we? Yes, let's talk about the Biden budget. The Biden budget. I have something here about the Biden budget. It's, oops, sorry. Yeah, so Biden proposed the budget. President proposed budgets and then Congress goes ahead and ignores it. But it is kind of a blueprint, particularly in an election year. It's a blueprint of the White House's priorities. Congress, of course, is the one that budgets, that allocates money, that votes on a budget. The president can then veto or sign it. But the presidents typically propose something and it becomes at least a benchmark guideline for Congress. And it certainly tells you what is important to the president and the administration. So the budget that is being proposed, and they usually project out 10 years. So the budget proposes a $3.3 trillion of net deficit reduction through 2034. Now this is what you call playing with words. There's no net deficit reduction. It's $3.3 trillion less deficit than would otherwise be if you just continued the existing budget forever. It projects that debt would grow from 97% of gross domestic product at the end of 2023 to nearly 106% at the end of 2034. That suggests to me a significant increase in debt, which means a significant increase in the deficit. But it's saying if we continue on the path we're going to be on, it's going to be even more. We're cutting 3.3 off of this imaginary line. This is only in Washington. If you did this in business, I believe the SEC and other regulatory agencies would literally put you in jail for that kind of accounting. This is called Washington DC accounting. All administrations do it. It is truly insane and immoral and irrational and completely deceptive. The debt would approach its previous record as a share of the economy, 106% of GDP by 2030. I'm willing to bet anything that it goes to well over 106% based on its budget because the assumption is making it completely unrealistic. Deficits are going to total $16.3 trillion, and I emphasize trillion. That's $16,300 billion. $16,300 billion or $16,300 million. You can't even imagine numbers like this. You can't hold them. Talk about the crow, crow epistemology. The deficit would grow to $1.7 trillion. I remember when the whole budget was $1.7 trillion in 2034. Spending and revenue would average 24.4% and 19.7% of GDP respectively. So spending would be 24.4% of GDP. To remind you, in the 19th century, federal government spending, except during the Civil War, was typically around 3%. Now, just at the federal level, 24.4%. Historically, let's see, over the last 50 years, the average is being 21% of GDP. And a lot of that has just been a steady increase. We've seen it over 20% now for the last decade or so, starting with a great financial crisis and bushes spending like crazy. So starting really with 9-11 on, we've seen massive, historically high, unsustainable government spending, 21% of GDP. In other words, 24.4%, a quarter of all the economy is now the federal government. I'm not including state. I'm not including local, just federal government. This is statism. This is what statism is. 19.7% of GDP would be revenue. So you get a huge deficit between spending and revenue. 19.7% is massive. Historically, the average is 17.3%. Generally, it's very difficult to generate revenue above 18%. As soon as you get it around 20, people find loopholes. They find other ways. No matter what the tax rates are, revenue tends to be 17, 17.5%, 18%. You can increase taxes. People work less. People find more loopholes. You can decrease taxes. Taxes will go up a little bit. People work a little bit more. But overall, it won't exceed about 18%. It seems like a GDP. This year, by the way, I think was a particularly low year in terms of revenue. And there was only about something like 16. something percent of GDP was brought in by revenue. So actually, Biden's tax burden, the actual money paid by us in taxes, was pretty low this last year for a variety of reasons. I think that's because it included, there were no capital gains taxes because in 2022, most people lost money in the market and therefore paid no capital gains taxes in 2023. Now, this idea of projected deficit reduction is going to be because of new spending. It's going to include 900 billion of spending reductions and 400 billion of net interest savings. These are all based on assumptions about interest rates in the future, assumptions that are pretty generous. The budget assumes real GDP growth of 2.1% per year, which is pretty pathetic. But I think it's going to be really challenging for the US economy to achieve over the next decade, given the regulatory burden, given the tax rates and given the amount of central planning, whoever wins the White House is going to engage in. And it assumes a 10-year Treasury yield of 3.8% compared, which is lower than what the Congressional Budget Office assumes, which is 4%. 3.8%. Hard to tell how realistic that is or not. It really depends on inflation and there depends on so many factors. This is the thing about these budgets, they project them out 10 years, they don't know what they're doing. One of the things that Biden is proposing is the introduction of taxes on unrealized capital gains. Which is in a sense of wealth tax, which would be particularly horrific for the US and the US economy and US wealth creation and investment. But I just don't think that will ever pass Congress. I hope that that will never pass Congress. Anyway, spending is out of control, deficits are out of control. At some point the United States is going to have to pay a price for that. It already does and that price is lower economic growth, but we don't feel it as much because we don't know what the alternative is when the economy is growing higher at a higher percentage rate. We would be in a way so much richer if not for these deficits. But go tell people that, go explain people that, go make that real for people. People can't really hold that. They don't really hold it. We're stuck with saying it could be better, but I'm not sure how convincing that is for people more generally. One of the big issues, of course, is Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are going to dominate government spending in the years to come. The United States is aging. The amount of people relying on Social Security and Medicare is only going to increase over the next decade or so. The portion that is dedicated to Social Security and Medicare is only going to increase dramatically. Swamp everything else, bigger than the fence, bigger than all discretionary spending. Basically, this budget will be dominated by interest payment, defense spending, but overwhelming. Both of those is going to be entitlements. I think whatever Congress, whatever the Biden administration is projecting is optimistic. I think it's likely to be a lot worse than that, deficits and debts and everything else. Really, the only way to fix this, the only way to fix the budgetary deficits, the only way to shrink government spending significantly, you can shrink it a little bit, but at this point, where we are today, the only way to do it is by reforming Social Security and Medicare. This is obvious, obvious to everybody who looks at the numbers, obvious to anybody who studies budgets. Medicare is bankrupting this country. Now, one of Biden's proposals are to basically increase taxes on Medicaid. You can solve lots of problems by increasing taxes. Taxes on wages, investment gains, and self-employment income. And primarily, the