 Here's a kind of a funny, sad story about Bezos. So Bezos is building a yacht, a luxury yacht. It's a sailboat. I think it's 420 feet long, which is, it's hard to imagine how big a 420 feet long yacht is, but it's a big yacht. I was once on, I spent a weekend on a 150-foot yacht. Wow, wow. It was luxurious and beautiful and amazing. We literally landed on the deck in a helicopter, in a helicopter. We landed on the yacht. So I can't even imagine what a 417 foot, which is what Jeff Bezos' yacht is going to be, 417 foot sailing yacht is going to be. I mean, it's truly an amazing, an amazing ship, an amazing boat. It's a lot of fun. It's costing him $500 million, which is, I guess, not that lot of money for somebody worth over $100 billion. Anyway, the yacht is being built in Rotterdam in the Netherlands by a company that specializes in shipbuilding, and particularly it's called Ocean Ocean Co. It's a company that, I think, specializes in building luxury yachts. And the problem is that because it has these very high sails, in order to get from where it's being built to the open ocean, it's got to go through these canals in Rotterdam and there's a bridge. And the bridge is 230 feet tall. And it's called The Hef, which is this bridge. It's 230 feet tall at that point. But that's not tall enough to let Bezos' boat go under. So Bezos, well, not Bezos, but Ocean Co. A company based in the Netherlands approached the city of Rotterdam and said, look, we will pay to have the bridge dismantled so the boat can go under it and then we'll rebuild it just the way it was, maybe even better. Now, what's interesting about this bridge is it's not in use. It was a bridge built a long time ago for real transport. I'm trying to find a picture of the bridge because it's a pretty ugly bridge. Oh, there it is. OK, let me show you a picture of it. Let's see if I can show you a picture of this. You're going to have to give me a second and I'll show you a picture. Where is it? I think that's it. OK, can you see the picture? Hopefully you can all see the picture. Let me just move it so I'm not in the middle of it. There's the bridge, right? It's a pretty ugly bridge, but you see it's got a big span in the middle where the ship should be, where the yacht should be able to come, but it's just not high enough. And you can see that it's fairly, it seems like it wouldn't be that complicated to take off just that middle part. Let the yacht go and put it back on. And all at the cost of Ocean Co, I assume at the cost of Jeff Bezos. And initially, the city council said yes. And then the citizens of Rotterdam freaked out. They freaked out. You're going to dismantle the bridge? This is the bridge. This is the symbol of our country. By the way, this was a railroad bridge. It's not being used anymore. The railroad does not run there anymore. It's just there. It's become kind of a symbol of Rotterdam, right? And you're going to do this for the sake of a billionaire? For the sake of a billionaire's yacht? How dare you? And the citizens have wiled up. They got all excited. And they put pressure on the city council with drawn their acceptance of the proposal. And I remember this. I'm going to cost the city a dime. So I'm going to cost these people a dime. They're going to put it back just the way it was. But they're not going to be inconvenienced. It's not going to cost them anything. It's not like this is a working bridge and now the trains won't be able to pass, or the people won't be able to pass, or the cars won't be able to pass. No, no, no, no, no. It's the principle. How dare a billionaire ask us to do this? The citizens of Rotterdam are already preparing for when the boat passes here. It probably won't pass with the sail because they'll have to put the sail on after it passes somehow, right? So they'll have to find a different way to do it. But they're going to throw tomatoes at it. They're going to throw eggs at it. They hate this boat. As they say, one of these residents that got very upset about this said, there's a principle at stake. What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments? Why not? I mean, notice how this is fueled completely, completely fueled by envy, completely fueled by hatred. So I did a kind of a positive story in the Netherlands about the, what do you call it, the farmers. I figured I'd give you a little bit of balance. Holland is a place where there are a lot of rich people. Holland became very, very rich in the 17th century. And a lot of wealth in Holland is old wealth, but there are also entrepreneurs in Holland that have made a lot of money. There's very, very wealthy people. Indeed, of all the countries in Europe, Holland is one of the countries that has the largest inequality. You know, I don't care about inequality, but just, you know, it's got huge inequality. But this is the thing about Holland, very similar to Scandinavia. It's okay to be rich. Don't flaunt it. Don't drive a nice car. Don't have a big yacht. Don't wear big, expensive jewelry. Don't flaunt it. This is a society shaped by a Calvinist approach to, you know, you're a steward of your money. God made this possible for you. You've got to be, take care of it. You've got to be generous. Take care of it. You've got to be generous with other people. And of course, Holland is no longer religious. It's quite secular. But that mentality of egalitarianism, of everybody being the same, of everybody dressing the same, of everybody looking the same, of everybody having the same amount of appearance in terms of wealth, even though everybody knows that they're not the same. So they despise the idea, the idea that Bezos has a boat, a big boat. They don't want to see it. They don't want to know about it. They certainly don't want the bridge to be taken apart so that it could be brought into the ocean. They don't want to have anything to do with it. Indeed, they want to protest it. This is envy. This is a hatred of success for the sake of hatred. There's not nothing to be gained. There's no value. There's no positive here. There's all negative. It's, as Paul says in the chat, it's a bridge to nowhere. There's no value they're trying to protect you. It's an ugly bridge. By the way, we have a beautiful bridge in Rotterdam. Look at this. I'll show you another picture. Let's see. No, not that one. No, look at this bridge. That's a beautiful bridge. Yeah, I'd be upset if that was closed. It's a major thoroughfare. I've driven on that bridge. It's a major entry point into Rotterdam. It's gorgeous. I love that bridge. The other one's ugly. Who cares? They should tear it down permanently. It's become, it's a national monument. You can't touch it. It's like historical or whatever they preserved at the... It's like people live in the past, hate progress, hate success. But more than they hate success, they hate the successful. And they hate the idea of consumption of a lot. They tell a story. This is a New York Times story about this, where this Dutch person says, let me find this for you. Yeah, I mean, as the story says, Netherlands has billionaires, huge pay gap, huge inequality. But it's this Protestant mentality, secularized into envy. Secularized into envy. It's not even like, anyway, what was the story? Yeah, she told the story about, they had an exchange student at their home. She's from the Netherlands. American exchange student at their home. And the mother told the kid, you can prepare your own sandwich. And when they prepare their sandwiches, they put one sausage in the sandwich, and that was what they ate for lunch. And the American kid, when he prepared his sandwich, put five sausages in there. And it was like, what do you need five sausages for? Nobody needs five sausages. Now they didn't say anything to him because they're polite. But that's what they thought. They rolled their eyes. They thought it was absurd. This conspicuous consumption, they're very against that. Like if you go to the Netherlands, I live pretty good, but there's this mentality. And it's the kind of mentality that the hatred of success, the hatred of conspicuous success, which kills culture, kills cultures. And Amsterdam used to be the greatest city in the world. Certainly in the 17th century, it was probably the best city in the world to be in. All right. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. 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