focus is on those earning more than $400,000 a year. That should extend a significant portion of Medicare trust fund for a long, long time. So that is what Biden is pushing. And generally, I think Biden is going to advocate for raising Social Security payroll taxes, raising Medicare taxes, raising other taxes, particularly for the rich. They think the rich are an endless source of sucking. And the same, ultimately, I think they were going to advocate on the side of Social Security. Now, on the other hand, in his State of the Union address, Biden basically said, look, Republicans, Republicans want to put Social Security in a chopping block. They want to cut it. They want to reform it. But he was like, I'm not going to allow it. We will not cut Social Security and Medicaid. Now, some Republicans yelled at him, liar. I wish they said, yes, we do want to cut Social Security and Medicaid. It's time. It's impossible to continue at this rate. We have to reform them. We're going to have a bipartisan commission on how to reform them. We can do this or that. But they have to be reformed financially and ethically. Of course, Social Security and Medicaid are sick, crazy programs that basically massive redistribution of wealth, the largest redistribution of wealth, maybe in the world, from young people to old people. From young people just starting out their careers, needing capital to buy a home, start a business, raise a family to old people who should have saved, who don't have that many, that much future and therefore that many needs. It's unbelievably immoral. We live in a world in which we favor the old so dramatically, particularly in these entitlements. And notice these entitlements are now for the poor. You could have a welfare program for poor old people. The reason these entitlements are popular, the reason you can't get rid of them, the reason nobody will consider even saying anything about them, is because they're middle class. Because they affect the middle class. Most of the recipients of Social Security and Medicaid, most of the people benefiting from it are upper middle, lower middle class. They're all middle class. And God forbid you touch those. Those are beyond touching. Trump is pushing the Republican Party away from any kind of reworking of these programs. He has basically said he wants to leave these programs intact. When Joe Biden in his State of the Union address accused Republicans of wanting to put Social Security in the chopping block, Trump wrote, Republicans have no plan to cut Social Security and made up story by Crooked Joe. That's what he wrote on Truth Social. Now he did do an interview later where he said, there's a lot of waste and fraud. We're going to cut waste and fraud from Social Security. There's a lot to cut from waste and fraud, which is bullshit, in which every administration claims there is. And every administration. Okay, one second. All right, sorry about that. Nobody knocking on my door. All right. Yeah, well, conservatives historically, the Republican Party have talked about entitlement reform. They've talked often about entitlement reform. Indeed, Senator Scott from Florida has suggested kind of sunset laws that all federal laws sunset after five years so that they have to be reinstated. And in his original plan, he included Social Security, Medicaid, Medicaid. Trump has basically forced him to back off of that and to basically take Social Security, Medicaid, Medicaid off the table. Remember, Trump voters are old. Trump voters are old. I don't know how old Scott is, but he's probably one of those voters. But Trump voters are old and they don't want their Social Security taken away from them. They don't want their Medicaid taken away from them. So sadly, there is basically nobody out there. There's nobody in politics today arguing for eliminating, not eliminating even God eliminating, that would be something. There's nobody out there in politics today arguing for reducing Social Security and Medicaid or reforming Social Security, Medicaid or rationalizing Social Security, Medicaid and putting it anything on some kind of footing that aid could survive would be ideally, from my perspective, morally phased out. And of course, nobody, nobody, nobody is talking about abolishing them and the fact that these are moral travesties. But that, the culture is going to have to change dramatically, dramatically for that to happen. So here we have both of our leading presidential candidates evading and ignoring the issue with Social Security. Both pretending they can solve it and both pretending they can solve the problem and both basically making the problem worse and they will make it worse. Biden's budget, again meaningless because it's not what will pass or not pass, is awful. It extends and grows statism. But we also know that when Trump was president, government spending accelerated. Indeed, it was decelerating. Government spending was decelerating during the Obama years because he had to deal with the Republican Congress. And it accelerated in the Trump years. And I expect that if Trump gets into power next year, he will want a lot of money to spend. That's what powers for, right? Grab as much money and allocate it to your favorite causes and display it out there and give it to your friends and use it as a power play. So no matter who wins this election, the one thing that we will be hurting for is any kind of economic, physical sanity. And you see, this is the difference between me and Scott, right? Scott is so blinded by partisanship. So blinded by who the president is, R or D, so blinded by his hatred of the left. When something good happens under, let's say, a Democratic president, he will ignore it or pretend it didn't happen. Evade it really, morally evade it. And when something bad happens under a Republican president, he will basically justify it and rationalize it and, again, morally evade its actual consequences. Because truth doesn't matter. Reality doesn't matter. What actually works and what actually promotes American well-being doesn't matter. The only thing that matters for people like Scott is who did it, who done it. Is it my team or their team? We talked a lot at the European conference over the weekend in Amsterdam about tribalism. And one of the, you know, tribalism primarily, it's primary manifestation. It's primary manifestation is an inability to think for oneself. It's epistemological. And what we're seeing with, to large extent, both political parties is, but what's shocking is among people who claim to be objectives, to free marketers, is when it comes to politics, complete and utter mindless tribalism, complete and utter rejection of one's own mind, rejection of reality, rejection of reason, in the name of my team versus their team, my team versus their team. And that's exactly the case. I criticize them all. I tell you what it's like in reality. You then choose whoever you want, vote for whoever you want. But, you know, I will call when somebody does something good. And by the way, Obama didn't reduce government spending because he wanted to. As I said, Obama reduced government spending because it was the only way he could negotiate with Congress. It was the only thing he could negotiate with Congress to get some of his other priorities passed. He had to give the Republicans a cut in spending. Republicans have been in the past no more. This is Trump's fault, no more. They have been in the past. A decent opposition party. But Trump has destroyed that. So Republicans could have insisted on Biden reducing spending as a percent of GDP. They have not. Republicans could have gotten a border deal with Biden as an opposition party by squeezing him on other issues. But they have not because Trump would not allow them. Republicans could have done a lot of different things to make this country better as an opposition party, which they are not doing because A, it's not Trump's priorities. And B, Trump doesn't want Biden to look good in any dimension. He wants it to fail in every dimension. And therefore he will not allow congressional Republicans to do anything good and right if it somehow is perceived as helping Biden. And that is, again, mindless tribalism that people like Scott cheer and support and love and embrace and drown their own mind in. All right. So yeah, nothing much is changing. Okay, quick story just to scare you a little bit. But this is interesting and I'm curious what you think in terms of how you think this would happen. What do you think would happen here in a free market? It turns out that your auto company, right now that every car that you drive has a chip in it. That chip is monitoring your driving behavior. It knows what speed you drive. It knows when you brake fast. It knows how you take corners. It's monitoring your driving. It monitors the engine. It monitors every aspect of the car. How far you drive. And that information is provided to the auto companies. That information is provided to General Motors or Ford or Toyota or whatever. And those auto companies then sell that data to a company called Lexus Nexus. Lexus Nexus is a data aggregator, global data broker. It used to be a legal search database, but the internet has made that irrelevant. So they've shifted to being this global data broker. And all this data goes to their risk solution division. And then Lexus Nexus sells this data to the insurance companies. Auto insurance companies. And then auto insurance companies use this data to assess how risky of a driver you are. And based on that, they will adjust your premiums. So if you notice that your premiums are going up a lot, it could be because you've been driving fast. You've been stomping on the brakes really, really hard. You've been accelerating really, really fast. And they have accurate data to suggest all this. Now, there's something really rotten about this. Something right about it and something very rotten about it. What's right about it is, yeah, insurance companies are really interested in this data. Insurance companies, I mean, it's great if they can really price insurance based on the real risk that you're driving poses. It will actually make insurance ultimately the long run for most of us, particularly for safe drivers, more affordable. So this is rational and logical from the insurance perspective. It's actually good for all of us in the sense that insurance premiums will actually reflect risk much better than they ever have. But on the other hand, I don't remember giving permission to use my driving data for this purpose. I don't remember giving permission for the auto company to accumulate this data and then to sell it. There's something really wrong with this assumption that the data can be bought and sold, transferred, taken, and that the individual whose data it refers to has no say in the matter. Like maybe we signed when we bought the car some form. It just allows the auto company to accumulate all the data once on us. But something's wrong with that. Generally contracts today suck and are non-objective. And you can tell they're non-objective by the fact that they're so long and so complicated nobody reads them. Contracts, particularly consumer contracts, should be written in plain English, should be short and simple. But we have a legal system that is perverted and distorted. The whole area of contract law, and of course one of the consequences of this, is that privacy is completely eroded, distorted, perverted. And they think they can just take our data and do whatever they want to do with it. There's something very perverse about that. There's something very, very wrong about that. So if the auto company asked me whether I was willing to have my data sent to the auto insurance company, I would say yes. But then you've got a moral hazard problem. That is good drivers would send auto information to the insurance company. But then what would happen, which is interesting, right? The insurance company would then take that into account. And if you refused to share the data with them, they would raise your premiums. Because they would rationally assume that your reason you didn't want to share your data with them is because you were a risky driver and you didn't want your premiums to go up. So they would go up anyway. So actually making this voluntary and making and allowing individuals to decide whether to share the data or not, actually allowing individuals to own their own data and then contract it out, sell it out, instead of what is probably going to happen with one side of the legislation that says one way or the other, would actually create a healthier, better use of data and a healthier, better kind of relationship between the insurance and for all, you know, basically for how all of this actually works. And ultimately that means lower premiums, better service, the whole shebang. But for that you need freedom. For that you also need basically what we need today is legislation that says you as an individual own your data and in order for you to give that up, it has to be in a context that is clear and non-confusing for the consumer. You can't have these complex ridiculously long contracts that half the time you don't know what they're actually saying. All right, let's see. Okay, good. So we're going to go to the super chat. I remind everybody that you can use the super chat to ask questions. You can use the super chat to engage and change the topic of the conversation. And importantly, you can use the super chat to support the show. You can use, for example, stickers to support the show. Thank you, Wes. Wes did a $50 sticker that is incredibly helpful to getting to our goals. We, as I said, haven't done shows for a while, so hopefully we can get your support so we don't fall back too far from achieving our goals for the month. Steven, thank you for the $20 super chat, for the sticker. Thank you for the sticker and thanks to everybody else. All right, so please feel free to use the super chat. Of course, if you want to support the show monthly, you can do so on your own bookshelf dot com slash membership or on Patreon. Patreon is cool. All right, here we go. Remo is at the conference at Amsterdam. I think he had a good time. I think he really enjoyed it. Right, Remo? All right, thoughts on two-tier board system in comparison to one-tier board system? I don't like two-tier board system. I think it lacks transparency. It creates different levels and different kinds of directors. I don't think there should be that. Already you have, every board has committees, committees that have different responsibilities. But at the end of the day, there should be one group of people, one group, one board that represents shareholders. And as the shareholders representatives, you know, make strategic decisions for the film and therefore can hire, fire CEOs and do other strategic decisions. I think a two-tier is confusing and risks creating factions and risk internal confusion and internal, what do you call it, infighting. So I like simplicity when it comes to these things. I haven't seen the academic research about two-tier versus one-tier boards, but I suspect that if you looked at that academic research, the one-tier system probably leads to greater shareholder returns. James says, men of genius are admired. Men of wealth are envied. Men of power are feared. But only men of character are trusted. Yes, but really in a world, in a rational world, in a free market, men of wealth are men of character. I mean, the challenge here is, and the sad thing about statements like this is, they separate this out and character goes with wealth. It doesn't go with power and it doesn't necessarily go with genius. But it certainly does go with wealth when you're talking about a market economy. Michael, is the nihilistic woke nonsense going to be the catalyst that motivates enough voters to start privatizing education? It certainly has in certain states. There seems to be a real push at least to do education saving accounts, which I think is the path to privatization ultimately. There seems to be a lot more school choice on state ballots and in front of state legislatures, and I think that is ultimately not a consequence necessarily just of good ideas, but a consequence of bad ideas and people observing those bad ideas manifest in education. It's a consequence of nihilistic woke. It's a consequence of DEI. It's a consequence of all the post-colonialism, all the nonsense going on at schools is convincing parents to homeschool more and it's convincing parents to put more pressure on legislatures to endorse school choice. And we just need the school choice to be more thorough and systematic. My fear is the Republicans don't really want to give up on education because they want to use education to indoctrinate kids with their own agenda and therefore that they will halt the school choice movement. But we will see. So far, you know, a lot of red states have moved towards education saving accounts. I really, really, really hope that that trend continues. I'm just not sure because I don't think somebody like Trump or even DeSantis really want that. Gail, thank you. Geffrey? Jeffrey? Geffrey? Thank you. Really appreciate the support, guys. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. That's really, really helpful for the algorithm. The algorithm really likes interaction. So participate in the chat, do super chats, do stickers, but like the show. Does it cost you anything? Just to click that like button on the app, on the YouTube channel that you are watching. All right, let's see. Liam says, I found that educated intellectuals have more respect for the fountainhead than Atlas shrugged, including many leftists. Why is this? Well, first because there's a way in which fountainhead is a more condensed, integrated story. It's easier to grasp. It's more focused. In a sense, maybe it's a better novel in that sense. It's less grand. It's less all-encompassing, and therefore people, I think, including intellectuals, can relate to it better. The other thing is about the fountainhead. The fountainhead is about independence, but that's the theme. But it really focuses on artistic independence, artistic integrity. And I think a lot of leftists, particularly artists, like that idea. They don't like the consequences of it. But they like the idea of artistic integrity. They really admire Walk, I think, for, you know, abandoning the bank project and going to the quarry, giving up money and sticking to his principles. Again, I don't think they understand the implication of that. They don't understand where that's heading. They don't understand what that means for freedom and liberty and capitalism. But, you know, a lot of leftists like this theme of integrity and they associate Walk with a kind of counterculture. I'm going to stick to my values. I'm going to stick to my art no matter what, whether it sells or it doesn't sell. I'm going to do the kind of art I believe in. You hear a lot of leftists talking about that. But, yeah, that Duda Bunny says, you notice a lot of libertarians are more aware of objectivists than they used to be. A lot of libertarians are debating objectivists about IP and war in Israel on their podcasts. Good. I mean, that's good. I don't know the more libertarians are aware of objectivists. More libertarians have podcasts. So you're aware of their awareness of objectivism. But, good, I don't know that we're making any inroads. I don't know that we're convincing libertarians. I don't know that that is the best audience for us to be engaging in and hoping to convert. I'm just not convinced of that, but, you know, good. The more objectivist intellectuals are out there debating, speaking, interacting, getting our ideas out there, the better. So, I'm excited to see so many new young objectivists engaged in the battle of ideas. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's the only way we win. It's the only way we win. We win. And I think that phenomena is only going to increase. And the objectivists doing the debating will only get better, much better. All right, I and Mirkat are going to disagree with you on this issue. Zuckerberg or anyone else from a normal country ran an identical app. I would agree with you. China is an enemy state and should be treated as such, especially the tech sector. By the way, Gaza must be destroyed. You know, we're going to disagree on this. China might be an enemy state. I'm not sure I'm ready to quite declare China as an enemy. But if it is, then declare China as an enemy. And then sure, then you can shut down TikTok. You still have an embassy there. We still have massive trade with China. We still cooperate with China on a variety of different things. We're not treating China as an enemy. We've picked TikTok out of a whole... China owns a lot of land in the... Chinese companies own land in the United States. They own other companies. We've picked TikTok out of nothing. It's completely arbitrary. And it's clearly a violation of free speech. The free speech of the people who post on TikTok. The free speech of everybody who's engaged on TikTok. They are now being restricted in terms of the platform they can use. And the free speech of TikTok. And TikTok is operating in the United States. And therefore should be protected by the free speech in the United States. Free speech laws in the United States. Now, true, if you are convinced that China is an enemy, then, okay, declare it an enemy, pull your ambassador, stop trade, embargo it, and shut down TikTok. I'm fine. I'm with you. But you can't just pick and choose which of those you want to do. You either do them all or you don't do any of them. You do them all or you don't do any of them. And to pick TikTok is a massive violation of free speech and a very, very dangerous precedent for the U.S. government to decide to shut down a social media company. Not good. Not good at all. And by the way, I don't see how it's a threat. It's not tech. It's not chip. It's not hardware. It's not really software. It's stupid videos. There's nothing to tech about TikTok. It's a media company. It's not a tech company. There's no national security implications. Zoo. Yeah, they accumulate data on the cat videos, you know, Scott watches. Who cares? Clark is the term neurodivergent legitimate. There are some very strange people out there who I don't believe suffer from, only from bad philosophy. Physiologically, their brain is wired in a screwy way. Okay, so I don't know if the term neurodivergent is legitimate. I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. So I can't comment on whether a term is legit or not in a field I really know very little about. I am pretty sure, and psychologists and psychologists that I've talked to have confirmed that there is a physiologically cause for many, many psychiatric problems. This idea that it's all psychological, that it all comes from bad philosophy, that is, everything psychological comes from bad philosophy is just wrong. Some of it comes from screwy chemicals in the brain and problems in the brain, trauma to the brain, all kinds of things that can happen to the brain that can cause real psychiatric problems. So some of them clearly, a lot of psychological problems, some psychiatric problems caused by bad philosophy, but not all of them, not all of them. And you can see that by the fact that you can fix some of these with drugs. That means the drugs help. The drugs change, which means the drugs don't change your philosophy. They only change the chemistry or the electricity or the connections or whatever it is that they do in the brain. Harper Campbell, when was the last time you flew coach on an airplane? Since you began flying first class, do you find it impossible to go back to flying coach? Also, is it egalitarian of airlines to stop calling it first class? Now they call it premier boarding. Yesterday? I think it was yesterday? Yesterday, I flew coach. I fly coach quite a bit if the price difference is high or if the trip is short, like I flew from London to Amsterdam, it didn't make sense to fly business. One of the reasons is in Europe, business class on most airlines is the same seat as coach, it's exactly the same. Just a little bit more leg room or sometimes if they have three and three, they leave the middle seat vacant so it's less congested. But the seat itself is the same. So if it's a relatively short flight or if the price difference is very large, I don't mind flying coach. When I do fly coach, what I do is I get an exit seat and exit seats, at least in the plane I flew yesterday, the leg room was larger than the leg room for first class. It just wasn't necessary. I don't fly coach on red eyes. So if I'm going to fly red eye, I want to lie flat bed. So the only time I will absolutely never fly coach is on very long flights and on overnight flights. Also, is it egalitarian of airlines to stop calling first class? I think they stop calling first class because people expectation of first class are very high and a lot of these are not first class. They're not first class experiences and therefore they're starting to change the language because people are complaining that you're not getting a first class experience. You're getting kind of just a little bit better than economy so why are you calling it first? So airlines are adjusting to adjust expectations of flyers. Michael, why do so many intellectuals contribute nothing to the world with negativity? Because that's what their ideas are. Those are the ideas that they believe in. They believe in ideas that that impact on the world is negative. They believe in, they hold ideas that are destructive, that are malevolent and you know, it's the why is that and the reason for that is that we live in a world that is ultimately dominated by philosophy and the philosophy that dominates the world today is a philosophy that is pretty anti-life, ain't I man? Whether it's post-modernism on the one side or religion on the other side, these are philosophies that are anti-living. If you hold a philosophy that's anti-living, whether from the left or from the right, then you're going to be negative. It's not a surprise that shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that intellectuals are negative. Intellectuals are the ones who take ideas seriously and when you take ideas seriously, the negativity of the ideas is going to reflect in the negativity of your life and the negativity of your advocacy and the negativity of your interpretation of the world. Alright, let's see. Andrew says, Illuminating and frightening video on ARI channel reviews a Prager University video of a philosophy professor arguing that morality must start with fear of God. That wipes out the good content of Prager University for me. Any comment? Yeah, I mean, I think it's wiped out. I mean, I have rejected Prager University a long time ago when Prager University was really, really, really pushing and pushing and pushing the idea that you cannot have morality without God. Now it's fear of God. So I haven't taken Prager University seriously for a long time and it's not like they produce really, really valuable content because the content mostly is bad and it's all short. Really, really short videos. And even when the content is good, it's very short. So it's of only partial value. But no, Prager University is awful. Its accuracy of religion is terrible. It has put religion front and center for everything that they do, everything that they believe in, everything that they hold. So yeah, I have not had any respect for Prager University content a long time. The only good content of Prager University, as far as I'm concerned, is Alex Epstein stuff. All right, Stephen Hopper. Did you eat John Bolton's opinion piece in Sunday's Wall Street Journal? Advocating that Trump, if elected, should lay off NATO and instead target the U.N.? I did. And, you know, I have been and continue to be and was for a long time a John Bolton fan. And when Trump chose John Bolton to be his National Security Advisor, I was excited about that. I thought that was the best appointment, one of the best appointment that the Trump made. And but you could tell that from the beginning, Bolton was not allowed to really, you know, move foreign policy in the direction that he wanted. And of course, he was fired. He didn't last very long and he was fired. He was fired because he was too good. He was too good for Trump. Trump's foreign policy is awful. It's evil. It's horrible. It's as bad of Biden as Biden's, if not worse. And, you know, John is good. And this is an example. The problem today with American foreign policy is not NATO. The problem today with American foreign policy is its support for the U.N., support for the humanitarian aid that is provided to Hamas. The problem with American foreign policy today is it's still accommodating Hamas. It's still ships right now. The fact that we're building in Gaza a floating port so we can provide them with more altruistic humanitarian supplies. The problem with American foreign policy is we won't take on Iran, not properly, not aggressively. The problem with American foreign policy is a million other things that we don't do. Maybe if I make it as right, then the problem with foreign policy is we don't declare, we haven't declared China to be the enemy. Lots of problems with American foreign policy. NATO is not at the top of the list. NATO is one of the better things that exist today, because NATO basically is an alliance of free countries, of all the alliances we have out there. NATO is not a bad one. And we should definitely consider creating an alliance like it in the southeast Pacific, in the southwest Pacific, southwest Pacific fast. You know, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, maybe even get Indonesia. And certainly India, India just launched two, it was just showing off, not launched, it's two aircraft carriers. It has just announced the finishing of the testing of a very sophisticated ballistic missile system that it has. India is a significant military ally of the United States, opposite China. And those should be the focuses. The focuses should be on lying and bringing together the free countries of the world and telling the not free countries of the world to go to hell. I mean the problem is going to be that in a second Trump administration you won't have Bolton, you won't have Mathis, you won't even have Jared Kushner, and you won't have, what's his name, Kelly. You won't have the adults in the room. A second Trump administration will be filled with MAGA and different types of MAGA foreign policy people that you've never heard of and never should hear of because they're incompetent and awful. M. Azhan, any favorite books or book recommendations on one American history and also two slavery and three colonialism books without any leftist baggage? Yeah, I don't actually not right now, not off the cuff, certainly not away from my bookcase, but no. It's very hard to find books without any leftist baggage. Ultimately remember, leftists dominate the academic field, so to a large extent they dominate the study of history and they dominate all of that, so I just don't have a list. If you want, for a lot of that actually, for a lot of that, I would check out Bradley Thompson. Bradley Thompson from Clemson University. Bradley Thompson Clemson University has been on the show many times. He's written some American history, the founding in particular, more intellectual histories, but he has written about slavery. He's got a book about slavery and he's also written about the history, the intellectual history again of slavery, how self-defended slavery. Generally, Bradley Thompson's books are good on American history. There are others, they're just not right in my mind right now easily for me to just spill it out there. Okay guys, we're about $200 short of a goal. It would be great if we could make it. We really haven't raised a significant amount of money in a while and March is struggling to get our goals in March, so it would be great if February was fantastic. You guys were great in February. Let's keep it going. James, what positives and negatives have you seen in the UK this year? Do you see anything that will advance freedom of capitalism? Do you see a lot of wealth in London or is that over for the near future? What I see, I see a lot of negatives in the UK. The Conservative Party has proven themselves to be basically socialists to be terrible. The public sees that, knows that. The Conservatives have completely, completely destroyed any opportunity that existed because of Brexit. The United Kingdom is the inner recession. You don't see it in London, but I'm sure that if you go to Manchester and Liverpool and the industrial north, you will see that recession and even in parts of London it exists. So certainly the UK is in really bad shape. It also looks like the next election, whenever that happens to be, the next election will see the Conservative Party basically be wiped out. The Labour Party will be the next party that creates a government in the UK. The Labour Party is really bad, or at least elements within it are horrifically bad, but they will be the next government whether you like it or not because the Conservative Party has been so bad and the British public is fed up with them and ready to kick them out. And so yeah, in that sense, I don't see any chance for the advance of freedom of capitalism. Again, the UK was somewhere where before COVID I was very positive on and I thought there were real forces within the Conservative Party that were going to move in the right direction. I thought there were some really interesting voices that they had a real opportunity with Brexit, but I mean everything they did turned out to be horrible and they're completely self-destructive. Again, the right in many respects was on the left and self-destructing so that when the left comes to power there will be no opposition, no opposition. Other negatives of course is the just prevalence of Hamas loving Muslims and leftists in the UK. It's just horrible, it's just awful, it's just disgusting. The fact that the police won't protect Jews, the fact that the police don't stop these demonstrations from turning violent, just terrific. By the way, the Hamas, pro-Hamas people were out in force in Amsterdam. Just terrible. On the other hand, you see a ton of wealth in London. I mean people are shopping, streets are crowded, both tourists and locals. The hotels are packed. A night in a hotel here is easily five, six, seven, eight hundred bucks a night, particularly right now when it's super busy. You see Rolls Royces, you see Bentley's, you see Ferrari's. I saw the other day, right in the centre of London, it's on McLaren, a million dollar car. You see a ton of wealth here, a ton of wealth. And it's not like it used to be all Russian wealth because a lot of the Russians have their assets frozen and are not here because they were kicked out, but there's wealth. London is an incredibly successful city. London is an incredibly successful worth creating city. It's a dynamic city. It's an amazing city. I love London. In spite of all the negatives, London pushes forward, pushes on. Another example of a blue city surrounded by red doing better than where the red is. The reality is England is in big trouble. London is surviving. James, why do so many people convert to Islam as opposed to Christianity? Do you think the trend will continue? Do you see countries like Indonesia and other Southeast Asian Muslim countries will keep growing despite religion? I think in many respects Islam is a much more positive, much more optimistic religion than Christianity is. Christianity is a confusing mess and Christianity requires you to believe in original sin. It requires you to believe in sacrifice and Islam in certain variations of it is pro-business. Certain variations of it is pro-family and sex and men. It attracts a certain type of person. What's his name in Romania? I forget his name. Islam has a certain self-esteem about it. It's a winning religion. Christianity is a losing religion. Christianity is a religion for the poor, the meek. We shouldn't inherit the earth. There are certain things that Islam is more attractive to people in certain respects than Christianity is. It also promises much more in terms of heaven than Christianity does. Depending on the sect of Christianity, you might be already predestined. God might already know where you're going to heaven and hell. It doesn't matter what you do. There's a certain element of Islam is just the elements of it that are just more pro-life than Christianity. Christianity is about the combination of worse stuff that you can imagine. The only thing that's virtuous about Christianity is that it's being secularized and the enlightenment went through it and it's being modified and it's being changed. But I'm not even sure it's true that Islam is more attractive. That is, a lot of people are converting to Christianity, particularly in Africa. Latin America is still dominantly Christian. Christianity defends murder. It used to. Ask Charlemagne. Ask the popes. Christianity forced people to convert to Christianity. Christianity was the first religion really to use the sword to convert people to its religion. I mean, I'm sure there were religions that did that before that but Christianity did it on a massive scale. Islam just learned from the Christians how to do that well. But remember Christians went to Crusades killing slaughtering pagans and not just in the Middle East but also in Lithuania, Poland and Germany, other places. So yeah, don't pretend that Islam defends murder and Christianity doesn't. Christianity is just being reformed and Islam hasn't. Countries like Indonesia, I think there's a cap to how far they can grow unless they start giving up on religion and become more secular. I don't know how deeply ingrained religion is in the cities in Indonesia. I just don't know. I don't know enough about Indonesia. But Indonesia is doing very well economically right now and we'll see if that continues. Andrew, can you comment on the content of the claim that morality must begin with a fear of God? Why is that wrong? Well, God, I mean, that's a whole, that's a whole, that's a whole episode of the Iran book show, right? I mean, so you have to, you can't have morality a guide to living your life on this earth without believing in an nonexistent entity by faith and then doing what it tells you to do because you're afraid of it. That's not morality. That's dogma. And it's dogma that doesn't lead to life, which is what morality should lead you to. It's dogma that leads to suffering and death, which is what fear is geared towards. Fear is not geared towards living, enjoying, achieving, succeeding, self-esteem. It's not geared towards happiness. It's not geared towards achievement, towards eudaiminea. Fear is geared towards suffering. Fear is geared towards death. Fear is geared towards running away. And for Christianity, it's true that morality is primarily a negative. Morality is primarily what not to do. Morality is primarily about, yeah, the things to avoid, the things to escape. So, yeah, it's a very negative morality. It's a very bad morality that has led to huge amounts of bloodshed in spite of what Jesus might or might not have said. I'm not one to interpret Jesus. I believe Augustine studied Jesus much better than I do, and so did the many Popes and the many Christian scholars. Do you know that during the 30-year war, Germans killed one-third of the German population over religion? 33% of all the people in Germany were killed by their own people. Reminds me of the Khmer Rouge, right? During the 30-year war, because German Catholics were killing German Protestants and German Protestants were killing German Catholics. So, don't tell me, don't tell me. For one iota, don't tell me. Christianity is a religion of peace. Christianity doesn't support murder. Christianity doesn't convert people by their sword. Christianity leaves you alone for your own religious freedom. I call BS on all of that. You want to interpret Jesus that way, go for it. But the scholars, the theologians, the thinkers, the religious experts throughout history have all interpreted Christianity differently. I'm sure Jesus didn't say anything about burning heretics at the stake, and yet Christians did that for hundreds of years. So what Jesus said is not important. What's important is how people interpreted, because Jesus didn't say anything very clearly. He wasn't exactly a philosopher. And we don't know what Jesus said, by the way. We have no accounts of Jesus saying anything. He didn't write any books. He didn't give any philosophy lectures. You know, Paul, who maybe met Jesus, probably never did, writes letters about Jesus, the apostles. We don't know who wrote exactly everything, and it's years and years and years later. And, you know, the canon was chosen with some apostles and not others. I mean, the whole thing is arbitrary. The whole thing is arbitrary. So, don't tell me what Christianity is or isn't. Show me what they've done. James says, have you heard of a comedian named Patrice One? How much will it cost to review a video by him? He was a comic that lived by integrity. I've never heard of him. Never heard of him. I don't know how long is the video. It depends how long the video is. So, I don't know. The three-minute song is $100. So, if it's a short skit, $100. If it's a longer piece, $250. So, figure out how long you think it is and adjust. Charles Wood says, what would have left us ten commandments include? I don't know. They'll should live. You know, I think it'll include a lot of the questions and commandments. But it would have something more egalitarian in it. They'll shall share my wife and property with my neighbor. I don't know. Something like that. So, it would have something egalitarian in it. It wouldn't have the first two commandments. But it would have, you know, parents, family. It would still have that. It would have covered that neighbor's wife probably. It would probably be covered. But a lot of it would be they shall not have more than my neighbor. They shall not oppress my neighbor. They shall not have a color skin that my neighbor finds offensive. They shall not say anything that my neighbor finds offensive. Things like that, right? What it will really promote is kind of an egalitarian view of life in the world. Thank you. Shazwat, $50. Really, really appreciate it. Kim, see you and other objective heroes in Buenos Aires. Looking forward to it. Looking forward to it. StarJet says, good show. Thank you, StarJet. Maximus says, can the West survive without African minerals and resources? What if Africa turns its back on the West? Yeah, it can. A lot of that once the cost of those minerals and resources will go up, then they will start mining for those resources in the West. They're huge deposits of rare earth materials in the United States, Canada, in Australia, in other places. And if the West is desperate enough, they'll start mining in spite of all the environmental regulation. Also, if a certain resource is made unavailable, then people find substitutes for it. Nothing, nothing. No resource I know of. One cannot find a substitute for it. So, you know, I really wouldn't worry about running out of resources, whether from Africa or anywhere else. What is your favorite kind of Scotch and red wine? I don't drink Scotch. I don't have a favorite. I don't have a favorite red wine. I don't know. It depends on my mood. Generally, I'd say a Zinfandel, a red Zinfandel are my favorites. But I love some calves or some Pinot Noir. Is that a great? I love a good Timonio or a Rioja. Yeah, there's an endless number of good wines out there. I can't say that I know enough about wines or have developed enough of a palette to be able to say what my favorite is. But probably Zinfandel is if I was pushed. Tom says, is a problem that people today just cannot envisage living without a welfare state? Is it that the memory of life without welfare has faded? What can be done? No, I mean, I don't think that's a problem. Because, hey, when people did have a memory of life before the welfare state, they still voted for a welfare state and they still supported a welfare state overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly. The problem today is it's always been as philosophical. The problem is always ideas. The problem is culture. The problem is the culture of dependency, the culture of entitlement, the culture of lack of real, real personal responsibility, the lack of people taking their life seriously. That's the problem. Again, it is not, not, not the issue of memory or knowledge. It's the issue of do I love my life? Do I care about my life? Do I take my life seriously or not? Ryan, do you think it's worth it to argue politics with strangers? I put an Israel flag and a Ukraine flag sticker in my car and it has led to some arguments with some very opinionated people. I think it's good just to piss them off and to show support and to stand up to your values. I don't think it's good if what you expect from it is to change people's minds. But sometimes just sticking them in the eye is worthwhile for the pleasure of it. Ike, I don't know if you've noticed on Twitter the right defending hillbilly culture. When other people play it dirty in dirty water, we call them savages. But when Southerners do it, we call it Southern pride. Yeah, I mean I'm with you completely. I am with you completely. You remember we did that song, I forget the name of the song. You know, the right has become a supporter of simple, traditional and mindless. And they're embracing that kind of culture, that kind of music, that kind of behavior. I have not seen it on Twitter, but I will look for it. Hillbilly culture is worth making fun of because it's not good. It's not good. It's been crazy with its soldiers changing genders. I haven't read the story yet, Frank, but yeah, if what you say is true, then it's absolutely insane. It's absolutely insane to create those kind of incentives and it's absolutely insane for people to do something like that in order to get a little bit more money. And this is the kind of entitled world we live in. Where you'll do anything to get more money for the government or something like that rather than earning more money, rather than working harder or stuff like that. Neocon, Iran, did you hear that Pope said Zelensky should have courage to negotiate with Russia? Yes, I know. In my opinion, he should be more worried about pedophiles and his own ranks in geopolitics. Yeah, I mean the Pope is awful. Why anybody listens to Pope I don't know, anybody should listen to. I hope this makes Poland less Catholic. That would be a good effect of this. But yes, the Pope wants Ukraine to surrender. This particular Pope is a leftist Pope. He's a bit of a pacifist Pope. And remember, Putin's more religious. There's real evil in Catholicism. There's real evil in every single Pope. All these Popes, including Pope Paul, the Polish Pope that everybody admired. They're all bad. They're all horrible human beings. He did some good stuff by standing up to the Communists. But yeah, most of his stuff was terrible, awful. And this Pope has done some good things like a lawful gay marriages. But that is just such a surrender, such a complete and utter surrender. Complete and utter surrender. And this is the other flip side of Christianity. They're either slaughtering you or telling you to turn the other cheek. Both evil. Yeah, it was nice to meet you, Yuan. Hope to see you again. Thanks to you all. Thanks for coming to Conference. I hope you enjoyed it. It was great to meet you. Apollo Zeus is 100% self-esteem, both confidence and self-respect possible. Sure, and I don't know what 100% means. How do you measure it in terms of percent? It's just a matter of having confidence and respecting yourself and getting rid of our own guilt, you know, and being moral, living up to your morality. So yes, again, I don't know what 100% how you measure these things, but you can have self-esteem. You just have to work on being moral, being honest, having integrity, being productive. You know the rest. Being rational, bottom line. Being rational, ruthlessly so. That says, buy some Bitcoin to secure your freedom. All right. That is Boaz's financial advice. If you'd listened to him a year ago, you would have made a fortune. All right. Thank you guys. We really, really appreciate the support. We're only like $62 short. I don't know if that stimulates anybody to want to jump in and get us over the mark. But anyway, oh, what happened? I guess it did stimulate a little bit. So we're only $17 short now. James G., are you going to cover Pittsburgh Police shutting down from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. on your next new show? Many cities are defending the police to record level, article name, 15 cities defunding the police budgets to the bare minimum. I will look for that. I did not see that story. I will look for it. Yeah, I see it. It's on MSN.com. All right. I'll check it out and cover it next time. Let's see. Thank you, James. Shazbot, Hilberley is a great entertainment, though. The Wheeler family from Knight Court in particular. I don't know Knight Court. I never watched that. But yes, Hilberley's can, when you make fun of them and don't take them seriously, are fantastic entertainment and very, very funny. Andrew says, conservative supporting IVF is hollow. As your prior guest said, the procedure by its nature involves destroying embryos. Yes. And I feel sorry for the people working in IVF labs who now have to figure out if they're really getting there, if they're really abiding by the law, if they're really going to be protected, will the Alabama Supreme Court actually hold that this law that was passed is constitutional? If it's not, will these workers in IVF labs be prosecuted? The whole thing is nuts. Conservatives are nuts about this. And this issue of abortion and human life and conception is insane and completely discredits any legitimacy that conservatives might have had or might have. Crazy, crazy stuff. Fred Harper, do all the books you have been reading on the topic of Western civilization integrate well? They do. Now, of course, Dominion has a very, very oppositional perspective. But it doesn't. But that's his interpretation. The fact that he presents all consistent across the different books that I'm reading, they really do integrate well. I continue to recommend the closing of the Western mind and the reopening of the Western mind. Anybody interested in the actual history of Christianity, the devastating impact of Christianity, how the West overcame Christianity, and the origins of Western civilization in Greece really read these books. They're very well documented. And again, they're consistent. They don't contradict anything in other books factually. It really is a bit better. And it really is the issue of how you interpret those facts. And yeah, if you're an apologist for Christianity, don't read them. This is not a book for Scott. UN Declaration of Human Rights is the closest to leftist 10 commandments we have. No, there's also the European Constitution with 377 or 500 or 600 human rights listed alphabetically, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it's nuts. They shall not eat animals. They shall not torture animals. They shall not kill animals. They shall not whatever. They shall not warm the climate. They shall not use CO2. I mean, you could go on and on and on with a kind of 10 commandments or 100 commandments or 1,000 commandments of the relevant for the left. All right, there will be a show tomorrow. No shows on Thursday. Thursday I'm flying all day. So no shows on Thursday. A show tomorrow. Not exactly what time. Maybe this time. Maybe a little later. What else? Yeah, that's about it. Don't forget to support the show. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Don't forget to share, particularly the short videos that are going up, particularly the short shorts, the one minute videos, those are easy to share. Yeah, and I will hopefully you're having a great week and I'll see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.